Tag Archives: Hearst Corporation

media news

Place that drew me there has vanished

The image you see with this blog illustrates what I did for a living for nearly 37 years. I took notebooks such as this with me to jobs in Oregon and then to Texas.

I mention this notebook today because we have returned from visiting the last stop on my professional journey. I came away with a huge trove of good feelings, seeing old friends, celebrating my son’s birthday and enjoying the unseasonably warm weather under a bright Texas Panhandle sun.

However, I also came away with a feeling of sadness. You see, the newspaper that summoned my wife and me there 25 years ago has all but vanished. The Amarillo Globe-News used to be a towering presence in the community. It has been decimated, reduced to a tiny fraction of its former self.

The Globe-News’s building — at the corner of Ninth Avenue and Harrison Street — is empty. Its signage has been stripped off the exterior wall. There’s an “AVAILABLE” sign on the property.  What’s left of the operation has moved into Suite 103 inside the tallest building in Amarillo, a 31-story bank tower down the street and around the corner.

News racks? Where they sell single copies of the Globe-News? I didn’t see a single one anywhere. I was told that convenient stores still sell the paper. I had a thought about buying the paper, but then I realized I would shell out more than $3 for a journal that would have little news of interest to me. I took a pass.

I guess it’s a sign of the times and the changing media era into which we are still plunging. My previous professional stop, in Beaumont, way down yonder on the Gulf Coast, is undergoing similar retrenchment. It, too, has all but vanished. The newspaper still operates out of its historic structure at 380 Walnut Street, but the corporate owners are looking for a smaller site to house its diminished staff. The Enterprise will vacate that site eventually, although the Hearst Corp., which owns the newspaper, is a proven media company with much greater newspaper chops that Morris Communications, which sold all its properties — including the Globe-News — and then closed its newspaper operation.

That ain’t all, man. My first professional stop, the Oregon City (Ore.) Enterprise-Courier has vanished. It closed completely in the late 1980s. Its parent company — Scripps League Newspaper — sold all its remaining properties and then ceased functioning altogether.

I am saddened by what has happened to print daily journalism. It was driven home to me this weekend on a return to Amarillo. The fellowship of friends was wonderful. The absence of any tangible evidence of the newspaper where I once practiced my craft with great joy and excitement, though, pains my heart.

But … retirement from all of that remains equally joyful and full of adventure.

media news

Time of My Life, Part 42: I met him before he was famous

Chris Matthews is celebrating 20 years as host of an MSNBC news/commentary talk show, “Hardball.” He has been getting salutes from fellow media stars, politicians and entertainers.

I don’t qualify as any of those categories of individuals, but I want to offer a salute of my own.

You see, I met Chris Matthews once before he was, well, “Chris Matthews.”

It was the summer of 1992 in sweltering Houston, Texas. Matthews and I worked for the same media corporate employer, the Hearst Corporation. I was attending the Republican National Convention at the Houston Astrodome while working as editorial page editor of the Beaumont Enterprise; Matthews was there as a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. He hadn’t yet made his big splash on cable news TV, although Matthews was a frequent guest — as I remember it — on the PBS program “The McLaughlin Group.”

The Hearst Newspapers had a work station deep in the bowels of the Astrodome. We all had our areas where we could organize our notes and send stories back to our newspapers through the primitive computer systems we used at the time.

One morning, I went to the small coffee bar we had set up in our work stations. Who do you think joined me there? Chris Matthews, that’s who. We chatted for a few minutes. I told him I enjoyed publishing his column in the Beaumont Enterprise; he thanked me for the exposure was getting in Southeast Texas. We had a laugh or two about what we had seen the previous day. Then our encounter ended.

My recollection of this guy, whose media personality is loud, brash, borderline rude is that he was much quieter when he was chatting with a fellow Hearst-oid. Yes, he is a gentleman.

OK, I admit to being a bit star struck as I recall that brief meeting. I doubt Chris Matthews would remember it, given the journeys our respective lives took after that encounter in the Houston Astrodome.

If he would remember, I would be flattered to the max. If he doesn’t, that’s all right. I do.

media news, national news

Redefining the term ‘cutthroat’

John and Dathel Georges are trying to redefine the term “cutthroat” as it applies to describing media purchases.

The couple that owns the New Orleans Advocate has just purchased the once-might New Orleans Times-Picayune — and has laid off the entire Times-Picayune staff! All of ’em are gone, or will be gone soon.

This is the way it has become, it seems, in the world of print media.

The Times-Picayune once was the newspaper of record for The Big Easy. It became a media powerhouse, reporting on the ravages brought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Then social media, the Internet and cable news began taking its toll. The T-P reduced its publication schedule to three days a week. Its circulation plummeted. As did its ad revenue.

The Advocate continued on. It became the scrappy alternative the Newhouse family’s once-formidable media presence.

Now the Advocate — owned by Mr. and Mrs. Georges — has taken over the T-P. It will restore its seven-day-a-week publishing schedule.

The T-P staff, though, won’t be part of the story.

Oh, my, this story hurts.

Sadly, though, it is just yet another example of how media companies operate. I once worked for a company, Morris Communications, that made a ton of bad business decisions at the top of the chain of command. When the company’s initiatives failed to bear sufficient fruit, the execs at the top decided to “punish” the staff by invoking pay cuts across the board and eliminating the company match toward staffers’ retirement accounts.

I also worked for another media group, the Hearst Corporation, that around 1988 decided to settle a major newspaper war in San Antonio. Hearst owned the San Antonio Light, which was battling with the Rupert Murdoch-owned Express-News. Hearst then purchased the Express-News.

However, Hearst then extended its “thanks” and expressions of gratitude for the battle fought by its Light staff by closing the Light and laying off its employees.

What’s about to happen in New Orleans, therefore, is not a newly contrived event. It’s happened many times before in the media business. It doesn’t make it any less disgraceful or dispiriting.

Working in the media world these days is tough, man!

I am so glad, delighted and relieved, to be free of that pressure.

business news, media news

Yes, it’s a cutthroat business

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Media companies operate in a highly competitive and often ruthless environment.

A take-no-prisoners approach to wheeling and dealing is commonplace. Consider the recent acquisition by the Tampa Bay Times of the Tampa Tribune. The Times bought the Tribune and then shut the paper down after a 123-year run on the other side of the Florida bay.

According to the New York Times article attached here, former Tribune employees felt betrayed by the takeover. They didn’t see it coming.

Well, let me be among the many individuals who’ve worked in print journalism to offer this bit of solace, not that it will soothe the pain: It could’ve been worse.

I worked for nearly 11 years for the Hearst Corporation, which has exhibited its own heavy hand in acquiring competing newspapers. Although I wasn’t affected directly by Hearst’s takeover strategy, I know many former colleagues who were.

In the late 1980s, Hearst was operating the San Antonio Light, which was in the midst of a nasty newspaper “war” with the San Antonio Express-News, which was owned by Rupert Murdoch’s company. Hearst decided to take the offensive, so the company moved the publisher of the Beaumont Enterprise, where I worked at the time, to San Antonio to take over as head man at the Light; I believe it was in 1988.

The new Light publisher — George B. Irish — was given the task of preparing for a serious corporate takeover.

Hearst decided to purchase Express-News — and then it promptly shut down the Light. Yes, the company “rewarded” its loyal employees, who had fought the good fight against the E-N, by giving almost all of them their pink slips.

A handful of Light hands were kept on. Most were let go. If memory serves, they were given severance packages. Still, the pain was palpable.

In 1995, Hearst went after the Houston Post. It purchased that paper, closed it down and left the state’s largest city with just one paper, the Chronicle, which Hearst already owned.

It’s a tough world, man.

I feel for my former colleagues in Tampa. Please know this: You are not alone.

business news, media news, national news, political news

Journalist shows his chops … and quits

2 Comments

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John L. Smith had a problem I never encountered in my 37 years as a print journalist.

He worked for a media mogul who is far more than just a mere newspaper titan. Smith was a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Then he quit when he was told his boss was off limits. He couldn’t comment on his doings.

Is that fair? I don’t believe so.

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2016/04/8597612/las-vegas-review-journal-columnist-resigns

And just who was this man’s boss? Sheldon Adelson bought the R-J in 2015. He’s also a big-time casino owner and a political money man for Republican politicians.

Smith thought that he could comment on Adelson’s casino business and his political activity.

No can do, came the directive.

At one level, I’m somewhat relieved I never encountered that problem while working as a reporter and editor for three corporate owners.

The first one was in Oregon City, Ore., where my corporate boss was Ed Scripps, owner of Scripps League Newspapers. Then I moved to Beaumont, where I worked for the Hearst Corporation, which bought the paper late in my first year on the Gulf Coast; the mogul then was William Randolph Hearst Jr. Then I went to work in Amarillo, where the Globe-News is owned by Morris Communications; the head man there is William Morris III.

They all had tremendous influence within their spheres. The issue never came up on whether I could comment on their outside activities.

Although …

The current Globe-News publisher’s involvement with certain civic activities has raised questions in some quarters about whether the paper could look critically at those activities. Yes, I worked there during some of that time, but the issue didn’t present itself so directly that I ever considered quitting over it.

John L. Smith’s dilemma is quite interesting, given Adelson’s huge impact outside of the business he owns. It’s his political influence that ought to make the R-J’s owner fair game.

It’s not to be.

The case isn’t entirely simple. Smith had written about Adelson before and the casino mogul sued Smith for libel. The suit was dismissed, but Smith went bankrupt defending himself. The two men had issues.

Smith wrote in a letter to his colleagues: “In Las Vegas, a quintessential company town, it’s the blowhard billionaires and their political toadies who are worth punching. And if you don’t have the freedom to call the community’s heavyweights to account, then that ‘commentary’ tag isn’t worth the paper on which it’s printed.”

My hope for Las Vegas is that other media organizations will fill the vacuum left by John Smith’s resignation.

I applaud the man’s guts in quitting over a journalistic principle.