Friday, August 20, 2010
Chicagoland / Media Why I Don't Care About Media Theory These Days
Posted by Whet Moser on 08.20.10 at 03:21 PM
I had a conversation with a peer in the local industry who claimed that I was known for being thoughtful about the media business. While it was nice to be misperceived as being known or thoughtful, I said that I'd mostly just written a thing largely to entertain myself and a few people had liked it, and that pretty much amounted to all of it, and that I'd lost interest in building on it at all.
It's probably entirely self-defeating, but I can't really bring myself to care very much about new media, monetization, branding, synergy, social media or whatnot when I look around at the wreckage that a brief rash of contemptible mismanagement created in this city, worsened by an economic crisis caused by similar financial mismanagement.
The ongoing troubles of the print industry tend to be accompanied by prescriptions aimed at journalists and ad departments. Be more biased! Be less biased! Learn multimedia! Aggregate! Learn computer-assisted journalism! Practice branding! All of which is fine and good. But if the end of these efforts is that whatever money the content producers (and the salesmen who monetize it) are able to generate ends up in the hands of upper management types who stand to earn bonuses outside their already substantial salaries by yoking their companies to unpayable debts . . . it's hard to get enthusiastic about whatever bright new stuff we create representing any kind of bright new future.
Why renovate the place if you're constantly living in fear that the landlord's going to torch it for the insurance money?
Is journalism, abstracted from the business of it, in crisis? Sure, I guess. But I can't help but think that it can't be any worse than what increasingly seems like a failed management culture in American business, particularly in the financial sector, which was knee-deep in the Tribune Company fuck-up.
Not that this sort of thing hasn't happened before. I just finished Liaquat Ahamed's excellent Lords of Finance, which details how various acts of financial arrogance (and outright fraud) led from World War I to the Great Depression, not to mention the economic rollercoaster Germany went on between the wars which, arguably, was the most important factor in Hitler's rise to power. Some of the decisions were on the world-historical scale, such as the division of war reparations between the great powers, but smaller crises, like the failure of a large New York community bank, and a housing bubble in the Chicago suburbs, contributed to the march towards disaster.
Perhaps the only thing to do is to continue in the thus-far-accurate assumption that nothing is the end of the world, and remember that building sand castles is a pleasure in and of itself, even if someone's going to come kick it down—or, more accurately, bulldoze it to build a summer house.
Comments (20)
Showing 1-20 of 20
I'll get started on my sand castle right after I finish my Facebook Tiki Resort.
like
dislike
I totally agree, but at the same time I take heart in the thought that the media empires of the future won't be empires at all. They're be smaller, nimbler shops that can turn out amazing journalism AND make money. Take Chicago News Co-op for example. They're not perfect and I don't know for certain if they are profitable. But for what they are, they are out there KILLING it while building a future in terms of financial sustainability.
I also think that the leaders of these future organizations will have the right things in mind and while they will want to make money, they will not allow that desire to drive them off a cliff. Basically (and I think this is already happening) I think that journalism and everything it entails and promises will be the primary goal of these companies. Thus management will be intertwined with its product, the way a small, boutique farmer is tied to the vegetables they grow or the livestock they raise. By being closer to the land, such farmers are able to turn out great food and make money at the same time. I believe that journalism can look forward to such a future as well. Is this a Utopian dream that might not come true? Sure. But I'm willing to believe in it for now.
I don't doubt that the CNC is building towards financial stability. It's when stability is reached that the sharks start to circle. I'm less worried about short-term sustainability than long-term.
I take your point on that, but the sharks start to circle if we believe a few different things such as:
1) People started News Org A in order to become filthy rich
2) People started News Org A in order to do great journalism, but then decided they want to become filthy rich
3) Everyone's end goal in life is to be filthy rich
What if none of those things turn out to be true for News Org A? Might it not have a chance to survive then? And survive in the best way possible, by doing good work and making enough to sustain that work.
Back when newspapers were doing great and there were a few employee-owned papers around the country, those employees generally didn't hesitate very long before selling out to chains -- and in the process, selling out future journalists who might have liked to follow them.
Same goes for families that owned papers for generations. If they could make a mint by selling out, they did.
If journalists ever do come up with viable models that make money, why wouldn't this happen all over again?
Pelham, I submit that some won't do it for the same reasons that a small business resists franchising or a private company resists going public: loss of control over the product they've worked lovingly to build and/or control over the destiny of the company they've labored over. In both instances (franchising and going public), a person or family or whatnot might make heaps of money. Yet not everyone does it. My hope is that there will be more and more media owners/managers who feel the same way. This is already a predominant culture in, say, the tech start-up community where people think long and hard before selling their company to some huge conglomerate.
"Take Chicago News Co-op for example. They're not perfect and I don't know for certain if they are profitable."
Not only are they not profitable but they are, in fact, a non-profit. Their business plan is to use these outside donations to get started and eventually become a for-profit operation. Until the CNC, that is a plan that I have never heard of in my life. Can anyone think of a company that started out as a non-profit and eventually became for-profit? There may be occasional examples of this but what is definitely pretty much unheard of is for that to be the plan from the get-go. There is obviously a reason why these things don't happen. For the CNC to be successful it is going to have to be the very first (at least as far as I know) company that becomes profitable after being formed in this matter. We have to assume that they were unable to get venture capital or other private funding to get started. That certainly isn't a good sign. So your optimism about its future seems misplaced.
" But for what they are, they are out there KILLING it while building a future in terms of financial sustainability"
Exactly how are they "building a future in terms of financial sustainability"? What specific evidence is causing you to form that opinion? I don't know that it has a sound basis when you just demonstrated you weren't even aware that it was a non-profit.
"I also think that the leaders of these future organizations will have the right things in mind and while they will want to make money, they will not allow that desire to drive them off a cliff. Basically (and I think this is already happening) I think that journalism and everything it entails and promises will be the primary goal of these companies. "
I'm trying to figure out what you are talking about when you refer to "these future orgainzations" and "these companies". Other than the CNC, who else are you referring to? I can't think of who it would be. The only other small news organizations to speak of in the Chicago area that have formed in the past decade or so have failed. This was the Chi-Town Daily News and The Chicago Current. I wonder if perhaps you don't even realize that you haven't thought of specifics.
The conversation on this thread seems to veered into rather strange and illogical territory. Everyone here seems to long for the days when news organizations were successful and employed large staffs to cover the news extensively. Yet the only way this happened was because these news organizations made tons of money. Yet everyone here seems to think the worst thing that can happen is for these companies to make a lot of money. It doesn't make very much sense to me. It is true that a strong argument can be made that once these companies were very well established and came to expect a great deal of profits every quarter that they could have done a better job of sacrificing some of these profits in order to prepare for the changes to the industry that were coming. But that is a long way from the current low point in the cycle, which is not being able to make nearly enough money in order to establish the type of news operation that you guys think is desirable. The companies must first get to the point where they can make serious money before the chance of becoming too complacent again even arrives on the radar screen. That isn't likely to happen in anybody's lifetime here.
We'll see who is right about the CNC's future. Since neither of us are fortune tellers, we can't know for certain. Based on what I know, I think they have a good shot.
No, I didn't realize they were operating as non-profit right now, but that doesn't change anything. In fact, non-profits can still make huge sums of money and their management can be quite wealthy. I'm just throwing that out there to remind everyone that non-profit doesn't mean non-revenue.
What future is CNC building? I have heard both Jim O'Shea and Dan Greising speak on panels where they discussed their business model to some degree. It was mostly broad strokes, but I thought it sounded promising and like they had the right ideas. They provide content for the NYT Chicago section, they're working on other partnerships like that and they seem to run a lean operation. And like I already said, you can't argue with the quality of the content. Also they're currently hiring web designers and such to spruce up the website further. These are FT salaries and benefits they will somehow be paying. So I guess they're doing well enough.
Yes, I AM talking to a large degree about organizations that don't yet exist. I only know of CNC in this market. A similar shop actually comes to mind that does international reporting: http://www.ara-network.com/index.html We are still in the very, very early stages of this kind of thing so a lack of such organizations is not a sign of failure. It's just early. Be patient.
I can't speak for others, but I don't long for the old days at all. I am eagerly looking towards the future and so are many of the people in my profession.
Finally, the Chi-Town Daily News and Chicago Current were both Geoff Dougherty ventures and they failed for very specific reasons. You can read more here: http://is.gd/etplE (be sure to read all the comments)
"Finally, the Chi-Town Daily News and Chicago Current were both Geoff Dougherty ventures and they failed for very specific reasons. You can read more here: (be sure to read all the comments)"
OK. I must say I find this to be truly interesting. I googled your name. You are a trained and practicing journalist. You have written articles for major publications. And here you are citing a message board thread that you claim contains comments that can point to "very specific reasons" why those two media organizations failed. I just read that thread again (I had already glanced at it before) and there are absolutely no comments whatsoever that come anywhere close to even stating any specific reasons as to why they failed. We don't even have to get into the fact that most of those comments are not made by people for whom there is any evidence would have any knowledge about this. None of them even say anything specifically. All there is is a bunch of speculation that he is a "douche", that he may not have paid his employees for the final weeks (though many of the same people, including yourself, correctly point out that there wasn't much evidence that there were any employees in the final weeks), and that perhaps Dougherty isn't a good businessman.
Mike Doyle links to his own post that also doesn't get into specifics other than simply recounting the details of the Chi-Town Daily News's short history and, in Doyle's usual bombastic way, declaring that the two failures show that Dougherty must obviously be completely incompetent and therefore the Reader was stupid to hire him. Oddly, Doyle and many of the commentators on the Windy Citizen thread (including you) call the Current a business failure while simultaneously criticize Dougherty for "bailing" out on the employees who went to work for him there in order to work for the Reader. Which is it? You can't criticize him for both. Either the Current failed and he subsequently took a job at the Reader (that seems clearly to be the case as the activity on the Current's website slowed to a trickle and no other journalists seemed to work for it in the weeks prior to the announcement, which you in fact mentioned on that thread) or he decided to shut down a publication that still had potential and lay off everyone who worked for it in order to take the Reader job. These are mutually exclusive. Yet numerous people were criticizing him for both (yes, I realize that Dougherty partly brought this on himself by posting on the Current's website that it was ending because he was taking the new job, but it isn't surprising that he would attempt to avoid the fact that the publication failed).
I find it rather astonishing and troubling that so many people who gossip about these types of things seem to not recognize the difference between strong evidence made by credible people and wildly speculative conjecture made by people who do not display any evidence they know what they are talking about. There was nothing remotely specific on that thread at all. Yet you, a journalist, came on here and told me that it contained "very specific reasons" for the failures of the Daily News and the Current. This is utterly baffling to me. Mike Doyle, who despite numerous faults does display a certain amount of intelligence, somehow thinks that a few comments about Dougherty from a few people (including, apparently, anonymous internet comments) is enough to make sweeping declarations about him worthy of a lengthy post. That discussion spilled over to the thread here at the Reader that announced the appointment of Dougherty: http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archi… Several people made allegations about Dougherty but did not back them up with specifics. They were completely silent after I asked them to do so as well as pointed out inconsistencies in what they were saying. Apparently they were just repeating what they read in blog comments and, for whatever reason, didn't feel the need to consider whether they were getting this information from a good source. I think most of the people making these allegations are probably actually at least college educated. Yet they are apparently prone to believe something just because they saw it mentioned from someone on the internet. It is really perplexing.
"I think most of the people making these allegations are probably actually at least college educated."
Probably journalism majors, go figure.
First of all, I take offense at you impugning my journalistic integrity just because I haven't given you specific, verifiable examples of why Geoff's news start-ups have failed. As you said yourself, these are comments on the Internet we're writing here, not news accounts. If I were writing one of those, I would absolutely put in specifics. Why are you not seeing much of that online? Because most people are not willing to publicly discuss specifics (including Geoff's former employees), because they still want to work in this town and don't want to step on any toes. But here's someone that quit CTDN and provides some insight: http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/news-opini… Fernando's account is what a lot of what you seem to consider gossip and heresy is based on. I personally know two other people who worked for Geoff at CTDN and they back up this account. One of those people even said that she considered at one point writing to the Knight Foundation to ask them not to renew their grant to Geoff. Is that specific enough for you?
As to the matter of him leaving a failing Chicago Current in order to take the Reader job, there is no incongruity there. You seem to think that a business either fails or it succeeds. It's not that simple. Many new businesses go through periods of having no profits, no employees, etc. Sometimes the efforts of their owners bring a business out of these rough times, sometimes they don't. I honestly don't know if Geoff made every possible effort or not. I would be inclined to say no, since I could have made many suggestions on how to improve on just the building an audience side. It just didn't look good after the CTDN closure happened in a similar manner. If he didn't make every possible effort than this is what he is being criticized for on the Windy Citizen thread. Windy Citizen is by the way itself a business that was unprofitable for quite a while, but is now sustainable.
In the end, and I think I say this somewhere over there, I don't blame Geoff for taking the Reader job. I probably would have done the same thing rather than continue to struggle with a business that seemed to not be working out. But then I'm not a person that starts businesses, gets grant money, hires employees, etc. Not all of us are cut out for that. Geoff seems to not have been cut out for it either and yet at both CTDN and Chicago Current, he made use of talented journalists' time and skills and large sums of grant money that could have been directed elsewhere. That is the true tragedy in my eyes. It's not personal in the least for me. Geoff and I have met only briefly and for all I know he might be a great guy.
Anna Tarkov is pretty hopeful about the future of journalism, and, even though I'm not, I'll concede she may be right. We won't know till the future gets here.
My glimmering suspicion, though is that the future is here. Thus, what we have is what we're going to get -- startups, failures, here one day and gone the next, dutiful little local news sites that plug along on a shoestring, a handful of larger projects (like CNC) that tap into some deep pockets for a while and then fade or vanish, and a galaxy of blog-like objects that may or may not be connected to reality, as well as print media's self-prescribed Internet leech therapy, through which they put their previously exclusive and lucrative ink product online for free and then wonder why they're getting sicker.
That said, I'll join Anna in, at least, not entirely regretting the loss of old media, particularly the big newspapers, which became stupefyingly profitable for two or three decades there by acquiring monopoly status in the big markets. Unfortunately, those big, fat papers blandified themselves to such a degree that they laid a good part of the groundwork for their own demise. In part this was due to noncompetition; in part the college-educated professionalization of what should probably have remained basically a trade.
Of course, the great, thundering newpapers of the McCormicks and their ilk were no great prize, either -- though they could be compelling. But there were, as I said, some really good, solid employee- and family-owned papers that were lively, readable and viable.
I have a theory: Institutions of whatever sort that turn out good product are actually highly inefficient. They employ way more people than they need and give their best employees way too little work (like universities today, with their pampered tenured profs and vast underpaid squads of TAs) so the hotshots can think and occasionally come up with something brilliant. Big fat newspapers were kind of like that, with prima donna columnists supported by teams of legmen, lavishly overpaid celebrity sports writers, advice columnists, teams of investigative reporters, and glass-office editors who had long lunches with (gasp) alcohol.
I imagine Apple and Google and some of the big ad agencies are modern equivalents. Let's watch what happens when these outfits hit a rough patch (as they all will) and there's an LBO and some clueless bastard like Sam Zell or Al Dunlap descends on them. They'll slash the inefficiencies, all right. They'll also leave these enterprises looking and functioning like ill-stocked dollar stores -- sort of like today's zombie newspapers.
There's definitely a way to fix things and get journalists thinking about what's good for both their trade and their futures by giving them the means to actually bring about needed changes. In fact, we could do the same with almost any American industry (see my comments elsewhere in this blog about German capitalism). As things stand, though, I'm not hopeful.
"First of all, I take offense at you impugning my journalistic integrity just because I haven't given you specific, verifiable examples of why Geoff's news start-ups have failed. As you said yourself, these are comments on the Internet we're writing here, not news accounts. If I were writing one of those, I would absolutely put in specifics."
That would be a somewhat persuasive point if all you did was come here and said something like "I wonder if Geoff Dougherty's publications failed not because they were bad models but because of leadership blunders. There has been some talk that he didn't do a great job when he was in charge of those publications" and you then linked to the Windy Citizen thread. Obviously, something like that would be perfectly reasonable mild speculation based on looking at one's surroundings. It would be ridiculous for me to then make the complaint I did about not providing the specifics to back up your assumption (and I would not). I might point out that the lack of specifics shows there might not be very much support for that theory. But I wouldn't expect you to provide clear evidence to support an argument that you present in such a way.
But that is not what occurred. What you did was state that "the Chi-Town Daily News and Chicago Current were both Geoff Dougherty ventures and they failed for very specific reasons" and then indicated those specific reasons could be found in the comments of the thread you linked to. You were the person who first mentioned the word "specifics", not me. You implied that you were pointing out specific evidence of how Dougherty caused the Daily News and the Current to fail. And I was pointing out that there was nothing remotely close. Now you are acting as if I were insisting on specifics when it wasn't called for.
Now you have mentioned a few things that are marginally less unspecific. But they still are not much more than conjecture and simple indications of general hostility from some people. I read Fernando Diaz's post after it was brought up in the other thread. As I mentioned there, it really is nothing more than a rant against his former employer. The only specifics he mentions are his complaints that the phone lines didn't always work and that people were laid-off. He doesn't get into what exactly about these lay-offs caused him to be angry. Obviously, whenever any organization is going through tough times there likely will be a reexamination the way it is structured and some layoffs. The head of that organization would be completely irresponsible to not look at these possibilities and act on them if appropriate during periods of financial turmoil. Otherwise there will be a higher likelihood of failure. So I don't really get Diaz's complaint there. He seems to be just a disgruntled employee attempting to get revenge for something. He was only at the Daily News for a few months. My guess is he was fired by Dougherty because he didn't live up to Dougherty's standards as a journalist. As I mentioned on the other thread, basically the only thing of Diaz's that I read was a comment on a Chicago Now blog that implied a government agency said something it didn't and then argued with this never stated point in order to make it look bad. That doesn't strike me indicating he is a particularly good journalist.
You then say "I personally know two other people who worked for Geoff at CTDN and they back up this account. One of those people even said that she considered at one point writing to the Knight Foundation to ask them not to renew their grant to Geoff. Is that specific enough for you?" No. I don't think it is particularly enlightening that two people "back up Diez's account" when there isn't anything specific about it other than the fact that he had a negative attitude towards his former employer. One person didn't like his boss. So apparently there were at least two other people who didn't either. Big deal. This was a start-up organization that was attempting to find a strategy to get traction with readers and with funders. It is natural that some employees will have some disagreements with philosophy. And maybe it would be useful if you went into details as to why the person you mention considered asking the Knight Foundation not to renew the grant. I'm pretty sure that the Knight Foundation grant was for the purpose of "training citizen journalists". Just observing from the outside, it seems to me that there was some incongruousness between that and the way the website was run. For good reason, I don't think Dougherty made training citizen journalists to be a priority. It wasn't going to work. He seemed to want to run a news organization staffed by professional reporters. One of the problems with being a non-profit is you sometimes have to choose to accept money from people who insist it be spent in a manner that you don't think makes sense. But that doesn't necessarily mean this money isn't going to be useful. So it is to be expected that there will be some tension with regard to what to do with certain funds and even whether to accept them. That could be the geneses of what you are referring to. Or it might be something different. In any case, you haven't shown me anything specific that suggests anything that indicates a lack of leadership on the part of Dougherty.
"As to the matter of him leaving a failing Chicago Current in order to take the Reader job, there is no incongruity there. You seem to think that a business either fails or it succeeds. It's not that simple. Many new businesses go through periods of having no profits, no employees, etc. Sometimes the efforts of their owners bring a business out of these rough times, sometimes they don't. I honestly don't know if Geoff made every possible effort or not. I would be inclined to say no, since I could have made many suggestions on how to improve on just the building an audience side. It just didn't look good after the CTDN closure happened in a similar manner. If he didn't make every possible effort than this is what he is being criticized for on the Windy Citizen thread. "
I don't really follow that at all. Yes, I am fully aware there it is not as simple as a business "either fails or succeeds". But the argument made by those on the Windy Citizen thread was that Dougherty was being selfish because he bailed on the Chicago Current in order to take the Reader job, which meant that the employees who worked for the Current were then out of a job. But like some of these same commentators (including you) mention was that there didn't seem to be any evidence that there were any employees left during the last days of the Current. One person mentioned that people were not being payed (which goes against the argument that there still was more that Dougherty could do to save the publication). In the final couple weeks, there was very little activity of the Current's website. There was clearly no other reporter there besides Dougherty. I remember seeing a freelance article in the Tribune from one the the Current staff reporters during that time. At that point, it seemed clear to me it wasn't going to last much longer. It is rather obvious that he didn't "bail" on anyone. So that criticism was obviously misplaced and was rather strange considering that the reasons this was obvious were mentioned by some of the same people criticizing Dougherty for this. I'm also curious if you could provide some color to your statement "I would be inclined to say no, since I could have made many suggestions on how to improve on just the building an audience side." What suggestions specifically?
And as often happens, I intend to spend a few minutes writing a brief six or seven sentence comment but end up spending around an hour writing something about ten times as long.
I'm going to attempt to be brief and make this my final comment here. Should anyone like to discuss this further, please feel free to e-mail me at tooter2 (at) gmail (dot) com. I would be more than happy to continue the discussion there.
On the topic of my alluding to the Windy Citizen thread containing specific reasons why CTDN and Chicago Current failed: MEA CULPA. That was a poor choice of words, as you spent considerable time pointing out. Your wording of what I should have said is certainly better and would have engendered less misunderstanding.
On the topic of offering more details on why my friend considered writing to the Knight Foundation or any other details you are seeking, I can provide them if you wish. Send me an e-mail.
Finally, it occurs to me that you are wholly willing to assign explanations to everyone's motivations except your own. Anyone who has publicly signed their name to something negative about one of Geoff's news orgs MUST be a disgruntled employee. Anyone who worked there for a short time MUST have been fired. Anyone who Geoff fired MUST have been a substandard journalist. Anyone who CONJECTURES to say that Chicago Current had no employees (me on the Windy Citizen thread) left MUST be right. However, when Mike Doyle cites Chicago Current employees who contacted him (citing anonymous sources) he MUST be lying. So you're willing to take my supposition, based on nothing more than observation of the Chicago Current site, at face value while you sharply question the suppositions of others? I call foul.
Thank you for not questioning my motives in talking about all this. I assume the only reason you haven't done so is because I never worked for Geoff. I guess the same goes for Mike Doyle, though you DID cast aside his assertion that there were Chicago Current employees who remained unpaid (and again, I want to reiterate that this is unsubstantiated).
When I put all this together, I can come to only two conclusions. One, you are a rigorous contrarian who does not believe even firsthand accounts. For you, it must come directly from the horse's mouth, so to speak. So nothing short of a signed affidavit from Geoff Dougherty himself saying "It is my fault that CTDN and Chicago Current failed and this is precisely how I messed up...." would satisfy you. While I wouldn't agree with such an outlook, it is one I could respect. The other conclusion is that you are somehow personally connected to Geoff or someone who made the decision to hire him at the Reader or something else of a similar nature. I have no way of knowing if this is true since you publish your comments under an anonymous handle.
By the way, even if my first conclusion is correct, you undermine yourself by remaining anonymous. You hold myself and others to the highest imaginable standard while not holding yourself to the same scrutiny. Not exactly a fair playing field.
Again, this will be my last comment here. E-mail me if you wish to continue interacting on this topic.
"On the topic of offering more details on why my friend considered writing to the Knight Foundation or any other details you are seeking, I can provide them if you wish. Send me an e-mail. "
Fine. if you'd like, I will send you an email. But since this is a public forum and there have been people following this discussion it would be unfair to not let everyone else know what the outcome is. The relevant question in regards to this is whether the reasons that this woman considered writing to the Knight Foundation and the supporting facts for these reasons is enough to show that there is any evidence that any of the criticisms we have seen of Dougherty are based on anything more than wildly speculative conjecture about rather unspecific things. So this is how it is going to work. I will send you an e-mail. You can then reply to that e-mail with the specifics you'd like. I will not post the specifics here. However, I will mention here whether or not, in my judgment, they would support the arguments made by those suggesting that Dougherty exhibited poor (or deceitful, as some have said) leadership at the Daily News. And if they do, I will mention whether they provide minor or more substantial support to these arguments. People will have to decide whether they trust my opinion based on whether they think I am someone who has good judgment and common sense. If you don't want me to provide a conclusion about this issue then don't respond to my e-mail.
"Finally, it occurs to me that you are wholly willing to assign explanations to everyone's motivations except your own. Anyone who has publicly signed their name to something negative about one of Geoff's news orgs MUST be a disgruntled employee. Anyone who worked there for a short time MUST have been fired. Anyone who Geoff fired MUST have been a substandard journalist."
I never said any of those things. I was just going by the fact that Diaz wrote what I felt was a rather personal hit piece on Dougherty that didn't go into any meaningful specifics at all. I mean look at it. It is ten paragraphs long. He mentions some variation Dougherty being a poor leader or that the publication "sank because of Dougherty" about five or six times. But he never explains exactly why. That is just an obvious tip-off that this was triggered by some type of personal animosity of some sort rather than a thoughtful consideration of the pitfalls about the way the place was run. How exactly can someone analyze that piece in a manner that causes them to learn something substantial that might convince them something about Dougherty and his leadership? What exactly does Diaz say about Dougherty? He says he installed phones that didn't work perfectly. He says Dougherty had an "inability to accept help" from his employees, to delegate, and to admit when he was wrong. OK. That could be interesting. Let's see what specifics Diaz provides to illustrate this. The answer is none. He doesn't explain exactly how Dougherty exhibited this leadership style. He states that people were laid-off. As I said, of course people are going to be laid-off when the organization is running out of money. And they were asked to sign confidentiality agreements. What's his point? That is standard practice everywhere. After Whet makes a comment pointing out pretty much what I have he then responds by saying that he can't be specific because he's "not a cop". What!? He worked in the place for three months and observed his boss and the way he operated during that time. He considered himself qualified enough to write ten paragraphs dissing him. But since he isn't a cop he can only speak in general terms? Give me a break. How can I conclude anything other than the fact that he is a disgruntled employee under these circumstances. I also didn't say he "must have been fired" and was a substandard journalist. I was just making a guess (and I clearly stated it was a guess) as to why he only worked there a few months and to why he had this much animosity. I could easily be wrong. But I thought it was worth putting out there. The only other exposure I have had to Diaz also indicated he had some very poor journalistic qualities. I was also, for the record, using the word "fired" loosely. Obviously, there are ways of making it clear that an employee isn't really welcome anymore and causing him to eventually quit. He wasn't necessarily formally fired.
"Anyone who CONJECTURES to say that Chicago Current had no employees (me on the Windy Citizen thread) left MUST be right. However, when Mike Doyle cites Chicago Current employees who contacted him (citing anonymous sources) he MUST be lying. So you're willing to take my supposition, based on nothing more than observation of the Chicago Current site, at face value while you sharply question the suppositions of others? I call foul."
I did not take from that post that he was necessarily talking about employees who worked for the publication in its final days and weeks. The only time frame he mentions is "the weeks before Dougherty closed the Current down". That could mean up to two weeks, three weeks, even four or five weeks. In fact, Doyle didn't even specifically mention these were employees. He states they were "individuals" who were owed money "for work done on behalf of the Current". They could have been contracted out by the Current to do some work. Anyway, the point I was making before was that it seems clear to me that the Current was running out of money and losing employees in the weeks prior to it being shut down and Dougherty taking the job at the Reader. Even if there were some employees left near or at that time it doesn't change the fact that the criticisms some made for Dougherty "bailing" on the publication (as if anything would be different if he hadn't taken the Reader job) seem to be misplaced.
"Thank you for not questioning my motives in talking about all this. I assume the only reason you haven't done so is because I never worked for Geoff."
No. The reason I haven't questioned your motives is because I don't think there is any reason to question your motives. I have been questioning your reasoning.
"guess the same goes for Mike Doyle, though you DID cast aside his assertion that there were Chicago Current employees who remained unpaid (and again, I want to reiterate that this is unsubstantiated). "
I never once said anything disputing that there may be Current employees who were unpaid. That wouldn't be surprising at all. It was a firm that seems to have ran out of money.
"When I put all this together, I can come to only two conclusions. One, you are a rigorous contrarian who does not believe even firsthand accounts. For you, it must come directly from the horse's mouth, so to speak. So nothing short of a signed affidavit from Geoff Dougherty himself saying "It is my fault that CTDN and Chicago Current failed and this is precisely how I messed up...." would satisfy you."
This was the only statement you made that actually got me somewhat annoyed. That is actually a rather ironic statement. In the 48 hours or so prior to your post, I have probably mentioned to about five or six different people how idiotic the holdout Blagojevich juror was and how she apparently expected nothing short of a clear statement by Blagojevich in the tapes saying "I am making this deal with you that encompasses breaking the law by doing X, Y, and z in violation of statute number such and such of the federal code" in order to convict. Even then, I'm not sure she would have. So no, I am not someone who requires signed affidavits or anything to come from the horse's mouth. The fact of the matter is nobody has shown any evidence that comes close to supporting anything they were saying. It has all been completely vague allegations or unsupported conjecture. Maybe things will now change with the former Daily News employee you mention. I have never even said that Dougherty did a good job with his publications from a business perspective (I think he did editorially). In fact, I think the evidence shows otherwise. The non-profit set-up at the Daily News was never going to work. I don't know the details to analyze why the Current failed. But it did. The complaints about him, however, have been more than about simply pointing out that he failed twice at creating news organizations. They either alleged misconduct or complained that he was a jerk or completely incompetent. If people are going to suggest these things it really makes sense if they why they believe them. The only reason I have posted is to ask these people to do so.
"The other conclusion is that you are somehow personally connected to Geoff or someone who made the decision to hire him at the Reader or something else of a similar nature. I have no way of knowing if this is true since you publish your comments under an anonymous handle. "
Well, you could probably guess that it is not true by examining my previous posts at this website. You could do that by simply clicking my name. You will see that I have made hundreds of posts about a wide variety of topics and I quite often state my views as fervently as I have here. And you will see that I am always very persistent at pointing out when others have weak arguments. So it clearly does not indicate any type of personal connection to anything involved in this discussion. Generally, the only thing that really drives me to be this persistent about arguing something is an annoyance at seeing people confidentially state strong opinions about something that is based on faulty reasoning, especially when it is accompanied by a certain amount of group think among people with these like-minded ideas. The underlying arguments generally have less to do with what interests me than the process by which others arrive at their opinions. I do not know Geoff Dougherty. I certainly have no personal connection to him or anyone involved in this. I have never really even thought about Geoff Dougherty when I haven't been dealing with these threads.
Let me know if you'd really like to go through the process I mentioned at the top of the post and I will send you an e-mail. I doubt I will do so otherwise since there probably are some benefits to simply ending this discussion here.
"I doubt I will do so otherwise since there probably are some benefits to simply ending this discussion here."
Indeed.
Back to the original topic of this post...
Whet, your thinking smacks of nihilism. A thing should be worth doing for the sake of itself. You can't accurately predict what will come of it later on, or how others will manipulate it.
If you fear that good works will be twisted to ill, you never begin the good works and leave the world to the ill.
Hard to believe, I know, but I agree with IAC: newspapers were able to do great work only because they made great money. It costs tons of it to have editorial staffs in the hundreds, with foreign bureaus and Springfield and D.C. bureaus and laptop computers and whatnot. Newspapers could fund all that and still do a Srcooge McDuck money swim because they were the only game in town for decades, if not centuries. TV doesn't count; it was and still is an entertainment provider; it does not cover sewer board hearings. Profits of 25 to 50 percent were routine in newspapers, particularly in one-paper towns. Now, of course, that's all dead. And so is a lot of the editorial product we Americans need to run our republic. Bloggers will NOT fill the gap, because to do a professional job reporting real news, one needs to be paid well for it. Most bloggers get the news they react to from the daily newspapers who provide it for free; they do not create original product, nor should we expect them to. America is a capitalist, First World society, and to live in it requires money. So, how to get that big pot of money back to the papers? Don't know if it can, let alone will, ever happen. Sadly. In a democracy, someone HAS to do the former work of the major media, because no one else can work independently enough to nail the bad guys ripping us off. (Or spend weeks or months in Iraq or the Gulf Coast finding out what's actually going on.) Not governments, not foundations, not billionaires, not CEOs. Only tough, seasoned reporters who dig and dig and obsess and are cramped from all the typing they do to discover things--and are paid well to do it so they don't have to worry about second or third jobs to pay their bills.
Shane Gericke
www.shanegericke.com
Quite the pointed digression. Well I second Mr. Fourcher's sentiment above: if you enjoy what you do, you'll keep doing it, and inthe case of bloggers, even for free. I'm not saying this is agreeable or profitable but it's probably the truth.
Internet killed the print industry like radio killed the radio star. Except it didn't; videos only made artist briefly evolve to video right before MTV videos apparently became unprofitable leading toward the recent indie scene proliferation- currently a thriving genre on hhe radio ironically.
To me, the Internet changed the game across the board by lowering the barriers to entry. You have a poignant thought? Start a blog. You want to make a low budget movie? Thow it up on YouTube. Things have evolved, and so many incremental evolutions lead to a revolution so that we're right back to square one.
And re the CNC Coop: they are indeed producing great content. Although I tend to view their nonprofit status with a skeptical eye. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the nonprofit business model just encourage it's members to increase their respective salaries rendering them no longer profitable? Kind of a self-fullfilling prophecy.
Using CNC as our example here, let's look at the required 990 disclosures for Window to the World Communications, Inc. (the parent company of CNC). The Illinois disclosures indicate 29% of their revenue is subsidized by taxpayers in the amount of 14.9million dollars. Now here's the kicker: WCW's top paying officer garners 327k in salary followed by 253k and 215k. Do you have an issue subsidizing a salary greater than the President of the United States? Because I do.
