Monthly Archives: November 2005

Yep, you’ve seen it before

If my column on today’s page looks familiar to you, that’s because it appeared as a blog post last week.

You’re accustomed to seeing my columns from the paper published simultaneously in this space, with links. This time, I thought I’d try the opposite, and see how it goes. Note that I’m not posting the column version, because that would be redundant. If you want to comment on the column — and I hope you will — please go to the original blog post.

This one seemed like a good one to try this with because 1) I had hoped for more feedback on the original post, but didn’t get it (possibly because I posted it on Thanksgiving), and 2) It happened to be column-length, and easily adaptable for print.

Anyway, I look forward to your feedback on the subject. We can’t get this new party (the party for the rest of us) started without a mascot, can we? Once we’ve got that, we’ll come up with a name. Then we’ll recruit candidates — or not. Let’s see how it goes.

The column that wasn’t

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I had this great idea for a column that would have illustrated some of the economic and technological challenges to the newspaper business that play into the market perceptions that have led to the current situation in which the company that owns my newspaper finds itself.

Basically, I was going to write about the dilemmas that face even me, a loyal newspaper guy, as I face Christmas shopping with little time and money, and the convenience of e-commerce right at my fingertips.

I would have included several examples from this past weekend of shopping — first at the fine establishments of our local retailers (that is to say, our advertisers), then on the Web (sometimes the Web sites of those very same retail companies that have stores here, sometimes not). I was inspired when, after caving in and buying a couple of things on-line — one of them something completely unavailable locally, the other something that just wasn’t in stock at the stores I had visited in search of it — I said to my wife, "Well, we just took food out of our own mouths by failing to do business with local merchants."

She said, "But those things weren’t available locally." I said that if it had not been for the Internet, we would have waited while a local merchant back-ordered the second item, and on the first — the specially item never available locally — we would have come up with some other gift idea.

Anyway, I was pitching this column idea this morning to my crew, and getting enthusiastic about the possibilities, when it suddenly hit me: I can’t do this column now; it would mean telling the world what I’m getting certain people for Christmas. Sure, I could be vague the way I’ve been in this post, but not being specific about the gifts, right down to brand and model number, would take the life out of the thing — and not answer some obvious questions, such as, "What was it you couldn’t get here, and why?"

It would be sort of like a Tom Clancy novel without detailed descriptions of the weapon systems — what’s the point?

Oh, by the way, I should note that the best bargain I got all weekend was bought from a local merchant, and was specifically advertised in The State. So there.

It DOES mean something, Mr. Natural

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Totally off any subject at hand, and probably not worth reading, but I’m still reeling from having wasted two hours of my life, so why should you be spared…

In a post toward the end of last month, I made a completely superfluous reference to underground cartoonist Robert Crumb’s Mr. Natural character. I won’t be making such casual links in the future, at least, not to that individual’s creations. Last night, my wife and I watched "Crumb," the David Lynch-produced biographical documentary. We had sort of enjoyed "American Splendor," in which Paul Giamatti managed to make Harvey Pekar‘s excruciatingly mundane existence interesting. Since that oddball flick was based in the "reality" comic book illustrated by Mr. Crumb, we thought (no, I thought; I take full responsibility) the 1994 film about him might also be engaging. We were (I was) wrong.

I came away from the film with one overwhelming impression:

Boy, that R. Crumb is one twisted (expletive).

Excuse my implied language, but I just had no idea. And yet I should have. It’s right there in his work, and if there’s ever been a better illustration of the truism that "by their fruits ye shall know them," it is the work of Mr. Crumb. (And yes, I read the part of that chapter that said "judge not," but read on.)

I never was a fan of Zap Comix or any of Mr. Crumb’s other work, but I was exposed to some of it at the time (although not much more beyond the ubiquitous "Keep on Truckin’" thing, and the Janis Joplin/Big Brother and the Holding Company album cover and such). And back then, I just thought this was a guy whose imagination was a little out there on the fringe of the kind of countercultural stuff that shocked our parents but that I tended to shrug at. I didn’t embrace it, but I wasn’t all that horrified, either. I was very young, and had not yet figured out that in one sense of the word (see sense 2), "discrimination" can be a healthy thing.

If the documentary got it right, the stuff in those comics was not just the product of a warped, hyperactive imagination with a penchant for mocking social mores. The problem was, he wasn’t entirely making this stuff up. According to those interviewed for the film, those twisted characters acting out abnormal, fetishistic sexual obsessions with a complete lack of regard for the human objects of their perversions actually were R. Crumb, in a real sense. As former wife after former girlfriend (one of them a professional pornographer) after family member, and Mr. Crumb himself, repeatedly asserts in the film, he not only thought like that, he acted like that. At one point, he acknowledges that he doesn’t think he has ever actually loved any woman. His relationships — or what we learn of them — tend to bear this out. As for some of the other twisted stuff — such as the drawings that pushed extreme racial stereotypes far beyond mere satire — the viewer is left without any satisfactory explanation.

All of that said (and here’s where I get to the "judge not" part), the film also made clear that the tree that is Robert Crumb was severely bent as a twig. No, it’s not an excuse, but it does appear to be part of the explanation. As Mr. Crumb and his brothers related, their father brutalized them (breaking the artist’s collarbone one Christmas) and their mother was an amphetamine addict who attacked the father (to the point that he wore makeup to work to cover where she had clawed his face). Both of the brothers were withdrawn and dysfunctional — neither was able to make his way in life in even the unconventional manner that their famous sibling has. One of them, who lived with their mother, never ventured forth into the world and spent his days in a psychiatric prescription drug fog, committed suicide a year after the filming.

There were also two sisters, but they declined to be a part of the film, indicating that at least someone in the family was capable of making good decisions.

It was profoundly depressing. And if I ever found anything in Mr. Crumb’s work even mildly amusing before, I won’t in the future, knowing where his "art" comes from.

Come to think of it, the fact that I watched the film all the way to the end makes me wonder a little about myself. And if you read all the way to the end of this, I sort of wonder about you, too.

Back to work.

Unparty column

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It’s my party, and I’ll vie if I want to
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
INSPIRED BY Ariel Sharon’s decision to abandon the Likud Party he helped build and start another, more centrist one — one that immediately began to catch on to the extent that it looks as though it will propel him past the established factions and into another term in office — I posted a blog item last week that asked, “Why can’t we do this here?”
Excited at the idea of “giving those of us in the sensible middle an actual alternative to the mutually exclusive, mutually loathing Democrats and Republicans,” I got right to the business of setting up my own faction, posing such questions as: What would be the precepts of such a party? What should we call it? Who would be some good candidates? What animal should be our mascot?
My respondents quickly brought me down to Earth. I heard from both sides of the partisan divide, and the more ardent were soon ignoring my questions and clawing each other. But both sides seemed to agree that those of us who eschew the current phony ideologies don’t believe in anything ardently enough to get things done.
What a relief when “David” spoke for me by writing, “I am always intrigued by this argument that moderates aren’t passionate about anything…. I take every issue on its own merits and when I make up my mind, I am as passionate and diehard about that position as any conservative or liberal could ever be.”
Exactly. Why is it so hard for partisans and ideologues to understand that we might hold our own values and positions even more passionately than they hold theirs, for the simple fact that they are ours. We didn’t do what they did, which was to buy an entire set of attitudes off the rack, preselected and packaged by someone else, and chosen based on nothing deeper than brand name.
Is there anything wishy-washy about the stands taken by such “moderates” as John McCain and our own Lindsey Graham? Was Joe Lieberman being a fence-sitter when he helped push through the Iraq Liberation Act, which way back in 1998 made the overthrow of Saddam Hussein the official policy of this country?
These are the people who take the independent risks that make things happen, from campaign finance reform to banning torture. Without them as pivots, giving ideas credibility by virtue of their own independence, we’d be forever in a state of stalemate, unable to settle any difficult issue.
And those of us who support their like are the ones who decide elections
— not the partisans, who can be taken for granted.
The best thing is to have no parties. But it’s still fun to imagine what kind of party we who despise them would create if we were so inclined. Let’s give it a go.
Right off, I’m stumped as to a name. So for now, let’s just call it the “Unparty.” (After all, the “Uncola” caught on for a while.)
Are there any fundamental, nonnegotiable tenets? Sure:

First, unwavering opposition to fundamental, nonnegotiable tenets. Within our party would be many ideas, and in each situation we would sift through them to find the smartest possible approach to the challenge at hand. Another day, a completely different approach might be best.
Respect for any good idea, even if it comes from Democrats or Republicans.
Contempt for any stupid idea, even if it comes from our own party leaders.
Utter freedom to vote however one’s conscience dictates, without condemnation or ostracism from fellow party members.

Every Unpartisan would have his or her own set of positions on issues, having worked them out independently. But to banish the thought that Unpartisans don’t take strong stands, here would be some positions I would bring to the party table (and remember, this is just me, not the editorial board of The State):

Respect for life. Opposition to abortion, the death penalty and torture of prisoners.
Belief in just war theory, and in America’s obligation to use its strength for good. (Sort of like the Democrats before Vietnam.)
A single-payer national health care system — for the sake of business and the workers. If liberals and conservatives could stop driving a wedge between labor and capital for about five minutes, we could make this a reality.
Universal education — as a state, not a national, responsibility. Go ahead and shut down the U.S. Department of Education, and make sure you provide equal educational opportunity for all on the state level.
A rational, nonideological energy policy that will make us independent of despotic foreign regimes: Drill in the ANWR. Impose strict efficiency standards on Detroit. Build more refineries. Since we are at war and they are helping the enemy, build internment camps for Hummer drivers. (OK, scratch that; just make the Humvee like automatic weapons — banned for all but military use. In fact, what was wrong with the Jeep?) Launch a Manhattan Project to find something better than fossil fuels. Take the advice of Charles Krauthammer and set gasoline permanently at $3 a gallon — when the price of crude drops, raise the tax to keep the pump price at $3. Unlike Mr. Krauthammer (who’d use the proceeds for tax cuts), I’d make like a real conservative and balance the budget.

Such ideas are not left, right or wishy-washy. Admittedly, in my zeal to debunk the myth that we “moderates” (an inadequate word, really, for independents) don’t take strong stands, I’ve deliberately chosen some ideas that are attractive to me but are too out there for my own editorial board. (Although the issues they address are similar to some set out by potential Unpartisan Paul DeMarco in comments on my blog.) But wouldn’t that make for some lively Unparty conventions? And wouldn’t they be more worth watching than those scripted, stultifying pep rallies that the Democrats and Republicans hold every four years?
I certainly think so. In fact, that’s one point on which most of us Unpartisans could agree.

Reform!

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This piece in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal was fascinating. The writer, a member of the Journal‘s editorial board, struggles mightily to figure out John McCain. He just can’t understand how someone could be so admirable and yet not recognize the "obvious truth" that economic policies should be structured to reward wealth.

And I just don’t understand why he can’t understand.

“Second-rate?” I beg to differ

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I finally managed to find a way to link to this Wall Street Journal op-ed piece — which several kind folks have brought to my attention — that I think will work. Let me know if you have trouble with it, in which case I’ll go back to the drawing board.

While I’m at it, though, I might as well point out that this is another example of the sort of analysis of Knight Ridder’s situation that shows the writer knows not of what he speaks.

I’m not so much quibbling with his calling Knight Ridder a group of "second-rate newspapers." I can’t, because he doesn’t state by what standard he is rating them. Personally, I believe The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are probably the two best papers in the country. Note that I say "probably," because unlike the author of the op-ed piece, I do not regard myself as omniscient. One would have to read every paper in the country every day, and come up with some way of standardizing judgments of them, to state authoritatively which papers are the best in the nation.

Anyway, after those two, I’m not sure where to go next. The Chicago Tribune? The L.A. Times? The Washington Post? I don’t know even what I think on that score. So let’s say the Times and the Journal are first-rate, no doubt about it. Do you cut it off there? Does that make the Trib, the LAT and the WashPost second-rate? If so, that’s fine company to be in.

I suspect that Mr. Ellis is drawing the line somewhat below that level, but I don’t know; he doesn’t explain. So we’ll let that go.

But when he repeatedly refers to Knight Ridder papers as "second-rate information providers," saying that it is unsurprising that broadband-enabled consumers would abandon them, I have to say, Hold on. This is where he’s showing the sort of ignorance that is typical among analysts who keep pronouncing ex cathedra from Wall Street that newspapers are doomed to disappear.

I don’t know (or care that much) about other Knight Ridder newspapers, but I would like Mr. Ellis to cite a source of news and analysis about South Carolina that is clearly superior to The State. Oh, I suppose the Greenville and Charleston papers have their fans who would argue that they are better on that score, but I’d disagree with them. And I don’t think anyone could make any kind of a case that there is a better source of information on the Midlands than my own newspaper.

If he could cite just one such source, I would be amazed. I’m quite confident that he can’t.

See, this is where the understanding of folks who view the newspaper industry from New York or Boston or Washington often goes awry. They misunderstand what this business is about. It’s about communities. Sure, you can go online and find many better and more complete sources about the recent tsunami, or British politics or the situation in the Mideast. But most newspapers exist to tell people what’s going on right where they live. And they have no serious competition in this endeavor.

If all newspapers (and I use "newspapers" to include their Web incarnations; I’m by no means wedded to dead trees) disappeared tomorrow, someone would start up a new one in every good-sized community in the nation. Why? Because there’s a market for the information that only newspapers provide — however they deliver that information to you.

Yes, newspapers (while remaining profitable, a fact that Wall Street willfully overlooks) are still stumbling around trying to find a way to make enough money to support their news-gathering operations on the Internet. One of the things holding us back is that there is still a market for the dead-tree version. Otherwise, we could ditch that altogether and eliminate more than half our cost, making it much easier to compete on-line.

But I believe we’ll work it out eventually. In the meantime, newspapers remain the first-rate providers of local news, by virtue of the fact that there’s nothing better.

An issue for the Critter Committee

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Finally, one or two people who actually like my idea of a political party for the rest of us responded to my post on the subject. And Paul DeMarco even gave serious thought to my question of what sort of animal should symbolize our party. I was impressed that he came up with one that was actually high on my own list: the owl. As he put it, the owl is "Quiet, wise, but no-nonsense and a swift and skillful Owl predator when the need arises."

Good idea. I’m not ready to settle on it, but it’s a good start.

Of course, as surely as we will hear stories of the Pilgrims and Squanto on this day, we had an item in the paper reminding us that Benjamin Franklin advocated the wild turkey as our national symbol. I think he was serious about that one, but you never know; ol’ Ben was a bit of a raconteur, and may have been sending us up.

On the subject of birds, I had already thought about the one that won out over the turkey. The bald eagle would be ideal in some ways. First, it would say we align ourselves with the nation itself, rather than with any ideological segment. Also, the traditional rendition of it, grasping the arrows with one foot and the olive branch with the other, would say that on the federal level at least, we concern ourselves with the main business of the national government — our conduct with other nations. (Yes, Bald_eagle I know it’s supposed to regulate interstate commerce and such, but one thing I want to do is distance ourselves from some of the sillier battles that the donkeys and the elephants have over domestic Kulturkampf issues that aren’t properly any of the federal government’s business — such as manger scenes in town squares, and comatose patients in Florida.)

In some ways, though, the eagle is limited. For one thing, it always looks fierce. I like the idea of a mascot that can look fierce when it needs to, but the eagle doesn’t seem capable of any other expression. Also — and this will seem silly, but remember that I work every day with a cartoonist for a living — I can’t see the eagle working well in political cartoons. Maybe that’s just because I haven’t seen it done enough yet. Robert Ariail could most likely anthropomorphize the noble bird into characters just as hilariously human as his donkeys and elephants, but I have trouble picturing it.

Maybe we should look beyond birds. Birds are good, given that the United States is the world’s first and greatest air power, and our party would be open to the judicious use of that power. But as I think on cartoons — and we need to be open to being lampooned — I’m thinking four feet might work better.

Of course, you can come up with an objection to almost any symbol:

The Owl: Never available in the light of day. Too close an association with Hooters.
The Turkey: Essentially American, and admirable in many ways (very tasty, for instance), but too ugly and ungainly — not to mention that "turkey" has unfortunately come to be a putdown in modern slang.
The Eagle: Drawbacks listed above. One other: Too obvious.
The Bull Moose: Already taken, and proven to be electorally unsuccessful, even with a strong candidate.
The Bison: VERY American, but too, well, bovine. Any animal that’s so easy to creep up on and kill in such large numbers to the point that you have to make special efforts to keep it from going extinct is problematic (ditto the eagle, come to think of it).
The Lion: Not indigenous, and too associated with royalty. We could go with the cougar, but I’m just not a cat person. I like dogs.
The Dog: Noble, loyal, friendly but willing and able to tear your head off if you mean to do ill to anyone or anything that it has taken under its protection. Note that I’m not talking Chihuahuas or French poodles, but real dogs — preferably a big mutt (symbolizing the melting pot), with some retriever, some setter, some shepherd, some chow, and some plain old hound dog. Probably can’t be a yaller dog, because that would be encroaching on the Democrats’ territory, and it is too suggestive of blind party loyalty, which we would abhor.

And there are other drawbacks to the dog — for instance, the fact that it would make us an object of contempt among Arabs and some other cultures, and we’ve got enough problems over there as things stand. But the dog has promise.

Ultimately, I remain stuck on this one. I guess, once we get this party organized (but not too organized, because that would be unlike us; we should strike a good medium between the Democrats and Republicans on that point), we’ll have to send this issue to our Critter Committee.

Or, we could just leave it to the cartoonists to come up with their own way of symbolizing us. They’ll do that anyway, unless we propose one that they find irresistible.

Anyway, enjoy your turkey today. And think no political thoughts while doing so, but remember to thank the One from whom all such blessings flow.

Bison_2

Do ya think?

Another shaky start for Green Diamond

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What was the biggest mistake that the backers of Green Diamond made last time around, in terms of their ability to win over the people of the Midlands to their cause?

It was being mysterious.

They came in and announced that they were going to build something really exciting — a billion-dollar "city within a city" on undeveloped land within minutes of downtown — and then clammed up, for months and months on end. They spent that time trying to line up everyone of influence in the community that they could get on their side before telling the rest of us the particulars of their plan.

This created suspicion, and gave those inclined to oppose plenty of time to get organized before the unveiling. And by the time of the big presentation, the promoters had lost much of the community already.

So some folks are going to try again. This time, Greenville developer Bob Hughes is taking the lead, at the behest of…

Well, he’s not saying at whose behest.

This is not an auspicious beginning.

Why can’t we do this here?

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I find this to be pretty exciting news, because of the possibilities it suggests. Basically, Ariel Sharon is quitting the Likud Party he helped found in order to form a new, centrist party that turns away from the extremes of both Likud and Labor.

This, coming on the heels of Sen. John McCain’s visit here over the weekend, prompts me to ask the following questions of my readers (and if you give me some good answers, maybe I can get a column Sharon_1 out of it, and maybe even get a movement started; who knows?):

Why can’t we do this over here, giving those of us in the sensible middle an actual alternative to the mutually exclusive, mutually loathing Democrats and Republicans?
What would be the precepts of such a party? (I have some ideas of my own on this score, but I’d like to know what you think.)
Who would be some good candidates we could run under our banner?
What should be the name of our party?
What animal, if any, should be our party symbol?
Do you think such a party would, given time to grow, actually have a chance to make a difference and help us find a way to move forward as one country, leaving the destructive bitterness of the two dominant parties behind?
If you believe it does, what’s stopping us?

I guess that’s enough conversation starters to go on for now. I look forward to your feedback.

KR Alumni: Good journalism is good business

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OK, one more on this navel-gazing subject and then I’ll move on to something else.

I thought you might find this piece, about a letter that former Knight Ridder journalists circulated over the last few days, interesting in light of the current situation in which the corporation — and, more relevantly to you and me, its newspapers — find t hemselves.

Here is their statement, as reported by Editor & Publisher:

John S. Knight, a founder of the company known today
as Knight Ridder, believed –- and proved — that excellent journalism is
good business. The undersigned, all alumni of Knight Ridder, have lived
that creed.
As did the late Jack
Knight, we believe profit is not merely nice but necessary. Knight
Ridder routinely has generated double-digit operating profits -– such as
last year’s 19.4 percent. We understand the obligation of an
institutional investor to maximize return on investment. An investor
for whom double digits are insufficient is free to sell Knight Ridder
stock. An investor who instead demands the sale or dismantling of
Knight Ridder merely in the name of a larger profit margin is engaged
not in good business but in greed.
As
did Jack Knight, we speak out of confidence in, not fear of, the future
of the good business of excellent journalism. There is durable value in
businesses that treat their citizens, their communities and their
employees with respect. New technology is an ally of, not a threat to,
trustworthy and nimble media. Competition gives rise to innovation and
efficiency, much as recent declines in print circulation have been
accompanied by increased electronic readership.
Knight
Ridder is not merely another public company. It is a public trust. It
must balance corporate profitability with civic purpose. We oppose
those who would cripple the purpose by coercing more profit. We abhor
those for whom good business is insufficient and excellent journalism
is irrelevant.
We have watched
mostly in silent dismay as short-term profit demands have diminished
long-term capacity of newsrooms in Knight Ridder and other public media
companies. We are silent no more. We will support and counsel only
corporate leadership that restores to Knight Ridder newspapers the
resources to do excellent journalism. We are prepared collectively to
nominate candidates for the Knight Ridder board. We wish to reassert
John Knight’s creed.

The signers, all of whom are listed at the link, include some highly prominent former journalists and executives who have left the KR ranks in recent years. The group said they "are prepared collectively to nominate candidates for the Knight Ridder board," candidates who see the newspapers’ mission as they do.

Corporate’s reaction, expressed in E&P by KR spokesman Polk Laffoon, was that "This is a fine gesture and a well-intentioned gesture by good and honorable people." He went on to say that "Unfortunately, the reality is that more than 90% of
Knight Ridder shares are institutionally held and more than a third of
them are held by three institutions."

Mr. Laffoon, vice president for corporate relations, was quoted by The Philadelphia Inquirer as saying:

"I wish there were an identifiable and strong
correlation between quality journalism as we all define it and strong
and growing newspaper sales. If that were the case, we would not only
know how to meet some of the challenges we would face today, but we
would thrive on doing it. I wish it were that simple. Unfortunately it
isn’t."

So now you’ll want to know what I think, as a current employee of a Knight Ridder newspaper. Well, on that subject, I’ll quote the composite character played by Eric Bana in "Black Hawk Down" — based, incidentally, on a series of stories by Mark Bowden, a former reporter for The Inquirer. Mr. Bowden is one of the "alumni" who signed the above statement.

Mr. Bana was speaking to an actor portraying a real-life hero of the battle of Mogadishu, Staff Sgt. Matt Eversmann:

"You know what I think? It don’t really matter what I think. Once that first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that (expletive) just goes right out the window…. Just watch your corner; get all your men back here alive."

Good advice, that, even if no literal bullets are flying. Nobody in San Jose or on Wall Street is asking what I think, and my situation — and those of the people and pages for which I’m responsible — will pretty much be the same whatever I think. We’ve got plenty to deal with right here, addressing the issues of importance to all of us in South Carolina, and trying to put out better journalism each day that we do it. That’s my mission, and that’s how I intend to occupy my time while all the big money people work out their politics and all that stuff.

When I’ve got something else to say about it, I’ll let you know.

Never Mind: Publishers to stay put

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The folks at Knight Ridder corporate just had a major Emily Litella moment.

You know how you’ve been hearing that The State is going to get a new publisher — Lou Heldman from Wichita — while our current publisher, Ann Caulkins, was to go to Charlotte?

Well, Never Mind.

It’s been decided that with the impending potential sale of the parent company, it’s best to keep each newspaper’s leadership in place — for now. It’s a bit of a curve ball when we were all expecting a Ann_1 different pitch, but it makes sense on a couple of levels. The less important advantage is that it saves some money associated with moving executives about. The greater consideration is that in a time of change — and the coming days will be a time of change, however all this shakes out — it’s best to keep people in place who know their newspapers and their communities, to provide some measure of stability and steadiness.

I was looking forward to working with Lou. I was set to have dinner with him week after next to talk about what we’re up to in editorial, but that’s off now; he’s canceled that trip to Columbia. Still, I might get to work with him in the future. I don’t know. Right now we’ve got a visibility horizon of about five minutes around here.

Meanwhile, it’s reassuring that someone familiar will be with us on this wild ride. I know that Ann is disappointed that she won’t be taking on a new challenge — just as it has to be a letdown for Lou, and Lou’s replacement, and the various other folks affected by this. But at least we’ll all still be dealing with some known quantities, and that can be reassuring at a time like this. I think I just said that. Oh, well.

Obviously, I don’t have anything profound to say about any of this, so I’ll shut up. I just thought you might like to know about it.

Speaking of ‘mature’ industries…

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Newspaper companies may seem a bit hapless as they flounder about trying to adjust to new business models and market conditions, but for sheer cluelessness and self-delusion, it’s hard to beat that supreme icon of American capitalism, General Motors.

In its weekend edition, The Wall Street Journal quoted GM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner as saying early this year:

"We’ve been ahead 73 years in a row, and I think the betting odds are we’ll be
ahead for the next 73 years."

That was in the context of this story, which led with this statement:

Toyota Motor Corp. is making a big bet that it can ride a host of new
models past struggling General Motors Corp. next year to become the
world’s biggest maker of cars.

This is something I can look at with somewhat greater objectivity than I can the news biz, and my snap reaction to the move by Toyota is, "More power to them."

Why? Because Toyota has produced a higher-quality product at a reasonable price (or at least "reasonable" by 21st century standards). Given that, the company deserves to come out on top. Does it hurt my national pride a little to see my country outstripped by something it has historically done best? Sure. But by our own standards of fair play, Toyota at this point it entitled to take the lead. If the American company starts doing its thing better again, it will retake the honors.

Instead, GM’s reaction is the standard, knee-jerk, stock market-driven reaction of many threatened companies: Cut costs. Having retrenched on benefits, the maker of Chevrolet et al. is planning to lay off 4,000 employees — a tenth of its white-collar work force. It’s a little hard to get all sentimental about an American company that is putting that many Americans out of work.

Meanwhile, Toyota will be hiring Americans to build its cars, possibly even in Michigan itself. Toyota isn’t contracting, but growing. How? Through quality and innovation. Toyota not only makes the world’s most reliable cars, it also has earned the reputation of being the industry leader in new technology. Next year, the Camry will be available as a hybrid. And personally, I think the company is being overly conservative predicting it will only sell 30,000 of them.

As I’ve said before, I’m no biz wiz, but I continue to have this gut belief that the way to grow a business is not to cut costs, but to improve the product.

Despite what some Japanese guy said awhile back about Americans being "a work force too lazy to compete with Japan," I think we can do that over here. We just need to go back to doing what we used to do: Make the best product. The first step is to stop being complacent and wake up to the fact that right now somebody else is beating you at that game, fair and square.

Knight Ridder column

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What will happen to this newspaper?
I don’t know. Nobody does
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
ONLY ONCE in my life have I bought stock all by myself, on purpose, with perfectly good money that was sitting safely in my bank account.
I bought 20 shares of Knight Ridder — the company that owns the newspaper I work for — at the impossibly low price of $62.65. It had been as high as $80 a share just a year before, and was bound to head that way again, right?
In October, it fell to $52.42.
I wasn’t the only one who was, um, disappointed. A man named Bruce S. Sherman, whose Private Capital Management company owns 19 percent of Knight Ridder’s stock (even more than I do) wrote a letter telling the corporate brass to put the company up for sale, or else. Last week, the company took a step in that direction. But while the stock has jumped up close to the price at which I bought it, nobody has rushed to scoop us up yet.
The irony is that people I meet have actually been asking me, as a member of The State’s executive team, what all of this means, and what’s likely to happen next. And I’m the one to whom other senior staffers have to speak very slowly and distinctly when explaining something financial.
Here’s the bigger irony: What I have to say on the subject is as valuable as what almost anybody else says, because nobody knows what’s going to happen (unless it’s already happened and they haven’t told me).
I’ve read what the analysts and the smart business writers at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and other publications have had to say. I’ve read memos from corporate. I’ve discussed it with my colleagues. And I’m about where I started.
Will the company be sold? I don’t know. If so, to whom? I don’t know. Will it be sold intact, or will the pieces be sold off to different buyers? I don’t know. What will it all mean to The State, and the community it serves? I don’t know. What will it mean to me?
I don’t know. There’s a lot of speculation, most of which will be shown to be nonsense when the whole thing shakes out.
While such companies as Tribune (as in Chicago), McClatchy and The New York Times are mentioned, Gannett — the only newspaper chain with larger circulation than ours — is seen by some as the only entity with the motivation and resources to swallow us whole. Then again, we could be bought by Yahoo! or eBay.
The experts say that what has driven this stockholder dissatisfaction is a set of dire portents for the entire industry. The retailers whose advertising is so critical to newspapers are consolidating. Readers are turning to the Internet and other free sources of news. Or they’re just not reading as much as earlier generations.
Experts also say newspapers are still a good buy, and that Knight Ridder is undervalued. The Journal said a “reasonable valuation range” for KR stock is from $70 to $100. It also said it was doubtful anyone would pay that. So much for experts.
I actually think that price range is reasonable (and am prepared to sell you a few shares in that range). I also think many of the evil portents are baloney. Readers can turn to the Internet all they want, and they’ll find newspapers already there, providing news content and selling advertising. Eventually, under current or future management, they’ll find a way to make as much money there as they once did peddling dead trees.
Ultimately, however the news is delivered, it will have to be paid for, either by subscription (a word that freaks out Web-surfers) or advertising. You see, it actually costs something to gather news. If newspapers, with their expensive armies of reporters, all of a sudden went away, you’d find the pickings of actual news on the ’Net to be pretty slim.
But hey, don’t listen to me. I don’t even know for whom I’ll be working in the new year. But I do know this: I’ve been here before.
I worked the first 10 years of my career for The Jackson (Tenn.) Sun, which was owned by The Des Moines Register Co. Some top shareholders in that privately held company tried to sell us to Dow Jones, which owns the Journal. That caused another major stockholder to try to sell the Des Moines paper to The Washington Post, and our little daily to The New York Times (or so the scuttlebutt had it). All those masters of our little universe were shown up in the end, when Gannett waltzed in and bought it all for $200 million. What this experience taught me is that once a company is in play, even those who think they’re driving the process have no idea how it will come out.
I’ve heard stories about what happened after Gannett took over, but I don’t know the truth of it, because I had left to go to work for Knight Ridder in Wichita — not because of Gannett, but because I didn’t get along with a new publisher Des Moines had sent us just before all the craziness started. (As it happens, I’m about to get a new publisher here, just as the uncertainty of a potential sale hangs over us all. Again. Interesting, huh?)
I was miserable in Kansas, and almost immediately after the company bought The State, I came here. As I said, I had gone to Wichita not because I want
ed to be there, but to work for Knight Ridder. Purely a career move. But I learned my lesson, and when I came here I came to work for The State — the largest newspaper serving the people of my native state. I pay little attention to what goes on at corporate (something I can do because Knight Ridder doesn’t believe in meddling in editorial policy). In my first interview for a job at The State, I said my ultimate goal was to be editorial page editor, which was where I thought I could be most useful. And 18 years later, here I am.
So what’s going to happen next? Well, for my part — and that of the team I work with — we’ll keep on doing our best to make the editorial pages a place where South Carolinians can come together to have constructive conversations about the critical issues that face us all, locally and statewide. We will still be motivated by the dream of a South Carolina that is no longer last where we want to be first, and first where we want to be last.
And we’ll do all that as long as whoever owns the paper lets us.

It’s even gotten to ME

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How exciting is tomorrow’s matchup between the Gamecocks and the Tigers? This exciting: Even I am caught up in it. Kinda. Sorta.

I am just about the last person you would ever call a football fan. Baseball, yes. Sometimes even basketball. But mostly, my interest in sports extends only to those that I can play, such as golf and tennis. And I have little interest in watching other people play those. If I watch a tennis match on television for five minutes, I want to turn off the tube and get out there myself. (Meaning that I’m either more of a doer than a watcher — which is doubtful, given my love for reading and watching movies — or I’m just a self-centered cuss.)

Anyway, I’ve been sufficiently caught up in the contact high of excitement about the Gamecocks — something that started about the time of the win over Tennessee, I believe — that I actually watched Spurrier part of last week’s game on the tube. And enjoyed it.

More than that, I actually read one of the advance stories about tomorrow’s big game in the paper this past week. Not a people feature or anything like that, but this story about a real football-geek facet of the game, built around stats. I started reading just out of curiosity, wondering what a "red zone" was (and unlike many such stories, geared only to the cognoscenti, it actually told me, once I got to the jump page), and then got caught up in the fact that it seemed Steve Spurrier’s approach to football was much like my approach to life (or what I like to think is my approach to life): Never give up, and never settle. He doesn’t go for the field goal when there’s a chance for a touchdown. Neither would I. Of course, I would never punt, either — but then, I tend to take things to obsessive extremes.

So, having done the required reading and whipped myself into an appropriate state of anticipation, I’m all set for the big game. And if I had ESPN2 on my TV at home, I’d watch it. I really would.

But lacking that, I’ll have to settle for the radio. If it’s on the radio. I assume it will be.

Anyway: Go, ‘Cocks.

Thanks, ‘Clint’

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One cool thing about the Blogosphere is that you can actually go back and change what you have published, rather than just running a correction later, when rectification is called for. In my last post, I had originally written the following:

But if Mr. Dawson is deluding himself as to whether he is one of the "bosses" referred to, that’s nothing compared to Sen. John Land. When he says "The voters, next year, will be demanding change, and the days of Mark Sanford’s embarrassing legacy are numbered," he’s ignoring the rather large fact that there is no alternative within electoral striking distance of Mark Sanford. In electoral terms, it really doesn’t matter whether the governor is strong politically or not, until there is a viable alternative.

Correspondent "Clint" correctly pointed out that the story didn’t back up the idea that Katon Dawson thought he was a "boss." So I went back and changed that paragraph to read:

But Democrats (and disaffected Republicans, for that matter) are deluding themselves if they think that means Mr. Sanford is finished. When Sen. John Land says "The voters, next year, will be demanding change, and the days of Mark Sanford’s embarrassing legacy are numbered," he’s ignoring the rather large fact that there is no alternative within electoral striking distance of Mark Sanford. In electoral terms, it really doesn’t matter whether the governor is strong politically or not, until there is a viable alternative.

Why am I bothering to tell you this? Well, for one thing, I want my commenters to know I’m serious when I make the following plea to readers at the top of my blog:

So if you see mistakes, say something so I can fix them.

Also, while it is really cool to be able to go back and change what I’ve published after I’ve published it, it still seems a little like cheating to an old dead-tree guy such as myself.

Bad Company

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I see some of my correspondents have gone ahead and brought up the Time magazine piece rating Gov. Mark Sanford one of the three worst governors in the nation, placing him in the unsavory company of Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana and Bob Taft of Ohio.

I heard about this yesterday, but didn’t get time to look into it until today, after it had already been in the paper. And here’s what struck me: The little blurb in Time — really a sort of afterthought sidebar to go with the story on the magazine’s five best governors — referred to Mr. Sanford’s being criticized by "leaders of his own GOP," and by "GOP bosses."

In our story, GOP Chairman Katon Dawson was quoted as saying that he was never contacted for his opinion, which seemed by implication to impugn the integrity of Tim Padgett, who wrote the blurb for Time.

Katon’s a nice guy and all that, and I supposed technically he is a "GOP boss," but is that who you think of when somebody says "leaders of his own GOP," especially within the context of criticizing his own party’s top state officeholder? Of course not. Republican Party chairmen are the world’s foremost practitioners of the 11th Commandment. They would never bad-mouth their own guys. For one thing, it would be inimical to the whole point of the job. For another, they simply don’t have the political standing to do so.

We all know of actual, elected GOP leaders who have been critical of the governor (while of course saying they didn’t really mean to be critical of the governor). There’s no mystery as to who they are. And the fact that they have done so without any political cost to themselves (so far) speaks volumes about the governor’s vulnerability within his own base.

But Democrats (and disaffected Republicans, for that matter) are deluding themselves if they think that means Mr. Sanford is finished. When Sen. John Land says "The voters, next year, will be demanding change, and the days of Mark Sanford’s embarrassing legacy are numbered," he’s ignoring the rather large fact that there is no alternative within electoral striking distance of Mark Sanford. In electoral terms, it really doesn’t matter whether the governor is strong politically or not, until there is a viable alternative.

“Three Amigos” column

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Reform backers disappointed,
but not discouraged
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
THEY WERE called the “Three Amigos,” even though there were up to five of them. They were business leaders who were instrumental in pushing the Legislature to pass the Education Accountability Act of 1998. Later, they served on the Education Oversight Committee that was created by that legislation.
They were Bill Barnet, Larry Wilson, Joel Smith, Bob Staton and James Bennett (scroll down on the link to bio). But the old “Amigos” gag led me to ask three of them for reaction to last week’s news that, for the first time since the standards they pushed went into effect, schools across the state failed to advance.
Far more (354) got a lower grade than received a higher one (55), compared with 2004, while most (668) held steady.
Messrs. Wilson, Barnet and Staton were all “disappointed” by the results, but none would own up to being “discouraged.”
They were not surprised by what they saw as a temporary setback on a long “journey.”
After all, this is what the Accountability Act was supposed to do — use tough standardized tests to show objectively where the challenges are, so that they can be addressed.
“I’m not all that upset about it,” Larry Wilson (whose latest ideas on education and economic development were the subject of last week’s column) called to tell me.
“You have to look at long-term trends,” he said. One year’s setback isn’t enough to worry about. If schools lose ground next year, too, “Then I’ll begin to be concerned about a trend.”
He noted that those who have spent their whole school careers under the law’s regimen are showing remarkable progress. For instance, our fourth-graders exceeded the national average in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, the “nation’s report card.”
“As these students progress, we’ll see better results,” he said.
He said the state has four big areas to work on:

Appropriate, early remediation for kids who need it.
Consolidating school districts to eliminate the “inefficiency and high cost of small districts.”
Early childhood education, getting children ready for the increased rigor they’ll face in K-12.
Raising expectations of students, parents and communities.

As one trained in systems engineering, he says “education’s no different from any other complex system.” The key is finding the right buttons to push and dials to turn.
Bill Barnet left the Oversight Committee to become mayor of Spartanburg, but his interest in the mission hasn’t waned.
He said it’ll take time to overcome the “generational abuse” that led to the conditions the Accountability Act sought to address.
He illustrated this with a story: For years, he ignored a herniated disc — until the pain in his leg became excruciating, and he consented to surgery. When his leg still hurt weeks later, he complained to the doctor. The doctor told him he couldn’t just assume the pain would go away overnight when he had allowed the damage to continue for 10 years.
Similarly, the challenges to educational achievement in South Carolina “cannot be solved in any one- or five-year period.”
He bristles at any suggestion that the struggle should be abandoned for, say, tax credits that encourage parents to abandon the schools.
“The governor says, ‘How can you be comfortable and pleased with where you are?’.æ.æ.æ. I look him in the eye and say I’m not comfortable and I’m not happy,” he said. And then, he says, he tells Gov. Mark Sanford that while he, Bill Barnet, believes in “choice” (such as charter and magnet schools) where it works, the “Put Parents in Charge Act” is “all about your constituents, and maybe your run for president.” Ultimately, it’s a “huge distraction” from the real issues, such as the inequality between rich and poor districts.
He keeps an eye on efforts to address that through comprehensive tax reform, but wonders if it is politically possible: “Greenville has to be willing to accept the premise that they’re going to take their money and send it to Dillon.”
The message, he insists, shouldn’t be “stay the course.” It should be “stay the course, with thoughtful adjustments.”
The only one of the three still on the Oversight Committee, Bob Staton takes heart from the knowledge that “Our kids are still being better educated than they were seven or eight years ago.”
In fact, he expected a setback such as this one last year — the first time the bar was raised on what schools had to accomplish.
But he knows not everyone sees it his way: “People will use this information to validate their point of view that we’re awful, we’ve always been awful and we’ll always be awful,” he said.
“My frustration is, people just look at a piece of it,” such as graduation rates. But today’s dropouts started school before the Accountability Act. “The kids that are beginning to come through it are doing better,” he said. “The graduation rate is the culmination of 18 years of that kid’s life and what goes on in it.”
He cited “three things to look at” going forward:

Where a child is in the third grade. Remediate if necessary.
The transition from middle to high school, when reading proficiency is essential to mastering critical thinking skills.
Moving out of high school and into career preparation.

“We’ve got to get them through each of those stages,” he said.
And my reaction? The questions to be asked today are: What are the conditions that led to 55 schools doing better, and how do we go about replicating them in the 354 that slipped?

Attention, District 5 voters!

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Opponents of Tuesday’s referendum on whether to let Lexington-Richland School
District 5 borrow $131 million needed to build new schools think they smell a
rat: They shrug off the district’s insistence that the bond issue will not
increase the taxes they pay for capital debt service, saying their taxes for
operating these new schools will go up.

Typical of this point of view is Don Carlson of
Chapin, who was quoted in today’s lead news story as saying:

"Unless these new buildings plan on heating, cooling, feeding,
supplying and teaching these students all by themselves, you can bet … your
tax bill is going to see an increase."

For Mr. Carlson and
like-minded voters in the district, I have the following three points to
make:

Your taxes for
that were going up anyway.
Your taxes for
that were going up anyway.
Your taxes for
that were going up anyway.

OK, so I’m being a
little facetious. Actually I only have two serious points to
make:

Your taxes for
that were going up anyway, because the school-aged population of the
district is growing at a rate of 500 to 600 kids a year, and the district has to
pay to educate them somewhere, somehow.
The real issue in
this referendum is whether you’d rather those taxes be spent entirely on paying
teachers and operating the classrooms in new schools that will be assets to the
community for generations to come, or spend a large chunk of that operating
money — which would otherwise have gone into the classroom — on mobile
classrooms that depreciate the moment they are placed on the grounds of
increasingly overcrowded, less-excellent schools.

That’s the choice
before you: Whether to spend your increased taxes for operations wisely or
foolishly. A "yes" vote is for the wise option.

In the interest of
full disclosure, there are two ways that your property taxes might not go up to
pay for school operations. One is that you just let one of the best districts in
the state go to pot, and watch your property values fall like a rock along with
the quality of the schools. The second is that legislators come up with a better
way to pay for school operations. That could happen, but there are a lot of
variables between the talk going on at this moment and an actual new school
financing system.

Column on Larry Wilson’s trial balloon

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A comprehensive plan for
making us wealthier and wiser
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
LARRY WILSON, one of the chief architects
of the Education Accountability Act, came by the office the other day and offered a pretty compelling vision for what South Carolina should do next.
The local entrepreneur doesn’t hold elective office, and doesn’t claim to speak for anyone but himself. But the ideas he put forth are worth sharing because:

He is a board member for the Palmetto Institute, and that think tank is expected to join with the Palmetto Business Forum, the Competitiveness Council and the state Chamber of Commerce to set forth a unified vision for how to make the average South Carolinian wealthier. Some of these ideas may crop up in that context.
He is also close to the new speaker of the S.C. House, Bobby Harrell. How many of these ideas Mr. Harrell buys into and how many he has told Mr. Wilson — according to Larry’s account — just aren’t feasible I don’t know.

Nor do I know how many of these ideas my editorial board colleagues and I will go for once we sit down and study them.
But I was sufficiently impressed by this set of interlocked proposals that it seems worth throwing out to see what others think. If not this, we need some kind of comprehensive strategy for moving South Carolina forward. We must get beyond the usual piecemeal responses to crises and interest group demands if we’re to catch up.
The critical element that ties all of these ideas together is the unassailable fact that education and economic development are inseparable. If we don’t realize that, we’ll continue to make 80 percent of the national income.
I don’t have room to set out everything covered in our wide-ranging discussion, but here are the most intriguing and/or appealing ideas that I heard:

EDUCATION
Mr. Wilson wants an Education Quality Act that includes:

Early remediation. Third-graders scoring below basic on the PACT would attend school year-round in the fourth grade, under master teachers or National Board-certified teachers. The teachers’ incentive? Higher pay for 230 days of teaching. He would then add a grade level at a time, on up to high school.
Full-day kindergarten for 4-year-olds. This would be provided at “accountable, certified” public and private schools, “financed by vouchers and integrated w/First Steps.” The money might come in part from consolidating current pre-5K efforts, and be distributed in a way markedly different from the awful “Put Parents in Charge” scheme: Low-income kids would get full funding (about $4,000 apiece). The money would go to the school their parents choose. Higher-income folks would get a tax deduction (not a credit) to help with a portion of the cost. “I’m absolutely against vouchers in the public schools, by the way,” Mr. Wilson said. “But this is an area where I think it will work.”
An appointed state superintendent of education.
A BRAC-style commission for reducing the absurd number of school districts in the state. He credited this idea to Rep. James Smith, D-Richland, citing the facts that 41 of the state’s 85 districts serve only 14 percent of all students, but account for 100 percent of schools judged “unsatisfactory” under the Accountability Act.
A statewide salary schedule for educators, by category and qualification. This way, for instance, Marion County wouldn’t lose good teachers to Horry just because the Grand Strand county can pay so much more.

KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY
Mr. Wilson would like to increase the lottery money going to endowed chairs from $30 million to $40 million to take greater advantage of this indispensable tool for helping our research universities to boost our economy.
He would also push for an Industry Partners Act that would:

Recruit or set up companies to apply cutting-edge research going on in the state, accelerating the growth of economic clusters built around automotive innovation (Clemson), “Next Energy” development (USC) and biotech (MUSC and USC). The idea would be to market the state’s under-acknowledged assets and provide such incentives as local demonstration projects — say, running buses in the Midlands on hydrogen. The goal: to see these products manufactured here, by highly paid South Carolinians.
Define respective, interconnected roles for the state Commerce Department, universities, S.C. Research Authority and tech system in boosting knowledge-based enterprises in the state.

TAX REFORM
Comprehensive tax reform, of course — the only kind worth talking about. Fortunately, while there’s a lot of talk regarding “property tax relief” as an end in itself, the climate has never been better for realigning our whole tax structure.
Mr. Wilson calls it “tax-balancing.” He would shift the burden of financing schools to the state (the only way to standardize teacher pay and otherwise reduce the gap between rich and poor districts). A Senate panel is talking about replacing the property tax as a school funding source with a higher sales tax. But Mr. Wilson raises two caveats: Care must be taken not to raise the sales tax to the point that S.C. merchants can’t compete with the Internet and neighboring states, and the tax burden must not be shifted to businesses to the point that it stifles job creation.
That latter point is worth considering for a reason he didn’t bring up: If only owner-occupied homes were exempted from school property taxes, gross inequality would still exist between districts rich in industry and commerce, and those without that base.
He would also:

Eliminate the $300 cap on the automobile sales tax.
Raise our lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax.

“The point of all this is, it fits together,” Mr. Wilson concluded. “You can’t fix one problem without fixing the other.”
Exactly.

bradwarthen.com

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