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Journalism Credibility Project - Liberalism’s role in our collapsing credibility

Author: Ross Mackenzie
Published: September 01, 1997
Last Updated: May 26, 1999
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Journalism Credibility Project

Liberalism’s role in our collapsing credibility

ASNE project doesn’t address a fundamental problem

By Ross Mackenzie

The March-May issue of The American Editor brought to hand an answer I have been seeking for nearly three decades as an ASNE member. The organization’s murky raison evidently is to get to the bottom of newspapering’s loss of public trust.

President Sandy Rowe, her designated successors, and ASNE’s board have undertaken yet another study (this time for two years) of press credibility. They have dedicated the organization — verily, its very future — to taking "the leadership role in an industrywide discussion and the development of strategies to reverse" plummeting public confidence.

Heavy stuff, and high-sounding. And likely a large waste of time. For at least one major element in the press’ declining credibility is well known — and has been for years, though too many self-important pressies choose to view it with blinkered eyes. Friends, it’s the L-word — liberalism.

The January-February American Editor addressed the liberalism of the mainline press in some detail, with:

A box headlined "ASNE Survey: Journalists Say They’re Liberal;"

An exasperated exhalation by an Alabama editor proclaiming he is "swearing off the answering of surveys, the results of which are to subject my colleagues and me to the pain of public pillory;"

A piece of juvenility contending that despite the overwhelming data, "the U.S. press is not liberal, except in the personal views of a majority of reporters." This last item prompted two pummelings in the March-May American Editor by ASNE members from Dayton and Detroit.

As Carlyle said, "Let any man write six words and I can hang him for it." He meant bias, slant and subjectivity enter everywhere.

The liberalism of the mainline media is as blatant as a thunderclap:

It infuses the networks, news magazines, nearly all the prestige newspapers; it appears in practically every poll of press ideology, as well in practically every prestige prize the industry awards its own.

It has permeated the press since the davidic Whittaker slew the goliath Alger, since the Nazism of Barry Goldwater, since George McGovern lost decisively with 90 percent of the press’ support.

It long has been reflected in ASNE itself: In April 1980 at the convention, Ronald Reagan received just 6 percent of the votes of several hundred members in an informal presidential preference poll; he went on to carry 44 states.

If liberalism does not appear in Carlyle’s "six words," it does so in choice of coverage; in angle, placement and skew; in the critical function becoming the major function; in hiring of the like-minded; in unfettered fascination with adversarial research. It parades in chichi guises: news analysis, social responsibility, advocacy journalism, civic and/or public journalism, journalism by focus group. It pervades the mainline media climate. It determines, as in the Clinton scandals, the vigor of a story’s pursuit.

Contrary to what a fatuous New Dealer said famously, the public is not "too damned dumb to understand." It reads and watches and listens, sees the lopsidedness of what is going on — and, fed up, is tuning out and turning away.

A press deemed intellectually untrustworthy is a press — like ours — with a huge credibility problem. There can be no defensible rationalizing of it, no excusing it and explaining it away — as of course there would not be if the data showed an ideologized press was categorically conservative and full of patsies for the Republicans. Imagine the caterwauling that would go up for our lost credibility, and the disingenuous testimonies to the soaring importance of a centrism — an ideological neutrality — regained.

Today we have moved far from Trollope’s 1862 observation that "the average consumption of newspapers by an American must amount to about three a day." Combined daily readership is declining after a quarter-century of mere stasis — and it is properly a topic of consuming interest among newspaper people.

The reasons are many: societal pace, economic and cultural shifts, competing media (television, talk radio, the Internet), heightened emphasis on self and leisure and lifestyle, the plunging desire (particularly among the young) to read. Those, and this: a spreading perception in this fundamentally conservative populace — a broadening awareness — regarding the overwhelming liberalism of the mainline press. It is no less a central element in the press’ credibility problems than misspellings of names or factual discrepancies.

So, credibility? More ruminations and boring self-studies to send us groaning low? Please. If words and data mean anything anymore, much of the explanation of the press’ credibility problem — that’s much, not all — is there for anyone with unblinkered eyes to see. The big hitters in the ASNE and elsewhere can save themselves a lot of effort by growing beyond denial, facing the music, and dancing to the facts and data as they are and not as they wish them to be. Otherwise, soon ASNE may render itself irrelevant — and with it the beloved yet bedeviled profession it presumes to represent and defend.

Mackenzie is editor of the editorial pages at the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch.

Washington Post Monday, May 2, 2005; A02

...

Buffett also offered a grim outlook for the newspaper industry during a three-hour news conference a day after Berkshire's annual meeting, saying he sees no clear way for papers to stem recent circulation declines or turn Internet operations into highly-profitable enterprises. "The economics for newspapers are worse now than they used to, and the prospects are worse," said Buffett, a long-time director and large shareholder of The Washington Post Co.

Buffett said declines in circulation result from readers turning to alternative sources , such as free Web sites and television. And he said owning the dominant news Web site in a region is not enough to guarantee sustained profitability for newspaper firms.

As an example, he cited Buffalo, where Berkshire owns the Buffalo News and Buffalo.com, which he described as the most popular news Web site in the city. "We've got the best position, but it isn't remotely like owning the paper 30 years ago."

Buffett said buying newspapers was once an excellent investment because the dominant paper in any city could count on steady advertising revenue and could raise ad rates, often as much as it wanted, every year. With circulation dropping, that is no longer the case, Buffett said.

Warren Buffett’s 2006 annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders (excerpt)

...

Not all of our businesses are destined to increase profits. When an industry's underlying economics are crumbling, talented management may slow the rate of decline. Eventually, though, eroding fundamentals will overwhelm managerial brilliance. (As a wise friend told me long ago, "If you want to get a reputation as a good businessman, be sure to get into a good business.") And fundamentals are definitely eroding in the newspaper industry, a trend that has caused the profits of our Buffalo News to decline. The skid will almost certainly continue.

When Charlie and I were young, the newspaper business was as easy a way to make huge returns as existed in America. As one not-too-bright publisher famously said, "I owe my fortune to two great American institutions: monopoly and nepotism." No paper in a one-paper city, however bad the product or however inept the management, could avoid gushing profits.

The industry's staggering returns could be simply explained. For most of the 20th Century, newspapers were the primary source of information for the American public. Whether the subject was sports, finance, or politics, newspapers reigned supreme. Just as important, their ads were the easiest way to find job opportunities or to learn the price of groceries at your town's supermarkets.

The great majority of families therefore felt the need for a paper every day, but understandably most didn't wish to pay for two. Advertisers preferred the paper with the most circulation, and readers tended to want the paper with the most ads and news pages. This circularity led to a law of the newspaper jungle: Survival of the Fattest.

Thus, when two or more papers existed in a major city (which was almost universally the case a century ago), the one that pulled ahead usually emerged as the stand-alone winner. After competition disappeared, the paper's pricing power in both advertising and circulation was unleashed. Typically, rates for both advertisers and readers would be raised annually - and the profits rolled in. For owners this was economic heaven. (Interestingly, though papers regularly - and often in a disapproving way - reported on the profitability of, say, the auto or steel industries, they never enlightened readers about their own Midas-like situation. Hmmm . . .)

As long ago as my 1991 letter to shareholders, I nonetheless asserted that this insulated world was changing, writing that "the media businesses . . . will prove considerably less marvelous than I, the industry, or lenders thought would be the case only a few years ago." Some publishers took umbrage at both this remark and other warnings from me that followed. Newspaper properties, moreover, continued to sell as if they were indestructible slot machines. In fact, many intelligent newspaper executives who regularly chronicled and analyzed important worldwide events were either blind or indifferent to what was going on under their noses.

Now, however, almost all newspaper owners realize that they are constantly losing ground in the battle for eyeballs. Simply put, if cable and satellite broadcasting, as well as the internet, had come along first, newspapers as we know them probably would never have existed.

In Berkshire's world, Stan Lipsey does a terrific job running the Buffalo News, and I am enormously proud of its editor, Margaret Sullivan. The News' penetration of its market is the highest among that of this country's large newspapers. We also do better financially than most metropolitan newspapers, even though Buffalo's population and business trends are not good. Nevertheless, this operation faces unrelenting pressures that will cause profit margins to slide.

True, we have the leading online news operation in Buffalo, and it will continue to attract more viewers and ads. However, the economic potential of a newspaper internet site - given the many alternative sources of information and entertainment that are free and only a click away - is at best a small fraction of that existing in the past for a print newspaper facing no competition.

For a local resident, ownership of a city's paper, like ownership of a sports team, still produces instant prominence. With it typically comes power and influence. These are ruboffs that appeal to many people with money. Beyond that, civic-minded, wealthy individuals may feel that local ownership will serve their community well. That's why Peter Kiewit bought the Omaha paper more than 40 years ago.

We are likely therefore to see non-economic individual buyers of newspapers emerge, just as we have seen such buyers acquire major sports franchises. Aspiring press lords should be careful, however: There's no rule that says a newspaper's revenues can't fall below its expenses and that losses can't mushroom. Fixed costs are high in the newspaper business, and that's bad news when unit volume heads south. As the importance of newspapers diminishes, moreover, the "psychic" value of possessing one will wane, whereas owning a sports franchise will likely retain its cachet.

Unless we face an irreversible cash drain, we will stick with the News, just as we've said that we would. (Read economic principle 11, on page 76.) Charlie and I love newspapers - we each read five a day - and believe that a free and energetic press is a key ingredient for maintaining a great democracy. We hope that some combination of print and online will ward off economic doomsday for newspapers, and we will work hard in Buffalo to develop a sustainable business model. I think we will be successful. But the days of lush profits from our newspaper are over.

Financial Woes for the New York Times

New York Times Company's reported financial results, outlook, and stock price keep getting hammered by poor business performance. Having announced it will pay $125 million in dividends, the company must increase its profits if it is to avoid further drawing down of shareholder equity, amounting to gradual liquidation of the company.

Last week I wrote about the bond covenants that could be violated if dividends continue to exceed earnings

The prospects are grim. The newspaper industry is in serious trouble. But the Times faces a special challenge in the arrival of Rupert Murdoch as new owner of the Wall Street Journal, not to mention any further problems which might grow out of the MoveOn ad scandal and the regulatory risks associated with the Federal Election Commission and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

But don't take my perspective by itself. A popular financial tool for analyzing bankruptcy risk reveals much.

The Z-score

A popular tool in analyzing bankruptcy risk is the Z-score model, which has demonstrated a track record in predicting corporate bankruptcies. The model was developed by Edward Altman, an NYU Stern School of Business finance professor who literally wrote the book on commercial bankruptcy.

He devised the Z-score model in the 1960s and has been refining it ever since.

The model uses five financial ratios and weights them to create a single Z-score value for a company:

Z Score = 1.2 X1 + 1.4 X2 + 3.3 X3 + 0.6 X4 + 1.0 X5

where:

X1 = Working Capital/Total Assets
X2 = Retained Earnings/Total Assets
X3 = Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (trailing twelve months)/Total Assets
X4 = Market Value of Equity/Book Value of Total Liabilities
X5 = Sales (trailing twelve months)/Total Assets
Z = Overall Index or Score

The higher the Z-score, the less risk of bankruptcy. A Z-score of 1.8 is considered the upper bound of distress for a firm.

I calculated Z scores for the New York Times Company (NYT), the Washington Post (WPO), News Corp (NWS), and the McClatchy News Group (MNI) using the 10K and 10Q reports. Below are the results:

	NYT	WPO	NWS	MNI
Z Score 9/2007	1.835	4.118	2.139	0.812

The New York Times is tottering on the edge, with a Z score just 0.035 above the upper bound of distress. News Corp has a score of 2.139, in line for a company with a record of aggressive growth funded by debt. Not surprisingly, the Washington Post is the most solid company, well capitalized and conservatively managed that should allow them to make the transition from print relatively unscathed.

McClatchy's stock is down 50% for the year. The precariously low Z score is attributable to their purchase of Knight Ridder with debt in June of 2006. Even after dumping the papers in the worst growth markets at what seemed at the time like good prices, (just ask Bruce Toll who bought the Philadelphia Inquirer) the net acquisition cost was greater than the business can support. With the notable exception of the Wall Street Journal sale to News Corp, the Knight Ridder transactions were a turning point in newspaper valuations.

Prior to the McClatchy/Knight Ridder deal, buyers set aside reality on ad revenues and allowed their ego-driven belief that they could do it better overpower the objective truth.

Further confirmation of this reality came in August, with the Fitch Ratings outlook for newspaper publishers. Hamilaton Nolan of PR Week commented:

"There does not seem to be any prospect for a miraculous turnaround. Print will not suddenly find itself re-emerging as a popular medium in a surge of throwback appeal. Craigslist is not going to fade away, forcing urban dwellers to flee back to papers to sell their bicycles and rent their apartments. The ink-stained wretch is a dying breed.

That is the general situation. The particular situation was brought into stark relief by the end-of-August publication of a report by Fitch Ratings, which goes a long way towards illustrating what's wrong. When 2007 began, Fitch posted a negative outlook for the newspaper industry; now, three quarters of the way through, the outlook is even worse."

The outlook is even worse, and for the New York Times all the more so. The Times has $250 million in debt due in 2009 and $250 million due 2010. They have $225 million available under a 2012 issue and $300 million available under their short term credit lines. They can use the $225 million to fund the 2009 maturity but after that their options are limited for 2010.

The Perfect Storm

Running headlong into a perfect storm, the Times' has to fight off attacks on their ad revenue on three fronts: A cyclical downturn in the crucial auto and real estates sectors, the inexorable migration of advertising to the internet, and lastly, the competitive pressures likely wrought by Murdoch's purchase of the Wall Street Journal.

The Future of the News wrote an excellent summation of the revenue strategy Murdoch is planning to use to pinch Pinch.

"In what could not possibly be a coincidence, Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and New York Post both announced today that they will be publishing glossy weekend magazine inserts supported by high-end, luxury advertisers. The Post will be inserting "Page Six" magazine in its Sunday editions, featuring celebrities, fashion, profiles, food, wine, and restaurants. Sunday's first issue will be 96 pages, and will include ads from Calvin Klein, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and other high-end advertisers rarely seen in the Post. Then a year from now, the WSJ will begin inserting "Pursuits" magazine into its Saturday editions once per month. Exploring "the world of wealth," this publication will include ads for luxury goods and travel."

All of which means that crosstown at the NY Times, the Gray Lady is bracing to have her purse snatched again [....]

Worse still for the Times, rather than grow new advertisers, the Post seems intent on stealing high-end ones from the Sunday Times. Same goes for the WSJ, with its new weekend magazine.

Leveraging the NY Post and the WSJ brands to snatch advertisers from a distressed competitor? Brillant. Can you say cross promotion platform? Rupert can.

Variety reports on Murdoch's upcoming launch of the Fox Business Network.

"It's going to be different from CNBC, just as Fox News is different from CNN," Murdoch told Wall Streeters at a Goldman Sachs-sponsored conference. "CNBC is a financial channel for Wall Street; we're for Main Street." CNBC has had little competition, short of Bloomberg TV, since CNN shuttered CNNfn in late 2004. Fox Business Network is set to launch in 34 million homes Oct. 15, when it will begin to compete with the NBC Universal-owned network.

"They dwell too much on failures and scandals and politics," he said. "We want to spend a lot of time on innovation, successes and people who are making money"

Broaden the audience, make more more compelling television, grow ratings.

Here's the money quote that sums up his philosophy:

"Cost savings, he said, "are not really what we're about; we're about expanding revenues."

Rupert is all about top line growth. Pinch is reduced to selling off valuable assets and hollowing out his core business with drastic expense cuts just to pay the current dividend!

If I were a betting man I would take Murdoch over Pinch any day of the week. Pinch inherited the New York Times, a global icon in newspaper publishing. Murdoch inherited a tiny paper called the Barrier Miner, in Broken Hill, New South Wales, (2000 population: 21,000), and Southdown Press, a small publisher of American comic books. While not nothing, it is an awfully humble beginning compared to Pinch.

All told, the Murdoch's companies were probably worth at most a few hundred thousand US$ or so when he took control of them. Today, the News Corp. market cap is $68.82 billion, while the Times is $2.89 billion. News Corp., in other words, has a market cap almost 24 times as much as the New York Times.

It's as if Pinch left England on the QE2 and washed up in New York harbor in a lifeboat, while Murdoch left Austrailia in a rowboat and sailed into NewYork commanding the Seventh fleet.

The battle is on.

Internet competition, newspapers, and video rentals

In what may be a preview of coming attractions in the newspaper business, Movie Gallery, the largest retail DVD rental operator has filed a prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition.

Taking on big liabilities at the wrong time to buy out competitor Hollywood Video for $1 Billion in 2005, the company collapsed under the weight of the debt in the face of a huge decline in the retail movie rental business. Companies often succumb to temptation when they buy competitors out in what turns out to be false bottom for the business. Several newspapers publishers made this mistake when the they bought papers in 2005 and 2006. Moreover, like newspapers, Movie Gallery confronted the disruptive technology of the internet and digital cable that made their retail distribution channel obsolete.

Last week we detailed the New York Times Company's financial condition. The Times is saddled with substantial debt from the purchase of the Boston Globe and other New England properties in a rapidly deteriorating advertising market.

The Times' situation is not nearly as dire as others in the Industry. In last week's post I calculated Z scores, an index used to forecast bankruptcy risk, for the New York Times (NYT) and several key competitors, including the Washington Post (WPO), News Corp (NWS), and the McClatchy News Group (MNI) using the 10K and 10Q reports. Since then I did the calculations for four more newspaper publishers, Gannett (GCI), Journal Register (JRE), Lee (LEE), and Scripps (SSP). The results are consistent with the respective business conditions facing each company

	NYT	WPO	NWS	MNI	GCI	SSP	LEE	JRE
Z Score 9/2007	1.835	4.118	2.139	0.812	2.755	4.137	1.282	0.752

News Corp., The Washington Post, Gannett and Scripps all score well the above 1.8 high risk threshold. These companies are diversified communications media companies with a number of high performance segments offsetting the structural decay of their newspaper properties. The other companies in the danger zone are all mainly pure-play newspaper businesses that made the fatal decision to buy out competitors at a false bottom similar to Movie Gallery's bad move.

McClatchy, Lee. The Journal Register and to lesser extent the New York Times should be placed on the watch list. Is this a preview of coming attractions? Perhaps

Harvard-PEJ study proves media bias, essentially accuses Old Media of fraud. Why arenÃ‚Â’t Old Media leaders defending themselves? 11/2/07

Posted by Steve Boriss in Bias.
trackback

In most industries, if a new study came out proving a company had made false claims about their product that harmed the public, we know exactly what would happen. The company would immediately seek public exposure to defend itself vigorously, or announce they were investigating the charges, or apologize profusely while proclaiming that such a thing would never happen again. Yet, Investors Business Daily reports that newspapers and network TV news have been caught making false claims about their objectivity, prompting — nothing — no news industry reaction at all. A joint survey by two institutions revered by journalists, HarvardÃ‚Â’s Joan Shorenstein Center and the Project for Excellence in Journalism, proved that newspaper and network TV coverage of the current presidential race has been overwhelmingly sympathetic to Democrats and hostile to Republicans. In newspapers, the ratio of positive to negative stories about Democrats was more than 5-to-1, while for Republicans negative stories outnumbered positive ones by 50%. On network evening news, twice as many stories about Democrats were positive, while twice as many stories about Republicans were negative. Democrats also get more coverage overall.

The fact that not a single one of these news enterprises has stepped forward to defend its behavior, announce an investigation, or apologize speaks ill of their leadership, who can justifiably be accused of either lack of courage, lack of integrity, or both. Lack of courage, because they might fear business losses from admitting to the public that they have been misleading them about the quality of their news product. Lack of integrity, because they allow this deceit to continue and fail to insist that their newsrooms report on corruption within their own industry as they would on others. Journalism as a discipline has a crisis of leadership and it is contributing to its demise.

Advertisers Sue 'Minneapolis Star Tribune' Over Circulation Inflation - 06/29/2005
Time Inc. Gets A U.S. Subpoena About Circulation - 09/24/2005
Denver papers use liberal rules to boost circulation - 08/08/2005
Arrests made in Newsday circulation scandal - 06/16/2005
Belo Begins Refunding Advertisers Over Inflated Circulation Figures (Texas) - 05/02/2005
Newsday, Hoy publishers retire amid circulation scandal - 07/19/04
Tribune Company (LA Times parent) Admits Inflated Circulation Numbers At Two Papers - 06/23/2004

Shush. This is fascinating.

It's Not Just Scott Beauchamp

"Matt Drudge's role in the Monica Lewinski scandal] strikes me as a new and graphic power of the Internet to influence mainstream journalism. And I suspect that over the next couple of years that impact will grow to the point where it will damage journalism's ability to do its job professionally, to check out information before publication, to be mindful of the necessity to publish and broadcast reliable, substantiated information." -- Marvin Kalb in 1998

Scott Beauchamp was the last straw. I realized that I need a scorecard to keep track of all the fallen journalists, journalistic mistakes and major and minor screw-ups in the media. I couldn't find one already made, although Wikipedia came close, so I started my own. I apologize if there is a good list already out there, but I looked and could not find.

Offenses include lying and fabricating, doctoring photos, plagiarism, conflicts of interest, falling for hoaxes, and overt bias. Some are hilarious, such as an action figure doll being mistaken for a real soldier. Some are silly, such as reporting on a baseball game watched on TV. Some are more serious.

I leave it to you to judge whether the internet damaged "journalism's ability to do its job professionally", as Marvin Kalb accuses, or if the internet has in fact helped expose an already damaged "profession".

I doubt if my list is comprehensive, but I think it's a good start. So that I'm not accused of plagiarism myself, I would like to give credit to Wikipedia for many of the entries on this list. And all the information below can be found with a little internet searching; I just could not find it all in one place. I do give at least one source for each item, embedded in the text.

Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press (2005). Lying/fabricating. In his sports column, he described alumni players at a basketball game who were not even there.
Stephen Ambrose, historian/author (2002). Plagiarism. He was almost a book "factory", writing eight books in five years. But that apparently came easier when parts were copied from other books, without attribution.
Associated Press (AP) (2005). Fell for hoax and phony photo. The AP ran a story, with a photo, about a soldier held hostage in Iraq. The photo turned out to be that of an action figure doll; there was no such soldier.
Mike Barnicle, Boston Globe (1998). Lying/fabricating and plagiarism. Totally made up stories, including one about a black kid and a white kid with cancer. Also used quotes from George Carlin as his own. Fired from the Boston Globe.
Maria Bartiromo, CNBC (2007). Conflict of interest. She dated a Citicorp executive and received special treatment from him, and also owned stock in Citicorp while doing financial reporting for CNBC, including reporting on Citicorp.
Scott Beauchamp, The New Republic (2007). Lying. TNR hired this U.S. Army private and husband of one of its own reporters to write first-hand accounts from Iraq. One of his accounts, supposedly demonstrating the dehumanizing effects of the Iraq war on him and fellow soldiers, occurred in Kuwait before Beauchamp even entered Iraq. Other parts of his writing are likely false, and if not, constitute military crimes on his part. In fact, his anonymous writing from a war zone is likely against military rules. This story is currently unfolding.
Nada Behziz, The Bakersfield Californian (2005). Lying/fabricating and plagiarism. Writing mostly on health issues, she plagiarized from the New York Times and AP, made up sources, and got basic facts wrong. An investigation counted 29 fabricated or plagiarized articles. She also lied on her resume. She was fired.
Michael Bellesiles, professor of history, author of Arming America and recipient of Columbia University's Bancroft Prize. Lying/fabricating. He made "myth shattering" claims about the history of guns in America that were based on fabricated historical records. He resigned from Emory University.
Joe Biden, U.S. Senator and candidate for President (1988). Plagiarism. He withdrew from the 1988 presidential race after being discovered "delivering, without attribution, passages from a speech by British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock... a serious plagiarism incident involving Biden during his law school years; the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event; and the discovery of other quotations in Biden's speeches pilfered from past Democratic politicians." He's still a Senator, and back in the race for 2008.
Jayson Blair, The New York Times (2003). Lying/fabricating. He fabricated parts or all of at least 36 stories. He, along with his bosses Gerald Boyd and Howell Raines, resigned from the NYT.
The Boston Globe (2004). Fake photos, fake story. The Boston Globe published pictures alleging U.S. troops raped Iraqi women. The pictures turned out to be commercially available pornography.
Paul Bradley Richmond Times-Dispatch (2006). Lying/fabricating. Made up his story on reactions to President Bush's speech on immigration. He fabricated interviews. He reported on an event in the first person, yet he was not even in the same town. He was fired.
Rick Bragg, The New York Times (2003). "Drive-by" reporting. "Bragg's defense -- that it is common for Times correspondents to slip in and out of cities to ‘get the dateline' while relying on the work of stringers, researchers, interns and clerks -- has sparked more passionate disagreement than the clear-cut fraud and plagiarism committed by Blair. The issue, put starkly, is whether readers are being misled about how and where a story was reported." He resigned.
Fox Butterfield, New York Times (2000). Lying/fabricating and plagiarism. In 2003, a federal jury ruled that "the New York Times and one of its reporters libeled an Ohio Supreme Court justice" in an article published April 13, 2000. The jury found that the article was "not substantially true". He also "had lifted material from a story in The Boston Globe while reporting, ironically, on plagiarism by a Boston University dean".
Thom Calandra, Marketwatch.com (2005). Conflict of interest. He profited by selling stocks shortly after giving them positive write-ups in his newsletter. The SEC brought suit against him, which was settled.
Jimmy Carter, former U.S. President, Nobel Peace Prize winner and author of Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. Lying, plagiarism, bias. His book was so full of errors, including doctored maps, that his chief collaborator, Kenneth Stein of Emory University, resigned his position with the Carter Center. Carter's book was condemned by Alan Dershowitz and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others.
CBS, Dan Rather, Mary Mapes (2004). Fell for fake documents. CBS used forged documents from a non-credible source in claiming George W. Bush received favored treatment in the Air National Guard.
Chris Cecil, Cartersville Daily News (2005). Plagiarism. "The associate managing editor of a small Georgia newspaper was fired for plagiarizing articles by a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Miami Herald, including copying a passage about his mother's battle with cancer. Chris Cecil, 28, was fired from The Daily Tribune News of Cartersville on Thursday after the Herald pointed out six to eight columns written since March that contained portions from work by Leonard Pitts Jr."
Philip Chien, Wired News (2006). Lying/fabricating. He made up sources and quotes in at least three articles. Wired withdrew the stories.
Ward Churchill, Chairman of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado. Lying and plagiarism. He lied about his credentials and ethnic background to get a job in the first place. His "research" was laden with fabricated evidence, plagiarism and referencing his own previous writings under pseudonyms. He is worthy of Mary McCarthy's quote about Lillian Hellman: "Every word (s)he writes is a lie, including ‘and' and ‘the'." He was fired.
CNN, Operation Tailwind, CNN NewsStand (1998). Lying/fabricating. The televised special claimed that the U.S. military used nerve gas in a mission to kill American defectors in Laos during the Vietnam War, but the story had no factual support. CNN later retracted the story.
CNN and Eason Jordan (2003). Admitted bias, slanting the news. Eason Jordan, CNN's news chief, admitted that CNN withheld reporting on Saddam Hussein's atrocities so as to continue getting favored treatment from Saddam.
Janet Cooke, Washington Post (1980-1981), Pulitzer Prize winner. Lying/fabricating. Her series on "Jimmy's World" about an 8-year-old heroin addict was totally made up.
Katie Couric, "Katie Couric's Notebook," CBSNews.com (2007). Plagiarism. In the first place, her blog is largely written by someone else. That someone else copied material from The Wall Street Journal, without attribution.
The Daily Egyptian (2005). Fell for hoax. This student newspaper wrote a series about the family of a soldier in Iraq who subsequently died, except that the whole thing was made up.
Allan Detrich, The Toledo Blade (2007). Doctored photos. He submitted 79 photographs that were altered. "The changes Mr. Detrich made included erasing people, tree limbs, utility poles, electrical wires, electrical outlets, and other background elements from photographs. In other cases, he added elements such as tree branches and shrubbery." He resigned.
Stephen Dunphy, Seattle Times associate editor and business columnist (2004). Plagiarism. He used significant quotes (e.g., seven paragraphs at a time) from other sources on multiple occasions. He resigned.
Walter Duranty, The New York Times (1930s), Pulitzer Prize winner. Lying. This man visited Stalin's Russia and wrote that nothing untoward was happening there -- no famine, etc. In fact, up to 10 million people died in the Ukraine famine. His writings matched Russian propaganda almost exactly. His Pulitzer Prize still stands.
Joseph Ellis, professor at Mount Holyoke College and historian/author (2001), Pulitzer Prize winner. Lying. He falsely claimed military service in Vietnam and incorporated his war "experiences" into his college courses on "The Vietnam War and American Culture". Mount Holyoke censured him and suspended him without pay for one year.
Jacob Epstein, novelist (1980). Plagiarism. "Jacob Epstein, responding to charges that he had plagiarized from Martin Amis's The Rachel Papers for his first novel, Wild Oats, has apologized, admitting that he had indeed copied passages and images from Mr. Amis, and from other writers, as well."
Diana Griego Erwin , Sacramento Bee (2005), lying/fabricating. The Bee was "unable to verify the existence of 43 people she named in her columns". She resigned.
Hassan Fattah, New York Times (2006). Fell for a hoax. Did a front page story about the man in one of the famous Abu Ghraib photos. But it turned out that the man who claimed to be the one in the picture, who provided details for the story, was not the one in the picture at all.
James Forlong, Sky News (2003). Fake story, fake footage. He presented footage from a missile test as actual combat in Iraq. He subsequently committed suicide.
Jay Forman, Slate (2001). Fake story. He wrote an article describing the fictitious sport of Monkey Fishing as real. Slate later published an apology and admitted details were fictitious.
James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, Oprah Book Club. Lying. Virtually the entire "nonfiction memoir" of his vomit-caked years as an alcoholic, drug addict, and criminal was fabricated.
Michael Gallagher, The Cincinnati Enquirer (1998). Information theft. "Mike Gallagher had illegally tapped into Chiquita's voice mail system and used information he obtained as a result in stories questioning Chiquita's business practices in Latin America." The paper agreed to pay Chiquita Brands International over $10 million and run an apology on the front page three times.
Stephen Glass, The New Republic (1998). Lying. "Glass, a 25-year-old rising star at The New Republic, wrote dozens of high-profile articles for a number of national publications in which he made things up...he made up people, places and events. He made up organizations and quotations. Sometimes, he made up entire articles. And to back it all up, he created fake notes, fake voicemails, fake faxes, even a fake Web site - whatever it took to deceive his editors, not to mention hundreds of thousands of readers." He was fired.
Jacqueline Gonzalez, San Antonio Express News (2007). Plagiarism. She admitted "she used, without attribution, information from a Web site for a Christmas Day column. Later research uncovered further examples of plagiarism in two other columns."
Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian/author (2002). Plagiarism. Large portions of her book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, were lifted from multiple other sources without attribution. She took a leave of absence from PBS.
Adnan Hajj, Reuters (2006). Doctored photos. He doctored dozens of pictures of the 2006 Lebanon-Israel conflict. Reuters later withdrew all 920 of his photos from sale.
Alex Haley (1977) , Pulitzer Prize winning author of Roots. Plagiarism. He settled a lawsuit for $650,000, admitting that large passages of Roots were copied from the book The African by Harold Courlander.
Mark Halperin, ABC News (2004). Admitted bias. He wrote a memo to news staff telling them to hold George Bush to a stricter standard than John Kerry: "Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and makes] mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win. We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally' accountable when the facts don't warrant that."
Jack Hitt, New York Times (2006). Lying, or at least really sloppy research. He wrote a story about a woman in El Salvador who was sentenced to prison for having an abortion when she was 18 weeks pregnant. It turned out that "her child was carried to term, was born alive and died in its first minutes of life." In short, her crime was infanticide, not abortion.
Houston Chronicle, Light Rail Controversy (2002). Admitted bias. An internal memo outlined how the paper would promote the light rail project in Houston and do research into Tom Delay and other light rail opponents. That would be creating the news rather than reporting it.
Eason Jordan, CNN (2005). False accusations. He accused U.S. forces in Iraq of deliberately targeting and killing journalists. He apologized and resigned.
Jack Kelley , USA Today (2004). Lying. USA Today concluded of "the star" of its news staff: "Jack Kelley's dishonest reporting dates back at least as far as 1991."
Jesse MacBeth, anti-war star (2006). Lying/fabricating. "Jesse MacBeth stoked opposition to the Iraq war in 2006 when he spoke out about atrocities he committed as a U.S. Army Ranger serving as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. MacBeth, 23, of Tacoma, claimed to have killed more than 200 people, many at close range, some as they prayed in a mosque. He spoke at an anti-war rally in Tacoma and appeared in a 20-minute anti-war video that circulated widely on the Internet. Trouble is, none of MacBeth's claims was true."
Rigoberta Menchu, author of I, Rigoberta (1983), Nobel Peace Prize winner (1992). Lying/fabricating. She claimed her autobiographical book "is the story of all poor Guatemalans. My personal experience is the reality of a whole people." However, "Menchú augmented her own story with that of the Indians of Guatemala generally, reporting experiences she either did not have or could not have witnessed and misrepresenting the violent history of her area of Guatemala to support her own cause as a Guatemalan guerrilla organizer."
Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher (2006). Lying. He admitted to fabricating a story in his younger reporting days.
NBC, Waiting to Explode segment on Dateline NBC (1992). Faking evidence and footage. NBC demonstrated the explosive danger of GM trucks' gas tanks by showing one actually explode in what appeared to be normal circumstances. "NBC said the truck's gas tank had ruptured, yet an X ray showed it hadn't; NBC consultants set off explosive miniature rockets beneath the truck split seconds before the crash -- yet no one told the viewers."
Christopher Newton, Associated Press (2002). Lying. "The Associated Press accused Washington bureau reporter Christopher Newton of journalistic fraud last month and sacked him. The AP alleges that in at least 40 of the many hundred stories Newton wrote for the wire service between Jan. 13, 2000, and Sept. 8, 2002, Newton quoted sources who appear not to exist."
NPR, CNN and others on the "Jenin massacre" (2002). CNN reported: "There's almost a massacre now taking place in Jenin. Helicopter gun ships are throwing missiles at one square kilometer packed with almost 15,000 people in a refugee camp . . . This is a war crime, clear war crime." However, the actual "death toll was 56 Palestinians, the majority of them combatants, and 23 Israeli soldiers."
Reuters, Lebanon coverage (2006). Fake/staged photos. A burning tire dump as the scene of an Israeli bombing, Photoshopped bomb smoke, etc. during the Lebanon-Israel conflict.
Reuters Russia's North Pole coverage (2007). More fake photos/footage. "Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic." The mistake was caught by a 13-year-old Finnish boy.
Tim Ryan, Honolulu Star-Bulletin (2006). Plagiarism. This entertainment reporter wrote multiple articles with words lifted from other sources without attribution. He was fired.
Eric Slater, Los Angeles Times (2005). Inaccuracy and plagiarism. "The LA Times ran a lengthy Editor's Note that outlines the inaccuracies, ‘substandard' reporting methods and unverifiable quotes in two stories by reporter Eric Slater." He was fired.
Patricia Smith, Boston Globe (1998), Pulitzer Prize finalist. Lying/fabricating "An award-winning metro columnist for The Boston Globe resigned Thursday after being asked to leave by the paper's editor, who said she admitted to fabricating people and quotes in four columns this year." "I attributed quotes to people who didn't exist."
Barbara Stewart, Boston Globe (2005). Lying/fabricating. "The Boston Globe acknowledged yesterday publishing a partially fabricated story by a freelance reporter about a Canadian seal hunt that had not taken place."
Nina Totenberg, The National Observer (1972). Plagiarism. She was fired by The National Observer for plagiarism. "Totenberg had allegedly lifted several paragraphs from a Washington Post story and dropped them into a piece she was writing about former House Speaker Tip O'Neill for the now-defunct National Observer." She is currently legal correspondent for NPR.
Jim Van Vliet, Sacramento Bee (2005). Misrepresentation and plagiarism. "The reporter watched the game on television at a location away from the stadium. He filed his story without telling editors at The Bee his true location, leaving the impression he covered the game from the ballpark. In addition, it was discovered later that the story included quotes from other media outlets that were unattributed and old, made to reporters on a previous occasion before the day of the game." He no longer works there.
Brian Walski, The Los Angeles Times (2003). Doctored photos. The LA Times admitted that it "published a front-page photograph that had been altered in violation of Times policy."
Bob Wisehart, Sacramento Bee (1994). Plagiarism. "Sacramento Bee editor Gregory Favre fired TV columnist Bob Wisehart the second time he plagiarized. For the first offense, Wisehart got a five-month suspension even though his plagiarism involved hundreds of words taken from Stephen King's book Danse Macabre for a television column about horror shows."

I conclude with a few observations.

These offenses have been going on for years, long before the internet. But there does seems to be a rise in the number of reported offenses in recent years. Did the number of offenses go up, or did the fraction of discovered offenses go up?
In a good number of these cases, the errors were caught by non-journalists, sometimes communicating over the internet.
If it is "too good to be true", or just too politically correct to be true, take it with a grain of salt - several grains, apparently, if from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, CNN or Reuters.
The Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize just ain't all they're cracked up to be.
If this is the visible part of the iceberg, just how big is the iceberg?

If I missed any, or if there is a better list out there, let me know.

Randall Hoven is an engineer living in Illinois. He can be reached at randall.hoven@gmail.com.

It's Not Just Scott Beauchamp (II)

[See also: It's Not Just Scott Beauchamp (I)]

Without too much extra effort, it was fairly easy to add 21 more names to the "Media Hall of Shame" list, bringing the total to 83. With more effort, I'm sure the total list could easily double. But I will stop here, for now anyway, because I think you get the idea (and this can be time consuming!).

I need to acknowledge two corrections to the original list: it is "Rigoberta" Menchu, not "Rigoberto"; she is female. Also, Ward Churchill resigned his position as the Ethnic Studies department chair in 2005, but was fired by Colorado University in 2007 after a more complete investigation.

I should add that there were many "honorable mentions" that I was uncomfortable adding to the list. Some cases, like the reporting of Walter Cronkite and others on the Viet Nam war, especially the Tet Offensive, reporting on Haditha, the Swift Boaters, etc., were just too complicated to wrap up easily. For cases that require a deeper analysis, try mediamythbusters.com.

I also tried to include only examples that had fairly unambiguous resolutions, such as a reporter getting fired, officially disciplined, resigning, or successfully sued. Plagiarism in particular has shades of gray. If held to a very strict standard, it seems almost everyone who has written anything has committed plagiarism at some time. I did not want to dilute the power of the list by including questionable cases.

Yet I'm sure some will think some of the cases are questionable. Jimmy Carter, for example, still defends his book. All I can say is start your search engines and hold on. I became convinced that every case in the list at least passes the "preponderance of the evidence" level of proof, if not "beyond a reasonable doubt".

1. ABC, Food Lion story (1992). Fraudulent techniques and probable fabrication. Two ABC producers lied on their resumes to get jobs at Food Lion. They each wore a wig hiding a tiny lipstick-sized camera, and each carried a concealed microphone. It's possible they shot footage of mishandled food by doing the mishandling themselves. Food Lion sued ABC and a jury awarded it $5.5 million.
2. ABC 20/20 "Exploding Fords" story (1978). Staged footage. Similar to the later NBC "exploding" GM trucks episode, ABC aired "grossly misleading crash videos and simulations, withheld the same sorts of material facts about the tests, and relied on the same dubious experts with the same ties to the plaintiffs bar... viewers were shown a crash fire and explosion without being told it had been started by an incendiary device."
3. ABC 20/20, "Buckwheat" (of the Little Rascals) story. (1990). Fell for hoax. "In 1990 the ABC program 20/20 was hoaxed into believing that Billy "Buckwheat" Thomas was alive and working as a grocery bagger in Tempe, Arizona. (Thomas actually died in 1980.) A segment broadcast October 5 with narrator Hugh Downs featured an impostor."
4. Ron Borges, Boston Globe sports writer (2007). Plagiarism. The Globe suspended him for two months "after allegations that he had plagiarized a portion of a football column from another sportswriter." He retired from the Globe when his suspension ended.
5. CBS 60 Minutes, the "Runaway Audi" (1989). "... drilled a hole in an Audi transmission and pumped in air at high pressure. Viewers didn't see the drill or the pump-just the doctored car blasting off like a rocket. The story starred a mother who had run over her six-year-old son. On the air, she insisted that she had had her foot on the brake the whole time. When her $48 million claim came to court in Akron, Ohio, in June 1988 the investigating police officer and witnesses at the scene testified that after the accident the distraught mother had admitted that her foot had slipped off the brake. The jury found no defect in the car."
6. CBS 60 Minutes, Illinois Power story (1979). Erroneous reporting. "The next day, the company's stock fell in the busiest trading day of its history. Illinois Power replied quickly to the story, however, producing a 44-minute videotape that served as a rebuttal to the show. The company sent it to customers, shareholders and investors, corporate executives and other journalists. It was a point-by-point reply to all of the assertions made on the show. In January 1980, CBS admitted to inaccuracies in the story."
7. CBS, Dan Rather, The Wall Within (1988). Fell for hoax, liars. This documentary had Dan Rather interviewing six Viet Nam veterans who told stories of slaughter, cruelty and the horrors of war. "You're telling me that you went into the village, killed people, burned part of the village, then made it appear that the other side had done this?" Rather asked. "Yeah. It was kill VC, and I was good at what I did." It turned out that five of the six were never in the service at all, and the sixth, who claimed to be a Navy SEAL, was an equipment repairman and never near combat.
8. Maureen Dowd, New York Times (2003). Serious misquoting. She cut words out of one of President Bush's statements, using quotation marks, to imply he said al-Qaida is no longer a problem. He was really referring only to those who were dead or captured.
9. Andrew Gilligan, BBC (2004). False/unsubstantiated reporting. He reported that the UK government had exaggerated the threat by Saddam to justify going to war. His report was largely based on an interview with weapons expert David Kelly. His story was found to be "defective" and his claims "unfounded" by Lord Hutton's investigation. Gilligan resigned and Kelly committed suicide.
10. Michael Isikoff, Newsweek (2005). False/unsubstantiated reporting. The Newsweek article claimed that a U.S. interrogator at a Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet (2005). "Anti-U.S. fanatics seized on the report to stir up riots that have left more than a dozen people dead in Pakistan and Afghanistan." There is no evidence such a thing ever happened, and most of us wonder how it would even be possible.
11. Martin Luther King, Doctor of Theology, Nobel Peace Prize winner (1950's). Plagiarism. Parts of his PhD thesis were plagiarized. A Boston University committee found that he was "responsible for knowingly misappropriating the borrowed materials that he failed to cite or to cite adequately... that is a straightforward breach of academic norms and that constitutes plagiarism as commonly understood." The committee chairman added, "under no circumstances would the atmosphere under which he did his work condone what Dr. King did. It's incredible. He was not unaware of the correct procedure. This wasn't just done out of ignorance." His degree was not revoked, but the university did attach a letter to his dissertation explaining the plagiarism.
12. Dennis Love, Sacramento Bee (2001). Fabrication and plagiarism. "The Sacramento Bee fired Love for plagiarizing and fabricating material in his stories on the presidential campaign."
13. Bob Morris, Orlando Sentinel (1993). Plagiarism. "The Sentinel discovered that Morris had written a column for the paper in October 1993 that was essentially the same as one published eleven years earlier by Mike Harden... Punishment was moot since Morris was no longer on the Sentinel staff. But the paper published an apology to its readers and made a cash settlement to Harden."
14. New Orleans Times-Picayune The New Orleans Times-Picayune and many other newspapers reported rumors, hoaxes and lies. The NOTP came clean and critiqued itself and others who "... described inflated body counts, unverified ‘rapes', and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of ‘scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials'." Also see Popular Mechanics for a refutation of Katrina myths.
15. Michael Olesker, Baltimore Sun (2006). Plagiarism. "Veteran Baltimore Sun columnist Michael Olesker, who has been in a high-profile feud with Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, was dismissed yesterday over several instances in which he used, without attribution, wording similar to that employed by other journalists."
16. Mirthala Salinas anchor for Emmy Award winning newscast on KVEA-TV in Los Angeles (2007). She was having an affair with LA's mayor while reporting on him. Station executives were still deciding her fate as of July.
17. Ruth Shalit, The New Republic (1995). Lying/fabricating and plagiarism. She was fired.
18. Gail Sheehy author (1976). "Manhattan Journalist Gail Sheehy, in preparing her 1976 bestseller Passages, borrowed enough from [UCLA Psychiatrist Roger] Gould's unpublished research that the psychiatrist sued for plagiarism. The suit was settled out of court, with Gould receiving $10,000 and 10% of Sheehy's royalties."
19. Washington Post (and others), "Plastic Turkey" story (2003). Lying or false reporting. The Post and a host of other media, including the New York Times, reported that President Bush was photographed with a plastic turkey rather than a real one when he visited troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving. The story was used to paint the White House as a public relations spin machine, with policy just as fake as the turkey. But in fact, the turkey was real. Multiple newspapers issued corrections.
20. Gary Webb, Pulitzer Prize winner, San Jose Mercury News (1996). Lying. He wrote the series of articles saying the CIA under President Reagan brought crack cocaine to Los Angeles. "Major parts of Webb's reporting were later discredited by other newspaper investigations. An investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department found no evidence of a connection between the CIA and the drug traffickers. In 1997, then-Mercury News executive editor Jerry Ceppos backed away from the series, saying ‘we fell short at every step of our process.' Webb was transferred to one of the paper's suburban bureaus." He committed suicide in 2004, but remains a hero to many conspiracy theorists.
21. Micah Wright. Author and anti-war activist (2003). Liar. Claimed to be a former U.S. Ranger and combat veteran. His book, You Back the Attack! We'll Bomb Who We Want!, was endorsed by novelist Kurt Vonnegut and historian Howard Zinn. He was never in the military.

McClatchy (MNI): From Horrendous to Worse

Henry Blodget | November 20, 2007 6:12 AM

Like the Washington Post's newspaper business (WPO) and other major newspaper companies, McClatchy (MNI) is in trouble. The company's revenue dropped 10% in October, a slight acceleration from almost equally devastating drops in prior months. Release

Yes, there is some cyclical weakness here, but McClatchy's not just going through a "rough patch." And online revenue gains aren't even beginning to offset the lost print revenue: Bizarrely, at McClatchy, they're declining, too...

As analyst Doug McIntyre at 24/7 Wall St observes, McClatchy is carrying a $2.6 billion debt load that requires $48 million in quarterly interest payments, and in Q3, the company generated only $90 million in operating income.

October's revenue dropped $24 million year over year: extrapolate that drop over a full quarter, and McClatchy's after-interest profit will quickly be wiped out. Extrapolate it over two quarters, and the company's operations will be burning cash. Time to start selling assets and restructuring. Or worse.

See Also:

WashPost (WPO) Newspapers to Start Losing Money

Gannett Revenue Drop Accelerated in October
Woe is Newspapers: Even Mighty USA Today is Axing Jobs
Bloody Sunday: Newspaper Circulation Even Worse Than It Looks

Newspaper Ads Tank Again, Industry Shrinking Fast

Henry Blodget | November 21, 2007 7:13 AM

Newspaper ads got crushed again in Q3: Down 7.4% year over year. Online revenue is growing, but isn't offsetting the declines in print revenue. Alan Mutter, the dean of newspaper analysis, says the quarterly decline doesn't even begin to reveal the depths of the industry's problems. On an inflation adjusted basis, Mutter says, the industry has now shrunk to the same size as it was in the early 90s. (The former deputy editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, Mutter is Managing Partner of Tapit Partners. He writes the well-regarded Reflections of a Newsosaur.)

The decline in newspaper print advertising - now tracking to a 10-year low - is actually far steeper when you factor out the inflation that masks the severity of the deterioration.

Based on the 8.6% sales decline in the first nine months of the year, it appears likely that print advertising for all of 2007 will total $42.7 billion, give or take. This will put revenues back to roughly the 1997 level, when sales were $41.3 billion.

Bad as that sounds, the industry actually is in much worse shape. Here’s why:As everyone knows, $41 billion was worth a lot more in 1997 than it is today. So, the most accurate way to calibrate the industry's decline is by eliminating the effects of inflation over the last decade by translating its sales into what economists call “constant” dollars.

With the assistance of an online calculator at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you will find that the industry’s 1997 sales, stripped of inflation, would be worth $53.8 billion today in constant dollars.

If you subtract this year’s likely $42.7 billion in print-ad revenues from the constant-dollar value of the sales a decade ago, the difference of approximately $10 billion means that today’s revenues are nearly 20% lower than they were in 1997. On a constant-dollar basis, therefore, industry sales this year will be about one-fifth lower than they were in 1997.

The sales trend is illustrated in the graph below, which plots actual print revenues (orange line) against their value in constant 2007 dollars (blue line). With inflation eliminated from the sales numbers, you can see that the industry’s sales have fallen far more steeply in the last decade than the actual numbers suggest. Further, sales have been diving at an increasingly accelerated rate since 2004.

As discussed earlier here, newspapers did a brilliant job of ramping their sales smoothly throughout the 1990s by boosting ad rates at will. Those remarkably consistent and predictable sales gains were derailed by the arrival of Internet and other disruptive, new technologies that give readers and advertisers unprecedented media alternatives.

Seemingly dumbfounded by the arrival of serious competition for their audiences and advertising revenues, newspapers have been struggling for more than a decade, with meager success, to regain their relevance and economic vitality.

Based on newly released third-quarter sales statistics, it appears the industry will achieve approximately $42.7 billion in print-ad sales in 2007, or an 8.2% less than the prior year. The last year newspapers had positive sales was 2005.

The 2007 sales projection is based on a formula that assumes the industry will reap 29% of its annual turnover in the fourth quarter, as it has done reliably for several years. In the event cautious retailers like Macy’s pull their holiday advertising back from traditional levels, revenues could fall lower. Conversely, a bigger-than-normal burst of advertising in the fourth period could make for a better year than now seems in prospect.

The 9% decline in print sales to $10.1 billion in the three months ended in September marked the industry's six straight quarter of year-to-year sales declines. The only worst performance in the last three decades was an eight-quarter sales slump in 1990-91.

Last time, the Bubble bailed out the economy and the newspaper industry. If there’s another deus ex machina out there, we are more than ready for it.

The Faithful Heretic

A Wisconsin Icon Pursues Tough Questions

Some people are lucky enough to enjoy their work, some are lucky enough to love it, and then there's Reid Bryson. At age 86, he's still hard at it every day, delving into the science some say he invented.

Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology-now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences-in the 1970s he became the first director of what's now the UW's Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. He's a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor-created, the U.N. says, to recognize "outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment." He has authored five books and more than 230 other publications and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.

Long ago in the Army Air Corps, Bryson and a colleague prepared the aviation weather forecast that predicted discovery of the jet stream by a group of B-29s flying to and from Tokyo. Their warning to expect westerly winds at 168 knots earned Bryson and his friend a chewing out from a general-and the general's apology the next day when he learned they were right. Bryson flew into a couple of typhoons in 1944, three years before the Weather Service officially did such things, and he prepared the forecast for the homeward flight of the Enola Gay. Back in Wisconsin, he built a program at the UW that's trained some of the nation's leading climatologists.

How Little We Know

Bryson is a believer in climate change, in that he's as quick as anyone to acknowledge that Earth's climate has done nothing but change throughout the planet's existence. In fact, he took that knowledge a big step further, earlier than probably anyone else. Almost 40 years ago, Bryson stood before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and presented a paper saying human activity could alter climate.

"I was laughed off the platform for saying that," he told Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News.

In the 1960s, Bryson's idea was widely considered a radical proposition. But nowadays things have turned almost in the opposite direction: Hardly a day passes without some authority figure claiming that whatever the climate happens to be doing, human activity must be part of the explanation. And once again, Bryson is challenging the conventional wisdom.

"Climate's always been changing and it's been changing rapidly at various times, and so something was making it change in the past," he told us in an interview this past winter. "Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?"

"All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it's absurd," Bryson continues. "Of course it's going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we're coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we're putting more carbon dioxide into the air."

Little Ice Age? That's what chased the Vikings out of Greenland after they'd farmed there for a few hundred years during the Mediaeval Warm Period, an earlier run of a few centuries when the planet was very likely warmer than it is now, without any help from industrial activity in making it that way. What's called "proxy evidence"-assorted clues extrapolated from marine sediment cores, pollen specimens, and tree-ring data-helps reconstruct the climate in those times before instrumental temperature records existed.

We ask about that evidence, but Bryson says it's second-tier stuff. "Don't talk about proxies," he says. "We have written evidence, eyeball evidence. When Eric the Red went to Greenland, how did he get there? It's all written down."

Bryson describes the navigational instructions provided for Norse mariners making their way from Europe to their settlements in Greenland. The place was named for a reason: The Norse farmed there from the 10th century to the 13th, a somewhat longer period than the United States has existed. But around 1200 the mariners' instructions changed in a big way. Ice became a major navigational reference. Today, old Viking farmsteads are covered by glaciers.

Bryson mentions the retreat of Alpine glaciers, common grist for current headlines. "What do they find when the ice sheets retreat, in the Alps?"

We recall the two-year-old report saying a mature forest and agricultural water-management structures had been discovered emerging from the ice, seeing sunlight for the first time in thousands of years. Bryson interrupts excitedly.

"A silver mine! The guys had stacked up their tools because they were going to be back the next spring to mine more silver, only the snow never went," he says. "There used to be less ice than now. It's just getting back to normal."

What Leads, What Follows?

What is normal? Maybe continuous change is the only thing that qualifies. There's been warming over the past 150 years and even though it's less than one degree, Celsius, something had to cause it. The usual suspect is the "greenhouse effect," various atmospheric gases trapping solar energy, preventing it being reflected back into space.

We ask Bryson what could be making the key difference:

Q: Could you rank the things that have the most significant impact and where would you put carbon dioxide on the list?

A: Well let me give you one fact first. In the first 30 feet of the atmosphere, on the average, outward radiation from the Earth, which is what CO2 is supposed to affect, how much [of the reflected energy] is absorbed by water vapor? In the first 30 feet, 80 percent, okay?

Q: Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor.

A: And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.

This begs questions about the widely publicized mathematical models researchers run through supercomputers to generate climate scenarios 50 or 100 years in the future. Bryson says the data fed into the computers overemphasizes carbon dioxide and accounts poorly for the effects of clouds-water vapor. Asked to evaluate the models' long-range predictive ability, he answers with another question: "Do you believe a five-day forecast?"

Bryson says he looks in the opposite direction, at past climate conditions, for clues to future climate behavior. Trying that approach in the weeks following our interview, Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News soon found six separate papers about Antarctic ice core studies, published in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1999 and 2006. The ice core data allowed researchers to examine multiple climate changes reaching back over the past 650,000 years. All six studies found atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations tracking closely with temperatures, but with CO2 lagging behind changes in temperature, rather than leading them. The time lag between temperatures moving up-or down-and carbon dioxide following ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand years.

Renaissance Man, Marathon Man

When others were laughing at the concept, Reid Bryson was laying the ground floor for scientific investigation of human impacts on climate. We asked UW Professor Ed Hopkins, the assistant state climatologist, about the significance of Bryson's work in advancing the science he's now practiced for six decades.

"His contributions are manifold," Hopkins said. "He wrote Climates of Hunger back in the 1970s looking at how climate changes over the last several thousand years have affected human activity and human cultures."

This, he suggests, is traceable to Bryson's high-school interest in archaeology, followed by college degrees in geology, then meteorology, and studies in oceanography, limnology, and other disciplines. "He's looked at the interconnections of all these things and their impact on human societies," Hopkins says. "He's one of those people I would say is a Renaissance person."

The Renaissance, of course, produced its share of heretics, and 21 years after he supposedly retired, one could ponder whether Bryson's work today is a tale of continuing heresy, or of conventional wisdom being outpaced by an octogenarian.

Without addressing-or being asked-that question, UW Green Bay Emeritus Professor Joseph Moran agrees that Bryson qualifies as "the father of the science of modern climatology."

"In his lifetime, in his career, he has shaped the future as well as the present state of climatology," Moran says, adding, "We're going to see his legacy with us for many generations to come."

Holding bachelor's and master's degrees from Boston College, Moran became a doctoral candidate under Bryson in the late 1960s and early '70s. "I came to Wisconsin because he was there," Moran told us.

With Hopkins, Moran co-authored Wisconsin's Weather and Climate, a book aimed at teachers, students, outdoor enthusiasts, and workers with a need to understand what the weather does and why. Bryson wrote a preface for the book but Hopkins told us the editors "couldn't fathom" certain comments, thinking he was being too flippant with the remark that "Wisconsin is not for wimps when it comes to weather."

Clearly what those editors couldn't fathom was that Bryson simply enjoys mulling over the reasons weather and climate behave as they do and what might make them-and consequently us-behave differently. This was immediately obvious when we asked him why, at his age, he keeps showing up for work at a job he's no longer paid to do.

"It's fun!" he said. Ed Hopkins and Joe Moran would undoubtedly agree.

"I think that's one of the reasons for his longevity," Moran says. "He's so interested and inquisitive. I regard him as a pot-stirrer. Sometimes people don't react well when you challenge their long-held ideas, but that's how real science takes place."-Dave Hoopman