Part of my job as a journalism professor is to recruit students. Because I was a journalist, I’m interested in finding bright, hard-working young men and women who’d like to follow the calling of the public service mission of journalism. (I remain optimistic, perhaps foolishly.)

Parents of prospective students, of course, routinely ask: “What’s your record on job placement?” That I can tell them, based on surveys of our grads six months after matriculation. (And it’s an excellent record, too.)

But here’s the question I dread:

My daughter says she wants to be a journalist. Even if her financial aid package is half your $35,000 per year cost — and rising at 5 percent a year — and despite what parents can pay, she may end up with more than $30,000 or $40,000 in student loans. How long will it take for her on an entry-level journalist’s salary to recover her investment?

Surveys of journalism school grads from recent years say salaries in the mid-20s are customary. Entry-level print journalists earn a little less (in some cases, a lot less, as my graduates tell me); PR, advertising and some broadcast jobs earn more. That parent envisions an ROI on the family’s investment in the daughter’s education at three to five years or more. That’s at a private school; presumably, a public school grad would fare better.

If that young woman is bright, she’ll do her homework. She’ll ask me before sending in her enrollent deposit for the names of recent grads who landed daily print jobs after graduation. After getting their permission, I’ll give them to her. They’ll tell her this:

They love being journalists. They love telling a good story. But they detest working 60 or 70 hours, nights and weekends, for 40 hours’ pay. They detest the unpaid furloughs imposed by corporate managers looking to cut costs. Their raises, if profferred, lag significantly behind inflation. Because of numerous rounds of buyouts and layoffs, fewer older, experienced reporters and editors are available (and willing) to serve as mentors. Young journos are tired of seeing assignments that serve more as fluff than substance. They thought, as journalists, that they could make a difference. They are discovering that the current structure of the industry prevents that, frustrating them. Their health-care plans suck. And they’re tired of providing their own reporter’s notebooks.

That prospective student may still attend my journalism program — but if she’s keenly aware of her ROI, she may apply her time, treasure and talent to mastering the skills of a journalist only to apply them to other avenues of communication that pay more. She’ll learn to observe, record, analyze, organize and present. But she’ll do that concocting advertising and PR campaigns instead of digging up the dirt at city hall that unpaid “volunteer” amateurs and bloggers don’t do well or at all. That’s because those stories — the mundane but necessary stuff of holding government accountable — don’t drive traffic to blogs.

Yes, I paint a bleak picture. Yes, it’s overdrawn. But scratch journalists in their mid-20s, either at print jobs or small-market broadcast stations, and you’ll hear all these threads. And yes, there are a number of emerging avenues for distribution of journalists’ work operated by laid-off journos, foundations, non-profits and for-profit, online-only startups. There are places she can work as a journalist. But then there’s that ROI calculation: Making a difference vs. paying the bills and student loans.

I wonder where the journalists will come from who will be around 10 to 20 years from now to cover the financial funeral of Social Security, the continuing debate over health-care reform, the attempt by President Hillary Clinton to amend the constitution to allow her a third term and the still unfolding drama of Brett Favre’s 15th “retirement” from the Toronto Argonauts.

Thousands of journalists at daily papers have lost their jobs in just the past few years. Generally, they’ve been the older, more experienced journalists. Bean counters figure they can hire two, maybe three cub reporters for the dough they pay an experienced journo making Guild scale and excellent benefits after 25 years. And that’s if they hire at all.

Studies show that the nation’s journalism schools are cranking out about 12,000 graduates every year. But is the trend line of those who wish a journalism career with a public-service aura ascending or descending?

Where will the next generation of skilled, committed journalists come from if the perceived ROI of a journalism education is so dismal?

You will want to know what happened. You may not immediately want to know what someone else thinks or feels about what happened. That may come later. You first want someone to tell you clearly and with minimal subjectivity what happened with no opinion or impression attached.

You live in a second-hand world. You need someone to observe the world first-hand when you cannot. Who will you trust to faithfully do that for you?

Sociologist C. Wright Mills described this half a century ago in the book The Politics of Truth:

The first rule for understanding the human condition is that men live in second-hand worlds. They are aware of much more than they have personally experienced, and their own experience is always indirect.

The quality of their lives is determined by meanings they have received from others. Everyone lives in a world of such meanings. No man stands alone directly confronting a world of solid facts. …

[I]n their everyday life they do not experience a world of solid fact; their experience itself is selected by stereotyped meanings and shaped by readymade interpretations. Their images of the world, and of themselves, are given to them by crowds of witnesses they have never met and never shall meet.

Yet for every man these images — provided by strangers and dead men — are the very basis of his life as a human being.

Your information needs may be summed up by three questions: How does the world work? Why does it work that way? What will be the impact on me?

The answers reflect the raw data of empirical observation and a neutral explanation of phenomena eventually followed by analyses laced with points of view. Those “crowds of witnesses” offer that information in many forms — books, movies, art, advertising, television, music, and the various means by which journalism and pseudo-journalism are distributed.

You first need to know what happened. But doesn’t it increasingly seem that your principal sources are also those who didn’t witness the event first-hand either? Doesn’t it seem as if your first notice of what happened comes from a second-hand source who is not a witness at all? Is that source someone using the pretense of a witness, someone who imbues that initial report with analysis laced with a point of view, pre-coloring and presaging your first impression? Which do you need first — a subjective point of view or one as objective as possible?

Reflect on your information needs. (Not your wants — that’s a different post.) What do you need to know? Why do you need to know it? Who will credibly tell you?

Mills’ analysis of understanding the human condition anticipates the digital world you live in. Your second-hand world consists of, in Mills’ words, “stereotyped meanings and shaped by readymade interpretations.” From what source do you not receive pre-digested reports?

If you want information without a point of view shaping it, perhaps you need Anne. She is a Fair Witness in Robert A. Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land.” Her employer, Jubal Harshaw, is asked to demonstrate her capabilities. Harshaw points to a building and asks Anne its color. Her reply: “White on this side.” In Heinlein’s fictional world, a Fair Witness has total recall, is fully impartial, and makes no intuitive or analytical leaps beyond what she can witness (such as assuming the color on the side of the building she cannot see).

A Fair Witness is the antithesis of a Spin Doctor. Anne, the Fair Witness, is a source of unfiltered fact. You are left to divine the meaning of that fact in a context uniquely yours.

In the midst of this high-noise, low-signal digital information age one S&R writer called “Shoutworld,” no Fair Witness appears to exist. Traditionally “objective” sources of information increasingly have colorized what happened through an ideological, self-centered, or selfish lens. The numbers of those sources who minimize the predigestion of what happened declines daily.

You eventually may find that subjective witness reports are necessary to help you ascertain context, importance, and meaning. On what basis, however, do you trust their authors?

If all your information sources tell you what it means before telling you what happened, how certain are you of what, indeed, did happen?

These are skilled people with diverse interests and even more diverse points of view. Three are college professors. Also writing for S&R have been or are an Hispanic activist from Texas; a foreign affairs writer who specializes in nuclear deproliferation issues and civilian casualties resulting from armed conflict; a gay staff cartoonist; a management consultant specializing in organizational behavior whose clients include 20 percent of the Fortune 500; an ex-pat South African economist; three experts in popular culture; a former director of the Berkeley Stage Company and statistical demographer for the U.S. Census Bureau; a professional stage actor; two stay-at-moms; a photographer; and occasional guest columnists.

However, we all share one trait: We are volunteers. We don’t get paid. We have other lives, other responsibilities, other people dependent on us to make a living. As business models go, ours sucks. Modest ad income and passing the hat means S&R remains a labor of love. But can love be a sustaining force for the online medium in the absence of profit?

In the Beginning of Blogging, it was all so exciting. Thrilling, even. Putting up a post, watching the stats, seeing who read your work, where they were — and how many read your stuff. Generate those hits. Yeah. That was heady stuff.

Is it still?

Most individual and group blogs are dependent on volunteers. It’s rare that a Huffington Post can raise $37 million to sustain the enterprise. (Of course, HuffPo has “volunteers” too, doesn’t it?)

The print newspaper industry continues to collapse in terms of revenue, profitability, and numbers of paid, professional journalists. So the dominant use of volunteers to inaugurate and maintain sites featuring commentary and/or advocacy journalism becomes an increasingly important public-interest issue.

Most S&R writers are ideologically progressive but rarely hew to party lines. As the S&R mission statement says:

Scholars & Rogues is a diverse band of thinkers, social analysts, activists, grousers, jesters, and troublemakers. We’re different in many ways, but we share a general belief in progress, a conviction that smarter is better, and a passionate distaste for convention.

That statement mirrors the intent of many capable bloggers. Many (but perhaps not most) bloggers seek to simply make things better. We have particular issues or problems that occupy our blogging attention. We are exceedingly dependent, though, on the research of others (those paid professional journalists whose stories we link to) to support points made in our posts.

But those posts, which leaven “objective” journalism with (usually lucid) commentary, add substance to debates of public interest. Yet the majority of bloggers are not paid for their work. What will become of community blogs such as S&R as the corps of volunteers 1) lose interest, 2) lose access to reliable, verifiable information produced by journalists, 3) lose equal access to the Web as politicians favor corporate control of the Internet or 4) just need to spend more time at the day job in a bad economy to make ends meet?

Note that newspapers, in the early days of online news Web sites, had links where volunteers could post community news. Now, that didn’t work out so well, did it? Let’s hope community blogs fare better.

Volunteerism is the principle means of support for community blogs such as S&R. Many such blogs, blogs populated by smart, capable people (see our blogroll), no doubt face the same pressure the volunteers at S&R do: Keep pumpin’ out the posts. Keep the conversation going. Keep the debate fresh and focused. But it’s difficult, as a volunteer, to pump out as many posts as I’d like. (I do like to get eight hours’ sleep each night.)

At some point, as B.B. King would sing, “The thrill is gone.” I hope most of us aren’t there yet, but it’s increasingly a problem faced by those bloggers who believe in candid, civil, and common-sense conversations in the public sphere — yet have family and job responsibilities elsewhere.

But readers in those cities still have print options for newspapers providing some local news.

Not so in the mountain town of Carbondale, Colo., whose population about equals its elevation. The Valley Journal, founded in 1975, had its plug pulled in March, reports DeeDee Correll of the Center for Rural Affairs. The 6,000 residents had no other sources of local news.

Their solution: Publish a newspaper themselves.

A core of volunteers started the Sopris Sun, running it as non-profit free weekly with a press run of 3,000 copies. Why’d they do it? Says the Journal’s original founder, Rebecca Young: “It just beat the dickens out of sitting around whining that our paper was dead.”

Carbondale’s solution was civic-minded. It taps every possible source of revenue, including grants. Says Carbondale Mayor Michael Hassig:

I don’t know if they have a business model that will work. It wouldn’t surprise me if [the newspaper] was sustainable because there are an awful lot of people who do labors of love here. There was a void. Every town should have a park, a library and a newspaper.” [emphasis added]

The Sun, of course, has days of reckoning ahead. Commitment and pride may drive volunteerism, but is free labor a sustainable business model? Will printing 3,000 copies a week be a cost that eventually cannot be borne? Will volunteers shy away from penetrating coverage of their neighbors and friends who may be public officials or business owners? Will the Sun succumb to soft-feature-itis by being unable or unwilling to produce eat-your-veggies journalism?

American has thousands of small daily and weekly newspapers. The mean circulation of the American daily newspaper is about 38,000 — but I’ll bet the median circulation is a third of that.

Small papers’ chances of economic survival are much higher than the metro newspapers of large cities. Small papers offer unique goods – local news and a local audience for local advertisers. Big newspapers are targets of aggregators galore. Their goods are not always unique.

Carbondale could react quickly to fulfill the communal void left by the demise of its newspaper. Could Cleveland? Portland (either one)? Tampa Bay? Dallas? Boise? Toledo? Burlington? San Diego? St. Louis? Spokane? Buffalo?

America’s cities are largely served by only one daily newspaper of substance. (Yes, that substance has been diluted by foolish cost-saving measures such as firing or buying out the professionals who report and write the product the papers are trying to sell.) We’ve seen the first metro dailies fail. What happens when the lone metro of a large city ceases print publication?

Perhaps opportunity happens. Dan Conover, says his bio, edited a big metro-daily and took a buyout in 2008 after 18 years in the news business. He makes this observation:

A client looking to invest in media asked me earlier this month for advice on what might replace failing newspapers. My response? There are plenty of interesting ideas in play, but the first meaningful test won’t come until a major American city loses its only metro daily. So wait.

That’s because metro newspapers are taking up the market space in which the innovation he’s looking for must occur. Newspapers may be failing, but most do a passable job of limiting serious competition in their markets. What succeeds in the shadow of an established metro, therefore, may not be what ultimately winds up contending for the market positions vacated by Old Media giants. [emphasis added]

That’s an interesting perspective. So pundits like me will be watching what’s lining up to contest for that “market space” about to be relinquished, developments in Seattle, Denver, and Tucson suggest, by large metro dailies.

[Thx to my colleague Carole McNall.]

But this week, it gave its product to me for free. I would have gladly paid up to 5 cents to read just one of its stories. But the JS didn’t charge me. What kind of business model allows me to consume a product for free?

I learned of the story through an e-mailed version of Romenesko, the legendary (or infamous, depending on your POV), media news page at Poynter. org, the Web site of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank.

The Poynter e-mail contained this tease: “Wisconsin university football coach bans student reporters (http://www.jsonline.com/business/43539347.html).” I clicked on the link and —ta da — there it was, a story written by JS reporter Don Walker. Free. Didn’t have to pay a penny. And I would have. Gladly.

I know this isn’t a rare phenomenon. I suspect you’ve read news for free online, too. Bet you kinda expect it to be free, even demand that it be free. Perhaps you think it’s some kind of birthright. But in the long run, if you do not pay for the product of professional journalists, you will lose one of your best defenses against secrecy, corruption, and tyranny.

Those who wish to keep information from you, those who demand or offer kickbacks and bribes to get what they want, those who wish to secretly manipulate the levers of power unfairly for selfish financial advantage, those who wish to attain and maintain power over you … they’re winning. They’re winning because fewer and fewer journalists are keeping an eye on them, holding them accountable for their words and actions. Remember, that’s the deal the Founders gave the press: Hold government accountable, and we’ll protect you from government intervention.

If you don’t pay for the product produced by professional journalists who cover the “eat-your-spinach” stories bloggers don’t, won’t, or can’t, then don’t complain if the powerful and influential take advantage of the lack of scrutiny formerly provided by the 5,900 journalists who lost their jobs last year.

In 1990 America’s daily newspapers had 56,900 staffers, very close to the historical high, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Newspapers were cash cows for investors, with profits north of 20 percent. In 2000, the population of journalists at dailies was still high — 56,400. Then the Internet came, folks say, and stole all the advertising revenue. Profit margins have been halved — as revenue has dropped precipitously. (Of course, it’s not as simple as that. Apparently, bad management and arrogance had much to do with the decline of circulation, and hence the declining advertising revenue, of daily newspapers. In effect, corporate newspaper management shot itself in the foot as it bad-mouthed the Internet as an irrelevant upstart.)

To attempt to maintain the profitability of that now-highly suspect business model, newspaper managements whacked jobs — the very jobs that produce the product those executives presumably want to sell. This has to be among the dumbest responses to economic stress in corporate history.

At the end of 2008, only 46,700 journalists were left at the America’s daily newspapers. 2009 is off to a rough beginning: The Web site Paper Cuts reports that about 8,500 newspaper staffers (including journalists) have been laid off or bought out as of mid-April. (Paper Cuts is a Web site by Erica Smith, who has been tracking newspaper layoffs since 2007.) It is possible that by 2010, the number of daily print journalists will have been halved in only a decade.

Surely that’s not a positive development for the democratic health of the Republic.

Interestingly, the nation’s premier journalism graduate programs are seeing marked increases in applications: Columbia, up 38 percent; Stanford, 20 percent; and NYU, 6 percent. But these new students are not necessarily seeking to become journalists. Says Jim O’Brien, director of Northwestern University’s Medill Career Services office:

Corporate communications is a growth area in terms of opportunities for jobs for our MSJ grads. Both corporations and nonprofits who are interested in communications, where they had typically looked at an English major before, are now thinking that a journalism grad might have leg up on those candidates because of their training.

This is a two-pronged blow to “eat-your-spinach” news. First, newspapers are shedding the very people trained —and paid — to do that. Second, former journalists and others are seeking graduate journalism degrees to become corporate communicators.

That means fewer professionally trained and experienced journalists are digging for information corporations and governments wish to hide, and more smart people are being trained — and, eventually, paid handsomely — to do the hiding.

They’re winning. Democracy is losing. Please consider that next time you read a news story online — for free. It may be, in the long run, a very costly read.

I learned to parse cop code by making daily phone calls to the cops to get the police log — and often walked to the cop shop and read it myself when the damned desk sergeant wouldn’t read it to me. I learned by paying attention to details. I listened to what sources said — always more than one, y’know — and wrote it down. I had a newsroom godfather who taught me well: “Get it right. Period.” I only used anonymous sources three times in 20 years.

One day Editor Bob said he’d heard somebody was going to build a nuclear plant up river. “Find out,” he said. I did. I had to learn how nukes operated in less than two hours before going to the presser for the announcement. I was the only newsman who asked: “Will this be a boiling water or pressurized water reactor?” Hell, the PR types didn’t know. I did. I knew the in’s and out’s of each. Score one for me. I learned the beat quickly. I reported what the utility and the government didn’t want my readers to know. I wore a button given to me by my news editor: “Question Authority.” I found facts — so my readers found out something they needed to know.

I covered the construction of that plant — how it helped and hurt the local economy, whether the utility’s general contractor was using local union labor or bringing in its own non-union crews, what the impact of the finished plant would be on property-tax rates in a very small town. I covered the environmental protests over the plant, learning what happens to fish when warm water is discharged into a cool river. I covered the squabbles over the environmental impact statement and licensing hearings. Then there was the radiation thing …

I covered boards of selectmen and planning boards and school boards and conservation commissions. I did zoning appeals meetings, where commercial interests tried quietly to get land use restrictions altered. Not on my watch: I found out, because my newsroom godfather taught me the law — and showed me the corner of the town-hall bulletin board where the zoning board posted required legal notices in type so small you’d need a magnifying glass to read ‘em. I found out facts — so my readers found out something they needed to know.

I explained why school budgets ballooned. I wrote why property taxes were heading up — again and again. I knew the paper’s readership area, I knew the readers’ interests, and I knew all the back channels of local government. I wrote stories when a town official gave the town’s winter salt contract to an in-law.

Yep, I was a newsman. Began with a typewriter, an old LC Smith, Army surplus. Ended on Hendrix computer terminals with disk drives the size of dinner plates. Even ran a linotype once.

After 20 years, I had accumulated institutional memory of the news and names of 400 square miles of readership area. I had an encyclopedic Rolodex of politicians’ names and numbers, including the bars they drank at (and in some cases, their lovers’ home phone numbers).

After 20 years, I was barely 40, and I knew my craft. I knew the public-service mission: Protect the readers. Find the facts, and tell readers what they need to know.

But in today’s Sam Zell universe, I’d be toast. I’d have been bought out years ago or laid off. I would have become an extraordinary expense in the chase for maximizing shareholder profit. Me and my costly health-care benefits and Guild salary would have been dropped like a fiscally toxic hot potato.

And out the door I’d have gone — with that institutional memory, that massive Rolodex, that 20 years of experience of writing more than 10,000 stories and editing three times that and penning 2,000 editorials and columns. Maybe into PR, like so many have. Or maybe into attempts to try different venues for news, as a few are doing.

Imagine today’s me — the experienced journalist in his or her late 40s, or 50s, or 60s. At the end of the last century, newsrooms were well-stocked with versions of me. No more. Newspaper corporations in their unbelievable arrogance ignored the emergence of the Internet as a competitive force. Newspaper advertisers began switching media allegiances. The trend of declining ad revenue at newspapers has accelerated, complicated by the current dismal economy. Look at these third-quarter numbers:

• Print ad revenue down 19.26 percent to $8.2 billion. (Down 16.07 percent in Q2, down 14.38 percent in Q1)
• Online ad revenue down 3 percent to $749.8 million. (Down 2.4 percent in Q2, up 7.2 percent in Q1)
• Combined is down 18.11 percent to $8.94 billion. (Down 15.11 percent in Q2, Down 12.85 percent in Q1)

The modern me — experienced, knowledgeable, presumably unflappable — is a pricey commodity in a business that’s losing its shirt so badly corporate practitioners are trying to sell off big metro dailies such as E.W. Scripps’ Rocky Mountain News and McClatchy’s Miami Herald. The New York Times Co. wants to mortgage its grand edifice for $225 mill to maintain cash flow — and Sam Zell’s Tribune Co. has filed for Chapter 11. He ran its newspapers and their veteran journalistic abilities into the cold, cold ground of indebtedness.

The modern me is unaffordable. So there are fewer version of the modern me in the nation’s biggest dailies. Staffs at the New York Times and Los Angeles Times and other newspapers nationwide have been slashed.

Yeah, yeah, you say. Heard all this before. So what?

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, that’s what. The weird case of the bamboozling guv illuminates the weak underbelly of American Corporate Journalism. Writes syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker:

Latest score: The bums are winning. And the corrupt politicians are, too.

Thanks to mismanagement and debt, Tribune’s eviscerated newspapers are riddled with more holes than Al Capone’s enemies, while Illinois holds the nation’s highest gubernatorial incarceration rate. Three of the past eight governors have spent time in jail or prison. Blagojevich would bring the number to four.

If ever The Chicago Tribune’s renowned staff of swashbuckling reporters, cartoonists, editors and columnists (Mike Royko and Jeff MacNelly, RIP) were needed — or more sorely missed — it is now. Not that those still standing don’t do a heroic job, but they know what I mean. Staff cuts and shrinking news holes make it hard to keep pace when the enemy is communing with one’s own generals, as seems to be the case here. [emphasis added]

That’s why more, not fewer, modern versions of me are needed— to keep the Bums from winning. Blago’s a Big Bum, but every newsman and newswoman at a small local weekly or daily know bums like Blago exist everywhere. That’s why I’m still a journalism educator, trying to provide young men and women the education and common sense needed to practice a craft vitally necessary to the conduct of a fully functional and fairly operated democracy.

You know that $700 billion bailout of financial institutions overseen by Hammerin’ Hank Paulson? Outside of a simple pie chart I saw on CNN showing a breakdown of who got what, I don’t know if that dough is really being used effectively, honestly and fairly. I read there’s dozens of federal investigations into the financial markets. How seriously are those look-sees being undertaken by the feds? American Corporate Journalism won’t and can’t cover these things adequately.

And if you think the majority of blogs you read are well-stocked with veteran, experienced professional journalists who can keep tabs on corporate cheaters and government incompetents at local, regional and national levels, send me some of what you’re smokin’.

Some blogs provide useful commentary and analysis. But it takes well-trained, experienced journalists fully supported by adequate organizational resources to find out stuff readers need to know. Good journalism is expensive.

Veteran, experienced journalists find out facts — so their readers find out something they need to know.

Sooner or later, the free stuff online will be precisely worth that price – absolutely nothing.

S&R, on the other hand, writes about music. About literature and poetry. About art. Education. Sports. Culture and popular culture. The Ramsey case and what it tells us about the state of media. And now that the election is over, S&R is writing about politics less than ever.

So really, what is S&R?

One response might argue that tout est politique. I’ve never been terribly comfortable with totalizing positions like this, though, because they tend to trivialize – if everything is politics, then nothing is. However, there’s no denying the fundamental truth that many things we don’t commonly associate with politics are powerfully political in their implications.

Take popular music, for instance. It’s impossible to consider the sweeping cultural and political upheavals of the 1960s without the soundtrack – Dylan, The Beatles, Woodstock…the list goes on and on. Some of those artists were quite explicitly agitating for political reform while others wove themselves into the social tapestry in less obvious ways, but the sum total of the music of that decade was inherently political.

Contrast that with the music of the Bush administration. Where was the protest, the outcry? Who was the Dylan of the 2000s? What record will we be comparing, come 2024, with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band?

The absence of such a voice was not an accident. Part of the grand conservative plan, the blitzkrieg that was launched upon Reagan’s inauguration, was the neutering of music’s political possibility. When Ronnie’s FCC hacks, Fowler and Brenner, decreed that “the public interest is what the public is interested in,” it did so in order to subvert, once and for all, the power of the creative social mind to the will of corporate logic. It dismantled radio ownership limits that assured a massive diversity of options for artists and audiences alike, and found its ultimate expression in Clear Channel’s pro-war, pro-Bush rallies and the banishment of those who chose to give voice to their dissent (the most notable case being the attempted silencing of The Dixie Chicks).

So when our generation needed to be marching in the streets and demanding an end to the outrage in Iraq, where was the soundtrack? Who ultimately benefited from those policies way back in the early ’80s? We’re fighting an unjust invasion and occupation and the rallies in the streets are for the war?! Corporate-sponsored pro-war rallies?!

When I’m writing a TunesDay piece on some band or another, providing a video link or encouraging you to check it out at eMusic, part of what’s going on is purely and simply about the music as art. But it’s also about the bigger picture, about the need for our culture to build a strong platform whereby artists can be heard. If they use this platform to sing silly love songs, that’s fine, so long as the platform is there when they need to sing about injustice. I recently did a piece promoting The Well Wishers, Maximo Park and The Dandy Warhols, and none of these bands may ever contribute a note to the cause of world peace. On the other hand, if I flash back to 1997 and Green Day’s Nimrod, I’m not sure I could have predicted American Idiot, a manifesto so powerful that not even the soul-deadening corporate might of Clear Channel could contain it.

What political blogs do is important, especially in a society where the legacy press has largely abdicated its responsibility to watchdog our institutions of power. Who Obama selects to run the State Department matters. His choices for Treasury and Defense and our various intelligence and military leadership posts matter tremendously.

But empires rarely rise and fall as a result of a couple close-in political knife fights. In my view, a great deal of what even the best poliblogs do is tactical, street-level and near-term. This isn’t true across the board, of course. There are outstanding thinkers and writers who are looking at the big picture and the long term. And this is where I think S&R has done and will continue to do its best work. Not in the political battle, but the culture war.

We may debate some of the nuances and specifics amongst ourselves, but in general it’s safe to say that those of us here at Scholars & Rogues have a shared vision of a more progressive society. I don’t use that word in any sort of conventional, partisan sense. By “progressive” I mean more enlightened; better educated; more appreciative of the cultural arts; better informed about the forces shaping our world; more productively spiritual (and less dogmatically sectarian) in our approach to life; more generous and charitable; more tolerant and more willing to understand the value of diversity; more committed to community and the common good; more literate; more intellectually curious and prone to critical thought; more responsive to the well-reasoned than to the passionately felt; and above all, more insistent that those we choose to represent us, to lead us and to govern us be the best America has to offer, not the worst.

Some of the solutions that get us to our destination may be “liberal” by our current reckoning, some “conservative.” The best ideas may be “idealistic” or they may be “pragmatic.” But in the end, I think most of us believe that a society that reads – in an environment uncluttered by censorship, either active or passive, governmental or cultural or corporate – is in better shape than one that doesn’t read or won’t. A society whose citizens not only have knowledge in their heads, but who have been trained to use it in innovative ways is more likely to solve more problems faster and more effectively. A country that thinks and thinks relentlessly is nearly immune to the machinations of despotism. A nation whose mythologies make clear that war is the last resort, not the first, is more likely to achieve greatness both at home and abroad. A nation whose media structures are designed to foster the best that is thought and created is one whose streets are less likely to flow with the blood of aggrieved citizens. A culture where competition aims to help people up the ladder instead of keeping them in their place is one that maximizes its collective genius. A political economy where genuine opportunity arises from a level playing field is certainly more likely to produce spectacular successes than one where the reality is that of a rigged game played beneath a banner of cynical egalitarian rhetoric.

And the most actualized of all possible societies is one where happiness and satisfaction have nothing at all to do with purchasing power.

This is what I think Scholars & Rogues is. We’ve covered a lot of ground since we launched less than two years ago, and at that point I deliberately chose not to compose a mission statement. Our philosophy was simple: invite the smartest people we could find to share their thoughts and trust the power of that intellect to start great conversations, attract more great minds and build the foundation of a thriving community. With that in place, I wanted to learn what we were rather than dictating what we would be.

Some of what we write may look trivial at first, and the occasional item may even prove trivial in the final analysis. But I think we now have a good sense of what we are and why our readers keep stopping by. We hope our political writings are worthy in the coming months and (if we’re lucky) years, and we expect that our audience will grasp the deeper political mission embedded in our far-flung musings.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to work toward a better culture, and in doing so will trust that if you enlighten the people and establish social structures that exalt the best they have to offer, the merely political will take care of itself.

The Catholic League’s request to Leah Daughtry to ban the blogs BitchPhD and Towleroad from the Democratic National Convention came as something of a shock to those of us here at Scholars and Rogues. Frankly, Mr. Donohue, we are hurt. Our offices contain no balloon figures of Jesus, with or without genitalia (you say “apparently albino penis,” I say “loincloth” – oh wait! There’s the penis! Or should it be Penis?). Our site features no links to intensely homoerotic coverage of the hottest Olympic athletes, despite insistent lobbying from at least two of our staff members. Our humble blog, unlike Daily Kos, may never become the Internet apotheosis of evil radicalism. We know our place. We are what we are.

What we are, Mr. Donohue, is a blog at least ten times as offensive to the Catholic League as the so-called “patently obscene” publications to which you so vehemently object.

Had you bothered to do any in-depth research, were you the watchdog of God you claim to be, your list of blogs to be summarily uncredentialed would have been headed by the proud though lesser-known name of… Scholars and Rogues.

Perhaps it is not too late; in this hope, I offer you the following information about our staff, practices and standards. May you use it for the greater glory of the League, ignoring in your righteous wrath the craven tolerance and despicable humanity of the vast majority of Catholics worldwide.

1. If, as you quote Peter Viereck, “Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals,” editor-in-chief Dr. S has raised that pastime to an art by installing an actual Catholic baiting pit in the basement of S&R headquarters. Unlucky male representatives of the Faith are routinely chained to steam pipes and taunted for hours by voluptuous Wiccans bearing wine, condoms and the latest issue of Lesbian Vampire Nuns of Sodom. Oddly, many former victims later return voluntarily and must be chased away by special guilt-sniffing Rottweilers.
2. Dr. W, senior editor and sexuality expert, has divorced at least nine wives, four of whom are practicing Catholics. With a callous disregard for the traditions of their faith, Dr. W has refused to apply for annulments on the grounds of antecedent and perpetual impotence, thereby dooming these poor women to a lifetime of lesbian vampire sex behind convent walls.
3. Mr. W, editor, is an official lapsed Catholic and has been heard to loudly profane the name of the Holy Virgin while locked alone in his office for several hours at a time. Repetitive slapping noises and an impressive collection of leather flagellation devices may or may not be related to these obscene outbursts.
4. Ms. I, token female and possessor of the Moist Pink Gates to Hell, is an outspoken pro-choice advocate; like most of her fellow succubi she has used repeated casual abortions to facilitate her whorish lifestyle and prominently displays a series of commemorative post-D&C “thumbs-up” photos along one wall of her cubicle.
5. Ms. I also personally fucked Jesus at least twice, possibly three times if oral counts. She stated that although the Savior pronounced his name “hay-ZOOS,” she got a look at his driver’s license in the bar and is confident in her identification.
6. Mr. L, token homosexual or “quoken,” also claimed to have had carnal knowledge of that same Son of God. In the resulting bitchfight, Mr. L produced as evidence a semen-stained t-shirt bearing an eerie resemblance to the lower half of the Shroud of Turin. Challenged as to its authenticity, Mr. L casually dropped two words: Baby. Jesus. (NSFW) Ms. I ran from the room in tears, only to discover Hayzoos had given her a fake cell number.
7. Mr. O emphatically denies any unhealthy preoccupation with plaid skirts, knee socks or white cotton panties. He was, however, unable to explain to the S&R site administrator the near-constant traffic between his workstation and here; his excessive Kleenex and hand lotion consumption is also under investigation.
8. Finally, Mr. Donohue, virulent ad hominem attacks on the defenders of the Faith are an everyday occurrence at S&R, and you yourself are a favored target. A typically bigoted exchange:

Is it me or is he the pervy uncle who wants you to sit on his lap while he talks about the miracle of womanhood?

I don’t know, but he’s apparently obsessed with Jesus’s penis…

I would be, too.

Shut up, you smug bitch!

HEY, we’re ripping the Catholofascist right now, you two.

Whatever.

So what does he say about fucking choirboys?

Who, King Powerbottom Donohue?

Nothing. No comment. He’s like the Switzerland of the Catholic world.

Yeah, if by “Switzerland” you mean “hysterical misogynistic homophobic paranoiac.”

Just an affectionate nickname, bless his heart.

I can only hope, Mr. Donohue, that you will reconsider your choice of obscene and inappropriate blogs and add Scholars and Rogues to that roll of honor.

Thank you,

The Staff of S&R

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

— from the Declaration of Independence; July 4, 1776.

The executive branch shall construe the provisions of H.R. 3199 that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch, such as sections 106A and 119, in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive’s constitutional duties.

— from a March 13, 2006, signing statement by President Bush explaining how he will interpret the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005; despite oversight provisions in the law that directed he inform Congress regarding the FBI’s use of the act’s expanded police powers, President Bush, in effect, told Congress he felt no obligation to do so; emphasis added.

In the annals of the human race, the separation of one people into two, is an event of no uncommon occurrence. The successful resistance of a people against oppression, to the downfall of the tyrant and of tyranny itself, is the lesson of many an age, and of almost every clime. It lives in the venerable records of Holy Writ. It beams in the brightest pages of profane history.

— from “An address, delivered at the request of the committee of arrangements for celebrating the anniversary of Independence, at the City of Washington on the Fourth of July 1821 upon the occasion of reading The Declaration of Independence” by John Quincy Adams.

Provisions of the Act, such as sections 2104 and 6024, purport to require congressional committee approval prior to certain obligations or expenditures of funds appropriated by the Act. The executive branch shall construe such provisions to require only prior notification to congressional committees, as any other construction would be contrary to the constitutional principles set forth by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1983 in INS v. Chadha.

— from an Aug. 2, 2005, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006; emphasis added.

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us — the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of “anything goes.” Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an “awesome God” in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

— from the keynote address by Sen. Barack Obama to the 2004 Democratic Convention; July 27, 2004.

I cannot give you that list.

— response of Michelle Boardman, deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, after Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., asked her during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to provide a list of laws that President Bush has decided, through signing statements, not to enforce; June 28, 2006.

I am proud that we worked together with such bipartisan spirit in the weeks following the despicable attacks on our Nation. My Administration will work together with the Congress to address additional needs as they become known during the second session of the 107th Congress.

— from a Jan. 10, 2002, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Defense and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Recovery from and Response to Terrorist Attacks on the United States Act of 2002; emphasis added.

A realistic president recognizes that he is president within the Constitution and that the Constitution provides the framework in which he can exert considerable power. But the power depends on persuasion, and it depends on consent. And our great presidents have, on the whole, exerted that power within the Constitution.

— from a 1980s clip of Arthur M. Schlesinger, author of “The Imperial Presidency,” aired on PBS; March 1, 2007; emphasis added.

The executive branch shall construe as calling solely for notification the provisions of the Act that purport to require congressional committee approval for the execution of a law. … Section 513 of the Act purports to direct the conduct of security and suitability investigations. To the extent that section 513 relates to access to classified national security information, the executive branch shall construe this provision in a manner consistent with the President’s exclusive constitutional authority, as head of the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief, to classify and control access to national security information and to determine whether an individual is suitable to occupy a position in the executive branch with access to such information.

— from an Oct. 9, 2006, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2007 in which he tells Congress he has the power to edit DHS reports regarding whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists; emphasis added.

Section 503(c) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, as amended by section 611 of the Act, provides for the appointment and certain duties of the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Section 503(c)(2) vests in the President authority to appoint the Administrator, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, but purports to limit the qualifications of the pool of persons from whom the President may select the appointee in a manner that rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office. The executive branch shall construe section 503(c)(2) in a manner consistent with the Appointments Clause of the Constitution.

— from an Oct. 9, 2006, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2007; according to The Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage, “To shield FEMA from cronyism, Congress established new job qualifications for the agency’s director in last week’s homeland security bill. The law says the president must nominate a candidate who has ‘a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management’ and ‘not less than five years of executive leadership”; Oct. 6, 2006; emphasis added.

The president hasn’t vetoed any bills, but basically he has done a personal veto. He has said which laws he will not follow and … put himself above the law, even the same law he has signed.

— Sen. Patrick Leahy during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing; June 28, 2006.

Provisions of the Act, including sections 841, 846, 1079, and 1222, purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the President’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as Commander in Chief. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.

— from a Jan. 28 signing statement by President Bush attached to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008; emphasis added.

Congress is Republican-controlled. Polling shows that a large majority of Americans are willing to give up their civil liberties to prevent another terror attack. The USA Patriot Act passed with overwhelming support. So why didn’t the President simply ask Congress for the authority he thought he needed?

The answer seems to be, quite simply, that Vice President Dick Cheney has never recovered from being President Ford’s chief of staff when Congress placed checks on the presidency. And Cheney wanted to make the point that he thought it was within a president’s power to ignore Congress’ laws relating to the exercise of executive power. Bush has gone along with all such Cheney plans.

No president before Bush has taken as aggressive a posture — the position that his powers as commander-in-chief, under Article II of the Constitution, license any action he may take in the name of national security — although Richard Nixon, my former boss, took a similar position.

— excerpt from FindLaw column by John W. Dean, former counselor to President Richard M. Nixon; Dec. 30, 2005; emphasis added.

Sections 8007, 8011, and 8093 of the Act prohibit the use of funds to initiate a special access program, a new overseas installation, or a new start program, unless the congressional defense committees receive advance notice. The Supreme Court of the United States has stated that the President’s authority to classify and control access to information bearing on the national security flows from the Constitution and does not depend upon a legislative grant of authority. Although the advance notice contemplated by sections 8007, 8011, and 8093 can be provided in most situations as a matter of comity, situations may arise, especially in wartime, in which the President must act promptly under his constitutional grants of executive power and authority as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces while protecting certain extraordinarily sensitive national security information. The executive branch shall construe these sections in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.

— from a Jan. 2, 2006, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Defense, Emergency Supplemental Appropriations to Address Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and Pandemic Influenza Act, 2006; emphasis added.

As the letter from the Acting Attorney General explained in considerable detail, the assertion of Executive Privilege here is intended to protect a fundamental interest of the Presidency: the necessity that a President receive candid advice from his advisors and that those advisors be able to communicate freely and openly with the President, with each other, and with others inside and outside the Executive Branch. In the present setting, where the President’s authority to appoint and remove U.S. Attorneys is at stake, the institutional interest of the Executive Branch is very strong. The Acting Attorney General’s letter clearly identifies the subject matter of the deliberations and communications at issue and provides an extensive treatment of the issues implicated by the subpoenas and the legal basis for the President’s assertion of Executive Privilege.

— from a July 7, 2007, letter from Fred F. Fielding, counsel to President Bush, to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy and Rep. John Conyers Jr. asserting executive privilege “with respect to the testimony sought from Sara M. Taylor and Harriet E. Miers covering White House consideration, deliberations or communications, whether internal or external, relating to possible dismissal or appointment of United States Attorneys”; emphasis added.

I have to wonder if the White House’s refusal to provide a detailed basis for this executive privilege claim has more to do with its inability to craft an effective one.

— comment of Sen. Patrick J. Leahy following receipt of Mr. Fielding’s letter; July 11, 2007.

The clear message of these decisions taken together is that the Court is willing to allow Congress some leeway in putting limitations on executive power but that it is wholly unwilling to permit Congress to participate in administering the laws itself or through its agents.

— Alan B. Morrison, a Washington lawyer who filed a brief as a friend of the Court supporting a special prosecutor law adopted by Congress in the wake of investigations of Reagan Administration officials and former officials; the law provided for judges to appoint special prosecutors in such cases, insulated from presidential control. The Reagan Administration argued that this was an unconstitutional encroachment on the president’s power; the Court ruled 7-1 against the administration; June 30, 1988.

The executive branch shall construe section 11(c) of the Act, relating to executive branch reports to the Congress concerning investigations of alleged criminal and fraudulent activities in connection with a specified project, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authorities of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair the performance of the Executive’s constitutional duties, including the conduct of investigations and prosecutions to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

— from a Dec. 25, 2006, signing statement by President Bush attached to the National Transportation Safety Board Reauthorization Act of 2006; emphasis added.

In late 1947 Clark Clifford and James Rowe instructed Harry Truman, “The worse matters get, up to a fairly certain point—real danger of imminent war—the more is there a sense of crisis. In times of crisis the American citizen tends to back up his President.” The result was the famed war scare of 1948, in which that accidental President started trumpeting “the critical nature of the situation in Europe,” the necessity for “speedy action,” the “great urgency” of the problem of the Soviet threat. He did this even though, as State Department counselor Charles Bohlen explained in a confidential January 1948 memo, the government considered its position “vis-à-vis the Soviet better now than at any time since the end of the war.”

— excerpt from a commentary in The Nation. by Eric Alterman; Feb. 7, 2002.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Is this really part of an effort by some in the Senate to try to convince the American people we don’t face a threat anymore, and there’s no reason to run the risk of violating people’s civil liberties, blah, blah, blah?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s been focused especially on the Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Pat Leahy, chairman of the committee, has opposed parts of the statute that we think are essential in terms of going forward, including specifically this retroactive liability provision. But I don’t like to question people’s motives. I assume he’s got reasons why he believes the way he does, but the fact is it’s their inability to resolve that issue that’s delayed passage on this legislation.

I think there are people out there, frankly, Rush, that don’t like what we’ve done, that are opposed to the bold action and tough decisions the President has made since 9/11. I think there were a lot of people who were panicky in the aftermath of 9/11, but now that we’ve demonstrated our ability to defend the country for the last six-and-a-half years, they want to act as though there’s no threat and we don’t need to take these important measures.

But the fact of the matter is, the threat is still there, it still exists. I look at it every day in our intelligence brief. We need to perpetuate and protect our capabilities here, as well as in terms of our ability to interrogate prisoners.

— excerpt from radio interview of Vice President Dick Cheney, conducted by Rush Limbaugh; Jan. 30; emphasis added.

Debates about the extent of presidential constitutional powers are as old as the republic itself, as the debates between James Madison and Alexander Hamilton illustrated. There is, however, general agreement that the past wartime presidents, including Lincoln, Wilson and F.D.R., have exerted their constitutional powers to the utmost. At the same time, any president should endeavor to work cooperatively with Congress as much as possible.

— from a written statement from the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, quoted in a New York Times analysis by James Risen; June 22.

photo credits:

• Declaration of Independence: Library of Congress
• Agenda for America poster: 4president.org
• Michael Brown, former head of FEMA: Allen Fredrickson, Reuters
• President Nixon leaving the White House, Aug. 9, 1974: Nixon Presidential Library & Museum
• President Bush: Joyce N. Boghosian, The White House
• President Harry S. Truman with pistols: Harry S. Truman Library and Museum
• Vice President Cheney: David Bohrer, The White House

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

Now, Judge Louis Stanton has decided to force Google/YouTube to disclose a complete set of data on all YouTube users. As TechCrunch reports: “That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason (DMCA notices or user-initiated deletions). Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely “speculative.””

TechCrunch goes on to express concern that this throws open the opportunity for copyright holders to sue individuals for watching their materials on YouTube. That, if you’ll pardon my language, is the fucking least of anyone’s concerns.

Over the past few years democrats and other “subversives” in places like Iran, Morocco, Egypt, Zimbabwe, China and other hell-holes of civil liberties have used their camera-phones to send broadcasts directly from the front-line of vicious conflicts.

Like this one:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video may not appear subversive, but it clearly shows empty polling stations, empty streets and V signs all over spray-painted by protestors against Robert Mugabe’s tyranny in Zimbabwe. Mugabe was inaugurated on Sunday after claiming 85% of a massive turnout voted for him.

Now imagine that Zimbabwe’s secret police get their hands on the person who posted this video… he, or she, will get more than just a lawyer’s letter. They’ll get killed.

Internet companies are more than just custodians of US civil liberties. They are now also custodians of people’s freedom all over the world. And especially in places where it is most at risk.

Such boycott talk misunderstands the AP and its journalistic breadth if not depth, and amounts, frankly, to pure hissyfits ’cause some bloggers can’t have their way.

How, exactly, does one boycott the almost omnipresent AP? And what would replace it? Reuters? Hardly.

Many of AP’s critics do not understand what the AP is: a non-profit cooperative. It is owned by its 1,500 member newspapers and has historically been credited with the emergence of “objective” journalism after the Civil War (or the disappearance of “subjective” journalism, depending on your POV).

Is the AP the “best” newsgathering and disseminating organization in the world? Could be, depending on how “best” is defined. It’s certainly among the most broad-based. After the budget cuts of the ‘80s killed the newsgathering reputations of the network news shows, particularly CBS, AP drove competitor United Press International into virtual extinction.

From the late ‘90s to now, revenue declines in the newspaper business drove it to ax most overseas bureaus, leaving the AP as the journalistic big kahuna worldwide. If broadest is best, AP wins, with (it claims) more than 240 bureaus worldwide. The AP serves 550 international broadcasters who receive AP’s global video news and other services. The AP serves thousands of newspapers in 121 countries.

On quality, the AP — as a worldwide newsgathering cooperative — has won 49 Pulitzers. (Yes, definitions of quality are subjective.)

Reuters, another large newsgathering and disseminating company, is decidedly not non-profit. Prior to its sale to Thomson for $17 billion last year, Reuters employed about 16,000 in 94 countries. But its strength has primarily been financial news. That’s why Thomson bought it — to compete directly with Bloomberg News on an equal footing.

The AP has a much greater presence in the United States for general news than Reuters. Newspapers, which have been cutting staffs and therefore local news holes, have enlarged the use of AP copy and photos. It’s simply cheaper than producing locally generated stories. Reuters, with a lesser American presence, has not capitalized on that and is unlikely to. Because …

The context provided by The New York Times for Reuters’ sale is telling:

The deal also comes in the middle of an information revolution as easy distribution over the Internet has turned news and data into a commodity. Media companies, including newspapers, cable companies and financial publishers, are all struggling to turn their content into new services that their customers are willing to pay for. [emphasis added]

Any argument for boycotting the AP and favoring Reuters is short-sighted. Thomson’s interest in Reuters is in its financial-reporting strength. The Times reports that Thomson considers Reuters’ general news service for newspapers, broadcasters and Web publishers to be baggage, not buoyancy. Look for Reuters’ role in general news to diminish slowly over time. Nature abhors a vacuum. The AP is the only news organization with the international resources to fill it.

Now, the AP is not without its own measure of stupidity in unleashing its legions of lawyers on the Drudge Retort, demanding it yank a few items containing quotes from AP stories ranging from 39 to 79 words. The AP has fired the first shot in a war that’s going to last (at least online) for a very long time, and it’s going to sully the AP’s image more than it can imagine. It’s also going to be expensive for both sides when lawyers really get involved. And the AP ought to realize that links from blogs to AP content benefits the AP by giving its content exposure to a wider audience.

Let the lawyers proffer advice on what to do here and parse what is or is not a copyright and what is or is not fair use. This flap is decidedly about money. The AP is run by a board of directors headed by … William Dean Singleton (gasp!), vice chairman and CEO of Media News General in Denver, Colo. This legal frontal assault on bloggers’ use of AP copy smells like his handiwork:

In 1995 he shuttered the Houston Post, throwing well over a thousand people out of work and killing a publication that had served the community since 1885. Nor is Singleton known for graceful entrances. When he purchased The Berkshire Eagle in 1995, reporters were given a sheet of paper describing their job status and new salaries. “People were expected to read the paper and put their initials next to the words ‘accept’ or ‘reject’ on the spot,” Stephen Simurda wrote in CJR. “There were virtually no negotiations. This was day one of the Singleton era.”

Mr. Singleton, who is single-minded about profit, understands a critical fact. From The Times story of Reuters’ sale:

In the information age, content may be king. But the real power lies in what you can do with it.

Loss of control equals loss of revenue, thinks the AP. That’s why the AP doesn’t like what bloggers do with its content. Bloggers have grown up lazy: Of the 100-plus million blogs tracked by Technorati, how many actually do their own reporting? The AP reports; the vast majority of blogs rip ‘n’ read and then rant. (And ripping AP at length and then ranting doesn’t always produce readable copy. Paraphrasing is a lost art online.)

Without stories from the AP — or Reuters or The New York Times or the Asahi Shimbun or the tiny Podunk Times — bloggers would have far fewer facts on which to opine. The AP is a principal information feeder of the Vast Blog Opinion Machine.

When a critical mass of bloggers raises the money and develops its own, independent, broadly based, worldwide newsgathering and disseminating cooperative, you can bet your bottom dollar it will be the first to howl “copyright infringement!” when someone posts one of the blogger co-op’s stories.

In the meantime, bloggers ought to treat information provided by others, especially professional news organizations that spent money developing it, with far more respect by at minimum crediting the source, linking to the original story and minimizing direct lifted copy. I don’t know the legalities of all this, but I know a lack of common courtesy when I see it.

The best advice for the AP and bloggers alike I’ve seen so far has come from the very sharp mind of a friend:

The AP ought to tell blogs that it welcomes minimal use of excerpts if accompanied by links to the AP or to the news organization buying the AP story. The AP should tell bloggers, and bloggers ought to understand, that except in fair-use cases of criticism, parody, and the like, the AP cannot allow blogs to use significant excerpts or entire stories for free that other news organizations have paid for.

Bloggers should have known that this day would come. The AP’s poorly executed crackdown, soon to be followed by other equally mercenary news organizations, reflects the enormous economic dislocations in the news business worldwide. Did bloggers believe they’d be exempt from it?

Blogging’s chance to improve its amateur standing is at hand. Either pony up to repair blogging’s wretched reputation for uneven writing and its widespread lack of original reporting — or back off on threats to boycott the AP.

And you’ve likely thought Gee, this has been going on for-evuh. Well, it has: The 2008 presidential election campaign began as the mid-term elections ended in 2006. By February of the next year, look at all the Democrats who had tossed in the proverbial hat — Sen. Joe Biden, Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chris Dodd, former Sen. John Edwards, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Sen. Barack Obama, Gov. Bill Richardson, Gov. Tom Vilsack and former Sen. Mike Gravel. All but two were sitting governors or members of Congress.

And the Republicans: Sen. John McCain, Sen. Sam Brownback, former Gov. Jim Gilmore, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Rep. Duncan Hunter, three-time Senate race loser Alan Keyes, Rep. Ron Paul, former Gov. Mitt Romney, Rep. Tom Tancredo, and the Thompson twins, former Sen. Fred and former Gov. Tommy. All but seven were sitting office holders.

This invites comment along the lines of Good god, what have we wrought? regarding Big Money and Running for a New Job While Not Doing the Current Job.

The Big Money.

All have bowed out but three — but not before all these presidential candidates had raised more than $935 million. (Perhaps the name of that animated film ought to be The Never-Ending Presidential Fundraising Campaign.)

By the time Sens. Clinton, Obama and McCain finish duking it out — and even if the last two standing agree to accept matching public funds for the general election — campaign contributors will have shelled out more than one billion dollars to elect the Leader of the Free World.

So what’d we get for the money?

• An apparently endless torrent of political junk mail via direct mail and e-mail.

• Nearly $5 billion in total political advertising in 2008 alone, according to a Lehman Brothers report. (PACs, 527s, special-interest groups and national and state campaign committees buy advertising independent of the candidates’ campaigns, hence the higher total.)

• The continued compilation of Americans’ voting records and personal information in databases controlled by the Democratic and Republican national committees, reducing us to heavily sorted bits of data rather than thinking, feeling human beings.

• A total of 35 mud-slinging, barb-tossing, highly scripted, media-biased, barely revealing primary-season presidential candidate debates (19 Democratic, 16 Republican), compared with two Democratic primary debates in 2004 and three Republican primary debates in 2000.

• Daily appointment viewing for political TV shows, such as CNN’s 8 p.m. (ET) Election Center, Fox’s 5 p.m. America’s Election HQ and sundry others that feature unrevealing, horse-race-trending, pointless-counterpointless, he-said she-said, confrontational interviews.

Running for a New Job While Not Doing the Current Job

Of the 21 primary presidential contenders, 12 candidates were or are sitting members of Congress or governors. How did that dozen do the jobs they were elected to while running full time for another job, namely the presidency?

If you are a resident of Illinois, Arizona or New York (which I am), how well are you being served by Sen. McCain, Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton? Yes, they have large Washington, D.C., and local staffs, but given the demands of their campaigns, how can these three senators possibly be fully engaged with the affairs of the states they represent — and with the people who elected them to do that? These senators are paid six-figure salaries by the public. Why don’t more people demand that they do the jobs we elected them to do?

Imagine this possibility: We elect Sen. X president. When the run-up to the mid-term elections in 2010 begins, we’re told (by favorability polls, of course, and the media), that President X isn’t up to the job. Candidates in President X’s party decide to oppose the president in the primaries.

Now, that hasn’t happened very often. Ronald Reagan challenged the unelected President Ford in 1976. Sen. Ted Kennedy challenged President Carter in 1980. Pat Buchanan mounted a rather weak challenge to President Bush I in 1992.

But given the divisive atmosphere in American politics, the next president should know he or she is on a short leash. Fix the economy, settle Iraq, and quickly, please. And, dammit, get those gasoline prices down pronto! If President X fails to do so in two years, he or she should could face a serious challenge requiring him or her to face 50 primaries. Given the dozens of candidates in this election season, it’s possible some will remain sufficiently ambitious to take on a sitting president.

If that happens, how will President X actually do the job he or she was elected to do if tasked with running around the nation electioneering and fundraising?

It would be messy. The price tag of The Never-Ending Presidential Fundraising Campaign would make this year’s almost-a-billion seem laughable. Government would barely function. The media would make oodles of money from ads. And we’d get lots more junk mail.

If this is the political landscape you’d like to maintain for the United States and its people, then sit back and do nothing. Say nothing. Allow the monied interests to continue to fund an inherently corrupt system inexpertly overseen by the Federal Election Commission. Let the media tell you what you ought to think about. Let polls direct you to The Important Issues.

That’s it. Just stop thinking. Relax. Just turn on the TV …

A Wisconsin daily newspaper, whose readers have been increasingly shedding it, has now shed a significant expense — newsprint. The Capital Times of Madison, whose circulation has fallen from more than 40,000 to 18,000, said “-30-” to its printing press. It has become an online information enterprise around the Madison.com portal.

The 90-year-old newspaper — one of two serving Madison under a joint operating agreement — will only publish a tabloid-sized edition twice per week carrying some news, opinion and a weekly arts, entertainment and culture section. It will be distributed in its home-delivered partner paper, the Wisconsin State Journal.

It’s a dicey move, but critics like me have said for years that the Web-only newspaper will see its day come (which does not mean we have argued that online-only is a good idea). So what does this end-of-print mean for Madison and beyond?

Capital Newspapers Inc. owns both the formerly evening Cap Times and the morning Wisconsin State Journal (as well as 18 other newspapers and several niche publications in 17 counties). Revenue shared equally between the Cap Times and the State Journal has allowed the Cap Times to withstand shrinking circulation without severe cuts in staff. It remains an influential liberal paper, contrasted with the more conservative State Journal. Not surprisingly, the State Journal reported that it had “succeeded in garnering most of The Capital Times’s former subscribers and will see its average daily circulation rise from 89,000 to at least 104,000 …”

About 20 jobs will be lost at the Cap Times and another 20 in the printing and distribution divisions of Capital Newspapers.

Here’s what the paper’s editor, Paul Fanlund, thinks:

To become a “CNN.com for Madison,” The Capital Times will have reporters posting breaking news items to its Web site seven days a week, 18 hours a day, Fanlund said. The Web site will also be hiring a staff member to improve its visual and audio content, he said.

“I absolutely believe the Internet is the future, ” Fanlund said.

But many challenges exist for the remaining staffers (who had little warning of the change) who would presumaby provide that ’round-the-clock coverage, according to Sue Robinson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison:

The introduction of new technologies to a staff that hitherto has not had much training across media platforms. The welcoming of citizen interaction within the production process. The 24/7 wire-service-like deadline. What it means to maintain objectivity as a journalist who must be heard and seen in their audio recordings or video formats. There is a going to be a significant adjustment period, no doubt, and at the end of it, the CapTimes’ newsroom culture will be altered in a fairly fundamental way.

Given the content of the real CNN.com, why would Mr. Fanlund want the Cap Times to be a local version of that? That seems to be an inappropriate frame to be imposed on a local readership by a local journalism entity. Is that the only model Mr. Fanlund has to present to serve Cap Times readers? He “absolutely believes” the Internet is future. But how does he intend to articulate that future?

And consequences for the Cap Times‘ readers?

Who will reading the Cap Times online? It had only 18,000 loyal hard-copy readers. Most appear to have drifted to the State Journal.

A reader of an Internet “newspaper” such as the Cap Times must have an Internet connection, preferably broadband, and sufficient income to pay for that connection. But the latter does not guarantee the former. That’s because broadband access is not universal, particularly in rural areas where newspapers are delivered. (Well, used to be. Many newspaper are cutting back on widespread circulation because of delivery costs.)

About 57 percent of the nation’s approximately 105 million households have broadband access, according to an S&R interview with Andy King of Website Optimization, publisher of the monthly Bandwidth Report. (Those households average about 2.6 people.)

Of those 18,000 loyal Cap Times print subscribers, how many have broadband access to retain their relationships with the newspaper? If locally oriented newspapers wish to succeed as online enterprises, they need to assure their local advertisers of eyeballs on the papers’ Web sites. Without much wider broadband coverage, how can they do that? That’s why I’ve argued for a broadband version of the Rural Electrification Act.

Without wider, affordable broadband access, the newspaper industry becomes complicit in a subtle form of redlining. That’s a practice commonly thought of in terms of refusing mortgages or insurance based on geography. But a newspaper’s decision to go online may in fact practice discrimination based not on geographic location but on the presence or absence of broadband. Access is generally found in densely populated areas. Rural areas require greater expense to provide broadband with less opportunity to generate revenue for the provider. If a newspaper drops its print edition and goes online, what happens to the rural subscriber without broadband access?

What would the journalism be like in an online enterprise focused on its broadband readers? Because newspapers, or online “papers,” are so starved for revenue, it’s likely that their energies will be focused on the wants and needs of an urban, affluent, probably mostly Caucasian population. That may make for a healthier balance sheet, but that’s not necessarily healthy for a readership left behind by the switch to online publication.

Newspapers have seen their financial ability to produce a marketable product eroded by revenue losses and gutted by staff cuts in response to those losses. Yet newspaper managers want their decreased staffs to adjust happily to a greater burden producing more (and innovative) news products. That has consequences, according to John Morton, who writes about the newspaper business for the American Journalism Review. In “Enough is Enough,” he says:

Still, even small newspapers are cutting back. I recently had an e-mail colloquy with an editor of a small-town daily in the Southwest. He loves his town and his newspaper, but he is troubled by a significant reduction in his staff at the same time his publisher is urging him to develop new editorial products to gain more readers and advertising.

“How am I supposed to do this?” he asked; he wondered if I knew how other small-town editors had coped in similar circumstances. I had little comfort to offer. I told him that his staff, in addition to the traditional burden of paltry pay, would now have the additional burden of being overworked. Editors at large dailies have the same problem, but at least they are able to spread the burden over a larger number of staffers. When the entire staff has ten or twelve people, there is much less running room.

Says Editor & Publisher’s Joe Strupp about the Cap Times‘ decision:

It’s not a surprise because the Web has become such a major factor for newspapers and I think clearly the way they’re going to survive is do more and more on the Web. That doesn’t necessarily mean everyone’s going to go Web only in the next five to 10 years.

But has the Web become a major financial factor yet for newspapers? No, says Mr. Morton:

Newspaper executives point to the Internet as the future of newspapers, arguing that a combination of online and print products will assure newspapers of a profitable future. Yet last year newspaper Internet revenue amounted to only 7 percent or so of total advertising. Moreover, growth in Internet revenue, which in earlier years had been 30 to 40 percent a year, has dropped to about 20 percent.

What this portends is that a successful Internet-print future will be a long time coming. And if newspapers embark on this future with lesser journalistic products, less circulation, less standing in their markets, the profits of the future likely will be much less than newspapers are accustomed to.

This is the economic and journalistic sea into which the managers of The Capital Times have leapt, perhaps blindly, perhaps too optimistically.

Let’s check back in a year and see how they — and their readers — are doing.

But what should a new business model for an industry whose principal product is journalism look like?

It would have to recognize several new — and old — realities.

• Any new business model must generate profit.

There’s no way around this. Journalism is best sustained within a for-profit frame. A company that engages in newspaper journalism as a product is not supported by government (unlike public television) nor should it be. The same holds for commercial broadcast journalism as well. To provide news, the company must make a profit to attract investors and secure the resources to collect, report and transmit that news. A non-profit model cannot immediately match the breadth and depth of news reporting that a healthy democracy of more than 300 million citizens requires.

The industry’s nosedive to lower revenues and reduced circulation has been predicated on an ill-fated imperative: maintain the current level of profit (about 16 percent) to retain and placate short-term institutional investors. That’s unsustainable, but news corporations refuse to confront that reality.

Still, arguments about public service as a moral imperative to maintain that healthy democracy, etc., while sounding grand, must take a back seat to the fiscal imperative. A news company must earn adequate profit to be able to tell better stories.

The industry must revisit its relationships with its investors, its consumers and its advertisers to determine what level of profit is appropriate, necessary and feasible for investors as the industry seeks to provide better stories to consumers and better service to advertisers. But there must be profit to enable large-scale collection and dissemination of meaningful news stories.

For long-term gain, there will be short-term pain. It takes money, and lots of it, to tell better stories in quantity.

• Find a technological panacea that will recapture some revenue from newspaper advertising’s Big Three: classified “help wanted” and “articles for sale” ads, and classified and display ads for real estate and motor vehicles.

These are the significant revenue sources the news companies have lost to non-news, online enterprises. Those ads have all but vanished from print newspaper pages. Online ad revenue for news companies is increasing, but it remains a small share of overall revenue. Still, news companies continue to delude themselves that online ad revenue is the immediate future. But that revenue is not increasing fast enough to rescue the current, faltering business model.

Advertising’s Big Three have migrated in bulk online. If the journalism business seeks to revitalize its content, it must find a way to recapture some of that principal advertising revenue it has lost. Without new and recaptured revenue streams, the journalism industry will not be able to produce better stories for people to read to produce the increase in eyeballs — and the proof of greater return on investment — that advertisers demand. (Can you say “vicious cycle”?)

• The business model must produce a greater quantity of a higher quality of journalism.

Currently too many people (young and old alike) who would like to work in journalism think newspapers are dying. They think they’d have to be nuts to go into a business that believes 60-hour weeks without overtime should be a normal routine for an entry-level salary of about $27,000.

If the business of journalism is to survive, a better product is necessary. That means better compensation for journalists and support staff — and hiring more of them. It means more money spent on continual training. It means news companies must work to achieve better relationships with and provide greater financial and instructive support to journalism education. The industry needs to improve the skills and breadth of general knowledge of journalists.

The industry needs a better product than it now produces. If the industry seeks to survive on the viability of journalism as content, it must invest to improve its product and its value for consumers, advertisers and investors alike.

Simply put, the new model should recognize that better compensation and improved working environments could produce a more skilled and more motivated work force. It takes seasoned, well-trained, properly compensated journalists to tell better stories. And the industry needs an improved product — better stories — to justify claims on old and new revenue streams.

• The model must confront the related issues of “free” and “social networking.”

The younger readers the industry seeks to attract today — and is failing to do so — expects the content, the news product, to be free.

If the industry intends to charge what this important demographic now gets free, it must convince that part of its audience that the content has new, added value and can be delivered in a timely manner and through a means of the individual reader’s choosing.

That’s important. Social networking through the Facebooks and YouTubes of this world have woven a culture of pass-along and free content into the very demographic the news industry says it wants to claim as customers. This demographic, a continually changing 18- to 30-years-old constituency, has adopted information-seeking and -sharing habits that the journalism business has blithely ignored for quite some time. Simply having an online presence via a Web site is insufficient for this demographic.

The means of delivery of content has become almost as important to this younger and technologically obsessive demographic as the content itself. A new business model has to think beyond mere repurposing (medium-dependent revision) of content. It must provide content of sufficient value to this segment of the audience to encourage its members to accept paying for it and to want to demonstrably circulate more of it (along with attached advertising) to other readers or viewers.

All demographic segments of the audience, including this advertiser-prized one, want better stories and brain-dead easy ways to acquire and share them. That also means newspapers must confront blogging — whether to, how to, why, and definition of measures indicating effectiveness. Blogs are a principal means that the industry’s desired demographic obtains and shares news. Newspapers have yet to fully develop adept, adaptable and financially and journalistically productive approaches to their own blogging capacity.

• Newspaper companies must decide what to do with their print product.

Some newspapers have begun to abandon the print product — but by abandoning readers. They have withdrawn from widespread regional (and rural) circulation to core areas around large municipal centers. This, too, is a short-sighted means to cut expenses. An industry that abandons customers is extraordinarily misled by its managers.

But how does this relate to keeping or killing dead-tree newspapers? Responsible corporate leaders will seek to retain readers — the customers — and acquire new ones. If a decision is made to abandon the print paper for an online version only, then newspapers should lobby for a broadband version of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936. The means to reach more readers must accompany a decision to go-it-online. Broadband must have broad, affordable reach to encompass the whole of a society. News companies should lobby Congress for government-assisted and -encouraged broadband access throughout rural America.

It is unthinkable for an industry that has its origins in defending its readers as their adversary to government to abandon those readers just because their location is geographically problematic. The public service mission of journalism ought to rule here. An industry engaged in journalism can’t be allowed to leave people behind.

• If the new business model decrees abandoning the print newspaper, its online or multimedia replacement must retain the journalistic responsibility of being the “paper of record.”

The maxim that journalism is the first, rough draft of history grew from newspapers’ legal and cultural roles as “papers of record.”

Someone has to keep track of society’s daily significant occurrences. Someone has to keep track of government meetings, deliberations and actions. Someone has to maintain a daily police log, a record of court proceedings, real-estate filings and such. Someone has to publish required “legal notices.” Few bloggers will keep track of the endless budget meetings and other factors influencing local property tax increases.

That’s what journalism does. A paper of record manned by experienced journalists does these important tasks. A new business model must allow that role of “paper of record” to remain firmly in journalism’s hands.

• Under a new business model, journalism must reconnect with what it has lost through more than a decade of slashing newsroom jobs. It must revitalize local reporting.

Read your local paper (or view its Web site). What’s not there that was a decade ago, two decades ago? Do you miss it? As newspapers have slashed reporting and support staffs, the ability to cover local news as competently and completely as in the past has diminished significantly.

Only the easier stories remain — the accidents, the fires, the crimes, the interesting government meetings versus the boring but complex, important ones. And sports. Has sports become the largest section of your local paper? Twenty years ago, it probably wasn’t.

News companies must find a way to reconnect with local issues, local concerns, local interests. They ought to do this in self-interest: Well-done local news breeds local advertising dollars.

Journalism is controlled by corporations whose principal motivation today is certainly not journalism as a public service but some truncated form of journalism that maximizes short-term profit.

It’s important to differentiate between journalism and the news business. Journalism represents an activity inherent in a functioning democracy that acts as a watchdog, that defends readers (and viewers and listeners), and that holds governments and corporations accountable for their actions. (Journalism even ought to entertain!) That’s the trade-off for protection against government interference provided by the First Amendment.

For journalism to retain its important democratic role, it needs a home. Ironically, that home must be a better-functioning and profitable news industry.

• • •

Understanding how the media industry works and why it works that way is a principal reason Scholars and Rogues was founded. Much of our dialogue here centers on the role of the media in social, economic, political and cultural transformation.

S&R invites commenters into this critical conversation about how the media industry ought to be shaped, why that must happen effectively and what consequences may occur if it does not. Please let us know what you think.

I was deeply amused to read the breathless news coverage of Hammerin’ Hank Paulson’s “ambitious” and “sweeping” plans to restructure the federal financial regulatory structure. It says something about how far the goalposts of this country’s discourse have been moved towards rampant, unchecked, unbridled “law of the jungle” financial pillaging that modest reforms like these are considered a major move.

If these pathetic hot-flashing stenographers that call themselves “reporters” would actually take a closer look at the plan itself–hell, even just the fact sheet–they would see that not only is Paulson’s reform agenda miniscule at best, but that it’s a shell game, a distraction designed to accomplish the long-held mantra of the Bush administration–centralizing federal power and weakening consumer protections at the state level.

Some of the recommendations are good–like creating a national office tasked solely with investigating and providing oversight on mortgage originations, and merging the anachronistic Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, another little-heralded agency I’ll mention again later. But read these following passages I quote carefully (emphases added):

Last March, Treasury convened a blue-ribbon panel to discuss U.S. capital markets competitiveness. Industry leaders and policymakers alike agreed that the competitiveness of our financial services sector – and its ability to support U.S. economic growth – is constrained by an outdated financial regulatory framework.

So they’ve been talking about how to improve and modernize the federal regulatory structure for a year. If I recall, a year ago Fed chief Ben Bernanke was only beginning to telegraph the warnings of larger economic failure from the subprime mortgage collapse, insisting the problem was still contained. And note the language–not “protect consumers,” but “support U.S. economic growth.” Not “constrained by unscrupulous lenders, ill-informed borrowers, overly complex transactional rules, and a Fed chief who does his best impression of a box turtle,” but an “outdated regulatory framework.” Gotta love that conservative ethos–even in the face of total market failure, regulation is still Satan personified.

Back to the fact sheet:

Treasury recommends the creation of a new federal commission led by a Presidential appointee, the Mortgage Origination Commission (MOC), to evaluate, rate, and report on the adequacy of each state’s system for licensing and regulating participants in the mortgage origination process. Federal legislation should establish (or provide authority for the MOC to develop) uniform minimum qualifications for state mortgage market participant licensing systems. Treasury recommends that the Federal Reserve continue to write regulations implementing national mortgage lending laws. Treasury recommends clarification and enhancement of the Federal enforcement authority over these laws.

I’m all in favor of establishing a “minimum floor” for decent mortgage laws, but the worry I have is something succinctly espoused by Alan White at the CL&P Blog:

While the Blueprint seems to preserve a role for state financial institutions regulators, it would impose federal oversight of the quality of state licensing for mortgage originators. More significantly, it calls for the Federal Reserve to take sole responsibility for regulating lender conduct in the mortgage market. Although it is not explicit, there seems to be a call for federal preemption of state mortgage regulation. This proposal is troubling, given the activity at the state level in regulating predatory mortgage practices (with North Carolina often cited as a model) during a time when Congress took virtually no action to curb mortgage abuses.

This has been a time-honored tactic of the Bush regime for as long as I can remember–to take away power from the states and federalize it in a weaker, central, federal authority, which precludes stronger state consumer protection laws on everything from identity theft to cellphone contracts. Matter of fact, former New York Attorney General and Governor Elliot Spitzer took pains to point out how the Bush White House deliberately interfered with the states’ investigation of predatory lenders, using the Office of the Comptroller as its blunt instrument:

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules. But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.

As Greg Palast astutely noted not long ago, it was no coincidence that Spitzer’s very public fall from grace happened at the exact same moment Bernanke and Paulson secured a $200 billion taxpayer-funded bailout for the faltering banks. The DOJ waved this tasty piece of candy in front of the press–“Hey, look, sex scandal! Prostitution! Democrat!“–and off they went with the intensity of Pavlov’s best dogs. And now we’re supposed to expect that the same administration that engineered and profiteered off this scandal can be trusted to craft a new regulatory framework to prevent this from happening again? Motherfucker, please.

Thankfully, at least some Democrats are challenging Bush, Bernanke, and Paulson on the “closing the barn door after the storm hits” nature of the plan. Chris Dodd is right to call this rescue plan for what it is, and as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, he has enough clout to ensure it will never see the light of day.

The simple truth is that no amount of taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks can effectively stop the convulsions this country’s economy is going through. They can only prolong the pain that consumers will endure in the form of record-high foreclosures, deflating home prices (which are still overpriced in too many areas, ironically), and the loss of home equity as a financial cushion to bracket against everything from soaring gas prices to food costs to student loans for the kids. The terrible trio of Bush, Bernanke, and Paulson have introduced mortgage rescue plans before, remember, but they were mild at best and downright useless at worst.

The bailout is not for you. None of these plans are for you, and they never have been. You’re just a tool, an asset being offloaded on a balance sheet, sinking with the ship. The lifeboats are already full to busting with the CEOs of Countrywide, Bank of America, Bear Stearns, and Citigroup, and there’s no room for you. Better sink or swim.

That bodes poorly for both the survival of the print press and the level of political knowledge of the electorate the print press decreasingly serves.

Jacques Steinberg of The New York Times reports that 650 journalists parachuted into Cleveland, Ohio, in February to cover the debate between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. “But,” Mr. Steinberg writes, “early the next morning, as the two candidates set off for engagements across Ohio and Texas, representatives of only two dozen or so news organizations tagged along.” [emphasis added].

Newspaper managers say they have reasons for pulling the boys off the bus.

Covering a presidential campaign is pricey. If candidates are flying hither and yon each day, the cost per day for a newspaper to put a reporter on that plane can teach $2,000. Multiply that by several days a week, per month, per election season. This political season has been interminably long and therefore uncommonly expensive for the press to cover. Newsweek, to its credit, is shelling out $30,000 a month to have a person ride full time on the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

Newspaper owners claim they are increasingly unable to write checks that big. Ad revenues are down. Circulations are declining. Profits are shored up by reducing costs — especially in “human resources” — by cutting editorial jobs, all for the benefit of institutional investors concerned only with short-term gains. So newspapers don’t have oversea bureaus any more, and many are closing bureaus within the United States as well. And they’re shedding coverage of presidential politics as well.

According to Mr. Steinberg, among the boys and girls no longer on the bus are those from USA Today, the nation’s largest paper; The Boston Globe, The Dallas Morning News, The Houston Chronicle, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Baltimore Sun, The Miami Herald and The Philadelphia Inquirer. (My newspaper, The Buffalo News, is owned by one of the richest men in the world, Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, and even it doesn’t have a boy on the bus.) The only newspapers covering the campaigns full time are The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal and The Times.

Mr. Steinberg quotes Lee Horwich, a senior editor at USA Today who oversees political coverage:

We’d all like to be able to be out there. Given the reality of the costs and various priorities, not just political priorities but across the rest of the newspaper, it just isn’t realistic for us. [emphasis added]

Well, so what? So what if there are fewer reporters daily following the candidates? After all, some observers think it’s a good idea to cut back. Says S. Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University:

I’m not sure too much is lost. There used to be a self-defined cadre of campaign reporters. Now the news comes from everywhere — from bloggers, maybe some guy with a video camera. Anyone can generate news and everyone can generate news. What’s the advantage of being the 50th guy on the bus?

According to Mr. Steinberg, this is who provides your regular, daily mainstream press campaign coverage:

For firsthand, daily dispatches from the campaign trail, most of the [newspapers no longer on the bus] have relied heavily on reports from the wire services, including The Associated Press, Bloomberg and Reuters; a handful of Web sites; and video captured by camera-toting producers from the television networks and cable news channels.

I suppose that’s good enough for the health of American democracy. Why invest more in coverage of a campaign to place in office a man or woman who will become the most powerful person in the world?

Who needs reporters to daily follow the candidates to catch conflicts in statements or positions, reveal pandering to special interests, track down inconsistencies in a candidate’s background, learn who has the candidate’s ear and could become a Cabinet member … and so on. Newspapers, whose profit margins average 15 percent, have placed financial considerations over the obligation given them in exchange for First Amendment protection against government interference: hold government and those who campaign to govern accountable.

Yes, the current coverage might be sufficient for that. But suppose a Buffalo News reporter (if Mr. Buffett would cough up 30 large per month) got on the bus and the plane and covered all the above but focused on how candidates’ words and acts might affect Buffalo and western New York state? Ditto the Des Moines Register, the Seattle Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, the Houston Chronicle … You get the idea. Homogenized campaign coverage does too little to serve regional issues and concerns.

When a candidate is elected, I certainly hope newspapers not now on the bus will rush correspondents to the White House to cover the president for the next four (eight?) years. But how well trained will those newly minted White House correspondents be? Reports Mr. Steinberg:

Deep and thoughtful reporting is also being produced by journalists off the trail. And some news organizations that can afford it are doing both. But the absence of some newspapers on the trail suggests not only that readers are being exposed to fewer perspectives drawn from shoe-leather reporting, but also that fewer reporters will arrive at the White House in January with the experience that editors have typically required to cover a president on Day 1. [emphasis added]

There’s another cost to major regional newspapers’ shortsighted shirking of daily campaign coverage.

Newspapers say they’re losing younger readers (and older readers, too: We tend to die). So they’ve added style and flash in special sections to attract those young readers. But campaigns this year, particularly that of Sen. Barack Obama, have been fueled by youthful interest and vitality. They like politics, they take it seriously, and they want substance from their newspapers, not wire copy.

Defecting from the daily grind of presidential campaign coverage shows these younger readers that newspapers do not mirror young people’s commitment to the political process. These cutbacks show newspapers surrendering an informational and therefore competitive advantage with other forms of news gathering and dissemination — particularly blogging — in terms of connecting regional and local issues to national campaigns.

Maybe newspapers have already lost this round. According to The Times‘ Brian Stelter:

[Y]ounger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well — sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter — reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com — with a social one. [emphasis added]

Regarded solely as demographic targets for circulation boosts by mainstream newspapers and other media, these young people whom traditional media do not serve well have created their own social networks for obtaining and sharing political news about the presidential campaigns.

In one sense, this social filter is simply a technological version of the oldest tool in politics: word of mouth. Jane Buckingham, the founder of the Intelligence Group, a market research company, said the “social media generation” was comfortable being in constant communication with others, so recommendations from friends or text messages from a campaign — information that is shared, but not sought — were perceived as natural.

The town crier is old and yet new again. This is what newspapers used to be — a voice of and for all the people. But the press’s disheartening cutbacks in this presidential campaign has only hastened its departure from remaining meaningful to all the electorate.

photo credit: Jim Bourg, Reuters

Last year, Exxon-Mobil made a profit of more than $40 billion. This is the highest profit any American company has ever made. While I congratulate Exxon on this achievement, it does make me wonder why my congressman, Tom Reynolds, found it necessary to vote to continue to give tax breaks to Exxon and other oil companies (House Bill 5351). At the same time, Reynolds voted against tax credits for wind, solar and other alternative energy sources that could actually help reduce global warming.

I can see the sense in giving tax breaks to struggling Western New York companies. But tax breaks for Exxon? What was he thinking? This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that he has received more than $165,000 in contributions from the oil and gas industry, would it?

Mr. Kester, 53, is a scientific consultant by trade and an activist who emerges, he said, “every two or four years.” He has worked with Democratic candidates who have opposed Rep. Reynolds. His goal? “One less Republican in Congress,” he said.

“Why’d you write the letter?” I asked.

“To point out the shortcomings” of Rep. Reynolds, he said. “This seemed a like good issue to do it with. It’s easy to understand.”

Mr. Kester composed his letter using information about the bill — including the text of the bill and congressional actions and voting records concerning the bill — available through the Thomas service (named after Thomas Jefferson) at the Library of Congress. He found his estimate of oil and gas industry campaign contributions to Rep. Reynolds at the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics — better known as opensecrets.org.

I admire what Mr. Hester did as well as how well he did it. In just eight sentences, he demonstrated:

• the magnitude of corporate profits.
• a coyness in his admiration for Exxon’s accomplishment.
• a contrast between Rep. Reynold’s votes for tax breaks that augmented Exxon’s profits and his votes against measures that could address climate change.
• a contrast between the favorable tax treatment for Exxon and the suggestion that faltering businesses in New York state have a greater need for tax breaks.
• a wink-wink question, rather than a demonizing statement of outrage, about Rep. Reynold’s motivations for backing Exxon.

Mr. Hester’s letter should serve as model to more citizens fed up with hypocrisy in politics, corporate governance and campaign finance. It should encourage them to sit down, write a letter to the editor (or begin a blog) and tell others what they object to, why they object to it, and what ought to done about it.

Most of all, I wouldn’t want to be a full-time reporter because it disgusts me to see how the modern media industry has let its primary duty of telling the truth and informing the public be cast away in favor of empty snark, passive-aggressive cynicism, and the sycophantic banality of sucking up to everyone from editors to interviewees just for the sake of–what? Access? Prestige? Being the first to report on a big scoop?

There’s a truly bipolar attitude in how the media machine views itself and its relation with the world, where peevish journalists can get a video on CNN complaining about how hard it is to have to redeem rewards points for frequent flyer miles just to follow a campaign. I can almost hear Mr. 28 % 19 % saying something like “Journamalism–it’s hard work!” when I hear stuff like this…the sneering viciousness of feeling like they can make or break a politician’s reputation with a single stroke of a pen or click of a mouse (which they can), mixed with the frustration of realizing that they still have to suck up and deal with life’s everyday miseries just like the rest of us. You can even see a lot of this “entitlement viciousness” in the blogerati, many of whom are building media empires in their own right and often adopt a lot of the worst attitudes of their nemeses–witness this post from GNB’s Jesse Wendel on how the Obama campaign was a cult because the Clinton campaign treated him better.

At the same time, you have to feel a measure of both pity and scorn for anyone who would willingly put up with literally being forced to work next to a toilet–which is what happened to these correspondents on the Clinton campaign. What’s more shocking–that a candidate who desperately needs all the good press she can get would so callously treat people this way, or that so many respected pundits and journalists would so blithely accept the shit they’re being forced to eat? I’m a pretty easygoing guy and can put up with a lot, but damn, I’d turn in my notepad and call it a career if this were me.

But this is the inferiority complex of the modern media–the knowledge that just as they can shatter reputations and expose scandals with their prose and investigations, they can just as easily be cast aside and relegated to the dustbin. No one’s here to see them, after all. Who cares what they think?

That’s how you end up with the media crafting narratives like their sudden decision to go in hard on Obama after months of generally glowing press coverage. It’s a reminder that the corporate masters control what makes it into the story, and that they–not you or I–decide who gets to fit in the frame for the camera, as Denny marvelously illustrated just a few minutes ago. That edict passes down from CEOs to editors to the reporter walking the beat, which is how you end up writing poison screeds about a candidate that ends their career one minute, and sitting next to a urinal furiously typing away on deadline the next.

Both Sam and Denny teach or have taught journalism in their long and storied careers, and never hesitate to come down hard on the crappy state of modern news reporting. I’m a bit more sympathetic–I know how many hands a story passes through before it makes it to the front page of a paper or a Web site. But one thing everyone forgets in the media machine these days is this simple rule: It’s not about you. You aren’t the story. There are vast numbers of people on the planet who are born, live, and die without ever knowing or giving a fuck what David Broder thinks, or what Joe Klein thinks, or even what Martin Bosworth thinks. But they do care about the information, the story, the events–the crises and crusades that shape our times.

Journalists and reporters have immense power to shape those times. They just need to forget that they have it, and get back to the business of the story itself.

We know that candidates dicker with presidential debate sponsors on everything: sitting or standing, size of lectern if standing, boosters for the short of stature, position on the podium with respect to other candidates, favorable lighting, what television cameras may or may not shoot, and so on. Candidates negotiate for every possible advantage. They demand control. We expect this at debates.

But what about those loud, noisy, seemingly chaotic political rallies? Candidates stroll onto stage surrounded by cheering supporters (handpicked, I bet), American flags waving and red, white and blue confetti swirling in the air. We see these scenes repeatedly on CNN or Fox or MSNBC or the broadcast networks, especially during CNN’s “Ballot Bowl” —which offers “unfiltered views of the candidates.” (Ballot Bowl is usually bereft of reporting that challenges candidates’ messaging, which I detest.)

Regarding these campaign rallies: Who decides what the TV cameras show?

It’s no secret that candidates seek control over their images and their messages. But so much of that messaging is inherent in the televised image, which is overtly or covertly controlled by candidates’ handlers. Political consultants control who or what surrounds their candidates on screen. Writes Jim Hoagland in The Washington Post:

Funds raised on the Internet flow into the other part of the air war that could determine this election: the organizing and broadcasting of images containing subliminal or unstated messages for a national television audience. But neither the mechanics of Internet fundraising nor the selling of the candidates, 2008, have received the media scrutiny they deserve. [emphasis added]

Watch CNN (or your TV news of choice). See the candidate preen before a camera. It’s usually a tight frame on the candidate, or pulled sufficiently wide to see who is cheering behind or alongside the candidate — but usually not much more.

Writes Mr. Hoagland about Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s South Carolina speech on Jan. 26:

His mastery was impressive. And so was that of his image managers, I gradually concluded. I marveled at the sea of white faces nodding approvingly or cheering wildly behind Obama. Then I realized that only a sprinkling of the black voters and volunteers who helped power the candidate’s victory in my home state had made it onto the platform seats behind Obama, in range of the national eye.

Was it possible these voters had not come to celebrate their victory? Hardly. Reporters in the hall saw Obama campaign workers usher photogenic white families toward the platform as they entered. The scene they composed was an effective, calculated rebuttal of the Clintons’ effort to portray Obama as a black candidate whose victory depended on race …

Such manipulation has become so commonplace that few other journalists bothered to mention the Carolina campaign tableau in their coverage, even though [one journalist] estimated that 85 percent of the crowd was African American. [emphasis added]

(See Sen. Obama’s speech).

I’ve never worked in broadcast journalism. But I wonder: Who decides where cameras are placed at political rallies? Who decides what the cameras will or will not show? CNN’s (or other news organizations’) producers? Campaign organizers? If a big-time political rally is covered by local broadcast stations (which may not have the political heft of CNN or Fox or MSNBC), do those stations simply allow rally organizers to dictate terms of camera placement and coverage?

Is this all “pool” camera coverage in which several news organizations share a single camera feed? Even if it is, who decides what the camera shows? I don’t know.

I only I know what I see on the screen — and it’s usually not enough to provide me a fuller “truth” of the event. Isn’t “truth” supposed to be the work product of journalists? (Or am I just impossibly naive?)

Let’s not just pick on the campaign of Sen. Obama. From Mr. Hoagland:

Team Clinton is just as ruthless, if not as adept, in arranging on-message human backdrops. Clinton’s stage managers in Iowa flanked her with the experience-heavy faces of her husband; his former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright; and retired Gen. Wesley Clark. But defeat in Iowa got them cut out of the picture in New Hampshire in favor of teenage girls. Now Clinton appears most often alone on stage.

For his part, John McCain is customarily surrounded on stage by members of the Republican establishment, which shot down his 2000 campaign. Other photo mates tend to be veterans and national security figures, put there to recall McCain’s status as an authentic war hero and his promises to keep America safe. [emphasis added]

If I could attend a political rally of a presidential candidate (assuming I could get in; some candidates only permit true believers to attend), and if I could get my video camera in, and if some security guy didn’t snatch it away, I’d pan the crowd while the candidate spoke. I’d try to show everything CNN et al. did not show. Hey – isn’t that what YouTube is for? To show the rest of the story? To show the artificial messaging inherent in politics?

Presidential candidates are being sold to us through branding and messaging. We should be aware of the techniques they use and the degree to which the press is co-opted by candidates’ marketing ploys.