Harold Meyerson, at the Washington Post, worries about the Koch Brothers’ latest attempt to institute their “three-pronged, 10-year strategy to shift the country toward a smaller government with less regulation and taxes”:
On May 21, Los Angeles voters will go to the polls to select a new mayor. Who will govern Los Angeles, however, is only the second-most important local question in the city today. The most important, by far, is who will buy the Los Angeles Times.
The Times is one of the eight daily newspapers now owned by the creditors who took control of the Tribune Co. after real estate wheeler-dealer Sam Zell drove it into bankruptcy. Others include the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the Orlando Sentinel and the Hartford Courant. The Tribune board members whom the creditors selected want to unload the papers in favor of more money-making ventures.
Fans of newspapers are a jumpy lot these days. And in the past couple of weeks, their apprehension has gone through the roof with word that right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch are looking to buy all eight papers….
In their very-brief no-comment on the sale rumors, the Kochs took care to note, “We respect the independence of the journalist institutions” owned by Tribune, but the staffs at those papers fear that, once Kochified, the papers would quickly turn into print versions of Fox News. A recent informal poll that one L.A. Times writer conducted of his colleagues showed that almost all planned to exit if the Kochs took control (and that included sportswriters and arts writers). Those who stayed would have to grapple with how to cover politics and elections in which their paper’s owners played a leading role. It’s also unclear who in Los Angeles, one of the nation’s most liberal cities, would actually want to read such a paper, but then the Kochs don’t appear to view this as a money-making venture….
The bankers’ men on the Tribune board likely view the sale of the papers as a financial transaction, pure and simple. But Times readers (and the Koch brothers themselves) would view a sale to the Kochs as a political transaction first and foremost, turning L.A.’s metropolitan daily into a right-wing mouthpiece whose commitment to empirical journalism would be unproven at best. A newspaper isn’t just a business; it’s also a civic trust. The money men who have been plunked down on the Tribune board should remember that as they sell off the civic chronicles of some of America’s great cities.
The Dangerman
If a shitload of trees fell in the woods to print a paper that no one would read (outside of Orange County, perhaps), would it make a sound?
PeakVT
Will no one rid us of these meddlesome billionaires?
Morzer
This is like asking a rabid wolf to remember that it ought to be a vegetarian.
craigie
Speaking as a current LA Times subscriber, I’m already tempted to cancel, just because the paper has become so … small. But I feel conflicted about ending a relationship that goes back to the 70s.
At least selling to those guys would make my decision easy.
Redshift
It would be sad to see many major newspapers all turned into the world’s most expensive clones of the Washington Examiner. Looks like their instincts are as good as when they decided to fund the Teabaggers.
RaflW
The Koch’s might be perfectly happy to have the paper hemorrhage staff and subscribers. Simply destroying a reputable and decent paper may be the “business plan.” They literally have billions they can burn on this sort of thing.
I just hope the decent reporters and editors at the LA Times can find ways to continue to work to bring news to the public to hold these democracy-wreckers to account.
Bruce S
“It’s also unclear who in Los Angeles, one of the nation’s most liberal cities, would actually want to read such a paper…”
The once credible San Francisco Examiner ended up in the hands of some right-wing crankery operation and has popped up with “Examiner” clones in numerous cities, as a free hand-out. Basically the transfer of value was a masthead. The Kochs will probably leverage the LA Times masthead in a similar direction. I’m not a denizen of LA, but the reality is that the Times is walking dead – the damage has been done, and whatever happens has pretty much already happened. I used to be a newspaper junkie but I haven’t had ink stain my fingers in over a decade – with the exception of the Sunday NYTs, which we recently discontinued because…why? I’m an internet subscriber and barely miss the print version. This was a story in the previous decade. At this point in time, as long as the NYTimes has a sustainable business model and The Guardian, et. al. overseas are viable, I can’t shed any tears. Local news is an issue, but frankly I can find out a lot of that on internet sites. I think we’re just going to have to get used to the fact that actual newsPAPERS are – with the exception of a handful of outlets that have global stature – history. New models are evolving – it’s painful – but I don’t see any option for turning back in the case of institutions like the LA Times. It’s not like the Kochs are going to wrangle the allegiance of Los Angelinos once they’ve tipped their hand, no matter how much money they are willing to lose. A ton of $$$ for a fucking masthead! Not losing sleep.
mdblanche
Don’t flatter yourself, Harold. For good or for ill, newspapers just aren’t relevant enough anymore for that to be true.
NotMax
Charles Foster Kane: “You’re right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in… 60 years.”
sb
The Times reporting “strategy” is to drum up controversy depending on which way the wind blows e.g. their current fetishes: education and pension reform. Every story with regard to pensions and education are barely disguised attempts to blame everything and anything on public employees unions (especially teachers unions which the Times hates, hates, hates). Their sports section features five columnists, all white, all over 50 (in the 80’s they had by far the best sports section in the country). Their entertainment coverage, once so strong, is nothing more than a gossip page at this point.
As a teacher and lover of sports and entertainment, I just don’t see what they have to offer that the internet doesn’t get me for free. Newspapers are a civic trust and the Times has done everything it can to violate that trust 8-ways to Sunday. I won’t miss it.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
As a right-wing mouthpiece, the LA Times would be going back to its roots under Harrison Gray Otis. It took too many decades to drag itself out of that much, and then back in it plunges.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@craigie: I felt the same way about the Baltimore Sun … until I saw too many stories from LA and Chicago and not enough by Baltimore reporters. I finally cancelled a 25-year habit. Tribune already killed these papers.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Bruce S: That whole series of transactions involving the Chronicle and Examiner, when the de Youngs liquidated their assets, was a joke. Hearst bought the Chronicle, and sold the Examiner to the Fangs, who were given a subsidy to operate it. The second the subsidy ran out, they dumped it onto Anschutz, who appears to view it the same way the Kochs likely will the LA Times.
scav
@craigie: LA Times, small? Physically small? One could wall paper Ducal estates with their advertising. I think I need to go lie down.
NotMax
Feb. 1, 2000.
The day I canceled my subscription to the local paper, which had been locally family owned and operated for a century since its founding in 1900.
Feb. 1, 2000.
The day Ogden Newspapers, a right-wing fundamentalist outfit based in West Virginia, bought the local paper.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Of one thing we can be certain; if the Kochs buy the LAT and circulation plunges thereafter it will be blamed on the internet.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@NotMax: The newspaper I grew up with, the Palo Alto Times/Peninsula Times-Tribune, was shut down in 1992 by the Tribune company, because it wasn’t making a large enough profit. Note, it was actually turning a profit at the time they pulled the plug on it.
cthulhu
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
Yup. Fluffed young Tricky Dick. But I have been a subscriber since I moved down here in the late 80’s when it had done a fairly decent job of moving left. I wouldn’t want to see it end up working it’s final days as a Koch mouthpiece. Regardless, the days are numbered for the classic newspaper model anyway. Here’s hoping the good folks like Hiltzik et al. find decent gigs when the time comes.
? Martin
Joy. OC will enjoy the competition between a right wing newspaper and a far right wing newspaper. Let the race begin.
NotMax
@Higgs Boson’s Mate
♫ Things go worser with Koch. ♫
(Not a word, I know. Call it poetic license.)
Spaghetti Lee
I think it’s sad. Yes, I do still like reading newspapers. But if these fucks buy the Trib then like hell I’m gonna keep reading.
I don’t wanna sound provincial here, but…Chicago journalism. Carl Sandberg, Studs Terkel, Mike Royko, Robert Abbott, Roger Ebert. And now this? It’s sad. It’s pathetic. Maybe newspapers were doomed as soon as the internet came into wide use, but let the historical record show that the Kochs, Murdoch, and the rest of the slime throttled them to death before they went out peacefully.
Petorado
The rise of social media has been based upon trust. Those you allow into your social circle to pass along their version of the news are people you trust, or at least you know where they are coming from. The MSM is disintegrating into a rich person’s newsletter, that I no longer trust, nor will I pay for it to cross my threshold. The Koch’s aren’t as smart as they think they are. They stand there with wooden stake and mallet in hand proclaiming the rebirth of a soul-sucking enterprise they say their actions will resurrect. I don’t think that’s what will happen.
KG
@The Dangerman: they already have that, it’s called the Orange County Register. Which, somewhat ironically, runs the NYT wire service for most of their hard news… the commentary though, that’s as bizzaro world libertarian as you can get (and I still count myself as something of a libertarian)
craigie
@scav:
Physically, yes – advertising doesn’t count. But also, more importantly, intellectually small. Hell, the most interesting part of it now is often the letters to the editor.
And there are much better examples of that sort of thing right here at BJ.
NotMax
Of course, the Kochs could consolidate their holdings and print on Angel Soft or Quilted Northern toilet paper, both of which they own.
KG
@Petorado: It’s funny, I very rarely actually read a paper anymore. I use to, on occasion grab one if I went to breakfast on a Sunday morning – half the time I’d pick up one that someone else had left behind. Now my pointers for news tend to be two or three blogs that I still read regularly, and the occasional link someone posts on Facebook. Well, those and ESPN.
When I was in law school, 2002-2005, I read probably 40 blogs regularly, read/scanned 6 papers close to daily. That’s when I was trying to be a blogger, but I’d always lose interest in most of the goings on.
I think newspapers are always going to exist in some form… just like I think record stores will exist in some form (and yes, sadly, iTunes is a form). But at the end of the day, their relevance is going to be a lot less than it use to be.
Spaghetti Lee
Maybe it’s just because I’m getting a BA with a minor in journalism at precisely the wrong time, but I’m still quite bitter about the whole thing. I’m not as on board with the groovy social media train as some of you. If anything, I think it allows bullshit to travel quicker and farther, and because it’s from ‘your friends’, more people end up believing it, or at least not rejecting it. No, retweeting is not ‘citizen journalism’. Yes, the guy who’s been a foreign reporter for 40 years and has lived in 12 countries is an objectively better source than the random dip on your facebook feed. It’s not like people didn’t know anything about the world before 2004, so obviously newspapers knew how to do their job at some point, and I don’t think there’s anything inherent that prevents them from still being worthwhile. The problem is that the whole damn industry seems intent on cannibalizing itself, dumbing down its coverage, becoming ideological whores for corporate shit-kings like the Kochs. I want to have a wealth of newspapers and newsweeklies worth reading, but apparently the people who actually run them don’t want me to.
Bruce S
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Yeah, that was a bizarre chronology. Forgot about that bizarre Hearst switcheroo with the Chron. Then the Fang scam. And all that’s left is that eagle masthead – a logo that’s proliferated into multi-city handouts that would have more value if the paper wasn’t too rough to wipe your ass with. The rest is history.
Spaghetti Lee
I’ve said this many times before, but I don’t get the Koch brothers. I mean, you’re two of the richest people in the world, and you’re old enough that you’re not under pressure to fight for more. You’ve won. You’ve won at life. You have achieved success. Do neither of them have any fucking hobbies, or anything they’d want to do that they could just do for the rest of their lives? Why this insistence, this manic, fevered, unyielding desire to remake the world in their image? Charles Koch is fucking 80 years old. What, does he think God will give him a special cloud in heaven if he succeeds in buying yet another tax cut or making an extra $50 million before he croaks? What does he have to gain from all this?
KG
@Spaghetti Lee: what fucked up newspapers more than anything was the rise of cable news and how newspapers reacted to the internet. They made a huge mistake in putting all their content online for free from jump street. There was no reason to pay for yesterday’s news. They put themselves behind the eight ball and it’s been all downhill from there
MikeJ
@Spaghetti Lee: It’s not about winning, it’s about making other people lose.
KG
@Spaghetti Lee:
I have a feeling they are doing it.
Gian
@Spaghetti Lee:
to remake the world in his image and get rid of the estate tax so as to better perpetuate power and wealth to his progeny. (does this thug have kids?)
asshole. when it comes to asshole men of extreme wealth, give me Andrew Carnegie…
“I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.”
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/andrew_carnegie.html#mt1J1L7AqUQVcO2Y.99
? Martin
@KG:
Craigslist shoved in the knife – classifieds were the paper’s bread and butter, and then adsense twisted it. Papers all ran their own ad desks and they expected to continue that online. Craigslist, then Google the wealth destroyer, put an end to that.
Bob, for example...
@Spaghetti Lee:
Perhaps it will be your role to figure out how to get the guy who’s been a foreign reporter for 40 years, has lived in 12 countries and is an objectively better source than the random dip on your facebook feed a presence on the new media.
Paper is dead. Not “the paper”. All paper.
It’s too slow. It’s too limited.
There’s probably enough of us out of 306 million who would pay a few bucks a month for a quality news site, one that does deep investigative reporting. Someone has to figure out how to make that happen.
Irish Steel
@Spaghetti Lee: I think it’s like a religious calling. They could no more stop being horrid neo-Birchers than the Pope could retire. Or something like that.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@? Martin: The local weekly which arrives in my mailbox every Friday teamed up with a local online classifieds company a while ago, and it seems to have worked out fairly well for them.
? Martin
@Spaghetti Lee:
Stamping on a human face forever doesn’t qualify as a hobby now? Geez, tough crowd.
David Koch
they’re buying into a terminally dying medium
all the Koch’s horses and all the Koch’s men won’t be able to put newspapers back together again.
Spaghetti Lee
@? Martin:
Ah, that’s some good gallows humor.
There was some talk about grave-defecating and suitable punishments in the afterlife re: Rush Limbaugh earlier today. Take everything I said about him and make it double for these fuckers. Those three, along with Murdoch, can’t die fast enough. Put ’em all together and I’d say you’ve got 50% of how this country got so fucked up.
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
I think when you’re born into fabulous wealth and live the rest of your life there, money doesn’t seem meaningful anymore. You get the urge to leave your mark on the world and reassure yourself that there was more to your life than just counting your millions all day. (And I think that’s why Mitt Romney ran for president, too).
Also don’t forget that the Koch brothers’ father was a founding member of the John Birch Society. They’ve been spoon fed this Randroid Gospel since they were in the cradle, and their wealth has shielded them from any need to discover that it’s not true. This is all they know.
The Dangerman
@David Koch:
…and, after all these years, papers like the LAT still don’t get the Internet. It’s really quite unbelievable.
Sure, limit the number of articles I can get per month per browser; I’ll just load up a bunch of browsers on my machine. If I happen to max those all out, I’ll just do a keyword search at news.google and I still get the article for free. I’d gladly pay for premium content if the content was truly premium, but it’s not.
Spaghetti Lee
@Bob, for example…:
Paper is dead. Not “the paper”. All paper.
Yeah, fuck that too. I’m going out kicking and screaming on that front.
You want to talk scams? One of the big ones of the 21st Century so far has been convincing people that being constantly connected to the internet is something desirable. And yes, it’s been getting increasingly less ‘as much as you want’ and more ‘whether you want it or not.’ There are times when I don’t want a multimedia experience or new ways to connect with friends or lists of recommended products. There are times when I just want to read a god-damned book. And fuck everyone who’s ruining that.
Ben
Given the current editorials that run in the Chicago Tribune, I doubt I would be able to tell the difference if the Koch Brothers brought it.
The prophet Nostradumbass
AAAAAAGGGGGHHHH! One of my cousins in Ireland posted some Boston Bombing Truther garbage on Facebook earlier today.
The Dangerman
@Spaghetti Lee:
I thought you were going to say Facebook. All internet business that doesn’t end up with something tangible in your hands (i.e., a book from Amazon) is doomed; I recall when Myspace was all the rage. Facebook will follow them into the pit (Facebook phone should accelerate that demise).
ETA: This is one of the reasons why Universities give out diplomas; a service without something tangible at the end is on the way out.
Redshift
@Bruce S:
If so, that was a complete failure. I never realized that the Washington Examiner and examiner.com had anything to do with the San Francisco Examiner. It was just a crappy right-wing tabloid that got dumped in people’s driveways that many wouldn’t even bother to pick up and put in the trash. (I saw a lot of that when I was canvassing in ’08.)
And even if I had made the connection, it wouldn’t have meant anything to me.
cthulhu
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
But that’s just the point. In the past, the dailies charged a premium for classifieds compared to other smaller newspapers based upon their subscription rate. Having paid for ads in both, it was still running 10:1 in the early days of the www. But when you get undercut at cost zero for a wider reach once CL came along, you can see how that economic model is f*ed. So the print classifieds shrink (even with offering online for free) and they are forced to sell more and more prime eighths, quarters, halfs and fulls at what must be bargain prices compared to the past at least based on the types of businesses that appear prominently now.
The fact that Variety just gave up on being a daily probably extends LAT’s profitability a bit longer as the studios still seem fine with pumping a lot of ad $ into newsprint.
Spaghetti Lee
@The Dangerman:
Seems hard to believe now, given that they’ve wormed their way into so many parts of life. I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes normal for companies to turn down people who don’t have facebook accounts. Not just who won’t show them, but who don’t have them. Because, hey, how can they tell you’re a trustworthy person without one? Only shady people don’t have facebook accounts. If you’ve got nothing to hide, why won’t you get one? And on it goes.
I’ve actually had a pretty not-bad experience with Facebook. I don’t have any uncles or high school friends who have gone totally around the bend (a few conservatives, but ones I can still be friendly with). I signed up at a time when I was so desperately starved for human affection that getting back in touch with everyone from high school sounded like a dream come true. Well, it hasn’t quite been an acceptable substitute, which is why I’m finally seeing a counselor for depression, probably a good 3 years after I should have started. I go on facebook maybe a few times a week and I can’t imagine being addicted to it. It’s mostly just my friends posting memes and junk that aren’t really interesting. Odd, I remembered them being more interesting in person.
I think there’s a big enough demand for social networking that if facebook ends up tripping over its own dick and falling to pieces like myspace, there will be another company waiting in the wings. Maybe the next one won’t have such mad-scientist-level obsessions with becoming the ruling body of the internet, but, well, hope in one hand and shit in the other.
John Weiss
@Spaghetti Lee: The Koch brothers’ hobby is fucking with the rest of us.
The Dangerman
@Spaghetti Lee:
::raises hand::
I also don’t text and talk on the cell phone only a few minutes a month (basically, emergencies).
I guess I’m a dinosaur ;-)
ricky
Aren’t the Kochs already the nation’s leading manufacturer
of papers in the toilet?
David Koch
Speaking of buying them.
digya see Hillary gave a $200,000 speech today at a Dallas resort to a bunch of real-estate lobbyists.
She doesn’t need the money, so why did she do it. Well, the answer is to cozy up to them so they can finance her 2016 run.
To John Edwards and Obummer’s credit, they didn’t take money from lobbyist. They didn’t accept $400,000 from Rupert Murdoch. Hillary had no such problems, if you remember she defended her practice at 2007 Dkos debate saying, “a lot of these lobbyists, whether you like it or not, represent real Americans,” a statement brought the audience to riotous laughter.
The problem is you would have hoped that Hillary had learned something from the last two elections. You can raise a lot of money online and not have to sell us out to lobbyists who will later demand and receive deregulation such as repealing Glass-Steagal.
But I guess you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
David Koch
+
BillinGlendaleCA
@David Koch: So I take it you’re not a PUMA?
David Koch
@BillinGlendaleCA: It’s mind boggling how some supposed liberals/populists are promoting a corporatist Blue-Dog like Clinton instead of a true progressive.
Redshirt
Fuck the Puma, man.
Just One More Canuck
@Bob, for example…: here you go
http://www.icij.org/
Tyro
@KG: They made a huge mistake in putting all their content online for free from jump street
In fairness, all of their attempts to make people pay for content, or even to “register for free” failed pretty badly.
Tyro
@Spaghetti Lee: Yeah, fuck that too. I’m going out kicking and screaming on that front.
You insist that paper has a viable future, outside of a few niches, you’re irritated at the 24/7 availability of the Internet for most everything, and you want to go into journalism. I am going to respectfully suggest that you have a pattern of betting on the wrong horse every time you are faced with making a decision. You might want to do something about that before the consequences become much more severe.
elmo
Newspapers are a civic trust? Since when? Seriously, when was this?
Must’ve been at the same time kids respected their elders, we didn’t have all this crime, people were moral and didn’t screw around behind other people’s backs, and we all had good jobs with great benefits during peacetime. And everyone was above average.
Jesus. Newspapers have always been a vehicle for selling advertising. Nothing more. Do I also have to explain that Steve Jobs went into business to make money?
“You provide the pictures. I’ll provide the war.”
Xenos
@Spaghetti Lee: I never did much with facebook until I went back to school and had to do group projects with a bunch 22-year-olds. They don’t even email anything, just post messages with links and attachments via facebook. IMO it is a pretty crappy platform for that sort of connection, but it is flexible and it is standard, and it is all they use.
sherparick
In one sense, this would be the LA Times going back to the future as it was a right-wing voice of the Chandler family from the late 19th to the mid-20th Century, when newspapers were far more powerful than they are now. Most notably, we probably have the LA Times and the Chandler family to thank for Tricky Dick Nixon. But with Otis Chandler that changed, and I guess in what will be considered the golden age of both the morning newspaper and broadcast TV news – 1960 to 1985 – it became one of the best papers in the country (it wasn’t such a golden age for evening papers – TV killed them off).
Now, if the Chicago Tribune (also originally a very right-wing paper until the 1960s) and LA Times become Koch propaganda broadsheets, like the Examiner, I don’t think it will mean very much outside the Conservative tribe. Like the Caller, the Breitbots, Drudge, and such it will filled with hack articles designed to send a thrill and such. For anyone outside the Tribe they will be a joke, and soon, as both Faux and the other parts of the right-wing entertainment complex, an embarrassment.
Gindy51
@Spaghetti Lee: He has more than you, that’s it. Like Ford when asked why he needed more money, he just wanted a bit more.
I had a FIL who was exactly like these two. Nothing he got a hold of ever got away; not money, women, or even his kids (my husband was the exception, the old fart wasn’t counting on fighting me).
When he died, all rejoiced at the newly found freedom his wife and other kids had. MIL, who hated my guts too, spent money traveling and giving to various charities her husband refused to allow her to donate to while he lived.
No one cares about him, no one visits his grave or even tends it. He was an evil, greedy man who only wanted more than his share. In the end, he died just like every other human being on the face of the earth, all his money could not change that.
Tokyokie
@Spaghetti Lee:
Jake Gittes: How much are you worth?
Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want?
Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you’re worth. More than 10 million?
Noah Cross: Oh my, yes!
Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?
Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.
Bruce S
@Redshift:
At this point it doesn’t mean much of anything to people in SF who remember the old Examiner either. A corpse is a corpse.
Bruce S
@Spaghetti Lee:
I think that the problem is that cable & internet force journalists to think fast and fill space all of the time. That’s the inherent pressure of the newer mediums and its corrosive of good journalism, much less great journalism. The best print journalists could take a bit more time to work it out before they ran with it – even working for dailies.
This problem is evident even in Chris Hayes’ new weeknight show. Hayes is my favorite on MSNBC far and away, mostly because he’s sort of the anti-cable personality. I think he’s doing a good job and has managed not to simply clone Rachel’s formula, but frankly I think his weekend, early morning two hours allowed for a more interesting and informative format than an hour every weeknight in prime cable time. Even our earnest young nerd and polymath Chris is starting to master the tropes and conventions of his current environment and I fear he’s becoming less and less of a rough gem in the vast wasteland.
Ksmiami
@Spaghetti Lee: I just want them to both die painful deaths alone with their money
Eric
Reporters will quit en masse? And go where? LAT is a place where you wind up after paying your dues at smaller papers. they’ll quit if the Koch bros drop the salaries to minimum wage, but most of them will put their kids throu college and pay the mortgage before making a principled stand. Otherwise they would’ve left when the tribune co. Bought them in 2000.
Short Bus Bully
@Petorado: Fucking brilliant anaysis. Thanks.