Where have all the barracudas gone? Out to sea, for one thing, wondering whether they'll still have jobs when the newspaper storm blows over. Not to worry. There's always room for an enterprising barracuda reporter.
Several major metro daily newspapers have announced changes of ownership in the past week, reviving the idea that the days of print journalism will soon be over.
It's true that the industry is changing, but the sales announcements that make the biggest splashes are in major metro dailies. Smaller, suburban hometown dailies have a brighter future, thank you very much. Just ask Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway investment firm has bought several.
The most recent sales wave was made when the Washington Post Co. said it was selling its flagship newspaper to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Less of a surprise was the news that the New York Times Co. was selling the Boston Globe. The Times said it would sell the paper to John W. Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox baseball team.
This is not to say that either paper is likely to disappear into the annals of history, leaving barracuda reporters out of work. It does mean a corporate refocusing of missions. Corporations, after all, have a duty to make money for its shareholders.
The Washington Post Co., owned by the Graham family, will likely change its name as it concentrates on its profitable education and other divisions, especially Kaplan, the tutoring firm. Bezos, known for his long-term outlook, may well let the Post emphasize what it does best -- gather, prepare and deliver the news to a large and solid customer base, providing a home for hard-charging investigative reporters, otherwise known as barracudas.
Boston, with its many sports fans, academics and culture corners, is returning to local ownership in the person of Red Sox owner Henry.
Here's a question bothering many observers: Will Bezos and Henry use their newly acquired media monsters to assail readers with their own political beliefs and agendas?
Answer from this corner: Hardly. Those days ended with the era of William Randolph Hearst, with his front-page editorials attacking those who disagreed with his views. The Graham family didn't do it at the Washington Post, and neither did the Sulzberger family at the New York Times. Whether Rupert Murdoch will succeed in doing it at the Wall Street Journal is an open question.
There is as yet no solid evidence that he's trying. The WSJ has long been known for its pro-business opinions on the editorial page, but Page One and its news columns have been straightforward.
Newsroom staff and editorial (opinion) page staff may talk to each other, but one should never influence the other. As for the advertising department, the separation from the news operations should be like church and state -- keep them apart.
At one time, it was possible to identify a newspaper's political leanings by its name alone. Today, a general interest newspaper avoids politicizing its news coverage and focuses on neutrality, much like sports referees and umpires who are charged with enforcing the rules. That's what reporters and editors do: Enforce the rules by exposing wrongdoing and embarrassing government officials into changing their ways. Realistically, that's the only weapon journalists have -- embarrassment. They can't arrest and prosecute wrongdoers, but they can alert law enforcement officials to corruption and crime, who then take up the cause.
Today, reporters and editors are more dedicated to their journalistic mission than ever, and less inclined to follow the dictates of the publisher-owners. At least, that's the hope here.
A single newspaper may be the only game in town for those with a journalistic talent for investigating, reporting and writing. But there are many towns.
Time was, talent gravitated to major cities. But as suburbs expanded, they became fertile ground for local papers, which grew in size and profitability as highways made access easy. Newsday, for example, was founded at the end of World War II, when Long Island was still largely farmland. In New Jersey, the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike became, in effect, housing subsidies, enabling many to move out of New York City, yet retain their jobs. But they still wanted to know what the local government was doing with their tax money, and that's where local daily newspapers stepped in, all the while providing space for local advertisers.
There's no denying that technological devices have changed the news industry, with more changes to come. That said, there will still be a market for major newspapers that have the talent and resources to do things that smaller dailies cannot, even as they continue to fill a local mission.
After all, who in Des Moines cares about issues in Philadelphia?
Reason enough for local editors to give readers the local news they need, want and deserve, and tenacious reporters are the ones who uncover it.
Barracudas rock!
Get with the Program! Be part of the Team!
Reporters are not team players.
The caribou feeds the wolf, but the wolf keeps the caribou strong.
When candidates meet the press, they should be knowledgeable and prepared. If not, they may arouse the barracuda instinct among reporters. It's also known as wolf pack journalism, where the subject -- a member of the herd -- shows a weakness, and the pack moves in.
It's important that candidates and corporate executives remember, however, that reporters and TV interviewers represent the general public as well as their journalistic employers, and their primary directive is to elicit information and truth. So to reach the undecided general public, candidates and corporate executives must deal with intermediaries; that is, journalists. In news terms, the word "media" is well chosen.
Granted, some reporters and cable TV personalities are sympathetic to an executive's views or a candidate's principles and goals, but most mainstream media reporters are not. Nor should they be.
But do we need more barracudas? To the extent that the barracuda instinct ensures alert reporters and warns candidates to know their topic, the answer is yes. Courtesy, however, is always appropriate.
True story: A corporate executive was prepped before an interview with a list of questions that a public relations coach said would likely be asked. The list included one that the exec believed would not be asked. As it turned out, that question was the first one posed, followed by all the others on the list. That's the work of a good PR advisor.
On another occasion, an exec previewed a list of possible questions, and crossed off several that he did not like and did not want to deal with. The PR advisor's response: You may not like it, but I can guarantee that a certain reporter will ask at least that one specific question.
Right again.
Moral: Know the issues and the likely questions, and be prepared to answer them clearly and confidently. Else the barracudas will swarm.
This does not excuse rudeness or unwarranted swarming. To repeat, courtesy is always appropriate. Even when, or especially when, the candidate is unprepared and backs herself into a corner or displays ignorance of the subject. Remember Katie Couric's interview with Sarah Palin.
The lesson here for political candidates as well as corporate executives presenting their views or plans to reporters is this: Know your topic. Anticipate the questions. Listen to PR advisors, who can coach you on what to expect. Expect the unexpected.
Second lesson, for journalism professionals: Be courteous. We know what fun it can be to back a candidate into a corner and watch him or her squirm. But your job is to elicit information and truth, not to unnecessarily harass the subject. (Note the qualifier.)
Granted, the reaction is often one of anger, resentment and accusations of bias because the report or interview did not hew to the party line or the corporate marketing plan. Not to worry. Reporters should have thicker skins. So should candidates, and they should not expect everyone to always agree wholeheartedly with everything they say.
Some believe that if a reporter is not an advocate, he or she is an adversary. Good reporters are neither. They ask the tough questions because they need to be asked.
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." -- Benjamin Franklin
Mercantilism: Whoever has the most gold at the end, wins.
"They're comin' to America." -- Neil Diamond
Coordinating policy for the general welfare is one thing; colluding to benefit one or a few is quite another. The same principle applies to nations as to individuals and firms.
Competition within the capitalist system is generally good, but efforts to gain complete advantage in all things is counterproductive. Not only is it not possible, but any attempt, deliberate or otherwise, to reduce others to beggary leads only to poverty, resentment and, eventually, conflict.
Suppression may work for a time, even for a century or more, but resentment builds, blocking ambition and limiting self-reliance.
Resentment festers in poverty until, like a ripening cyst, it infects the body politic and explodes. Prevention, therefore, is more valuable than cure. Nourishing the body politic, whether that of a nation or the world, eases the strain and stress of festering poverty and prevents infectious violence.
Dealing with this issue calls for cooperation and coordination of policies, not only within nations but among nations. Otherwise, a set of policies that benefits one nation could have a spillover effect and harm others.
This is not a new problem. In the early years of capitalism, the concept of mercantilism dominated, and nations struggled to gain market advantage in everything, to enrich themselves even if it meant reducing others to poverty. But that didn't matter. The goal was to win.
A worthy goal, but not if the loser goes hungry and feels defeated. Resentment then builds, like an infectious disease.
Symptoms of stress are easily found in unemployment numbers and immigration policies, as well as national policies designed to foster growth in
one country at the expense of others.
That's why experts in world economics at the International Monetary Fund are calling for a concerted, coordinated policy action "to reduce risks to global growth."
Throughout America, the unemployment rate was 7.4 percent in July, even though an estimated 162,000 new jobs were added in July. The total number of people out of work is in the millions. On a state level, Nevada reported the highest unemployment in June, 9.6 percent, followed by Illinois and Mississippi, at 9.2 percent and 9.0 percent respectively, the government survey said.
The lowest jobless rate in June was in North Dakota, at 3.1 percent.
In the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an island whose residents all have U.S. citizenship, the unemployment rate was 13.8 percent, with jobless rates in metropolitan areas of the island ranging from a low of 12.5 percent to 20.1 percent.
In Canada, 7.1 percent of the labor force were unemployed in June, unchanged from May. That's a drop from 8.5 percent during the worst of the Great Recession, but "the share of the unemployed who have been jobless for a year or longer has nearly doubled since the beginning of the recession," said the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and government needs to act to deal with this issue.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in Spain will stay above 25 percent for another five years, according to a survey by the International Monetary Fund. And the unemployment rate in the 17 countries that use the euro as a common currency is 12.1 percent.
In Britain, the unemployment rate has been at 7.8 percent for months, and in Germany and France, those without jobs comprise 5.4 percent and 11.0 percent, respectively. Italy posted 12.1 percent, Greece 26.9 percent, and Ireland 13.5 percent.
The official unemployment rate in Mexico was listed as 5.09 percent in June, but some question the validity of that figure. In any case, violence in Mexico is often more than enough to send people away, especially from large urban areas. Nationally, the homicide rate is 22 per 100,000 population, according to official statistics, but it's far larger -- 77 per 100,000 -- in the northern border state of Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juarez is located, and the Pacific coastal state of Guerrero, home to Acapulco.
Some consolation, that it's safer in Chicago.
In the U.S., the national homicide rate in 2011 was 4.7 per 100,000 people, according to FBI records. In some of the nation's largest cities, the murder rate is far higher. In Chicago, it was 15.9; in New Orleans, 57.6 and Detroit, 48.2. Comparatively, some would say Chicago is a safer city than Ciudad Juarez or Acapulco. That, however, is small comfort to the victims and their families. In Chicago last year, there were 511 homicides, down from the record year of 1974, when 970 murders were committed.
Many European nations have been sending people to America for generations in search of jobs, and with such a differential in unemployment rates, that's not likely to change.
People come to America because this is where the jobs are. They may not be great jobs, or prestigious jobs, but they are jobs, often the kinds of jobs that native-born American youth don't want and will not take. Others do want them, and will take them.
Bottom line conclusion: It will take coordinated efforts by officials in several countries to solve problems and build economies to benefit everyone.
Interrupting is rude
Good conversations mean each person has something valuable to say. But if one person is talking and the other is A/ not listening or B/ interrupting, it is no longer a conversation, but a competition.
It happens in everyday life, where one person asks a question, but before a response is finished, another spray of words comes from the purported questioner.
Conclusion: The questioner doesn't really want a response, but an audience and agreement.
Some of the most prominent offenders of this basic rule of courtesy can be seen weekly among the panelists on Bill Maher's TV show. They are so focused and determined to propagate their own opinion that they neither hear others nor allow them an opportunity to speak. And when all panelists behave the same way, interrupting continually, the "show" is reduced to a display of jabbering, and the "show" becomes a contest to see who can talk louder, longer and say less than any other.
But there seems to be a market for such a display, to entertain jabber-watchers.
As well go to a zoo.
Moral: If you don't want an answer, don't ask the question. Otherwise, the encounter becomes no more than speechifying propaganda, so don't pretend it's anything else.
No man is an island, entire of itself. -- John Donne
Five years have gone by since the global financial crisis, but many nations are still struggling to resume their growth potential.
For example, U.S. firms added 162,000 jobs in July, notching the unemployment rate down to 7.4 percent, but that's still too high a level. There were still 11.5 million people out of work, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said, with 37 percent of these unemployed for 27 weeks or more.
Even so, Labor Secretary Tom Perez called the report "good news." He said the economic turnaround over the past four years "has been unmistakable." But he added that "we can and must do more to pick up the pace of this recovery."
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund called for a "concerted effort" by the world's largest economies to coordinate policies in "mutually reinforcing ways" in order to lift global output.
In its annual "Spillover Report" -- a variation of the principle of unintended consequences -- the IMF said worldwide economic risks have abated, but the agency warned that unless there is a concerted effort by policymakers in the top five economic regions, action by one or more of the five could spill over and affect other, smaller economies adversely.
Tensions and risks in these five -- China, the euro area, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States -- "have lessened, but these economies are not contributing to global activity as much as they might."
The challenge, according to the IMF report, is for large economies to find policies that encourage their own growth "without complicating, through spillovers, economic management in other countries."
Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has been slowly adding jobs, with the unemployment rate of 7.4 percent the lowest since 2008. At the same time, however, while personal income rose by $45.4 billion , or 0.3 percent in June, according to another government report, expenditures were up by $59.4 billion, or 0.5 percent.
So while more people are finding jobs, Americans are spending money faster than they make it. And there are still 11.5 million workers unemployed, with 51 of the country's 372 metro areas reporting jobless rates of 10 percent or more. In the commonwealth of Puerto Rico, all eight of that island's metro areas reported unemployment rates above 12 percent, with an overall jobless rate for the island of 13.8 percent. Only 26 metro areas throughout the country had jobless rates below 5 percent.
The unemployment rate declined in 73 percent of U.S. metropolitan areas in June, according to a government report, while rising or staying the same in the rest. Meanwhile, another report said initial claims for jobless benefits dropped, and wages were up.
That's the good news, that fewer people are seeking benefits. The not-so-good news is the context. The number of people applying totaled 326,000 last week, down 19,000 from the week before. However, the overall national unemployment rate remains 7.8 percent, and there are still many millions out of work. Granted, some of those seeking work are newly minted graduates, but that happens every June, and statisticians take that into account when dealing with the figures.
In any case, new national numbers are due out tomorrow.
Meanwhile, metro area unemployment figures ranged from a high of 31.8 percent in Yuma, Arizona, and 23.6 percent in El Centro, California, to a low of 2.8 percent in Bismarck, North Dakota.
And the largest increase in newly employed workers happened in the Greater New York metropolitan area, which added 144,000 jobs over the year since last June. That metro area, however, includes not only New York City, with its population of almost 10 million, but also the population of Northern New Jersey, Northeast Pennsylvania, and Long Island.
So if you're one of the lucky 144,000 in the New York region who snagged a job, congratulations. If you're elsewhere in the country and are still looking, good luck to you.
A soldier saw a wrong, took action against it, and was willing to take the consequences.
A civilian saw a wrong, took action against it, and was willing to take the consequences.
Both Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden were right in taking action, but admittedly broke rules in doing so. Therefore, some punishment is in order (or not). But to charge them with espionage and to accuse them of treason is over the top, and there is a groundswell of support for them because they exposed wrongdoing on the part of the military and a government security agency.
The military accused Pfc. Manning of "aiding and abetting the enemy," albeit indirectly, by leaking to the public media government documents and video exposing things that should not be done. In doing so, he leaked documents marked "secret." And he broke the rules by releasing "secret" documents. The problem here is twofold: One, the government's over-zealousness in marking almost everything it does as "secret." And two, military personnel were doing things they ought not do.
Granted, Manning broke military rules and regulations. But the military broke moral, legal and very likely constitutional principles, and deserved to be exposed.
It is an old axiom that, when confronted with an unjust law, that law should be challenged and changed.
As for indirectly aiding and abetting the enemy, which was a core or the prosecution's case, deservedly thrown out by the judge, that's a major issue. What constitutes "indirectly aiding and abetting"? The prosecution claimed that in making the documents publicly available, the enemy could read them. But journalists who published the documents were not charged.
Most important, the concept of "indirectly aiding and abetting the enemy" could be expanded to include nearly anything, including a weather forecast. Military strategists have long consulted weather forecasts when planning invasions, so by that measure, anyone from local radio and TV stations to the federal government's weather bureau could be charged with "indirectly aiding and abetting the enemy."
The judge wisely threw that one out.
As for the rest, Manning admitted he provided allegedly "secret" material to outsiders because the material documented wrongdoing. And Manning is taking the consequences of breaking the rules.
Likewise Edward Snowden. One difference is that Snowden is a civilian, with more freedom of movement, so he was able to leave the country while the government ranted about his actions. However, there is now increasing support for Snowden, in that many influential people are questioning why the National Security Agency has been collecting so much data about the private activities of American citizens.
So Manning is going to a military prison, and Snowden is a man without a country.
Both are paying a big price for doing the right thing.
