Journalists Should Sue Themselves
Saturday, September 20, 2008 |
Category: Newspapers |
Wow!
Jeff Jarvis, whose BuzzMachine blog is one of the best there is, went to town in a September 17th entry sparked by the lawsuit of the journalists at the Los Angeles Times against their controversial new owner, Sam Zell.
I think you could say that he really let the journalists have it.
The second paragraph gives you a taste of his current state-of-mind: "Journalists are such a whiny bunch, always complaining, constantly blaming someone else for their problems. But friends, as the Rev. Wright would say, the chickens are coming home to roost."
Later in the entry the attack resumes:
"When the paper failed even at covering its own hometown industry, did you jump in to fill the void? No.
"When the internet came, did you all - every one of you as responsible, smart journalists, on your own - leap to get training in audio and video? Did you immediately hatch new ways to work collaboratively with the vast public of bloggers able and willing to join in local journalism? Not that I saw."
He finishes this scathing attack on journalists with "Want to see who’s to blame for the state of your paper? Get a mirror."
At the same time he presents the most emphatically damning statement about the future of newspapers:
"Newspapers and newspaper companies are about to die (emphasis mine). The last remaining puddles of auto, home, job, and retail advertising are about to be sucked down the drain thanks to the economic crisis and credit is about to be crunched into dust. So any newspaper or news company that has been teetering will fall. If Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and AIG can fall, so can a puny newspaper empire — and there’ll be no taxpayer bailout for them."
I wrote the 27th response to Jeff's entry:
"That is the most refreshing and to-the-point article (OK, blog entry) I’ve read in the midst of these endless months of hand-wringing, tear-jerking and self-serving twaddle. It’s strong stuff, but exactly what needed to be said. Sure, some folks can take some small issue with parts of it. But they should read the entire indictment and respond to that. You’ve finally said what needed to be said. For this I thank you. I’m going to send my readers to it from my blog."
Check it out.
I had seen Jeff's post and have to say I had a completely different reaction to it. Jeff can go off half-cocked at times and I thought as I read it, this is one of them. In this case, I'm not sure he was even half-cocked. A number of the comments on the post echo my take on it, which is that Jeff has confused whining over the plight of the company (and the newspaper business in general) with the issue (whining?) of how the ESOP has been put at greater risk and may have been used to finance what could turn out to be a corporate raid. I read some of the complaint, just to see what was there. Not being a lawyer, I haven't an opinion on it's legal merit, but it does appear to address the ESOP as the central issue. As some commenters on Jeff's blog have pointed out, Zell is a corporate dealmaker, maybe raider (not that there's anything wrong with that). He may have some genuine interest in journalism, not to confuse journalism with the newspaper business, but I haven't seen much of that in his public statements. It's always been about the money, and I never understood the logic in taking on the huge amount of debt that was leveraged by the employee fund just because it was there for the taking and apparently vulnerable. Reminds me of another publishing company that was buried in debt for the benefit of a few and the detriment of many, but it's not quite the same.
At any rate, now part of the continuing conversation will take place in the courts, which is a completely different reality.