Category Archives: The State

Am I happy? What do you think?

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People ask, in a concerned sort of voice, whether we’re happy with our new ownership. Are you kidding? Swapping Knight Ridder for McClatchy is a dream come true. Sure, it’s early to tell (the sale just finalized this week, and a lot of basic decisions remain up in the air), but all the signs are excellent.

Here’s somebody who expresses the difference in a fairly graphic manner. It’s a pretty good piece. Of course, he castigates me and my colleagues for not writing the same piece while under KR ownership:

    And this is a man whose company purports to honor the public trust?
And how many of his newspapers and their reporters — anywhere — will
write about this?
    None, that’s how many. Newsrooms are loaded with hypocrites quick to
pontificate about every other publicly held company and its executives.
All but their own.

I guess guys who are rich enough to buy papers (that’s Mr. Connor at right) have a perspective thatConnor2 allows them to sneer not only at their own class, but at us working stiffs who don’t hear the same country-club gossip that they do. I don’t know how I was supposed to write stuff I didn’t know about, such as the great golf clubs anecdote. I knew Tony and company were running the company into the ground, but I didn’t know enough about business matters to explain authoritatively how they were doing it. As I’ve tried to make clear in the past, Tony Ridder only said one thing that mattered to me — he promised that the editorial pages would be independent of corporate influence (and his successor says the same, even more convincingly). Once I was assure of that, I paid as little attention to him and his doings as possible. When my fellow execs from advertising, circulation, etc., would talk corporate scuttlebutt in our weekly senior staff meetings, I would update my Palm. Our former publisher upbraided me about that a couple of times, but hey, I was trying to manage my time better.

What I knew, I wrote — months ago. And all that consisted of was my conviction that they were burning up the seed corn by cutting expenses, thus diminishing the quality of the product they were allegedly trying to sell.

I was pretty ticked off when Bruce Sherman forced the company to go up for sale. That’s because there were a lot of potentially bad scenarios arising from that action. But being bought by McClatchy was the best of all possible outcomes. I think. Check back with me in a year or two.

Warthen refuses to debate Ravenel, Willis!

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Scoppe_2
Tonight we have the live debate between the undeserving survivors in
the GOP state treasurer’s race. Unfortunately — and I thought I’d best
break this to my fans now — I’ve had to pull out at the last minute as
moderator.

My
excuse? The fact that I’ll be working probably through the night
getting ahead so I can take off a few days, starting tomorrow. It’s not
only a short week for me, but as I mentioned before, I’m also doing
work for a certain slacker who took off all this week.

Standing in for me will be my lovely associate Cindi Ross Scoppe (seen above in her very best excuse for a Vanna White pose), and I assure
you that’s just as good (she’s done this before), so don’t ask for your money back.

Actual Reality

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There’s something redundant about the phrase, "actual reality." I know that. But we have to make distinctions, when dealing our friends at SCRG, between the actual sort and their sort.

If I agreed with what these folks are advocating, I’d be embarrassed they’re on my side. I’ve gotten the impression that Karen Floyd is. But she’s sort of stuck; she’s their candidate.

Anyway, here is a partial breakdown of the problems that made the latest SCRG unpublishable by anyone except SCRG.

I should probably preface this by noting that on the pages of The State, we let (actually, we encourage it and facilitate it) folks who disagree with us say pretty much anything they want and call us any names they want — as long as they’re suitable for a family newspaper. You can call us left-wing; you can call us right-wing (they’re about equally popular, it seems); you can call us late for supper. You can say our mothers dress us funny.

What we won’t let you do is confuse readers by saying something that is objectively, obviously untrue. And that includes saying we said things we didn’t say. I mean, what’s the point of our taking the trouble to write something if we’re going to use our own space to let people say we said something else? Kind of a pointless exercise. Argue with what we say all you like, but no inventing false statements. (I suspect people do this because they think they have an answer for the phony statement, but they know they are incapable of contending with what we actually said. Whatever.)

Anyway, here’s the point-by-point:

  • Goebbels? Joseph Goebbels? Isn’t this device in some sort of Over-The-Top Name-Calling Rhetoric Hall of Fame?
  • Actually, Cindi likes school choice. You know, send your kids to any public school you want, whether you’re zoned for it or not; whether you even live in the district or not. And send them to any private school you want, but then you pay for it yourself instead of asking other taxpayers to do it for you. On this point she’s a lot easier than I. I’m suspicious of any movement that has to hide behind the word "choice." Whether it’s abortion or subsidizing private schools, people with bad ideas avoid saying what they’re actually for.
  • "She used both of them in this diatribe with a shameless disregard for the facts or the truth." Hey, maybe she’s a Nazi, but the law doesn’t let you libel Nazis, either. We will now wait in vain for any assertions by SCRG that anything she said was untrue, much less "shamelessly" so.
  • "Ms. Scoppe recklessly labels South Carolinians for Responsible Government and other groups’ activities as ‘white collar crime.’ " Uh, hello. No she didn’t. Reading comprehension problem time. Her actual text: "The poker barons were more dangerous, in the sense that street
    crime is more dangerous than white-collar crime." It’s called an analogy. Look into it.
  • "She is a partisan, liberal Democrat." When they try to make a case for this one, I want to be in the room. It should be entertaining. One quick example: Cindi is the one who has to keep coming to Mark Sanford’s defense when I get fed up with him (it’s becoming a full-time job, and, truth be told, she’s starting to agree with me sometimes). For the record, no one on my editorial board is a partisan, or I wouldn’t have chosen him or her to work with us. That’s just insulting. The amusing part is when they call her "liberal" and "Democrat." Of course, there is no evidence offered here — circumstantial or otherwise. How could there be? None exists.

… tell you what — to save your time and mine, let’s just stop skipping over all the plain silly stuff (although all the stuff about her "screaming" — coming from people talking about Goebbels — is a lot of fun) and go to their out-and-out false assertions of "fact"…

  • "While complying with all applicable laws." Say what? They can argue that the law is unconstitutional if they wish. But the fact is
    that the law does require them to report their spending, and they have refused
    to comply with it.
  • "She is doing it to advance liberal political candidates and causes." Such as? I can think of some folks we’ve endorsed over in the Democratic primary who might be described as "liberal" — but only here in South Carolina and few other places. But in the Republican primary, which is what we’re talking about here? Who? Where? In what sense?
  • "Destroy your opponents’ credibility through lies and distortions." Once again, give us one example in which Cindi (as opposed to some other people we could name if we wanted to get picky) has done this. And remember the rule: You can’t make it up! She has to have actually done it, and you actually have to have a plausible argument that it’s untrue.

I realize we’re playing by tough rules, requiring actual facts and all, but publishing the op-ed page South Carolina’s largest newspaper is not the same as throwing junk on the Web site of some lame, ranting advocacy group. We’re kind of particular about this fact stuff, and if you don’t know what one is, you’re going to have trouble keeping up.

Reality, version B

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We’ve got this regular thing going on with SCouRGe: We write a piece explaining the facts about something that touches on them in any way, they write a wildly overheated response that argues with things we didn’t say. We tell them their response doesn’t address the actual piece we ran. Then, the routine goes one of two ways: They can take the hint and give us a letter that does respond to what we had published (they did that last time), or they can say they don’t want it changed — in which case we ditch it and move on to something relevant.

In either case, they will send out the original, absurd version to whip up their base. That’s sort of the point of the game. Getting us to help them make their case is a fringe benefit, if achievable. If not, they gripe to their base about us not publishing their fantasies. Win-win. (And I see it’s already up on their site. Oh, I love this touch: "CENSORED BY THE STATE … AGAIN!" Let’s see… I told them I’d put it on my blog, and here it is. And they got it up on their site before I did. So, how exactly are they being "censored"? Somebody get a dictionary.)

It really wasn’t achievable with the latest piece they sent us, purportedly a response to this piece by Cindi (she seems to be in the news on this blog today, probably because she’s the main writer on most of the state primary races).

First, their piece, unedited. I will discuss it in the next post:

The State’s Propaganda Machine in High Gear
By Randy Page
    Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, followed two primary rules when brainwashing the German public.  The first was to tell a big lie loud enough and long enough so that people would eventually start to believe it.  The second rule was to always accuse your enemy of your own worst crime.
     I was reminded of this when reading Cindi Scoppe’s most recent pathetic rant against school choice and limited government supporters.  Ms. Scoppe clearly has learned Goebbels’ methods well.  She used both of them in this diatribe with a shameless disregard for the facts or the truth.
     Ms. Scoppe recklessly labels South Carolinians for Responsible Government and other groups’ activities as “white collar crime.”  She knows very well that allegations against us were nothing more than political maneuvers and that we have not been charged with any crime.  She also knows that the one issue currently active has broad Constitutional free speech implications and that we are looking for clarity through the federal judicial system.
  But that doesn’t matter to Ms. Scoppe.  She throws mud and then hides behind her “press credentials.”  She uses her free speech rights to attempt to deny us and any other group she opposes that very right.  That’s the height of hypocrisy.
     For all her screaming and high-pitched assaults, Ms. Scoppe wants to hide the fact that she is a partisan, liberal Democrat working for an out-of-state corporation that has engaged in repeated efforts to influence the outcome of elections while reporting to no one.  “We are the press and cannot be regulated,” she will scream.  And we would agree.
     But if she and her comrades are free to act in such a manner, why does she have such a problem with an in-state non-profit organization discussing issues that may or may not affect the outcome of political debate while complying with all applicable laws?
     Simple.  She attacks us because we advocate for less government, more individual freedom, lower taxes, greater personal property rights, parental choice in education, and an end to the controlled political environment that has kept hundreds of thousands of South Carolinians out of the process.  She opposes all these things – as do most of the major candidates they back.
     It is a fair question to ask why she and the State newspaper editorial page would attack us and other conservative groups so intensely.  The answer is they want to silence us.  They want to tarnish our good name so that when we engage in debate or issue discussion our words are deemed suspect.  She is engaging in pure character assassination.   And, she is doing it to advance liberal political candidates and causes.
     This, of course, was another of Mr. Goebbels’ methods – whenever possible, destroy your opponents’ credibility through lies and distortions.  Yes, Ms. Scoppe has learned her lessons well.  And that’s too bad for the reputation of the State as well as the people subjected to her sleazy, unethical tactics.
     Luckily for groups such as ours, her opinion and that of the State newspaper is absolutely insignificant.  The most recent election results are a testament to that fact.

Randy Page is President of SCRG, a statewide non-profit grassroots organization that advocates limited government and education reform through school choice on behalf of its 200,000 supporters across the state.

Don’t miss Actual Reality, coming to a blog near you, right after this post.

Reflections on letters

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Some reflections on letters in Saturday’s paper.

First, there was the one headlined, Grand Old Party is losing its way. My thoughts on it:
A person whose identity as a Republican reaches back to 1932 is bound to feel a bit lost, for a number of reasons. It is now the majority — or perhaps I should say, the plurality, party. (There are enough of us independents to keep either from being a majority, but I suppose you could say the Republicans are the majority among partisans, certainly here in South Carolina.) That means it has had to expand its membership beyond what it once encompassed. The letter mentions Glenn McConnell (unfavorably) and Mark Sanford (favorably). The two men are very different from each other, but united in two facts: They are both very libertarian, and it’s hard to imagine either of them fitting in with, say, Dwight Eisenhower or Richard Nixon. Actually, it’s a bit hard to imagine Ike and Nixon being in the same administration. Anyway, my point is that people looking for consistency and reassurance in a party large enough to win elections are almost certain to be disappointed.

Here-and-now issues should determine vote:
This letter is related to the first, in that it illustrates the way that many Democrats are determined to keep their party the minority among partisans by rejecting certain lines of thought. Take for instance the writer’s dismissal the idea that ideals, or faith, might outweigh material considerations. Or at least, that they should not do so among practical, right-thinking individuals. But that’s not the really telling bit. What really points to the main fallacy among many (but not all) Democrats is the suggestion that right-thinking (i.e., socially concerned or liberal people) cannot choose the "moral path" of their fathers. Why on earth would concern about the direction of the country or current events be inconsistent with faith or a "belief system." Why can’t a person who is concerned  about the future still embrace the faith of his fathers? This writer seems to assume that traditional morality is utterly inconsistent with moving forward. Why so closed-minded? As long as supposed liberals think this way, they are doomed to failure.

Townsend did what he thought was right:
This writer says "Ronny Townsend worked tirelessly for the people he represented, for conservative values and for bettering public education." Exactly. A person who embraces conservative values would certainly be committed to serving and improving public education. It is a fundamental institution of our society, and one that is essential to building the kind of future that those who went before us envisioned. Anyone who would dismantle it, rather than protecting, strengthening and improving it, is a radical, leaning toward anarchy — anything but conservative.

Liberators not always what they seem:
Why would this writer believe that the idea that "there has always been a thin line between ‘invader/occupier’ and ‘liberator’ … was not considered three years ago?" It was and is to be expected that there is a delicate balance to be struck between such concepts. I certainly considered it, worried about it — still do. This is a short missive. Is the writer suggesting that those of us who favored the invasion must not have seen the inherent risks? Is he suggesting further that if anyone had seen the risks, the endeavor would not/should not have been undertaken? If so, I couldn’t disagree more. Those are merely reasons to proceed wisely — which certainly hasn’t always been done in this enterprise. I believe concern over that fact underlies this letter. But if leads the writer to conclude that it should not have been undertaken to begin with, or should be abandoned now, I have to disagree.

Feting Bernanke may be premature:
Why? So we don’t know whether he is a Greenspan or not? Why wouldn’t homefolks celebrate the fact that one of their own is the Fed Chairman. Seems sort of like a big deal in and of itself to me.

Accepting differences leads to better world:
One would be puzzled why someone would be compelled to write that "I am of the belief that God doesn’t hate." I mean, who isn’t? One would be further puzzled to read, "One day, I hope to find a community of faith that believes in love,
tolerance and acceptance. Maybe that is too much to hope for…" All true communities of faith believe in those things. They welcome sinners, and invite them to be penitent. The problem is that some do not wish to be penitent, and choose to characterize any suggestion that they should be as "hate." This is an obvious fallacy for anyone seeking a community of faith. It’s astounding how many people fail — or refuse — to see that.

Finally, Tests give teachers too little to go on:
OK, if you’re going to insist on standards being taught, why would you let teachers know what questions will be on the test that will measure whether they are teaching the standards. If you let them know the test, they would be able to — as many claim they already do — "teach to the test." It’s not about you improving test scores. It’s about teaching the standards. If test scores do improve, we’ll know how successfully you’re doing that. The letter presents one real reason for concern, when it suggests that students have seen "subject matter on tests that was not included in the standards." If so, something should be done about it. Of course, if the standard were not taught properly, the student would find the measuring test unfamiliar. So it’s difficult to tell from this missive where the fault lies.

Primary-day column, WITH LINKS!

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Read all about it. Then go vote!

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

AT MONDAY morning’s editorial meeting, we wearily debated how we might have done a better job on these primary elections. Should we have interviewed candidates in fewer races, opening time and space for more detail on the top contests? Did we make the best endorsements we could have? Did we give readers all the information that they need?
    The answer to that last question is, “Of course not.” Resources are limited, and at best, even when our board has been as thorough as it can be in making a recommendation, ours is but one voice in a much broader conversation. Careful voters should attend thoughtfully to all of it.
    My purpose in writing today is to refer you to additional resources, so you have more information available to you on this day of decision than we can fit onto one page.
    Start by going to my blog on the Web. The address is at the bottom of this column. If you don’t feel like typing all that in, just Google “Brad Warthen’s Blog.” Click on the first result.
    Here’s what you’ll find:

  • An electronic version of this column with one-click links to all the other information in this list.
  • The full texts of all of our endorsements. We don’t expect you to be swayed by the brief capsules at left; we provide this recap on election days because readers have requested it. Please read the full editorials.
  • Additional notes from most of the 51 candidate interviews that helped in our decisions. Please leave comments to let me know whether you find these notes helpful; it’s a new thing for me.
  • The Web sites of major candidates. These sites vary greatly in the detail they offer on issues (and in their frankness), but some can be helpful.
  • Addresses for state and local election commissions.
  • More links to last-minute news reports. The State’s news division is entirely separate from the editorial department, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help you find the news — including the Voter’s Guide from Sunday’s paper.
  • Recent columns, including an unpublished piece from teacher and former community columnist Sally Huguley, explaining why teachers should vote in the Republican primary.
  • Various explanations I’ve given in the past for why we do endorsements, and what our track record has been with them.
  • Much, much more — from the silly to the (I hope) profound.

    Please check it out, and leave comments. I want to know what you think — so would others — about the election, about our endorsements, about the blog itself. There were 138 comments left there on one day last week. I’d like to see that record broken. Broaden the conversation beyond the usual suspects (no offense to my regulars; I just want more, and you know you do, too).
    And then, go vote your conscience. Please. A number of observers have said voter interest is low this time around. It shouldn’t be. This election could help determine whether South Carolina does what it needs to do to improve public schools — and therefore improve the future for all of us — or gives up on the idea of universal education.
    I’m not just talking about the governor or superintendent of education contests. As we’ve written in detail (which you can read again on the Web), there are well-funded groups from out of state trying to stack our Legislature so that it does what they want it to do from now on. Don’t stand back and watch that happen. Exercise your birthright. Vote.
    Finally, after the votes are counted, be sure to tune in to ETV from 10 to 11 p.m. I’ll offer live commentary off and on (it won’t be just me for that whole hour, so you’re safe). You young people, ask your parents to let you stay up late. If you’re big enough to be reading the editorial page, you deserve it. You older folks, try to get a nap in the evening and rest up — after you’ve voted.

Here’s the address: http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

Our Primary Endorsements

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There is of course a link just to your left to our endorsements page, but I want to make this blog as user-friendly as I can, so here’s are direct links to every endorsement for today’s primaries, contest by contest:

For more information on the endorsement interviews that helped lead to these decisions (at least, the ones I had time to do posts on), click right here.

Rusty DePass, psychic

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I was out Friday and I’m just now catching up on e-mail from the end of the week. I’ll share this broadcast message from my fellow Rotarian (and former state election commission chair and former S.C. Senate candidate
and perpetual Republican gadfly) Rusty DePass, sent out on Friday:

    I want to ask you to consider voting for Mike Campbell for Lieutenant Governor if you vote in the Republican primary.  When I first worked for his Dad when he was running for Lieutenant Governor, Mike was 5 years old.  It’s hard to believe he’s 37 now, has a family, runs a business.  Mike grew up on the fortunate side of the street, to be sure, but whether that’s a good or a bad thing—and who among us wouldn’t choose that way if we could?—he certainly had nothing to do with it. The children of prominent people, I have observed, have a very special cross they bear in life, and I think Mike has handled it well. I am really very proud of and for him in the way he has taken on the responsibilities of family and business life and he may very well develop into the kind of public servant his Dad was.  I know all three Republican candidates for Lieutenant Governor WELL and I can tell you without fear of contradiction that Mike
Campbell knows how to behave the best of the three. 
    He was endorsed today by The State newspaper’s editorial board but I hope you will not hold that against him.  I feel sure he will not be endorsed by them in the fall. 
                        — William B. “Rusty” DePass, Jr.

As you can see, I get as much respect from Rusty as I do from the regular commenters on the blog. What he means by that last bit, I have no idea. I had to go look it up to see who was even running on the Democratic side in the fall (as I’ve explained over and over, the 51 candidates with primary opposition in the races we’re writing about NOW have been more than enough for me to think about). As near as I can recall, I’ve never even met the guy (although his picture looks familiar). I suppose Rusty knows something that is hidden to me.

Cindi’s ‘Pink Pigs’ column

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Pink_pig
Generic pink propaganda:
‘(Fill in the blank) is a big fat pig’

By CINDI ROSS SCOPPE
Associate Editor

THE CUSHY pink pigs were stuffed illegally onto mailboxes, necklaced with flyers crying that “State Spending is Out of Control” (“up 10 PERCENT THIS YEAR ALONE!”) and asking: “Why is our legislator, Bill Cotty, voting to spend millions of our tax dollars on beach sand, an arts festival and a football game?”
    A better question might be: What is “Conservatives in Action,” and why is it making this stuff up?
    Rep. Cotty is the one member of the House who by no stretch of the imagination could be tied to that spending. He recorded the only vote against this year’s final budget bill (after you click on the link, search for the third time the words "record for voting" occur), which contained the money for beach renourishment and the football game and the arts festivals and the 10 percent increase in spending. He also was one of eight House members who voted against the House’s version of the budget, and one of two members of the Ways and Means Committee who voted against it in committee.
    This suddenly ubiquitous little group followed up the pigs with post cards showing a stack of cash ablaze and urging voters to call Mr. Cotty and “tell him that you’re tired of him spending your tax dollars like he’s got money to burn” and “tired of him voting against Gov. Sanford and for ‘pork barrel’ projects.” Huh?
    Apparently the group not only forgot to check Mr. Cotty’s voting record or notice that he did more than anyone except maybe the speaker to push through this year’s $180 million tax cut. It also forgot to check with its fellow libertarians at the S.C. Club for Growth. Their web site shows that only 27 of the 124 House members voted to sustain more of Mr. Sanford’s 2005 budget vetoes than Mr. Cotty — and just four sustained more of his 2004 vetoes.
    “Conservatives in Action” is based in Greenville, and it’s targeting a half-dozen Republican House members statewide.
    That explains why it’s running a generic campaign that has nothing to do with how Bill Cotty actually votes. The pigs — and the same cut-and-paste mailings — also showed up in the districts of Lexington Rep. Ken Clark and Upstate Reps. Becky Martin, Gene Pinson, Adam Taylor and Bill Whitmire.
    What it doesn’t explain is why the group is targeting him — and the others — at all.
If you just read what it says, you’d think “Conservatives in Action” was going after the worst of the tax-and-spend crowd. But that’s clearly not the case.
    Fourteen House Republicans are on the ballot next week, and 11 of them have voted with the governor less than Mr. Cotty. (The other two both voted for this year’s sand-and-festivals budget.) Yet “Conservatives in Action” gave a pass to six of those anti-Sanford, pro-sand Republicans.
    The group’s other target is education superintendent candidate Bob Staton, and the only issue on which he and Karen Floyd differ is tax credits for private schools: He’s against them; she’s for them.
    Sure enough: The six un-pigged Republicans all voted for last month’s effort to send public money to unaccountable, private schools. The six Republicans on the hit list voted against it.
    Welcome to our second consecutive primary election featuring an anti-public schools group that’s hiding behind less controversial issues to lob misleading attacks at GOP legislators who don’t ask “How high?” when it shouts “Jump!”
    We first saw this M.O. when Michigan-based “All Children Matter” came after anti-voucher candidates in the 2004 GOP primary. It, too, was careful to focus on such “issues” as their refusal to sign a blood oath to creepy puppetmasters
in Washington swearing to never ever vote to raise a tax so help me God. No mention of vouchers, which don’t poll nearly as well as “State Spending is Out of Control.”
    Up until a couple of weeks ago, it looked like the baton had been passed to the ironically named “South Carolinians for Responsible Government,” which had taken over as the face of the voucher/tax credit movement after it became clear that voters weren’t comfortable with a Michigan multi-millionaire trying to dictate school policy in South Carolina. The ostensibly local group started out this spring’s round of attacks on Reps. Cotty, Clark and others by focusing on their alleged attempts to raise taxes or their alleged opposition to the governor’s vetoes.
    But then the State Ethics Commission ordered the group to obey the state ethics law, and report its activities.
    Suddenly the “Conservatives in Action” name started appearing on the kind of cookie-cutter junk mail that had been coming from SCRG.
    The slick little post cards just keep coming. Last week’s piece charges that (fill in the blank) “has developed quite an appetite for spending your money.”
    It’s bad enough that the attack dog du jour, like its predecessors, is working hard to hide the fact that its only real goal is to install a voucher-friendly Legislature.
    And trying to mislead voters into thinking legislators raised taxes, when in fact they cut them.
And recycling the governor’s bogus 16 percent figure to make spending look like it’s spiraling out of control. (Mr. Sanford admits he’s leaving out some spending when he compares this year’s budget to next year’s; he sees nothing wrong with comparing apples to pineapples to produce a growth number that’s several points higher than reality.)
    Such deception has, unfortunately, become commonplace among political operatives.
    But in the case of Mr. Cotty — the man who voted against spending any tax money on anything because he thought his colleagues were spending too much of it — even the sleaziest of sleaze-masters couldn’t defend the attacks.
    Why do they think they can get away with such obvious lies? Mr. Cotty has a simple explanation: “They’ve targeted us because… they think we’re stupid.”

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.

Steak-vs.-Sizzle column

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Choosing the steak over the sizzle

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

KAREN FLOYD is the sizzle; Bob Staton is the steak.
    Carve it any way you like, that’s what you end up with in the GOP race for superintendent of education.
    Mr. Staton proposes (yawn) to push ahead on the sweeping, fundamental reforms that he and other business leaders initiated. The ones the education establishment’s defenders fought so hard.Staton The ones that are working.
    They proposed to set some of the highest standards in the state (which South Carolina has done), to test every child to make sure the schools teach those standards (which South Carolina is doing), and to bring the schools where kids aren’t meeting those standards up to snuff (which South Carolina has hardly begun to do).
    Continue pulling the schools up to high standards? Sounds like a lot of hard work, doesn’t it?
    Mrs. Floyd says things people like to hear. She’s a lawyer, but seems born for sales. As was said in the Charleston Post and Courier, she “has polished her presentation to a bright shine.”
    She is very open-minded. One of her best, most sizzling lines goes like this: “Given the state of education in South Carolina, it would be irresponsible to prohibit any reasonable idea, any possible solution from consideration merely out of a fear of change.”
    Sure. But what’s “reasonable”? There’s the rub. Mrs. Floyd is really reluctant to draw that clear line. When she finally does, she draws it in the wrong place.
Floyd_debate_1    Look at last week’s ETV/The State debate. I asked Mrs. Floyd whether her endorsement by Gov. Mark Sanford — whose one big idea with regard to public schools is to pay people to pull their kids out of them — meant that she was “completely in sync” with his education agenda.
    “I am absolutely a free thinker,” she said, noting that “there’s a wide spectrum” of views among her supporters … .
    But would she have voted, given the chance, for the governor’s proposal to give tax credits to private school parents, a plan called “Put Parents in Charge”?
    “You know, I purposefully have never discussed the PPIC legislation.” She would pull together all the stakeholders, and “put together a ‘choice’ program that would fit the needs of the state of South Carolina….”
    “But you didn’t really answer the question,” host Andy Gobeil objected.
    She said PPIC was “a moving target constantly,” with 42 amendments. She hadn’t wanted to “anchor” herself to what “may not be the final position.”
    I tried again: “But in the end, there was an amended — much amended — piece of legislation, and lawmakers did have to vote on it. And they had to say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ So on that one that was finally voted on — this year, let’s say; let’s be specific: Yes or no?”
    She stopped sizzling: “The piece of legislation that was voted on this year, the last piece of legislation, was one that I would have supported, yes.” She had not wanted to answer that.
    “I did not support PPIC,” Mr. Staton answered. He went on to say we have to focus on improvingStaton_debate_1 our public schools, and that the problem with South Carolina is that every time we undertake a reform we abandon it before we’ve fully implemented it, and… I cut him off. I had my answer.
    Why the big deal on this one thing? You might just as well ask Mrs. Floyd that, since she was the one dodging it, but I’ll provide the answer: This is the one substantive point on which Mrs. Floyd and Mr. Staton differ. They both know that. To the extent that this race turns on issues of any kind, that point is the pivot, the fulcrum.
    And the stakes for South Carolina are incalculable.
    This is why the governor — who fundamentally does not believe in public schools — endorsed Mrs. Floyd last year, long before he could have known who else would be competing for his party’s banner. It’s why out-of-state anti-public school interests have pumped loads of money into the campaigns of not only Mrs. Floyd, but of anyone who will run against any Republican lawmaker who has had the guts to stand up and vote “no” to their proposal.
    For them, it’s the end-all and be-all. It is for our schools, too. And it is for you, whatever your political affiliation.
    If you’re a Republican, a vote for Bob Staton is a vote for South Carolina’s right to determine its own future. To vote for Mrs. Floyd is to side with out-of-state extremists who have vowed to take out any Republican who dares disagree with them.
    If you’re a Democrat, and you actually care about improving public schools (as Democrats always say they do), you’d better vote in the Republican primary for Bob Staton, rather than wasting your vote deciding whether Tommy Moore or Frank Willis will lose to the governor in the fall. This is the one that counts.
Floyd    And if you are an independent, this is your chance to step in and say that the public schools belong to you, too — not just the ideologues of various stripes.
    Mrs. Floyd is an intelligent, delightful, charming woman who is open to all sorts of good ideas. But she’s also open to one horrendous idea that undermines all the rest. It takes all the gloss off her “bright shine.”
    Mr. Staton doesn’t glow. He sweats, doing the heavy lifting of making all of our schools better.
    It’s not a very shiny proposition, but it’s a meaty one.

Correction: It was just the opposite, partly

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Altman
I now have a firsthand report, and the previous one was exactly backwards on the second point. If you follow me.

Apparently, what Rep. Altman actually said about editors at The State was that we can’t get anything for free at any stores — even temporarily. More specifically, he is said to have said that the newspaper’s owners won’t let us get so much as a box of paper clips on credit, on account of how we’re such terrible business people.

With regard to myself, I must endorse the representative’s remarks on this score. I am not a businessman, terrible or otherwise, but if I were I’d probably be a lousy one. And while the paper clip thing may be a tad hyperbolic, he’s caught the gist of what it’s like working with Knight Ridder. I can get the paper clips, but then we have to go through all sorts of gyrations to get the expense processed.

There are many reasons why we’ll all be glad to be owned by McClatchy soon.

As for the other — well, my first source seems to have gotten it right. Of my having called him a "jerk," he seems to have observed that "that is the extent of his erudition."

So, bottom line: John Graham Altman is still a jerk, but that doesn’t mean he’s always wrong.

Tomorrow just got easier

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I am notified by colleague Cindi Scoppe that one of the five candidates I’m supposed to interview tomorrow (out of the 55 such interviews that were set for this month) has canceled on us. Thank the Lord for his small blessings.

I thought for a moment she meant he was rescheduling, but apparently he’s canceling altogether.

Who is it who’s not showing? Henry Jordan, who is running for — hang on, let me check — theJordan2 Republican nomination for gov lite.

Why? Well, here’s what I was told:

Henry Jordan’s campaign called Sandy and cancelled his meeting for tomorrow. Said they did not feel like they could get a fair shake from The State and Jordan needed to spend his time campaigning. Sandy asked the person to leave a message on my voice  mail; that message said merely that Jordan was canceling the interview.

That’s it. No further explanation. Apparently Dr. Jordan has no confidence that he’d have a chance of being endorsed when he’s running against Andre Bauer. I don’t know what precipitated such a crisis of confidence. I can’t remember us writing anything about Dr. Jordan recently. And it’s hard to imagine that a guy would worry about, say, being misquoted when he’s best known for having said, as a member of the state school board, "Screw the Buddhists and kill the Muslims. And put that in the minutes."

Seriously. I think he was talking about the Ten Commandments at the time.

I guess he’s gotten shy with the passage of time.

Anyway, that makes him the ranking office-seeker of this particular election cycle to refuse to come in for his interview. It’s really pretty rare for that to happen. The all-time ranking refusal came from Gov. Jim Hodges, who refused to come in to defend his re-election bid in 2002 — the only time that’s happened with a gubernatorial candidate in my years on the board.

Out of the 55, two others have said they wouldn’t come:

  • Joe Owens, Lexington County councilman. That puzzled me. We have both agreed and disagreed with Mr. Owens in the past. We did not endorse him last time. But I ran into him in the Food Lion a few months ago, and we had a fairly normal and agreeable conversation about county politics, so I don’t know what’s under his skin now. He told Warren Bolton he knew we would endorse Bill Banning, so what’s the point? I remember Mr. Banning’s name, but have only met him once or twice, and am having trouble remembering what he looks like (sorry about that). I suppose I’ll remember right away when he comes in — and his opponent doesn’t.

  • R.L.B. Jay Julius (aka, "BJ the DJ"), seeking the Republican nomination to oppose Lexington County’s one Democratic councilman, Billy Derrick. I don’t recall whether I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Julius, but he sounds like such a meeting would have been interesting.

That leaves 52.

Valerie “Suitcase” Bauerlein

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Have talent, will travel.

Anybody remember Valerie Bauerlein, who covered the State House and politics for The State for several years? She left in September 2004 (which, at my age, seems like a couple of days ago) to go to the Washington bureau of the Raleigh paper. Good reporter. Strong writer.

Anyway, I picked up my Wall Street Journal yesterday morning, and there was her byline, on the front page. So she’s moved again. She just can’t seem to stay in one place. But it’s understandable that she would be in demand.

Sorry to hit y’all with inside baseball again so soon. I just thought I’d share that with any of her sources out there who remember her.

Papa’s got a brand-new boss (No, really!)

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For those of you keeping score, it was announced this morning that our current publisher, Ann Caulkins, will be going to Charlotte after all. But she will not be replaced by Lou Heldman from Wichita. Lou, I am told, had a change of heart about uprooting his family, and decided to stay in Kansas.

Our new publisher — and I think it’s for keeps this time — will be Henry Haitz, currently publisher of the Bradenton Herald.

The announcement was made at 9 this morning– before his arrival — to our senior staff, then he was presented to employees in general in the atrium at 10 (that’s where the rather blurry picture Maypurge_071was taken — papa needs to work on his digital photo skills). He then met with senior staff for an hour.

I knew Lou slightly, from years ago, but we’ll be starting fresh with Mr. Haitz — which is probably good for me, depending on how you look at it. Seriously, though, I had been pretty psyched to be working with Lou. I had meant to e-mail him to tell him I was sorry when his move here was put on hold, but since it was still a potentiality, I didn’t — it would have looked like brown-nosing. Now I’m free to tell him.

So far, everything I’ve heard from and about regarding Henry Haitz is good, but I don’t know as much about his as I did Lou (hence the "Mr." Haitz, even though he’s 10 years my junior). I expect to get to know a good deal more in the next couple of days, and a lot more than THAT when he starts officially, two weeks from today.

That’s it for now. I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up.

Whom will we endorse?

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As both a blogger and editorial page editor, and not exactly in that order, I can run into certain conflicts: If I use the blog to share my impressions of candidates as we wade through endorsement interviews, am I not risking giving away whom we are likely to endorse?

And yet if I don’t share such information from day to day, what’s the point in an editorial page editor having a blog? Isn’t that the (admittedly theoretical) value of the Weblog — that by virtue of my job, I have access to this kind of information? Shouldn’t you get something extra for going there to read it?

Last week, it struck me for the first time: Why the big mystery about whom we might endorse? I’ve written over and over that the point in a newspaper’s endorsement is the why, not the who. If you just glance at the picture and the headline, you’ve missed the point of that kind of editorial.

The benefit for the reader lies in pondering the reasons we give for the choice. (This is a fact easily lost on many of those who read my blog, unfortunately. Judging by their comments, many remain trapped in the phony left-right, Democratic-Republican, are-you-for-this-one-or-are-you-for-that-one dichotomy — which closes their minds to reason.)

The idea is that by reading our endorsements, and reading rebuttals, and thinking about whether you agree or disagree, should add depth to your own decision-making as a voter — whether you vote in the end for the candidate we endorsed or not.

Besides, trying to guess the eventual endorsement from what I write after an interview is inadequate on two levels: First, an endorsement consists not just of what I think, but of what a consensus of the editorial board arrives at. Besides, I could change my own mind as we go along. I once pulled back an endorsement that was on the page and headed for the press. (I had last-minute qualms, did a little more digging and consulted with my colleagues. We rewrote it and went with the other candidate. Neither of  them knows that to this day.)

So, that resolved, I put my initial, rough impressions of our first three candidates (out of 55 I’ll be interviewing for the June 13 primary), on the blog last week. In each case, we were interviewing challengers. When it works out, we try to bring them in first because we tend to know less about them, and this gives us more time to get up to speed.

I also put capsules of those blog posts in my column Sunday. Here are those minimal excerpts, but if you are at all interested (and I hope you are; state legislators are more likely to have a direct impact on your life than those folks in Washington that everyone loves to shout about), I highly recommend following the links to the much-longer full blog posts:

Artie White, H89, Republican.
I didn’t ask Mr. White (challenging Rep. Kenny Bingham of Lexington County) his age, but I know the approximate answer: Quite young. The nice thing about talking to a candidate so recently (two years) out of college is that he still remembers more than most politicians have forgotten about representative democracy and how it’s supposed to work.

Mr. White sets less store by party than his former boss, Joe Wilson (which is a good thing). When asked whether he would make a point of regularly voting with the GOP caucus, he said, “I don’t really think it’s important.”

His main issue? Eminent domain. “Property rights in this country… is the basis of a free country,” he pronounced.

Greatest strengths? Sincerely good intentions and good theoretical knowledge of how government is supposed to work. Greatest weaknesses? Youth and inexperience.

Sheri Few, H79, Republican.
Sheri Few of Kershaw County, who is challenging Bill Cotty for the Republican nomination in District 79, was our first challenger armed with money from school-“choice” advocates, going up against a vocal Republican opponent of Gov. Mark Sanford’s “Put Parents in Charge” plan: “I am a proponent of school choice,” she said. “We need to start treating parents as consumers.”

But she objects to being portrayed as some sort of tool of out-of-state ideologues. She notes that she has raised $30,000 for her race, with only $8,000 of it coming from outside South Carolina.
Why should voters choose her over her opponent? “A Republican should vote for me over Bill Cotty for a couple of reasons,” she said. “I am a conservative.”

She said with tax credits, private entities would set up various schools to address special needs, such as learning disabilities. I said I could see how that might happen in Columbia, where there was enough demand. But what would be the motivation for private enterprise to set up such choices in the areas where South Carolina’s greatest educational challenges lie — poor, sparsely populated counties?

“That’s an excellent question,” she said. “I haven’t really thought about that.”

Joe McEachern, H77, Democratic.
Mr. McEachern, a member of Richland County Council who is challenging Rep. John Scott, is a straightforward sort who goes his own way, as fellow council members can attest to their delight or chagrin.

For instance, when we asked how he would get things done in the House, as a minority member of the minority party, he said, “I’m not one of those folks that carry the banner.” He said that the best course for South Carolina is likely to be something that transcends party and race. As a result, at times he will disagree with the Legislative Black Caucus.

He sees no need for voters to elect the “long ballot” of statewide officials — or for that matter, the purely magisterial offices on the county level.

When he says that, “People say, ‘Oh, no …. We’ll never get an African-American elected” to statewide office if they become appointive. “Have we ever gotten an African-American elected?” he answers.

“Elect a governor and hold him accountable” for having a diverse Cabinet, he said. “That is the best way.”

More importantly, thanks to his experience in local government, he understands the crying need to get the state government — including county legislative delegations — out of local affairs. “We need to make a clean break,” he said. “Either you’re going to have Home Rule or you’re not.”

He said Rep. Scott “thinks it’s his seat,” and “takes it very personal that I’m running against him. But it’s not personal.”

He said folks in the district complain that Mr. Scott neglects them. By contrast, he says, Bill Cotty — the Republican who represents a neighboring House district — is “more hands on.” Mr. McEachern is indeed no typical banner-carrier.

McClatchy execs say all the right things

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I’ve got good news — for me. I think it’s good news for you and all readers of The State as well. CEO Gary Pruitt and two other top McClatchy executives visited the paper this afternoon, and they said all the right things.

I wasn’t taking notes, but here is the gist: McClatchy believes in hiring good people and leaving them alone to run their newspapers. This is great to hear because we’ve already got good people here, andMcclatchy_001_2  there is no more important value in this business than local autonomy.

That’s the way Knight Ridder ran — or didn’t run — things when I joined it in 1985. That gradually became less so over the years, as the company was battered about by unrealistic expectations on Wall Street. It’s still a better newspaper company than many, just not as tremendous as it was.

I will say this for Tony Ridder and KR, though: They never broke their promise about preserving editorial independence of the papers. They started meddling here and there with most of the other executives — publishers, ad directors, etc. — but they left me alone. (And that’s what counts, right?)

The best part of the general employee meeting was when Mr. Pruitt asserted, strongly and eloquently, his own belief in editorial independence. I liked it so much that when he and the others met privately with the executive staff later, I asked him to say it again. He did, and I then sat back and shut up; I had no other questions. (I believe a videotape of the broader meeting exists. I intend to get the exact quotes, and hang onto them.)

I had been slightly worried because I had heard a rumor to the contrary (and I couldn’t check it out Mcclatchy_002because, until the sale is final, we’re not supposed to have any contacts with McClatchy folks not pre-approved by KR, which still owns us). And indeed, once upon a time, when it was a smaller company, there was a certain amount of editorial coordination (I guess that’s what you’d call it) among the California papers in the group. I am reassured that that is not the case today, and apparently has not been corporate policy since the mid-90s, when Mr. Pruitt became the top guy.

While it might be counter-intuitive to people in other lines of work (based on the kinds of questions I get all the time), people who understand the newspaper business understand that it is a local business, and the quickest way to lose credibility is to have your editorial stances change according to the whim of a bunch of pezzonovantes off in some corporate office.

The new boss used an analogy that I’ve used a number of times in the past to explain the importance of editorial consistency: We are like the court system; we respect precedent. You might have a new publisher or a new editorial page editor once in a blue moon, but in making decisions, those folks and the others on a local editorial board should respect the vote of the paper itself as an ongoing, living entity — a quintessentially local entity that can’t be fully understood outside the community. As you might expect — but that made it no less good to hear — this philosophy was also endorsed by VP for News Howard Weaver (another of our visitors today, along with new operations VP Lynn Dickerson).

On a related note, I spoke to a lunch meeting of the West Wateree-Lugoff Rotary today. IMcclatchy_005 had been asked "to come talk to our club about the recent developments with Knight Ridder and McClatchy newspapers." So that’s what I did. Here’s the text of my speech
— or rather, the notes from which I spoke. Although it’s written mostly in complete sentences, I quit reading it after the first few paragraphs — but stuck to the basic thrust.

I could have told those folks a lot more about the future of The State under McClatchy if they had asked me to speak tomorrow instead of today. In any case, the hopes I expressed in what I did say were borne out by what the McClatchy folks said this afternoon.

Of course, in the newspaper business, we have a saying: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." So we have yet to see whether encouraging words are backed up by reality. We won’t know that until after the sale is final, which will be sometime in July or later. And truth be told, you can find bad news within McClatchy if you look hard. (But to me, the fact that the folks in charge in Minneapolis made one bad call just backs up what the honchos told us about local autonomy; McClatchy folks are apparently free to screw up — to a point, anyway).

I’m not normally a guy to say good things about any kind of corporate types. To put it another way, there is a reason why my boss made me move to the opposite end of the table from where Gary Pruitt was to sit before he came in for the senior staff meeting (to steal a line from a certain other blogger, I am not making this up).But for me, right at this moment, I’m feeling as good about the new company as I’m ever likely to feel about such a thing. It’s not as good as owning the paper myself, but it’s good.

It’s not just the thing about local autonomy; it’s the way they explained why they have such an approach. They showed that they get it. That is a fine and rare thing, so pardon me while I savor it.

Oh, one last thing: I neglected to ask the new jefe which was his favorite Ramone. Maybe next time.

Columbia election column

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Fisher has given Coble the
kind of race Columbia needed
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
WHEN KEVIN Fisher had left after energetically making his case in an endorsement interview, I said this to fellow editor Warren Bolton: “You see why I wanted him to run?”
    He nodded.
    A few minutes later, we decided to recommend the board endorse Mayor Bob Coble again.
Sound contradictory? Well, it makes sense to me. I’ll explain.
    A week before the filing deadline, I used this space to urge Mr. Fisher to challenge the mayor. After a lunch during which he had passionately expressed one point of disagreement after another with the mayor, I thought it was high time such criticism was actually aired before the voters.
    Bob Coble has some of the world’s most passive-aggressive critics. They gripe and snipe, but not one who had a chance of unseating him had tried in 16 years.
    I knew Mr. Fisher could make up for that.
    After I wrote that column, a lot of people thought I was backing Mr. Fisher. Then I wrote another column in which I said Columbia voters had a clear choice before them: Mr. Fisher, who tries hard to convince everyone he’s right; or Mr. Coble, who is happy to be seen as self-effacing but effective. That muddied the waters. Some thought at that point that I was declaring for the incumbent, but that wasn’t my intent.
    Mr. Fisher is a very effective critic of the present administration. There’s a lot he doesn’t like, and he expresses eloquently why you shouldn’t like it either. He writes a whale of a good op-ed piece; I hope he keeps them coming.
    But he’s too much like me. I’m a professional critic, and sometimes I write a marginally readable piece lambasting this or that. But I haven’t seen any groundswell of people out there demanding that I run for mayor.
    And I think I understand why. When I look at Columbia’s city council, and imagine myself trying to get that bunch of independently elected prima donnas (no offense) to do what I know good and well they ought to do… well, I reflect that I’ve picked the right line of work — one in which it’s more important to be right than to be effective. I’ll just keep on being a voice crying in the wilderness.
    Mr. Fisher should, too. He’s good at it.
    So why did I want him to run? This city is in the middle of rapid, dramatic, multidirectional change, and it would be a travesty not to have a full, lively debate about its course. I didn’t think the city could afford another mayoral election like the ones it has had the last 16 years.
    The mayor needed challenging. He’s far from perfect. Mr. Fisher is right in many ways. He has a point when he says that “Mayor Bob” is perhaps too affable and, as a result, often isn’t forceful enough to overcome the limitations of his office in this form of government.
    Mr. Fisher is plenty forceful. But he is not affable enough to get things done. There’s a delicate balance involved in working with six council members who are each as powerful as you. Mr. Coble doesn’t always strike that balance, but often does. Mr. Fisher seldom would.
    A lot of good things have happened in the last few years in Columbia, and while the mayor isn’t always the loudest voice in the room, he pushes as hard as anyone. The Vista booms; Main Street is revitalized; old enmities are set aside; strategic partnerships envision a dynamic future for the city, and make it happen.
    Mayor Coble doesn’t shout, but he testifies convincingly to his effectiveness in the past, present and future. Mr. Fisher is great at pointing out the mayor’s failings. But he doesn’t make the case for himself nearly as well.
    In the end, the mayor has risen to his first real challenge, and has defended well his claim to four more years.
    While I’m all for saying who should be elected, I stay clear of predicting who will win. But I will say this: On Tuesday, more people will turn out to vote in Columbia than in a decade of mayoral elections. Whether they favor Mr. Fisher or the mayor, they know that this time, their votes are likely to make a difference.
    If that happens, the winner will be the city of Columbia.

Repeating myself

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Nobody else is likely to notice this, so I’ll just go ahead and tell it on myself.

I realized that in my Sunday column, I was referring to an anecdote I had used once before, so I boiled it down to as brief a reference as possible:

I was once told that someday I would have to decide whether I wanted to be right or effective. There is no doubt which paths these two have chosen.

Only after the page was gone on Friday did I realize I had told this story twice before, once toward the bottom of a column on July 6, 2003 …

One of the many long-suffering bosses I’ve had in my career, thoroughly exasperated with the bullheaded way I tended to play with others, said that if I wanted to be successful, I would have to make up my mind: Did I want to be right, or be effective?

This was at least a decade ago, so I don’t recall exactly how I responded. But I remember being torn between saying either, "Both, of course," or "If I have to choose, I’d rather go down in flames being right."

… and, in an expanded form that actually led the column, I wrote about it again on April 4, 2004:

I ONCE HAD a boss who, in the throes of frustration with me (not an uncommon state among bosses I have known), told me that one of these days, "You’re going to have to make up your mind whether you want to be right, or you want to be effective."

Of course, I wanted to be both. But if absolutely forced to choose, I would dig in and choose the former, and go down in flames if necessary. Hence his frustration.

He was definitely on to something. I’ve had a number of setbacks in my career based on that very propensity. Still, I tend to want politicians to exhibit a similar trait. I keep wanting politics to be about honestly advocating what you believe at all times, and stoically accepting the consequences if your ideas prove to be insufficiently popular to have the effect you desire.

Both references were to make a point about Gov. Mark Sanford, by the way.

You know, the former boss in question — Gil Thelen, who ran The State‘s newsroom back in the long-ago days (more than 12 years ago, now) when I was a part of that department — would probably feel gratified that his point comes to my mind so frequently. Maybe that’s because I still struggle over which one I want more. My answer still tends to be, "both."

Sure, I could just not have mentioned it at all in the first place, but it seemed the
quickest way to introduce the whole organizing dichotomy of the column. And it was in that context that the idea struck me.

And I didn’t think it was worth the wasted money of redoing the page, when I found out I had done it twice. If I had realized what I was doing sooner, I might have introduced the idea another way. I could have said,

I’ve written more than once that Gov. Mark Sanford must choose whether he wants to be right or be effective.

… and so forth. Then I would have felt a little less like a bore. Too late now, though. And here I’ve gone and bored you again with this pointless explaining. Oh, well. You didn’t have to read it.

This young man’s got potential

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I filed a rather flippant post a few days ago about the boss man of McClatchy, the company that is about to buy Knight Ridder (which owns The State). Respectful, of course, but flippant.

Well, let’s get serious for a minute. I was much pleased with this piece in The Wall Street Journal the other day. There’s definitely more to this young man than an obsession with The Ramones. Note that I say "young man" not merely because he’s four years younger than I, but because he looks much younger than that. One of my colleagues (whom I will not name) made a passing reference the other day to "our new 12-year-old boss." That’s a bit of an exaggeration, of course. Mr. Pruitt looks, I would say, thirtyish — which to me is still a kid — but everyone knew to whom the description was meant to refer.

But if he is a kid, he’s a kid with potential. I’ll have to keep my eye on this young man; I have high hopes for him. And yes, I’m saying that because he seems to think about the future of newspapers in much the same way I do. That makes him a smart guy, right?

In case you have trouble linking to the piece, what with the WSJ being all regulation about wanting everybody to be a subscriber, I’ll explain that I’m referring to an op-ed by Mr. Pruitt in the March 16 edition headlined, "Brave News World." Here’s the beginning of it:

Last year, the world celebrated the 400th birthday of the newspaper. Those of us in the business also recognized it as the 399th anniversary of the first prediction of our demise. Speaking as someone whose company is writing a $6.5 billion check to triple its newspaper holdings, I beg to differ.

To many, ink spread across newsprint pages seems old-fashioned and destined to disappear. This conventional wisdom has become so pervasive that you can buy the nation’s second-largest newspaper group, Knight-Ridder, for a price that would have seemed an unimaginable bargain only a few years ago. But while that kind of thinking might be good for our company — we were the buyer, after all — it’s wrong. The fact is, newspapers are still among the best media businesses — and the most important.

He goes on to explain that while readership has declined, it’s still healthy. And while everybody touts the power of TV, he presents some interesting stats to put that into perspective. Here’s one illustration I thought was revealing:

When the Steelers faced off against the Seahawks in SuperBowl XL last
month, 90.7 million people turned in, television’s best day of the
year. But on that Sunday — indeed, on an average Sunday in 2004-2005
— about 124 million people read the Sunday newspaper. Look at it this
way: We won Super Sunday, 12-9.

That may seem an odd comparison: One TV network versus all the papers in the country. But think about it — newspapers are community businesses, not national businesses (with the freakish exception of McPaper, aka USAToday). The local stations are our competition, not the overall network. And we routinely beat those local stations like a drum. So think of his illustration as being about every network affiliate vs. its community newspaper. The papers won in a walk, in terms of market share that day. And there’s no question we beat them in news coverage, every day.

I’ll finish with this excerpt, which addresses the canard that we are being driven out of business by the Web:

While it may seem counterintuitive to suppose that a
company founded before the advent of electric lights would be a media
leader in the age of blogs, podcasts and text messaging, that’s exactly
what has happened. We certainly have competition from Google and
others. But in each of the communities where we compete, almost every
newspaper has the largest news staff, largest sales force, biggest
audience and greatest share of advertising in its market. Whether it’s
on the Internet or off the presses, we are capturing that business.

Adding the unduplicated reach of newspaper Web sites
to newspaper readership shows that, far from shrinking, our audiences
are growing steadily. Simply put, more people want our products today
than wanted them yesterday; this is hardly the profile of a dying
industry. But of course our products have changed as we have all been
forced to adapt. Today’s daily newspaper is the engine driving a
multimedia company that includes popular Web sites, foreign language
publications, direct marketing initiatives and much more. Replacing the
notion of "readers" with "audiences," we’re fast becoming
multi-platform, 24/7 news companies — and it’s working.

Just in case the WSJ gets ticked about my excerpting their material, let me finish by saying that WSJ.com is a fine product, which I would recommend to my friends — but only if they are already seven-day subscribers to The State. If they aren’t, they have no way of knowing what’s going on in their communities. And something they don’t know about on their own street is a whole lot more likely to jump up and bite them where it hurts than something happening in New York or Washington.

 

The Burning Questions

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A colleague brought to my attention this quote from NAA Chairman Jay Smith on McClatchy‘s Gary Pruitt and his contributions on
the NAA Executive Committee:

Treasurer Gary Pruitt — the
tennis-playing, philosopher-quoting aging rocker (The Ramones still rule in his
world) and head of The McClatchy Co. in Sacramento — blends hisPruitt_crop_2 varied interests
with a cool, calculated approach that believes readers will always want quality
first. The go-to guy when consensus building is required, Gary is right about
readers, as he is about so many other things.

Yeah, but which is his favorite Ramone? And what about The Clash? And how could The Ramones rule a world that has Elvis Costello in it?

So many burning questions. I guess we’ll just have to wait until this all shakes out to learn the answers.