Sips from the Firehose
A blog that seeks to filter the internet into a refreshing, easily-gulped beverage
Feb 25
Posted: under Uncategorized.
The last couple of months have seen the weaker papers in two-newspaper towns file for bankruptcy, fire their staffs & announce impending doom. A lot of this can be written off as the natural consequences of a contracting ad market and an epically bad economy; the announcement today by Hearst that the San Francisco Chronicle [...] [...more]
The last couple of months have seen the weaker papers in two-newspaper towns file for bankruptcy, fire their staffs & announce impending doom. A lot of this can be written off as the natural consequences of a contracting ad market and an epically bad economy; the announcement today by Hearst that the San Francisco Chronicle is facing yet another massive & painful round of layoffs came as both a surprise and not. The gut-clencher came a little bit down in the story:
The Hearst Corp. today announced an effort to reverse the deepening
operating losses of its San Francisco Chronicle by seeking near-term
cost savings that would include “significant” cuts to both union and
non-union staff.
In a posted statement, Hearst said if the savings cannot be
accomplished “quickly” the company will seek a buyer, and if none comes
forward, it will close the Chronicle. The Chronicle lost more than $50
million in 2008 and is on a pace to lose more than that this year,
Hearst said.
Downer cow dragged off to slaughter
This has led to a flurry of stories assuming that the End is Nigh for the Chronicle. The Wall Street Journal weighed in:
Observers have been waiting to see which major U.S. city will be the
first to go without a major daily newspaper, and San Francisco is a
front-runner for the role.
Over at Content Bridges, Ken Doctor muses about the other struggling Bay Area newspapers, and wonders why a viable web-based alternative hasn’t sprung up yet, in an area that’s within a hurled semiconductor of Silicon Valley (hell, I can’t figure that one out either). However, he gets close to what I think is the underlying story here:
Could the Chronicle indeed go away? Well, don’t expect anyone to buy it. The newspaper market is, to use the kind word, illiquid. Frozen solid by two minor problems: 1) the credit meltdown, which will someday ease; 2) no one knows how to hell to value a newspaper company because no one has “visibility” in future revenue, which is a nice way to say no one likes what they see ahead.
Maybe, Hearst and MediaNews, once close, but now more distant partners, can figure out some new cost-sharing plans that will pass government review. If not, we can now imagine the Chronicle indeed closing, if it doesn’t get the “significant” cost reductions it wants. My guess given our times, is that it will get reductions, and then reduce itself in product and people to some sense of immediate sustainability. It may keep publishing, though it may scrap days like Detroit or whole sections like many of its brethren.
My read on the threat of folding the paper is that they have run up against a wall of union contracts, and want to get around them without having to resort to Chapter 11. The “concessions” that Hearst wants are going to be ugly – over at Newsosaur, Mutter spitballs them at nearly 50%.
At that point, mere eliminations of staff positions will not hit that target. To eliminate half of the staff would mean that the paper quite simply would not get out. There wouldn’t be enough people to run the presses, drive the trucks, or lay out the display ads from wackjob religious sects. Not to mention, report & edit news. That means the survivors of the cuts would have to take massive pay cuts. Maybe the newsroom staff would meekly submit to the replacement of a paycheck with a moldy roast-beef sandwich and a family pass to Hearst Castle, but those Teamsters, well, that’s another story.
The other unsettling prospect is that Hearst would either sell the Chronicle to MediaNews, the Dean Singleton empire that has been similarly troubled, or perhaps even demand back all the money that Singleton owes the Hearsts (which I’m guessing he does not have), which would mean that Hearst would wind up taking MediaNews titles like the Merc-News or Contra Costa as a barter-type payoff. Both moves have significant anti-trust problems, not to mention less than rosy implications for journalism in the Bay Area.
Some interesting thinking from Daniel Singer at Huffington Post on this one – on why the solution to a revenue crisis at big newspapers IS NOT to get bigger.
The big record labels’ entire business was built around moving little plastic discs around the world, similar to how a newspaper’s business was built around moving paper through a printing plant and on to you. That’s about 60-70% of the cost of producing a newspaper: getting the ink on it and moving the damn thing around. Moving things from place to place–be it plastic discs or bundles of paper–is very difficult and expensive. It’s the kind of business that rewards economies of scale and, as a result, allows for huge concentrations of power and money. It’s the kind of business that creates five major record labels and a dozen or so major news companies (that’s a generous number, actually, once you get past the first five or six you’re down to small town paper chains). It’s the kind of business that comes crashing down the quickest once its central complication–moving things from here to there–disappears. With the efficiencies of digital distribution, the established order is not simply threatened, it is broken.
So if size is a disadvantage in the New Media world, the teetering newspaper empires’ reflex to merge and merge again is perhaps the exact wrong move at this time. If the key to web success is that overused buzzword “community,” then an amorphous conglomeration that exists mainly to cater to efficiencies in distributing an ad sales platform that grows daily less relevant, is not a move in the right direction.
Technorati Tags: San Francisco Chronicle, Hearst, newspaper, new media, iTunes
Feb 24
Posted: under Community, Digital Migration, Newspaper Deathwatch, Newspapers, Webconomics.
The last couple of months have seen the weaker papers in two-newspaper towns file for bankruptcy, fire their staffs & announce impending doom. A lot of this can be written off as the natural consequences of a contracting ad market and an epically bad economy; the announcement today by Hearst that the San Francisco Chronicle [...] [...more]
The last couple of months have seen the weaker papers in two-newspaper towns file for bankruptcy, fire their staffs & announce impending doom. A lot of this can be written off as the natural consequences of a contracting ad market and an epically bad economy; the announcement today by Hearst that the San Francisco Chronicle is facing yet another massive & painful round of layoffs came as both a surprise and not. The gut-clencher came a little bit down in the story:
The Hearst Corp. today announced an effort to reverse the deepening
operating losses of its San Francisco Chronicle by seeking near-term
cost savings that would include “significant” cuts to both union and
non-union staff.
In a posted statement, Hearst said if the savings cannot be
accomplished “quickly” the company will seek a buyer, and if none comes
forward, it will close the Chronicle. The Chronicle lost more than $50
million in 2008 and is on a pace to lose more than that this year,
Hearst said.
Downer cow dragged off to slaughter
This has led to a flurry of stories assuming that the End is Nigh for the Chronicle. The Wall Street Journal weighed in:
Observers have been waiting to see which major U.S. city will be the
first to go without a major daily newspaper, and San Francisco is a
front-runner for the role.
Over at Content Bridges, Ken Doctor muses about the other struggling Bay Area newspapers, and wonders why a viable web-based alternative hasn’t sprung up yet, in an area that’s within a hurled semiconductor of Silicon Valley (hell, I can’t figure that one out either). However, he gets close to what I think is the underlying story here:
Could the Chronicle indeed go away? Well, don’t expect anyone to buy it. The newspaper market is, to use the kind word, illiquid. Frozen solid by two minor problems: 1) the credit meltdown, which will someday ease; 2) no one knows how to hell to value a newspaper company because no one has “visibility” in future revenue, which is a nice way to say no one likes what they see ahead.
Maybe, Hearst and MediaNews, once close, but now more distant partners, can figure out some new cost-sharing plans that will pass government review. If not, we can now imagine the Chronicle indeed closing, if it doesn’t get the “significant” cost reductions it wants. My guess given our times, is that it will get reductions, and then reduce itself in product and people to some sense of immediate sustainability. It may keep publishing, though it may scrap days like Detroit or whole sections like many of its brethren.
My read on the threat of folding the paper is that they have run up against a wall of union contracts, and want to get around them without having to resort to Chapter 11. The “concessions” that Hearst wants are going to be ugly – over at Newsosaur, Mutter spitballs them at nearly 50%.
At that point, mere eliminations of staff positions will not hit that target. To eliminate half of the staff would mean that the paper quite simply would not get out. There wouldn’t be enough people to run the presses, drive the trucks, or lay out the display ads from wackjob religious sects. Not to mention, report & edit news. That means the survivors of the cuts would have to take massive pay cuts. Maybe the newsroom staff would meekly submit to the replacement of a paycheck with a moldy roast-beef sandwich and a family pass to Hearst Castle, but those Teamsters, well, that’s another story.
The other unsettling prospect is that Hearst would either sell the Chronicle to MediaNews, the Dean Singleton empire that has been similarly troubled, or perhaps even demand back all the money that Singleton owes the Hearsts (which I’m guessing he does not have), which would mean that Hearst would wind up taking MediaNews titles like the Merc-News or Contra Costa as a barter-type payoff. Both moves have significant anti-trust problems, not to mention less than rosy implications for journalism in the Bay Area.
Some interesting thinking from Daniel Singer at Huffington Post on this one – on why the solution to a revenue crisis at big newspapers IS NOT to get bigger.
The big record labels’ entire business was built around moving little plastic discs around the world, similar to how a newspaper’s business was built around moving paper through a printing plant and on to you. That’s about 60-70% of the cost of producing a newspaper: getting the ink on it and moving the damn thing around. Moving things from place to place–be it plastic discs or bundles of paper–is very difficult and expensive. It’s the kind of business that rewards economies of scale and, as a result, allows for huge concentrations of power and money. It’s the kind of business that creates five major record labels and a dozen or so major news companies (that’s a generous number, actually, once you get past the first five or six you’re down to small town paper chains). It’s the kind of business that comes crashing down the quickest once its central complication–moving things from here to there–disappears. With the efficiencies of digital distribution, the established order is not simply threatened, it is broken.
So if size is a disadvantage in the New Media world, the teetering newspaper empires’ reflex to merge and merge again is perhaps the exact wrong move at this time. If the key to web success is that overused buzzword “community,” then an amorphous conglomeration that exists mainly to cater to efficiencies in distributing an ad sales platform that grows daily less relevant, is not a move in the right direction.
Technorati Tags: San Francisco Chronicle, Hearst, newspaper, new media, iTunes
Feb 23
Posted: under Uncategorized.
Poor Socks the Cat, the puzzled feline who famously crouched on the sidewalk in front of the Clinton’s house back in ’93, providing the only photo op for frustrated news services in the weeks following the election … is dead. (h/t Tbogg) After the euthanization, the body of Socks was deposited in FortMarcy Park, a [...] [...more]
Poor Socks the Cat, the puzzled feline who famously crouched on the sidewalk in front of the Clinton’s house back in ’93, providing the only photo op for frustrated news services in the weeks following the election … is dead.
(h/t Tbogg)
After the euthanization, the body of Socks was deposited in Fort
Marcy Park, a federal park in Virginia where it was found by park
rangers. Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) the ranking Republican on the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has vowed an
investigation into the death of Socks, coming as it has, on the eve of
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to China. According to
congressional aides, the timing of the Socks death just as his former
owner was leaving the country is “suspicious, to say the least.
Probably criminal. Yeah. Really really criminal looking.”
In related news, Regnery Publishing Inc, A Division of Eagle
Publishing, has commissioned noted author Lilian Jackson Braun to write
a tell-all book on the late Socks: The Cat Who Knew Too Fucking Much
to be published on Wednesday, February 25th. The slim tome is expected
to reach number one on the New York Times Non-Fiction Bestseller list
the following week due to massive bulk orders shipped to 214
Massachusetts Ave NE Washington DC 20002-4999, as well as a copy to be
delivered gratis to all seventy-three people who subscribe to the
Washington Times.
I look forward to the fund-raising posts on this subject, surely already in the works, from Chief Editor Korir, and the imminent promise of a mysterious “tape” showing that Socks was in possession of crucial documents proving that President Obama was actually grown in an eerie green-tinted vat in an abandoned warehouse by the Cigarette-Smoking Man, Horn-Rimmed Glasses Man, and George Soros. The documents were stashed beneath Socks’ kitty box, and are now the subject of an international man … er, cathunt.
Silliness aside, this photo actually fills me with a lot of nostalgia – look at how many photos there were just hanging around outside the Clinton’s house, waiting for any kind of news to develop. Think of the resources that Big Media outlets had sixteen years ago … how they had the money in their budgets to devote to paying people just to stand around in a location in the hopes that something might happen.
While this may still happen (there were a lot of reporters hanging around the neighborhood in Chicago, trying to come up with some new angle on Obama), I think that this is going to be seen as an artifact of a vanished age. Nobody can afford to pay a photog’s salary, when all he comes up with is shots of a puzzled cat on a sidewalk.
…ask not for whom Socks the Cat meows, news industry; he meows for thee…
Feb 23
Posted: under Uncategorized.
Poor Socks the Cat, the puzzled feline who famously crouched on the sidewalk in front of the Clinton’s house back in ’93, providing the only photo op for frustrated news services in the weeks following the election … is dead. (h/t Tbogg) After the euthanization, the body of Socks was deposited in Fort Marcy Park, [...] [...more]
Poor Socks the Cat, the puzzled feline who famously crouched on the sidewalk in front of the Clinton’s house back in ’93, providing the only photo op for frustrated news services in the weeks following the election … is dead.
(h/t Tbogg)
After the euthanization, the body of Socks was deposited in Fort
Marcy Park, a federal park in Virginia where it was found by park
rangers. Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) the ranking Republican on the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has vowed an
investigation into the death of Socks, coming as it has, on the eve of
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to China. According to
congressional aides, the timing of the Socks death just as his former
owner was leaving the country is “suspicious, to say the least.
Probably criminal. Yeah. Really really criminal looking.”
In related news, Regnery Publishing Inc, A Division of Eagle
Publishing, has commissioned noted author Lilian Jackson Braun to write
a tell-all book on the late Socks: The Cat Who Knew Too Fucking Much
to be published on Wednesday, February 25th. The slim tome is expected
to reach number one on the New York Times Non-Fiction Bestseller list
the following week due to massive bulk orders shipped to 214
Massachusetts Ave NE Washington DC 20002-4999, as well as a copy to be
delivered gratis to all seventy-three people who subscribe to the
Washington Times.
I look forward to the fund-raising posts on this subject, surely already in the works, from Chief Editor Korir, and the imminent promise of a mysterious “tape” showing that Socks was in possession of crucial documents proving that President Obama was actually grown in an eerie green-tinted vat in an abandoned warehouse by the Cigarette-Smoking Man, Horn-Rimmed Glasses Man, and George Soros. The documents were stashed beneath Socks’ kitty box, and are now the subject of an international man … er, cathunt.
Silliness aside, this photo actually fills me with a lot of nostalgia – look at how many photos there were just hanging around outside the Clinton’s house, waiting for any kind of news to develop. Think of the resources that Big Media outlets had sixteen years ago … how they had the money in their budgets to devote to paying people just to stand around in a location in the hopes that something might happen.
While this may still happen (there were a lot of reporters hanging around the neighborhood in Chicago, trying to come up with some new angle on Obama), I think that this is going to be seen as an artifact of a vanished age. Nobody can afford to pay a photog’s salary, when all he comes up with is shots of a puzzled cat on a sidewalk.
…ask not for whom Socks the Cat meows, news industry; he meows for thee…
Feb 22
Posted: under Uncategorized.
Late Snowfall, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. This is a view of the house in Wisconsin. The snow on the trees is thick and heavy, which means that as you walk underneath them, it slides off and usually lands in that space right between the back of your head and your collar, and immediately shoots tendrils [...] [...more]
This is a view of the house in Wisconsin. The snow on the trees is thick and heavy, which means that as you walk underneath them, it slides off and usually lands in that space right between the back of your head and your collar, and immediately shoots tendrils of freezing water down to the small of your back, causing you to dance around like Curly and make the same “Ay-yi-yi-yi!!” noise.
Still, until the snow actually attacks, it is pretty on the pine trees.
Feb 22
Posted: under Uncategorized.
The Obama Pose, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. Taken by Janine Warner just outside Point Reyes Station. I’ve been getting pickier & pickier about my images lately, but this one I kinda like. [...more]
Taken by Janine Warner just outside Point Reyes Station. I’ve been getting pickier & pickier about my images lately, but this one I kinda like.
Feb 13
Posted: under Drinking games, Foodstuffs, Travel, Ukraine.
Tags: Foodstuffs
…and this is where my problems really started… Note that in Kiev, you can get sex on the beach. The drink, that is. Actual sex on the beach is not recommended. [...more]
…and this is where my problems really started…
Note that in Kiev, you can get sex on the beach. The drink, that is.
Actual sex on the beach is not recommended.
Feb 13
Posted: under Uncategorized.
…and this is where my problems really started… Note that in Kiev, you can get sex on the beach. The drink, that is. Actual sex on the beach is not recommended. [...more]
…and this is where my problems really started…
Note that in Kiev, you can get sex on the beach. The drink, that is.
Actual sex on the beach is not recommended.
Feb 13
Posted: under Uncategorized.
I was serenaded by this group last night on a riverboat restaurant here in Kiev. My friends here took us out for a big traditional Ukrainian dinner, and started plying me with this deadly local concoction made of vodka, honey and hot peppers. It’s designed to hit your stomach, and warm you up in the [...] [...more]
I was serenaded by this group last night on a riverboat restaurant here in Kiev.
My friends here took us out for a big traditional Ukrainian dinner, and started plying me with this deadly local concoction made of vodka, honey and hot peppers. It’s designed to hit your stomach, and warm you up in the winter. It had just started snowing when we got here, and looking out the window, I saw huge heavy flakes floating down to disappear into the dark, slow Dnieper River. Chunks of ice, broken free from the mass far upriver, kept floating by on their way to the Black Sea. With this music in the background, it felt somehow timeless…
So yeah, it’s campy and melodramatic. But as the song goes on, you start to see the changes come over the faces of my dinner companions. I don’t know what they were singing about, but it must’ve been heavy.
Eugen, the dean here at the Digital Future of Journalism school, explained to me that traditional Ukrainian songs are all tragedies, drawn from their long and heartbreaking history.
“The potato harvest fails, so to support his family, the man goes off to fight in the Tsar’s wars,” he said. “He knows that there is small chance of him ever coming back alive, and his wife knows this is probably the last time she sees him in this world. So they sing of their love for each other, and he embraces his children goodbye. It’s like Ukrainian bluegrass, or country and western. Where the man has no money, no job, his pickup truck is broke, his wife left him and his dog just died. That kind of thing.”
Anyway – enjoy.
Ukraine, music, country & western, tragic love, song
Feb 13
Posted: under Amusing Nonsense, Online Video, Video, visual storytelling.
I was serenaded by this group last night on a riverboat restaurant here in Kiev. My friends here took us out for a big traditional Ukrainian dinner, and started plying me with this deadly local concoction made of vodka, honey and hot peppers. It’s designed to hit your stomach, and warm you up in the [...] [...more]
I was serenaded by this group last night on a riverboat restaurant here in Kiev.
My friends here took us out for a big traditional Ukrainian dinner, and started plying me with this deadly local concoction made of vodka, honey and hot peppers. It’s designed to hit your stomach, and warm you up in the winter. It had just started snowing when we got here, and looking out the window, I saw huge heavy flakes floating down to disappear into the dark, slow Dnieper River. Chunks of ice, broken free from the mass far upriver, kept floating by on their way to the Black Sea. With this music in the background, it felt somehow timeless…
So yeah, it’s campy and melodramatic. But as the song goes on, you start to see the changes come over the faces of my dinner companions. I don’t know what they were singing about, but it must’ve been heavy.
Eugen, the dean here at the Digital Future of Journalism school, explained to me that traditional Ukrainian songs are all tragedies, drawn from their long and heartbreaking history.
“The potato harvest fails, so to support his family, the man goes off to fight in the Tsar’s wars,” he said. “He knows that there is small chance of him ever coming back alive, and his wife knows this is probably the last time she sees him in this world. So they sing of their love for each other, and he embraces his children goodbye. It’s like Ukrainian bluegrass, or country and western. Where the man has no money, no job, his pickup truck is broke, his wife left him and his dog just died. That kind of thing.”
Anyway – enjoy.
Ukraine, music, country & western, tragic love, song
