Tag Archives: Amarillo Globe-News

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Big change is coming to local media outlet

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I heard the news this morning via a text message from a former colleague.

The publisher of the Amarillo Globe-News — where I worked for nearly 18 years — is “stepping down.” Lester Simpson, who ran the paper for more than 15 years, is leaving to, um, pursue other interests. The announcement came today; Simpson’s last day on the job is Friday.

I will not comment in any detail on Simpson’s tenure at the Globe-News. I’ve already shared with you the circumstances of my departure from that organization in August 2012. It was an unhappy event that has led to a glorious post-journalism life for my wife and me.

I also have commented on this blog about the state of the Globe-News, how I perceive it to be in dire peril. Its decline occurred on Simpson’s watch as publisher. Enough said there.

What happens next is anyone’s guess.

The paper is owned by someone new. GateHouse Media purchased the entire Morris Communications group of newspapers this past fall. Morris had owned the Globe-News since 1972, when it purchased the paper from S.B. Whittenberg.

Print media all across the country have undergone immense change over the past decade. The Internet has taken huge bites out of print media’s income base; advertisers have bailed from newspapers, along with subscribers.

I have no clue on how GateHouse intends to wage that struggle. My hope for the community is that it does a better job in fighting that fight than Morris ever did.

The Texas Panhandle deserves to have a strong media voice chronicling events in its various communities. There once was a time when the Globe-News was a significance presence in communities ranging from Perryton to Plainview and from Farwell to Childress. That’s no longer the case.

Morris Communications sought to achieve greatness as a media company, but to my mind usually fell woefully short. It couldn’t execute a strategy. The Globe-News sought to cultivate a TV audience on its website; it hasn’t worked. On my last day on the job there, Aug. 31, 2012, Simpson told me “radical changes” were coming to the paper; the only radical change I’ve seen has been the precipitous decline in the paper’s ability to cover the life of the communities it used to serve.

So … the winds of change continue to sweep through what used to be the Texas Panhandle’s preeminent media organization.

I wish those who remain at the Globe-News well as they continue to fight under new leadership.

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Once-flourishing craft is in serious peril

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I am saddened by what I see happening to the craft I pursued for 37 years.

It’s in trouble. Print journalism as I pursued it is being eaten alive by technology it never saw coming back in the 1970s when I entered that line of work.

I won’t buy into the nutty notion that newspapers are no longer viable purveyors of information. They continue to do great work covering the news of the day. They continue to keep the public informed on policy matters that have direct impact on citizens of this country.

Nor will I accept the “fake news” mantra that keeps pouring out of the pie holes of conservative politicians who seek to discredit the media that are merely doing their job.

What is happening to newspaper saddens me because it need not happen in the manner that is occurring.

I want to point to the last stop on my career, the Amarillo Globe-News, as an example of what I see transpiring. The newspaper that once won print journalism’s greatest honor is now a mere shadow of its former self.

In 1960, the Globe-News actually comprised two newspapers: The Daily News and the Globe-Times. The Globe-Times captured the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service by exposing county government corruption. The paper was led by the legendary editor Tommy Thompson. If you look at the G-N’s building on Van Buren Street, you’ll see a plaque commemorating that honor.

But …

The Van Buren Street building is vacant. The paper’s new corporate owners, GateHouse Media, decided to move what is left of the newsroom across the parking lot to the company’s other office building facing Harrison Street. That structure has an inscription over its front door: “A newspaper can forgiven for lack of wisdom, but never for lack of courage.” That quote came from another legendary figure, Globe-Times publisher Gene Howe.

I was proud to work for the Globe-News for nearly 18 years. My career ended on Aug. 31, 2012. I resigned after being phased out of my job in a corporate reorganization.

The paper has continued to wither since then. It’s not because of my absence, but rather because — as I have viewed it — the paper has not kept pace with the changing information trends sweeping the world.

It sells far fewer copies each day than it did a decade ago. It publishes its daily editions with far fewer employees than it did even five years ago. The Globe-News no longer operates a printing press in Amarillo; its editions are printed in Lubbock and then shipped back to Amarillo for delivery to what remains of its subscriber list.

The newsroom used to operate in a different building from where the advertising department works. That was by design. When I arrived in January 1995 I was told that the newspaper wanted to keep the functions separate to protect the integrity of the news-gathering team. There would be no pressure to publish stories that advertisers might want.

Today? The depleted newsroom staff now sits side by side with an equally depleted advertising staff in the first-floor office space on Harrison Street.

My, how times have changed.

I am acutely aware that other media markets are undergoing tremendous pressures as well. Some major metro markets no longer even have newspapers delivered daily to subscribers’ homes.

They face pressure from the Internet, from cable TV news, from the plethora of outlets that provide information that could be legit — or it could be, um, fake.

Meanwhile, newspaper reporters and editors continue to do their jobs the way they were taught to do them. The problem, though, is that much of the public isn’t paying attention.

And a once-flourishing and proud craft is paying a grievous price.

I look at what is left of the place that served as my last stop on a career that gave me so much happiness and satisfaction — and I am saddened.

local news, media news

Happy Trails, Part 16

I’m still trying to shake myself loose from my previous life as a working stiff, but a brief encounter today illustrated how difficult that task remains.

I walked into the polling place this morning to vote in the Amarillo municipal and Amarillo College election. I presented the voting judge my voting registration card and my driver’s license (with photo ID that’s now required).

He looked it over, signed me and said, “Oh, you’re with the newspaper.”

“Um, no. I used to be,” I answered. “I left the Globe-News nearly five years ago,” I explained. “I guess you haven’t missed me,” I joked. He chuckled and said, rather sheepishly, “I don’t read the paper.”

“Well,” I said, “neither do I.”

This is the kind of greeting I get from time to time as I conduct daily business here. My job as Opinion page editor of the Globe-News more or less defined me in the eyes of many folks who read the paper and saw my name on the Opinion page masthead.

That’s all great. At some level I do appreciate the recognition that comes my way. Everyone who brings up my recent past is gracious, kind, some are complimentary; others say something like, “Oh, I often disagreed with you, but I always read your stuff.”

My wife and I are still in the midst of this transition from full-time work to full-time retirement. The transition is progressing along many fronts. The most critical of them is our on-going effort to prepare to commence to get ready to relocate.

When that task is completed, hopefully sooner rather than later, we’ll be resettled in a new community where no one knows us from the past we have left behind. We’ll greet everyone for the first time and no one — except for family members who will live nearby — will know what either of us used to do for a living.

I look forward to completing that journey.

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Happy Trails, Part 12

My mind has this habit of wandering backward.

Yes, it goes forward, too. It’s been moving ahead in this post-retirement phase to the next great adventure that awaits my wife and me. When it’s not thinking ahead, it occasionally drifts into the past.

My mind did so again today as I began thinking about two colleagues of mine who died within a week of each other under quite different circumstances.

Buddy Seewald died in an auto accident north of Amarillo. He wasn’t ready to leave this world. It happened. He was gone. Just like that.

Then came news of the death of Virgil Van Camp, a much older gentleman, who died of natural causes at the age of 87.

I wrote about them in September 2013. Here’s the link to that earlier piece.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2013/09/there-goes-another-good-man/

I tend to reminisce in my own mind about my past, about the career path I chose and the people I met along the way. Buddy and Virgil were two men who affected me greatly during the time we worked together. They were contributors to the Amarillo Globe-News opinion pages, which I had the high honor of editing for nearly 18 years.

My memory of them reminds me of how much tried-and-true fun I had pursuing this particular craft.

They enabled us to keep the newspaper more relevant in people’s lives. They would share their world view on particular issues. They would debate them between themselves and share their differing perspectives with Globe-News readers.

This was just on the eve of the Internet Invasion, before newspapers — the printed version that carriers would toss onto our porches — began losing their relevance.

I was proud to be a part of that era. It saddens me at some level to see all the changes that are occurring within the industry. Newspapers are printing fewer copies each day. They’re moving toward what publishers call the “digital product”; as an aside, I detest the word “product” to describe a printed newspaper.

While I am somewhat sad these days, I also look back with great fondness at the journey I was allowed to travel.

Friends and associates like Buddy and Virgil made it all the more fun.

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Happy Trails … to us

This blog has allowed me to cover many things over the years I’ve been writing it.

Its primary focus is politics and public policy. I also choose to write about “life experience” and assorted other matters that pop into my noggin. I’ve shared with you how my wife and I have become parents to an adorable puppy named Toby; I post Puppy Tales items on occasion.

I also have been writing what I call an “occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.” I included that message in a sort of “editor’s note” at the start of those entries.

Today I announce the end of that feature on “upcoming retirement.” There’s no more “upcoming” about it.

It’s here. It has arrived. Or, shall I say it’s arrival is right around the corner.

Accordingly, you’re going to get a new series of blog posts. I’m calling it “Happy Trails.”

It will chronicle the adventures upon which we are embarking. They might involve travel in our fifth wheel RV; they might include a vignette about Toby the Puppy; they might involved preparations we’re making to relocate.

Or … they might simply offer some perspective on issues of the day from a retired individual who spent nearly 37 years in daily journalism, most of it commenting on issues, public officials or the community where we were living.

It was my goal at the Amarillo Globe-News to retire from that organization. I arrived there in January 1995 to become editorial page editor of the Daily News and Globe-Times. The papers merged in 2001 to become the Globe-News — which is what most folks in the Panhandle called it anyway; the afternoon paper, the Globe-Times, vanished.

Circumstances beyond my control didn’t allow me to retire from the paper. The publisher reorganized the place in the summer of 2012. He instructed all employees in the newsroom — and yours truly — to apply for any job they wanted. I looked at the rewritten job description, saw the few new wrinkles in it — and then decided to apply for my own job.

It didn’t work out quite the way I anticipated. The publisher decided to hire someone else, a former colleague of mine who worked under my supervision for several years before he had transferred back to another department in the newsroom.

I was — shall we say — stunned to get the news.

I quit the next day. Cleared out my office, went to visit with the publisher for a brief — and awkward — meeting. Then I was on my way.

All I wanted was to be able to retire, to leave of my own volition. I was unable to do so in quite the manner I envisioned, unable to retire from the craft I had loved for so many years. To this day, even though I resigned, I feel almost like a persona non grata at the Globe-News.

But … what the hey!

That was then. The here and now has arrived. I am going to retire — on my own terms — from the part-time job I’ve been working for the past three-plus years.

So, this blog is going to include a feature I hope you’ll enjoy reading as much as I intend to enjoy writing.

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Words ‘I am retired’ flowing more easily

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This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.

You might not think this is a big deal, but it is to me.

The words “I am retired” are flowing more easily out of my pie hole these days.

I get asked frequently by customers at the auto dealership where I work: “Do you do this full time, part time or what? Are you retired?”

My answer: “Oh I’m retired now.”

Actually, my presence at the auto dealership reveals that I am not yet fully retired. I’m getting there, slowly but inexorably.

I’ll admit to being a bit uncomfortable saying “I am retired” when I first started collecting my Social Security income. My discomfort wasn’t anything that I can identify. I didn’t have pangs in my gut. I didn’t stutter when I said it. I didn’t flinch, wince or grimace at the sound of the words.

It was just a strange set of words coming from me, of all people, a guy who had worked pretty damn hard for nearly 40 years in daily journalism. Then it ended. I was sent out to pasture, along with a number of other, um, more mature fellow practitioners of this noble craft.

I have admitted already that I wasn’t ready for the day I tendered my resignation after being told someone else would be doing the job I had been doing at my last newspaper stop here in Amarillo. Instead of seeking another job at the Globe-News, I decided to quit.

Boom, just like that, my career was over.

The onset of retirement is sounding more comfortable to me these days. I’ve still got a couple of part-time jobs that keep me busy. There’s the Street Toyota auto dealership customer service gig; there’s also my freelance writing gig at KFDA NewsChannel 10.

However, I am feeling more retired these days than not.

What’s more, I am quite comfortable saying it out loud.

Ain’t it cool?

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You have unprofessional, petulant, petty … and then you have this

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Take a look at this page. It’s today’s Opinion page from the Amarillo Globe-News, the newspaper where I worked for nearly 18 years.

What you see here is the product of a personal feud between the newspaper’s publisher, Lester Simpson and Amarillo’s now-former interim city manager, Terry Childers.

goodbye-terry

Words damn near fail me as I ponder what the publisher has done under the name of the organization he has overseen since the summer of 2002.

Childers quit his municipal post this week after muttering a profane epithet at a constituent during an Amarillo City Council meeting.

This is the response today from the newspaper of record. Did the city manager deserve criticism for his own brand of  unprofessional behavior? Of course he did. The newspaper should have delivered it in the form of an editorial explaining why the manager was out of line. But no-o-o-o. The paper delivered this instead.

A few words come to mind: petulant, unprofessional, bullying, petty, shameful, reprehensible, disgusting. Pick one. Pick more if you like. Pick ’em all. Add some more if you choose.

Rarely during the nearly four decades I worked in daily print journalism have I seen such a display from an organization that is charged with being the voice of reason in a community.

Some longtime Amarillo and Texas Panhandle residents will have looked at this page this morning and have been reminded of another such display.

It occurred in the late 1980s when the former Amarillo resident and oil/natural gas tycoon T. Boone Pickens got into a beef with the newspaper over its coverage of local issues and — namely — Pickens himself. Pickens launched a boycott against the Globe-News. He then persuaded the paper’s corporate ownership, Morris Communications, to “reassign” the then-publisher, Jerry Huff.

On Huff’s last day as publisher, one could see a banner hanging from the side of what was known as the Mesa Building. It read: “Goodbye Jerry.”

That, ladies and gents, is the model of decorum that the current publisher of the newspaper demonstrated today with that ridiculous and childish message.

Simpson and Childers have been feuding for nearly the entire time that Childers took over as interim manager. I am not privy to the root of their mutual displeasure. Simpson reportedly disliked the way Childers handled downtown redevelopment. The disagreement likely turned into something much more heated with the forced resignation of Melissa Dailey, former head of Downtown Amarillo Inc., with whom Simpson had worked on downtown issues.

Suffice to say, though, that this example demonstrates how low one can go when disputing matters of public policy.

There’s intelligent, reasoned disagreement. Then there is this.

Good grief!

This thought comes to mind. Given that the Globe-News endorsed Donald J. Trump for president, perhaps the publisher of the paper can seek a job in the Trump administration.

He’d fit right in with the bully in chief.

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Now … who will get my local paper’s endorsement?

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th

This just in … The Houston Chronicle has endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for the presidency of the United States.

The Chronicle said in its editorial that it normally waits until the end of the campaign to make its recommendation. It backed Mitt Romney in 2012.

This year, it’s different, according to the Chronicle. The paper’s editorial board has made up its mind. The nation needs a “steady hand” in “these unsettling times.” The hand doesn’t belong to Republican nominee Donald J. Trump.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/7/29/1554307/-Houston-Chronicle-endorses-Hillary-Clinton-for-President-says-Trump-is-danger-to-the-Republic

I don’t know why I should care, but I do wonder who will get the backing of my local newspaper, the Amarillo Globe-News, where I worked for nearly 18 years. I quit my job there at the end of August 2012.

I have no contact with the AG-N’s editorial board, which comprises the publisher and its director of commentary. I can only offer an educated guess how they’ll go, given the paper’s history of backing Republicans for president — and given the paper’s corporate ownership, which has a visceral loathing of Hillary Clinton.

My guess is that a lot of newspapers are going to weigh in early — and perhaps often — on this race. They’ll decide, perhaps as the Houston Chronicle has decided, that there’s no reason to wait. Whether they’re favoring Clinton or Trump, let’s get it out there on the record, they might surmise.

As for the Amarillo Globe-News, they’re likely to preach to the proverbial choir by backing Trump, who’s likely to carry on the Republican tradition of capturing a majority of votes in Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle.

The serious stunner would be if the G-N backs Clinton.

Don’t look for hell to freeze over.

My interest will lie in how the paper makes its case for Trump and how much of this individual’s record it will ignore.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/06/good-luck-editorialists-in-making-your-decision/

 

local news, media news, national news, political news, State news

Political conventions: raucousness with serious purpose

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I won’t be attending either of this year’s political conventions.

Part of me wishes I could because — having been to three of them over the years — I’ve discovered how much fun they are for those who attend them and for those who report and comment on them.

This year’s Republican convention in Cleveland could be especially fun especially for the reporters lucky enough to get the assignment to cover it.

My first political convention was in 1988, when Republicans gathered in New Orleans.  I was part of the media team representing the Hearst Corp., which owned the Beaumont Enterprise, where I worked for nearly 11 years.

Any convention in The Big Easy was a serious blast, given that it’s, well, New Orleans.

Four years later, the Republicans gathered in Houston, about 85 miles in the other direction from Beaumont. That one produced its own share of memories. Chief among them was watching former President Reagan deliver his last major political speech in which he poked fun at the Democrats for nominating a young Arkansas governor who compared himself to Thomas Jefferson. “Well, I knew Thomas Jefferson,” the president said. “Thomas Jefferson was a friend of mine …” He brought down the house.

Four years ago, I had secured press credentials for the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. I didn’t have the support of the Amarillo Globe-News or its parent company, Morris Communication. I applied for the credentials on my own and then received them. Then my world was turned upside-down when I got “reorganized” out of my job at the paper just as the convention was about to begin the following week.

I went to Charlotte anyway — with my wife; we enjoyed ourselves immensely. I attended the convention as a spectator and got to cheer as President Obama and Vice President Biden received their party’s nominations for re-election.

One of the major takeaways from all three events, though, is a visual one.

In New Orleans, Houston and Charlotte, I was struck by the sight of serious-minded men and women parading through the convention hall wearing goofy hats, festooned with campaign buttons, loud clothes, carrying signs — all while they shout slogans from the convention floor.

I had to remind myself of this fact: These people from all across the nation are gathered in one place to nominate a candidate for president of the United States of America. They are choosing the individual who will represent their political party in an election to determine who will be commander in chief of the world’s foremost military establishment; they will pick the head of state and government of the world’s greatest nation.

I’m telling you that when you are among these folks, it’s easy to forget the seriousness of the task they are seeking to complete.

This year — in Cleveland and in Philadelphia — it’ll be no different.

Except that in Cleveland, where Republicans are going to gather, the serious nature of their mission might be compromised by the individual who is poised to accept his party’s nomination as president.

 

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Newspaper endorsements: do they matter?

newspapers

Near the end of my career in daily print journalism, I began to question the value of newspaper “endorsements.”

We didn’t really even like to refer to them out loud as endorsements. We preferred the term “recommendations.” We’d recommend a candidate of our choice while understanding that voters are independent thinkers — or so they say — and wouldn’t take whatever the newspaper said as gospel.

These days I’m beginning to wonder about voters’ independence. The plethora of social media and big-money advertising are having the kind of influence on voters’ thought process that, well, newspaper endorsements might have had a half-century or longer ago.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry perhaps demonstrated better than anyone in recent times how newspaper editorial endorsements’ value has diminished.

When he ran for re-election in 2010, Perry announced he wouldn’t even talk to newspaper editorial boards. He’d go straight to the voters. He didn’t need no stinkin’ newspaper editors’ approval.

How did Gov. Perry do at the ballot box that year? He thumped Republican primary opponent Kay Bailey Hutchison — no slouch as a Texas politician herself — and then clobbered Democratic nominee Bill White that fall. White, by the way, garnered virtually every newspaper endorsement there was to get in Texas — including from the Amarillo Globe-News, where I worked as editorial page editor; it did him virtually no good at all.

So now, in this presidential election cycle, newspapers are weighing in. The “influential” Des Moines Register endorsed Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Hillary Clinton in advance of the Iowa caucuses. Over the weekend, the Boston Globe endorsed Clinton as the neighboring New Hampshire primary approaches.

There will be others coming along as the campaigns proceed along the long and winding road toward the parties’ conventions. Newspaper editors and publishers will extend the invitation for the candidates to make their cases. Some of them will accept; others will follow the Perry model.

In the end, however, none of these endorsements — or recommendations — likely will be decisive.

Voters are getting their heads filled by ideologues on both sides of the divide. Their minds are made up.

What’s more, during the more than three decades I practiced my craft in daily journalism, I never heard first-hand any voter say they changed their mind on an election based on a newspaper endorsement.

Maybe they’re out there.

Back to my initial question: Do these endorsements really matter?