We keep getting complaints about the whole no-opinion-pages-in-Saturday’s-paper thing, and when anybody complains to me personally, I ask them what they’d do, given the imperative of cutting expenses. Given our staff cuts over the last few years, I was faced with either doing pages of lesser quality seven days a week, or doing fewer pages, maintaining quality, and staying here really late every Friday night putting a bunch of Extra stuff online for you ingrates.
No, really — I’m humbled by folks missing our pages so much.
But it might be helpful if people had a bit more understanding of the problems newspapers are having lately. I’ve been saving up stuff for a post, such as:
- Staff buyouts at the Raleigh News and Observer, which is owned by McClatchy, which also owns The State.
- The announcement of buyouts at The Charlotte Observer, another McClatchy paper, as well.
- The fact that the International Newspaper Marketing Association is changing its name to drop the "newspaper" part. I am not making this up, as Dave Barry would say.
Actually, I had meant to gather a bunch more pieces of similar string for you to help you gain a little perspective on all this. But I can’t wait for that, on account of the latest.
David Broder, the dean of Washington political columnists, has announced he’s taking a buyout from The Washington Post. You’ll still see his columns, but he’ll be a contract employee. Here’s a memo he sent to us today:
{DAVID BRODER COLUMN}<
{(ADVISORY FOR BRODER CLIENTS)}<
{(For Broder clients only)}<
<
Dear friends:<
I want to give you a heads-up that later this week, The Washington Post will be making an announcement that, along with many other longtime employees, I am taking the buyout offer — and to tell you what it does and does not mean.<
The column you have been running will not change at all, and you will continue to receive it from The Washington Post Writers Group. I will continue to write from the same office in the Post newsroom and will continue to travel the country to wherever politics is happening. You will find me at the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer and on the campaign trail this fall, just as I have been this winter and spring.<
As of Jan. 1, I will become a contract employee of The Washington Post Company. For the last two years, the bulk of my reporting has gone into the column, rather than the news pages of the Post. This change will allow me to focus entirely on the column, while freeing up the Post to use its budget for other news-section salaries and expenses. It will not diminish my ability to be out where news is happening.<
I look forward to being part of your paper for many years to come….<
Many thanks,<
David Broder<
Get the picture? The biz is changing. Small wonder that some people come to me as a blogger, without even knowing I have this newspaper gig…
Anyway, I wanted to make sure you knew about the Broder thing as soon as I knew.
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Broder is another pretentious blowhard will only be missed by a tiny audience, mostly of envious former journalists turned pundit.
Lee, Paul Begala called Broder a “gasbag.”
That’s an even more stunning endorsement than your criticism.
Broder’s evaluation of Bill Clinton — “He came in here and he trashed the place, and it wasn’t his place” — hit the nail on the head.
Paul Begala is precisely the sort of person who would covet Broder’s job – another gasbag who has made a living talking loud and fast, without every having built anything. He is a flea, jumping from dog to dog, and telling the other flees that he is controlling the dogs.
The Dean of the Washington Press Corps is 78, and he says that the move will allow him to concentrate on his column. This may free up a slot for another reporter on the WaPo staff, so in part it’s a budgetary move.
I note that Broder’s work is not universally admired here, but he is a good reporter and a pretty perceptive analyst. I think that he and Bill Kristol would be a dynamite team that could give a balanced, valuable assessment and clever insights on politics in general. Alas, they work for different enterprises… While Kristol is an ideologue, he’s not afraid of communicating clearly what the facts tell him, however those facts vary from what he prefers. Broder describes the forces at play as he is able to discern them, given his political preferences.
That’s muddled. What I’m trying to say is that both produce noteworthy analyses, but Kristol is better able to separate his preferences from his analysis than Broder sometimes is.
That may be as clear as mud, but it covers the ground.
In my opinion, when searching for the reasons that the MSM is in its’ death throes, David Broder could be considered Exhibit A.
He is a self-important, liberal gas-bag who operates from and writes out of a liberal template. His material is nearly always skewed in favor of the democrat, and he is stale…oh so stale! When ever I look for piercing and well reasoned political analysis, you can bet I don’t go find Broders’ column to see what this liberal old fossil has pontificated. David
Notes on matters only slightly unrelated to David Broder, since I saw the phrase “self-important, liberal gas bag” in the post above:
1) John Edwards is a snout. This was true before he endorsed Barack Obama, and now it is especially true.
2) Today’s guest column was a pleasant surprise. Later, a song called “Payday Loan” to be sung to the tune of Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” (“Momma, don’t you take my payday loan awayz”). Or, come to think of it, maybe that’s enough.
3) Today’s editorial recommending tax penalties for violations against green behavior is a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing but gas baggage:
“To balance the tax breaks that encourage positive actions, lawmakers could add tax increases to discourage negative actions.
“They could increase the sales tax on high-mileage vehicles, for instance — or simply remove the tax cap that keeps the tax at an artificially low $300 for the most expensive new vehicle you can find. Of they could raise the state gas tax — or eliminate the sales tax exemption, and start charging the same 6 percent levy on gas as we charge on clothes and DVDs and Big Macs.
“There is nothing popular about increasing a gas tax, as pandering presidential candidates attest. But there is nothing more powerful that a state legislature could do to drive down energy consumption and help free us from the petrodictators.”
What would increasing the sales tax on high-mileage vehicles accomplish? Why punish someone who has to buy a vehicle that has a lot of miles on it? Or is high gas-usage meant here? Or do you mean to increase the property tax on high-mileage vehicles, an equally horrific idea, good only for punishing poverty?
What politician could possibly be so stupid as to raise the tax on gas when the cost is already going up a nickel per gallon a day?
Is the editorial board at The State so dense that it believes that when its own budget is shrinking, forcing it to drop two pages of publication per week, that salaries in South Carolina will magically rise to cover the added cost of taxing gasoline more?
Someone needs to give you guys an economic primer or else direct you to focus on matters so unimportant you couldn’t possibly have a negative effect.
I’m thinking editorials about possible colors for rest-area bathrooms and the like, real cutting-edge journalism.
Homerun Payday, homerun.
“…lawmakers could add tax increases to discourage negative actions.”
And of course under this little gem the very first point in this silly editorial is adding these tax increases to high mileage vehicles or removing the tax cap on new vehicles.
I would like for one of the superior intellects (visitors from a superior alien race, no doubt) to explain precisely how and why buying a new vehicle is viewed as a NEGATIVE action? Here are just a couple of questions concerning that ridiculous pronouncement:
-Is it not true that new vehicles by definition would tend to be more fuel efficient than older, more primitive used ones?
-Are not new vehicles generally the flagships that embody the cutting edge technologies that make them cleaner and more environmentally “friendly’?
-Has it not been demonstrated sufficiently that the artificial increase (through taxation) in the price of something reduces the demand for it? Ergo, does this proposed tax increase not inhibit the demand for cleaner and more fuel efficient cars?
-Does the present economy really need government doing things that reduce and stifle economic activity? Especially in the hurting automotive sector?
-Do the Imams of Economic Jihad at The State mullet wrapper really believe the garbage they publish?
David
I said above that liberal bloviators like David Broder are Exhibit A when one looks for the reasons underlying the implosion of the MSM.
I hadn’t even seen the editorial Payday mentioned until she cited it in her post. But really, is not this kind of silly, poorly thought out and unreasoned apologetic for big government and higher taxes the perfect example of Ehibit B?
This makes me not have any sympathy for your long hours Brad. You and newspaper editorial writers all over the country bring about your own destruction with this kind of stuff. And the point is not lost on me that a $300 cap on taxes on new car purchases may be unfair. The entire property tax structure in this state needs overhaul. But that wasn’t your premise in the editorial…your problem was that you view new car purchases as a “negative” behaviour. How many seconds did the writer spend dreaming up this little gem? David
A much better approach would be to bring back tax credits for very fuel efficient vehicles such as the Prius. Perhaps $2000. Rewarding innovation will bring about more of it.
Yeah.
That way Prius buyers can put that $2000 in a savings account somewhere so they’ll have it available whenever their car needs repairs. Of course these will be repairs that only a dealer can perform because all of the technology in the car is proprietary and no one but a dealer can work on it.
All for the sake of looking environmentally avant garde and “fighting” a non-existent, problem. A hoax.
Still, I like the idea of tax credits. Better yet would be the outright elimination of the taxes altogether. David
I am confused about Iraq, the candidates, and the media. We have one candidate who voted for the war but didn’t expect the president to go to war. We have another candidate who voted for the war and thinks we should stay there for 100 years if necessary. Finally, we have another candidate who wasn’t in the Senate at the time the vote was taken but would have voted against it if he were there.
We have the MSM who is in love with both the candidate who would have voted against the war and the candidate who wants to stay there 100 years. I am so confused. Since most of the intelligence on earth is represented in this blog, I am sure someone can straighten this out for me.
By the way Brad, as far as your elimination of opinion pages in the Saturday edition, put me down as a huge fan. Especially when the editorials we generally get from your Op-Ed board are represented fairly well by the glittering jewel of colossal hypocrisy and shallow thinking PayDay has called attention to.
I mentioned I hadn’t even seen it until Payday brought it up. That’s not surprising, as I’ve long since given up reading anything but the bullet/headline of your editorials. When I go the your editorial page (online of course, because I won’t buy the paper any more), I am primarily interested in letters to the Editor rather than anything you may be pontificating about. There’s never anything new or more highly evolved in what you write. You love taxes whenever and wherever you see them. I get it.
Why bother?
Nothing to see here folks…move along. David
Finally Brad, it is outrageous and shocking (or at least it SHOULD be) that todays’ fenderhead editor has advocated tax increases solely for the purpose of behaviour modification and social engineering.
This is a disgraceful endorsement by The State mullet wrapper for the abuse of government power and the unlawful use of the tyranny of taxation.
You should be ashamed. However, when the brie and Birkenstock crowd weigh in here momentarily we’ll see that leftists and enviro-wingnuts love your idea. Keep it up ~ let’s see if they ultimately are an audience that can keep your paper economically viable.
Fortunately for the rest of us, you and your supporters don’t represent an overwhelming majority. David
Rush Limbaugh was exactly right yesterday when he said that at some point the American people were going to become infuriated by the price tag on the environmental folly they are being forced into by so-called leaders like McCain (they’re really nothing more than panderers). Hopefully, the result of this fury will be the repudiation and abandonment of this sillines.
Now, you may discount or disregard anything Rush says because he’s Rush. But the stagnant circulation numbers, lackluster sales and declining ad revenues besetting the newspaper industry are undeniable. I further believe that they are due in large part specifically to their advocacy for big government, abuse of tax authority and wrong-headedness about the environment, property rights and personal freedom.
Again, time will tell whther the audience you’ve appealed to really represents the direction of the hearts of the american people. I don’t believe your carefully cultivated “green” and “big government” audience does, and if I’m right, how could that bode well for your paper? Does the generally lousy business performance of newspapers not lead you to have the least little bit of doubt? david
Sheesh! Our legislators still have not realized that burning food for fuel is a rotten idea and you go on to encourage them to impose greater restrictions in hopes of modifying behavior. Or is this just the logical extension of the Nannies now that the smoking ban has passed?
How about trying a bit of liberty. The US Congress could remove restrictions on drilling offshore, and this state’s solons could offer tax breaks for drilling off the coast in exchange for a slice of the revenue stream, as in the Alaska Permanent Fund. Oil companies would jump at the chance to spend their own money doing so.
We’re in a bit of a mess because of congressional action. I don’t understand how you expect those self-serving folks to act wisely in imposing restrictions when they’ve no track record of doing so.
“…it is outrageous and shocking (or at least it SHOULD be) that todays’ fenderhead editor has advocated tax increases solely for the purpose of behaviour modification and social engineering.”
Precisely.
Let me add:
It is without any evaluation or regard for the ability to pay the taxes, the lack of any need for the money, and without any offsetting tax reductions in other areas, even for other social engineering and behaviour modification of OTHER PEOPLE.
So much for the claim of a vision of “comphrensive tax reform” by our local bloviating editors.
All I know is, there are 4 pages I always read in The State, in this order: front page, editorial page, first page of Metro, comics. Take away anything else you like, but I hate losing one of the pages I read most often, especially on Saturday when I have time to really read the paper.
Also, since I spend most of my time in front of the computer all week, I rarely even bother to check my email on the weekend.
Maybe you could put the editorial page online on Wednesdays instead?
Seven comments, some of them right behind the preceding one, with no other writers in between…?
It almost looks like David is Lee in disguise — but Lee has three signed one, including his signature leadoff comment.
Weird, though. Two guys with similar M.O.s as well as similar attitudes. Lee has a greater tendency toward brevity, though… Looks like he’s found a buddy with similar interests.
Anyway, one hardly knows what to do with people who would call David Broder, of all people, a “gas bag…”
I disagree with David Broder about a lot of things, not least the fact that he is a huge believer in the political parties. He thinks they serve a useful, positive purpose. This results from an essential conservatism toward the system that he knows better than almost anyone. If politicians tend to “dance with the one that brung ’em” in defending the political status quo, I suspect that Broder has come to love the processes he has studied so assiduously to the point that he doesn’t see an essential wrongness in their very core. He is a devoted aspect of good and clean government, and will ferret out unsavory practices with great skill and fervor. But he doesn’t see that the basic two-party perpetual fight itself is a fundamentally bad thing.
This for me is a much bigger problem with Broder than issues or political attitudes where he and I might disagree. And there are such issues. For instance, I’m pro-life, and Broder, as fair as he tries to be, obviously disagrees. And over time you form the judgment that, as gentle and fair as he is, when he goes into the booth he has a marked tendency to prefer Democrats.
But all of that said, no one is fairer, more civil, more admirable or more knowledgeable than Broder in writing about American politics. The flaws I point to do not diminish my admiration for the man. I see them because finding flaws, looking at political writing critically, is something I do.
Bill Kristol? I might enjoy some of his columns and often agree with him, but the man is an unabashed ideologue from the get-go; it’s what he’s all about. If you want to compare him to a liberal, compare him to Paul Krugman or Bob Herbert. When Broder reveals his own political proclivities (and he does so), it’s in spite of himself, in spite of his considerable efforts to be fair and step back. It’s not what he comes to the table to do.
If you want to find a conservative counterpart to Broder, the closest you can find would be David Brooks or maybe Kathleen Parker, and even they don’t get there. The fact is that there is no one among nationally known opinion writers, on the left or the right, as REPORTERly (to coin a word) as Broder. He comes closest to putting the reporting and explaining what’s happening ahead of advancing conclusions based in personal political preferences.
If you can’t see that, you aren’t looking at the op-ed field very carefully.
Here’s a nice article from USA Today that underscores how the American people are finally starting to recognize what a failure modern conservatism is. I just wonder what has taken them so long?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-05-14-gopfallout_N.htm
It’s time to move the country in a liberal direction. That’s the way forward. That’s the way to return America to the high ideals espoused by the founding fathers. Liberalism = peace, prosperity and a grand future for our children and grand children. This election can make that happen.
I’d like to comment on the following:
************
S.C. may let motorcycles run red lights
The Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. –South Carolina motorcyclists would be able to run some red lights under a measure heading to state Senate.
The bill would allow motorcyclists, mo-ped drivers and bicyclists to go through a stop light after waiting for two minutes if the light doesn’t change and the intersection is clear.
The House approved the bill Thursday and the Senate will have to decide whether to go along with minor changes.
Gov. Mark Sanford hasn’t reviewed the legislation. Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer says it would be a challenge to enforce.
***********
If I’m in my car and have waited 2 minutes for a light, and there is no traffic, I will run the light. If anyone wants to see 2 minute lights, go through any side street in the town of Lexington, SC. They have the longest lights I’ve ever seen!!!
The only liberals in this race are Ron Paul and Bob Barr.
McCain is a sort of an eclectic, taking each issue on its on, without any congent philosophy.
Hillary believes she is destined to be part of a ruling socialist elite, that is entitled to be come wealthy from her power, while redistributing the wealth of those under her control.
Obama is a populist and even more socialist, tailoring his messages to pander to the greed of various factions in order to build a coalition.
Brad, to my knowledge you’ve never said you had a problem with the length of my posts before. Seems to me you get snippy and sort of childishly insulting about length only when either:
A) Leftist Broder and his ilk are called what they are ~ liberal gas bags, or
B) You and your other editors are called on the carpet in stark terms for your ridiculous and outrageous advocacy for the use of taxation as a blunt object.
I make the candid observation that your repeated proposals to use the tyranny of taxation to force the public behaviour you like, and you respond like a twelve year old. Nice. David
PS, I don’t think the length of any of my individual posts was a problem, since none of them were particularly lengthy. If I had attempted to say everything that arose in my heart in one post, it would have been un-un-follow-able. As it is, I stand by everything I wrote.
About Broder, you openly admit he favors democrats, while trying to make people believe he’s this statesmanlike, cool, rational reporter who’s above the fray. Of course he isn’t. What more do we need to know about him, and why is he given this mantle of respectability and status as a fair journalist, when he isn’t? He’s in the tank for liberlism. A gas bag, simply put. David
I got typing too quickly and forgot part of one of my thoughts. What I meant to say was:
I make the candid observation that your repeated proposals to use the tyranny of taxation to force the public behaviour you like may be why newspaper circulation and ad revenue continue to shrink, and you respond like a twelve year old.
Again…nice. David
David,
I was awed by your term,and am compelled to ask:Would you consider the artist,Christo,”environmentally avant garde”?
Brad can’t help it. He takes his cues from the Orwellian Playbook. ” All animals are equal, some animals are more equal than others.”
Thank you, Mr. Warthen, for ignoring the logical flaws and/or terminological errors in your editorial to discuss how David and Lee wrap their posts.
Is it all about the package, not the content, or is it just easier to ignore your mistakes and hope they’ll be forgotten or overlooked?
“It’s time to move the country in a liberal direction.”
That has been happening of its own accord for the last 200 years, bud.
No further nudge is needed.
The socialists who call hemselves “liberal” want to move America back 100 years, to the failed experiments of communist dictatorship, fascism, and elected socialism which killed 200,000,000 people and destroyed the economic prosoperity and hope for billions more.
Real liberals embrace free market capitalism, personal freedom, and a government limited to protecting the rights to take risks and prosper, not to act as a Big Sister who redistributes earned wealth to the slackers and dictates lifestyles.
Bill I’m from Swansea, so my idea of “art” is a fancy NASCAR logo on the side of a 12 pack of Coke.
Who is (or was) Christo? Was he avant garde? By the way, what exactly does avant garde mean? I just read it soemwhere and thought it sounded cool when I used it above. David
Watch it Lee.
The piercing and powerful intellect of Brad Warthen has been brought to bear, and because you and I haven’t been seen in the same room together, he’s determined that I’m you.
Also, for Brads’ sake keep your posts short. The only tremendously long and convoluted screeds he thinks are any good are the ones he writes himself.
Dave
I cut back my subscription to The State from 7 days to weekends only last year. I’m heading toward dropping it altogether as the content has grown significantly less interesting over the past few years. Just last week, I noticed the Travel section in the Sunday paper was cut from two pages to a single page. Why exactly will people buy the paper if there’s nothing to read???
Facts are facts. The State cannot compete with the Internet. The few niches that it could exploit, like local news and in-depth investigative journalism, are ignored. The idea should be to provide a compelling reason for people to purchase a copy of the paper.
I travel around the country and read papers from all over. There are still good ones out there. And what makes them good? Content. More pages, not fewer.
Once the auto sales, real estate, and help wanted business shifts completely to the web, it’ll be over for most of the newspaper business. The fact that The State’s circulation has dropped despite the huge influx of people into the Midlands over the past decade is not a good sign.
The problem with the State is the name. It doesn’t say the state of South Carolina. It just says the State and that is what it is as in ” The State ” or Big Brother or the Nanny State as every editorial calls for more government control and more taxes to support that control.
christo was a con artist who hung ribbon and other litter across hills and called it “art”. Of course, most of his funding came from government welfare programs for artists.
Newspapers, like all the old media, is in decline because those who run it disrespect their customers. They will pander to customer demand for more gossip and sports coverage, but when the customers say they find the political bias offensive, and the coverage tardy and inaccurate, the editors and producers dismiss the criticism.
I keep checking in to see if Gordon has anything to say on this one. Unfortunately, he has not so far…
And yeah, The State is way cool as a name, huh?
You know, Richard, many years ago when I was in college and sort of halfway living at home, and “home” was a U.S. Navy installation, I had a bank account at a branch of a local financial institution located on the base. The name of it, to the best of my memory, was “People’s State Bank.” If that’s not it, then it was something equally ironic for such a patently capitalist entity located on a Navy base. Sometime you just wonder what folks are thinking when they name things…
No, Mr. Warthen, when “The State” is nothing but a lie as a name, it’s not cool, much less “way cool.”
Your paper (notice the omission of the word “news”) doesn’t portray the state of anything — South Carolina, human consciousness, even life as we know it — apart from the politically-correct prejudices of those who spend their lives cubicled on Shop Road.
A fitting name, Shop Road, by the way.
“‘Buy, buy,’ said the sign on the shop window.
“‘Why, why?’ said the junk in the yard.
I think you ahould call your propaganda sheet “The Midlands Mercantile Mumbo-Jumbo.”
Or “Imbibed With Mayor Bob,” whichever comes first.
Interesting to read the various comments about David Broder, but nary a peep about the column that ran the other day from Kathleen Parker, one of the most odious op-ed pieces I’ve ever read, about “full-blooded” Americanism. It had the great distinction of being highly inaccurate AND noxiously racist.
Kathleen Parker expressed nothing racist.
She was discussing the opinions of patriotic Americansn who are put off by the immigrants who don’t embrace American ideals, who want the economic prosperity, and social and political freedom, but retain a primary allegiance to their old country and old culture.
Barak Obama is an example of the worst of this – a millionaire who got rich off political coziness with big business, but raised by Marxist parents, who changed his name to something foreign-sounding, and keeps expressing is hatred of whites, “the white blood in my veins”, his white mother and grandmother, and everythign that is wholesome and good about America.
Hillary is a 1960’s radical anti-war hippie with makeover as an 2008 real estate saleslady.
The contrast between these two traitors and Vietnam hero John McCain is stark.
I hope Broder’s fawning fantasy over Ted Kennedy is his last column.
Ted Kennedy should be judged on his sorry record of legislative efforts to undermine American liberty and aid her enemies.
It is a shame the way people who know better suddenly try to dress Kennedy up in a white gown out of pity for his illness.