Newspapers: A Never-Ending Crisis

by Jack Breibart

San Francisco --Newspapers are in crisis. Again. Before it was television. Now it's the Internet. Layoffs all over.

Many stories about the subject. Most say the same thing. The latest is from the Hartford Courant, whose web site headline sums it up nicely: "They ((Newspapers) Fight Declining Readership With Redesign, New Sections, Ties To Online Content."

The big thing is redesign. Brighten up for younger folks. Many focus groups. Many surveys. Much money spent.

We have to look different. Rails, no rails. Huge headlines. Huge pictures. Huge graphics. Hands-on editors are having a ball. Everything goes. The pages look great. Problem is everybody ends up looking the same.

Cut the masthead off papers and it would be hard to identify them. It's a breath of purified air when you roll through front pages across the country and finally come across the New York Times and L.A. Times. No problem identifying who they are. Their character remains. They look like newspapers and not web sites.

Maybe, that's the answer, just be a newspaper -- interestingly presented with good stories -- that readers can be comfortable with. Don't change everyday.

Big debate over the length of stories. Should they be long, should they be short. The answer: If it can be told in a few words, which most can, do it. If not, go long.

If papers really want to be different, a suggestion: Throw out editorial writers and editorial pages and hire more reporters, end op-ed pages, cut your local columnists in half. Most write about the same thing, and they will not have anything to say when President Bush leaves office.

Use the entire editorial page space for letters to the editor. Turn the op-ed page space into a money maker. Charge add rates. Most of the contributors to op-ed pages are hawking some agenda. If the local Republican Party chairman wants to air something, charge. If the Sierra Club chief wants a say, charge. If your senator or congressman wants to say how great he or she is, charge.

And above all, don't worry. Newspapers will be around a long time -- even in crisis.

(Jack Breibart had stops at the Charleston News and Courier, the Raleigh News and Observer, the Miami News, Cocoa Today and The San Francisco Chronicle)

Some Pockets to Dip Into for Storm Funds

by Jim Head

Beverly Hills, Fla. --One definition of humanity is: the quality of being humane, of kindness, mercy and sympathy. It has special relevance to what is needed in the wasteland that is so much of our southern Gulf coast after the storms.

Two opposing advertising consultants in the Carter-Ford presidential campaign of 1976 have written a syndicated column that opens undreamed of possibilities and ironically, all in the name of humanity defined above.

They propose a 90-day moratorium on campaign fund raising. Both parties and congressional incumbents and losers should tithe from their leftover campaign funds for hurricane-flood relief. That would mean 10 per cent of millions of dollars for relief efforts.

If accepted it would open a beneficial Pandora's box.

Politicians' promises are about as empty as a beggar's pockets, but the idea is a mother lode of -- humanity.

Here is a list of those who should be tapped with proceeds to be used for one thing:to help the wretched left homeless and hopeless.

--The National Council of Churches and all faiths

-- The NAACP, the Urban League and Jesse Jackson's Rainbow
Coalition

-- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of
Manufacturers, Small Business Association and Jaycees

-- Political Action Committees

-- Newspaper, magazine , radio and TV associations

-- Environmental societies

-- American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars

-- Professional sports leagues

-- Casinos and state lotteries

-- Multi-national companies embedded in this country

-- Major utility companies

-- The Big 5 oil companies

-- The major foundations (Ford, etc.)

It is often said that a corporation has no soul or conscience so this would be the moment to prove that or blow it away. While we are waiting for that to happen why don't we revitalize the Peace Corps and send them into the area and divert the good works of the Missionary Societies to the stricken region for awhile?

We should suspend all foreign aid for at least two years -- all of it, and suspend congessional pork projects and pie in the sky space projects for the same period.

Defense spending is a tempting prospect (the military-industrial complex Ike warned us about) but that is probably beyond reach of mere mortals.

Who would lead this effort? Almost anyone but a politician-bureaucrat. Our national tragedy calls for an Albert Schweitzer, Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King. Maybe the enormity of the mission will produce a miracle worker.

(Jim Head had stops at the Miami Herald, the Miami News, the New York Herald Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Cocoa Today, and the Gannett Westchester Newspapers)

Rising Above Katrina, the Evil Lady

by Jim Head
Beverly Hills, Fla. --If ever there was a time for America -- Americans -- to come together it is now. Time to put aside ideology, politics, Red states and Blue states,finger pointing,haves and have nots and racial issues. Especially that last one.

The catalyst is Katrina. Killer, destroyer of the living and the almost dead. Evil to the end of time. She came to America with a pretty name. In fact, she was a skeleton in a black shroud wielding a terrible swift scythe.

Today is a bleak landscape, tomorrow seems an eternity away. Most of us know we have the means and the ability to rebuild and start over -- but do we have the will? History shows that in many things, many ways America is larger than life, but is she larger than death itself?

No one wins that battle but surely we can make things better for the ones who come after us. And that would be our victory, small as it may seem.

Start by looking in the mirror and ask yourself:

Am I my brother's keeper?

Do I believe in treating others as I would be treated?

Do I care about those living in poverty in unspeakable slums?

Would I want a Katrina survivor, especially the penniless and uneducated, as a next-door neighbor?

Make your own list, but it is a never ending one.

America as a beacon of hope always has attracted the poor, the losers and the persecuted, symbolized by the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. All too often we don't see the forgotten, hungry,lost souls at the Lady's very feet.

Right now America needs another beacon to light our way. All cliches, you can hear many say. That is an attitude we should kick to hell and gone. A saying becomes a cliche by being repeated;it survives by the very fact it is true .

We don't need a "shining city on the hill." We need a new New Orleans where its people can live, work and play together -- an Open City where the world can see what we do, where the food and the music are as good as they ever were and where a humble black man named Hardy Jackson, whose wife was swept out of his arms by the water, can have a home and a job to care for his surviving children.

Dear God, can't we do that?

(Jim Head had stops at the Miami Herald, Miami News, New York Herald Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Cocoa Today and the Gannett Westchester Newspapers)

Arise, Ye Moderate Extremists

By Jim Head

Beverly Hills, Fla. -- "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

Those words by Barry Goldwater in his acceptance for the presidential nomination at the GOP convention in 1964 sent the elephant's share of that crowd into bellowing raptures.

In the aftermath, all the way through wars and down to today you seldom hear that second sentence quoted, the one about moderation. Why? Because it does not sell and it never suits the purposes of self-interest seekers. The buzz words today are all about far-left liberals and right-wing extremists.

Americans of good will most certainly take sides, especially now about the Iraq war , but if you held their feet to the fire they'd likely say something about a "plague on both your houses."

Today's rash of polls somehow never gets to the heart of issues. So many respondents lie to their questioners, deliberately mislead them or simply hang up. The polling firms don't dare poll the general public on whether they believe in or trust the polls.

The key to the hostility, latent or otherwise, must be because the questioners can never get the "why" answered; most of us don't think it is any of their business anyway.

But there is a voiceless yearning out there, unspoken but palpable:
Americans would like to be moderate extremists and have done with the constant threats and raging by the left and right. The tag likely is an oxymoron -- so what?

Being a moderate never forecloses on taking a stand on the issues; it preaches patience, pragmatism and civility, all missing in the shouting matches on TV talk shows, in political journals and many newspaper editorials.

It would do well for extremists of every stripe to remember this line:

"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

Dr. Samuel Johnson said that many long years ago. His biographer Boswell said Johnson was not talking about the patriotism that means a real and generous love of country but pretend-patriotism which is a cloak for self interest.

Dr. Johnson, we could sure use you now.

(Jim Head has had stops at the Miami Herald, Miami News, New York Herald Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Cocoa Today, and the Gannett Westchester Newspapers)

The Iconoclast Covers Camp Casey

Californian Nancy Mancias, a Cynthia Sheehan supporter, on way to deliver a basket of letters to Laura Bush. (Photo by Gene Ellis, Lone Star Iconoclast) 

by Jack Breibart
San Francisco--The weekly Lone Star Iconoclast may be on to something.

Published in Crawford Texas, the hometown of President Bush, the Iconoclast has had the Cynthia Sheehan saga fall onto its journalistic lap.

The Iconoclast does a lot of cheerleading for the California woman and her leaders and followers camped near Bush's vacation ranch, but it is using its website (iconoclast-texas.com) in an interesting way to cover the story. The gathering may be international for other newspapers but it is "local" for the Iconoclast. Its coverage could become a model for other newspapers in major events.

The five-year-old newspaper has embedded reporters in Camp Casey, named in honor of Sheehan's son killed in the Iraq war and center of an anti-war protest. The reporterters would have to wait a week to report their stories in print, but on the web, they're doing it almost hourly in the "Cindy Watch."

The "Cindy Watch" (Deborah Matthews reporting) was on the scene when a neighbor started firing shots into the air:

"Wait! Someone is firing a gun. (pause). He fired it into the air about five times. He appears to be a local inside the fence line on private property. Now he has thrown what looks like a shotgun into the front seat of a pickup, and he's stomping off out of sight. I wonder where he went.
"Now he's coming back out. I'm out here standing on the road. He's got a no parking sign in his hand, walking toward his fence. I'm going to go try to talk to him. I've got to hang up."
(three minutes later)
"I went over and talked to the man. He is Larry Mattlage, who says he is on his property and just posted a no-parking sign.
"'We're going to start doing our war and it's going to be underneath the law,'" he told me. 'Whatever it takes. So y'all go find another place to do whatever you do. 'Cause this is our front yard and back yard.'"

"Cindy Watch" also was on the scene when Sheehan had a haircut; when the protesters marched to the checkpoint to Bush's ranch and turned over baskets of letters to an aide, Bill Burke; when homeowners in the area went to the city council to air complaints about being innudated by outsiders; when another neighbor -- a distant relative of the gun wielder -- offered land for Camp Casey; when Sheehan got a call telling her that her mother had suffered a stroke. There was also a midnight visit to the camp by Iconoclast editor-in-chief, W. Leon Smith.

Not earth-shaking stuff but the words and pictures tell you a lot about what is really going on -- like it or not. The impression is that Camp Casey is not some slick, polished operation but is more seat-of-the-pants and down home.

And you'v got to like a newspaper whose stated mission is: "An exposer of icons. Icon-buster. Fighter for Truth, Justice and the American Way."

Clark Kent, eat your heart out.

(Jack Breibart has had stops at the Charleston News and Courier, the Raleigh News and Observer, the Miami News, Cocoa Today and The San Francisco Chronicle)

Bush's Slick Move

by Jim Head
Beverly Hills, Fla. --If there were as much gasoline available as there are price conspiracy theories, Americans would be almost carefree and dreaming about that Hummer or other SUV dinosaurs.

There is a strange silence from Big Oil, from Muslim world producers and most of the time from the White House itself. There are no definitive news reports out there so we are left to consider our sorry state of affairs.

Bush's brain (Rove) may be orchestrating a solution, but one that will never be traced to that deft operator.

Here is a possible scenario:

Dubya knows Americans are suspicious of Big Oil and Bush family ties to them. So far he has apparently leaned on no one, not the companies,not his Saudi friends and not the car makers.

By staying above the battle with just enough tsk-tsking he can force action to:

-- Make car manufacturers boost mileage performance

--Push alternative energy sources into an all-out crash program

--Make SUVs somehow anti-American -- they already are in many people's minds

--Sink more offshore oil wells in the Gulf and look for new fields in the Pacific and Caribbean to recover self-sufficiency

He can finesse this with little outcry from his oil friends -- what can they accuse him of?

And it will be done when you and I see self-service Regular at the pump run right on by the $3 to $3.50 mark, before summer's out.

(Jim Head had stops at the Miami Herald, Miami News, N.Y. Herald Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Cocoa Today, and the Gannett Westchester Newspapers)