On Monday, June 12, Editor and Publisher ran this story about Robert Kennedy’s Rolling Stone article concerning voting irregularities in Ohio, 2004.  The Enquirer’s Carl Weiser was quoted in the article, saying “The folks who know Ohio elections best checked into it and found there was no conspiracy.” Despite several attempts (as demonstrated in the letters copied below) to discover the names of these “folks,” The Enquirer will not release such information.  We recently talked with Dr. Bob Fitrakis, Green candidate for Ohio governor and international elections observer, to discuss the anomalies. 

Read the letters below, and watch our exclusive video content of Dr. Bob Fitrakis—including his theory about how newspaper editors would rather “kiss ass” than conduct “actual statistical analysis.”

(Video hosted through YouTube here.)

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1. Dr. Monkeysuit Moniker says:
   20 Jun 2006  at  10:04 am | #

   Fitrakis rules. It was gratifying to see the “Dean” (why don’t you drop the schtick, Jason?) play undergraduate suck-up to Dr. Fitrakis.

   Nevertheless, I think he failed to make the case that an undergraduate degree from Cornell or doctorates in statistics, etc, provided any more expertise than the doctorate in economics that whatsisname has.  What’s the point?  Fitrakis is referring to the Deathpatch here, not the Enquirer.  It is awkward how you, then, try to puff up Weiser’s single, casual quote into a conspiracy. 

   “Bob bites back” is always more coherent than this Dean of Cincinnati Basement Productions “exclusive content.”

2. says:
   20 Jun 2006  at  10:08 am | #

   As the title indicated, this is part of a series.  I rolled this one out first, because it intersected other stories—like the unanswered email about the Enquirer’s line to E&P.

   But the bit about Mike DeWine sending that guy Dawson to the major dailies—that is not just about the Columbus papers.  And it does relate—Fitrakis IS an expert here.

   I think the other parts of the video series will show that.

3. Andrew Warner says:
   20 Jun 2006  at  10:11 am | #

   I agree that Fitrakis often gets sidelined by attacking credentials. An undergraduate, a PhD, or a 14 year old, can all present the same facts and one is no more true than the other.

   If Manjoo, or whoever, is wrong, show how he is incorrect. If he’s not an expert in the field, it should be clear from his facts and presentation that he’s not.

   When you start pointing at your PhD and saying how superior your thinking must be because of it, you stop respecting people outside of the world of academia.

4. says:
   20 Jun 2006  at  10:26 am | #

   But the point he is making is that the corporate press has ONLY cited unqualified testimony.  Fitrakis HAS been showing how they are all wrong.  He has thousands of documents proving his case.  No one listens in the corporate press. 

   How do you expect him to feel?

5. Andrew Warner says:
   20 Jun 2006  at  10:51 am | #

   Dean,
   I totally agree with everything Fitrakis says on the issue. But I do so because he is correct, not because he has a higher degree.

   I merely said that imposing an academic hierarcy detracts from the point that his facts are correct and that the corporate media continues to ignore them.

6. Dr. Monkeysuit Moniker says:
   20 Jun 2006  at  11:26 am | #

   Fitrakas: “I would not THINK of calling myself an election poll expert.”

   But again: he mentions the Deathpatch 5 times.  Where does Fitrakis say anything about the Enquirer?  What are his sources?  Will he name them?  Will you write him an open letter if he doesn’t?

   Congrats, Jason.  You’ve boiled Bob Fitrakis down to a great 2 minute segement of basement tabloid.

7. says:
   20 Jun 2006  at  11:38 am | #

   Would you like to ask him about his sources?  Go ahead.  Share his response.  Why do you need me to do it for you?  Are you a helpless child?

8. says:
   20 Jun 2006  at  11:47 am | #

   You’ve boiled Bob Fitrakis down to a great 2 minute segement of basement tabloid.

   How many media sources have this much from Fitrakis?  Already today we’ve got twelve minutes of him talking.

9. Patriot says:
   20 Jun 2006  at  12:21 pm | #

   I look forward to the rest of this series and watching the Enquirer unravel.

10. Dr. Moneysuit Moniker says:
    20 Jun 2006  at  02:40 pm | #

    Jason,

    I just haven’t made that mode of opportunistic yellow journalist grandstanding my trademark schtick.  If you were motivated by a principled desire to inform, you’d ask the same “tough questions” of Fitrakis instead of “kissing ass” as you put it.  After all, you are the one who complained about Weiser’s off-hand remark:
    

    I’d like to take a closer look at this. What are the names of the people to whom you were referring, “the folks who know Ohio elections best”?

    and
    

    Can you please just tell me the names of your experts?

11. Dr. Monkeysuit Moniker says:
    20 Jun 2006  at  02:51 pm | #

    The Dean of Cincinnati says:
    20 Jun 2006 at 01:47 pm | #

    You’ve boiled Bob Fitrakis down to a great 2 minute segement of basement tabloid.

    How many media sources have this much from Fitrakis?  Already today we’ve got twelve minutes of him talking.

    Two things:
    1. Fitrakis has his own “media source” called The Free Press.
    2. You do not count as a media source.  You are a hobbyist and a crybaby, as your interview shows.  Lucky for us, Fitrakis thoughtfully refuses to let you get a word in edgeways.

12. says:
    20 Jun 2006  at  03:46 pm | #

    I just haven’t made that mode of opportunistic yellow journalist grandstanding my trademark schtick.  If you were motivated by a principled desire to inform, you’d ask the same “tough questions” of Fitrakis instead of “kissing ass” as you put it.  After all, you are the one who complained about Weiser’s off-hand remark:

    I’d like to take a closer look at this. What are the names of the people to whom you were referring, “the folks who know Ohio elections best”?
    

    and
    

    Can you please just tell me the names of your experts?

    You are delusional.  This is about six minutes of two hours of footage.  I started with it because there was a loose tie with The Enquirer.  My point was not to fill the video with my own talking.  The point was to give Fitrakis an opportunity to speak, and we did.

    Now, Bob Fitrakis—who as you have pointed out is himself a reporter—says he has some inside sources at the Dispatch who informed him of the DeWine/Dawson connection.  Maybe he is lying, but I can understand these sources remaining anonymous:  they could lose their jobs if their identity is leaked.

    The Enquirer’s Weiser, on the other hand, told Editor and Publisher that “folks who know Ohio elections best” found no “conspiracy.” Is there some reason that these experts should remain anonymous?  If so, please share!

    I cannot think of a reason; therefore, I see no reason to badger Fitrakis about his sources in an attempt to get someone in Columbus fired.

    Now, I happen to view Fitrakis’ work in itself “information”—so, yes, I happen to think sharing some excerpts with you an act of information.

    You’re welcome.

13. says:
    20 Jun 2006  at  04:03 pm | #

    Now, Carl Weiser—who as you have pointed out is himself a reporter—says he has some inside sources “who know Ohio elections best” who found no “conspiracy.” Maybe he is lying, but I can understand these sources remaining anonymous:  they could lose their jobs if their identity is leaked.

    Bob Fitrakis, on the other hand, told The Cincinnati Bacon that folks at the Dispatch informed him of the DeWine/Dawson connection. Is there some reason that these experts should remain anonymous?  If so, please share!

    I cannot think of a reason; therefore, I see no reason to badger Weiser about his sources in an attempt to get someone in Columbus fired.

14. anon says:
    20 Jun 2006  at  05:13 pm | #

    Maybe he is lying, but I can understand these sources remaining anonymous:  they could lose their jobs if their identity is leaked.

    That’s idiotic. This is not confidential material. Elections are public events and a newspaper relies on elected officials and experts such as professors to make a decision about whether the elections were clean.

    Further, who’s going to lose their jobs by verifying that the elections were clean, especially when the entire state is essentially run by a single party and that party prevailed?

    The only reasons Weiser wouldn’t answer this question are that he doesn’t feel obligated to defend his reporting to a blogger or else his statement to E&P is not based on facts that will back up his conclusion.

    If readers want to know the answer, ask Weiser or Callinan. Maybe they’ll answer if others ask the question.

15. says:
    20 Jun 2006  at  05:38 pm | #

    That’s idiotic. This is not confidential material. Elections are public events and a newspaper relies on elected officials and experts such as professors to make a decision about whether the elections were clean.

    Further, who’s going to lose their jobs by verifying that the elections were clean, especially when the entire state is essentially run by a single party and that party prevailed?

    Please read more carfully, anon 7:13.  I am not talking about Weiser’s sources, but those Fitrakis mentions.  If Mike DeWine sends his hitman Dawson to kill the story at the Ohio papers, that is not public record and it definitely isn’t clean.

16. says:
    20 Jun 2006  at  05:55 pm | #

    Oh… I see now that anon 7:13 is responding to “Bizarro Dean,” who is really Dr. Monkey trying to complicate the discussion…

17. anon says:
    20 Jun 2006  at  06:38 pm | #

    Oh… I see now that anon 7:13 is responding to “Bizarro Dean,” who is really Dr. Monkey trying to complicate the discussion…

    That’s correct - no harm done. Looking forward to your further installments.

    Anon 7:13

18. Fitrakissaysreadthis says:
    20 Jun 2006  at  10:23 pm | #

    Thin News, Fat Profits
    How arrogant corporate tools like E.J. Mitchell are destroying your local newspaper—and why Gannett is laughing all the way to the bank

    by Willy Stern

    Mr. Craig A. Dubow
    President and Chief Executive Office
    Gannett Co. Inc.
    7950 Jones Branch Drive
    McLean, VA 22107

    Dear Mr. Dubow:
    Photo
    Moneymaker Craig Dubow has found the formula.

    Maybe he would be reluctant to admit it, but if David Halberstam were to graduate from Harvard today, he probably wouldn’t trek down to Nashville to toil at The Tennessean—as he once did—but instead would be thinking about Yale Law School, McKinsey & Co. or Goldman Sachs.

    Mr. Dubow, journalism today has ceased to attract the best and brightest. At least, that’s what my students tell me. In recent years, I have been privileged to teach journalism to a fairly diverse cross-section of talented students at Vanderbilt University, Colorado College, Fisk University and Williams College. With few exceptions, my high-I.Q. students say in no uncertain terms that they would no more seek a job at their local chain-owned newspaper after college than they would, in the words of one of my more colorful Vandy students, “work as the public ass wiper down at the Davidson County courthouse.”

    At Vanderbilt, I repeat my favorite line about Nashville’s Gannett-owned daily: “The best thing about The Tennessean is that you can pick it up at the end of your driveway and have it read by the time you get to your trash can at the back.” My students respond with blank faces. It’s not just that they don’t read your daily—they think you’d have to be a moron to do so. And working for it? Give me a break, Professor Stern!

    Journalists pride themselves on being smart, cynical sorts, well grounded in the cold realities of a hard world. But we’re such naive fools when it comes to gauging our own profession. You, of course, know this already, Mr. Dubow, and are too polite to call us out. So I will explain here, to a larger audience, what you have already figured out about newspapering—proving you are a quick study, since your background is in TV.

    Let’s start in Nashville, home of The Tennessean, one of the largest of the 90 daily papers that Gannett owns here in the U.S. By virtually any standard, The Tennessean, day in and day out, is an embarrassingly weak Metro daily. It is written and edited by a squadron of second-rate journalists, led by editor E.J. Mitchell, an arrogant character with little interest in the reporters who churn out the product. (A year-and-a-half into his tenure there, there are many reporters he’s yet to have a conversation with.) When Mitchell stood in front of Nashville’s downtown Rotary Club last September to speak, and an hour later a wide swath of the city’s power structure returned to their offices thinking him an insufferable corporate mouthpiece of modest brainpower, we were secretly enthralled.

    See, we told ourselves, with leadership like that, there’s no way The Tennessean, over the long haul, will be a profitable or valuable property for Gannett.

    We naive journalists like to tell ourselves that the largest newspaper chain in the country (by circulation, anyway) is undermining its own long-term future by promoting editors and reporters of Mitchell’s ilk, journalists who are outright nifty at corporate-speak, at manipulating spreadsheets and at kissing the derrieres of their immediate superiors. The result: the daily supply of pabulum that passes for news in your papers. We truly—nay, desperately—want to believe that The Tennessean is losing readership and eroding the intrinsic value of its core product.

    You, Mr. Dubow, know better, but let me share with you what passes for analysis in most newsrooms and journalism schools today: in the traditional media world, we tell ourselves, Lindsey Volckmann would represent the future of journalism. A very recent graduate of Vanderbilt University, Lindsey was a stellar student in a media ethics course I taught last fall. The writing assignments Lindsey churned out in class were nothing short of extraordinary. It takes little imagination to project her into a role as dashing foreign correspondent or award-winning investigative reporter.

    I ran into her early one morning at Starbucks on West End, and we chatted about her budding writing career. Perhaps, I wondered, she might like to become a journalist, or even start out as a cub reporter at The Tennessean? “Why?” she responded, acting in every way as if I had just suggested a career humping it over the French-fry machine at Burger King. Lindsey was on her way later that week to interview for consulting jobs in New York City. “Journalism used to have this aura around it, that you could bust someone’s balls and get stories out in the open,” the engaging 22-year-old from Woodside, Calif., said. “For my generation, that’s gone.”

    Lindsey explained gently that she wasn’t sure that the culture at 1100 Broadway would be a good fit for her. The subtext of Lindsey’s remarks: a dumbed-down organization like The Tennessean wasn’t a place for ambitious go-getters.

    Lindsey is, of course, right, but then you know that already, don’t you, Mr. Dubow? For much of this nation’s media history, Lindsey’s views would have been a source of great angst for forward-thinking news executives around the country.

    To be sure, there are bucket loads of well-intentioned dinosaurs working in the media today who still cling to the quaint notion that what sells newspapers—and makes money—is publishing a quality product. Think back to mid-March when McClatchy Co., a smaller newspaper chain, bought the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country, Knight Ridder Inc. In the wake of that deal, no less an authority than the free-market-loving editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal penned a piece, typical of journalistic innocence today, clinging to the notion that editorial content actually mattered. “That value proposition—journalistic standards and editorial judgment—has arguably become more important than ever…,” the Journal opined on March 14. How sweet. How touching. And how wrong.

    Nonetheless, we cling to this mantra. Hire smart people to produce kick-ass stories and your news company will thrive.

    I’m sure that you’ve heard the David Halberstams of the media landscape kvetch about how highly successful newspaper companies like Gannett—with its huge profit margins—are undermining the media’s historic role as guardian of the public trust. This nation’s founding fathers only saw fit to give one type of business—the media—special constitutional protections. What would Thomas Jefferson think if he came back today to witness Gannett using its First Amendment protections to gut newsrooms, gouge advertisers and mint money in one-newspaper towns? It’s a reasonable, if precious, question to ask.

    Surely, Gannett, like other news companies, is caught in a tug of war. On one hand, it must pay lip service toward fulfilling its First Amendment obligations to readers. (You call them customers nowadays, don’t you, Mr. Dubow?) At the same time, of course, Gannett has an overriding responsibility to return value to its many shareholders.

    I suspect, Mr. Dubow, that you would share my view that Halberstam and his ilk—good people all—have the moral high ground in the profit vs. product media debate. But they miss the point; that battle for high-quality news content just isn’t terribly relevant any more, for better or worse.

    Today’s smart kids view local newspapers and the local TV news, which they lump into the same amorphous blob, as a politically correct world in which dumb people present dumb stories in a dumb way to other dumb people. In short, it’s the perfect arena for the likes of Tennessean editor E.J. Mitchell to strut his stuff. Surely, it’s no place for my smart students to make a career. That is the true crisis in American journalism today—or so we sentimental traditionalists like to believe.

    Bear with me while I share a story. In 2004, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates found himself seated next to a journalist on an airplane, and allowed that he had finally determined who his software firm’s major competition was. IBM, perhaps? Nope. Not Apple either. “It’s Goldman Sachs,” Gates explained, noting that he was referring to the competition for brainpower. “I mean the competition for talent. It’s all about I.Q.,” Gates continued. “You win with I.Q. Our only competition for I.Q. is the top investment banks.”

    The same is true for journalism—we naive journalists believe—a simple fact many of my brethren truly think is lost on news executives like you. We journalists are an I.Q.-driven profession. In business school terms, our primary source of capital is intelligence, or so we tell ourselves. The late legendary Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Vermont Royster well understood this basic point—four decades ago. When asked in the 1960s to explain how his business newspaper had risen to national prominence, Royster responded without hesitation that the Journal simply hired “the best minds.”

    Time was, Royster was right.

    Walk into the newsroom of any of your 90 newspapers today. Or head down to one of your local TV stations. Look around. Better yet, pop down to Nashville and visit with the writers and editors at The Tennessean. Then ask yourself whether any of these news people have the brains to make partner at the blue-chip law firm downtown, or receive tenure at a top university, or become a talented surgeon. You already know the answer, and so do I. With a few exceptions—some of the journalists at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and a few others—the staffs of daily newsrooms today are largely composed of unimpressive people doing singularly unimpressive work. Call it the “Department of Motor Vehicle-ization” of the news business.

    The true crime of the corporate takeover of the American newsroom is in instituting a culture where smart people do not wish to work. Or so we’d like to believe.

    The problem with this logic, as you well know, is that it is utter rot. From a financial standpoint, anyway, it doesn’t appear to have a downside. There’s simply no evidence that putting out a quality news product will produce more revenues or profits for the parent company—at least not anymore. In fact, a careful analysis of the 13 largest publicly traded newspaper companies today indicates that just the opposite appears to be true. That is the genius of Gannett. You figured it out first. Your papers don’t win serious journalism awards. Few self-respecting journalists with job options would consider a career at Gannett. There is almost no original thinking or cutting-edge analysis of the important issues of the day in your papers. Your columnists are absolute nobodies. Your editorial writers have virtually no impact on policy-making institutions, either here inside Nashville’s Interstate 440, or inside the Beltway, up near where you live.

    But what do you care, Mr. Dubow? Gannett is kicking everybody else’s financial derriere in the newspaper industry. As CEO of a public company that trades on the New York Stock Exchange, you well know that you have a fiduciary responsibility to return value to shareholders. Fact is: you’re better at it than any of your competition.

    According to The Value Line Investment Survey composite newspaper index, the average net (after-tax) profit margin among publicly traded newspaper companies in 2005 was a robust 10 percent. By contrast, Gannett’s was 15.9 percent, an extraordinary figure that most CEOs in any industry would give their first born to achieve.

    From 2003 through year-end 2005, in a down market for media properties, Gannett’s sales increased from a staggering $6.7 billion to $7.6 billion. Gannett’s net profits grew over that period from $1.19 to $1.21 billion. Wow. Think about that for a second. After paying your corporate taxes, Gannett finished last year with a profit of more than $1.2 billion. That’s a nice pocketful of change—even if you remain legitimately frustrated with the continued slide in Gannett’s stock price over that same time period.

    Nonetheless, Gannett pulled off this phenomenal financial growth while the rest of the newspaper industry remains mired in a serious slump. The news industry is being battered by relentless competition for classified advertising from free online services like craigslist.org. Production costs continue to drift higher. Advertising revenue is slowing. Readers are drying up in droves, particularly among the younger set. Multiple opinion polls point to severe credibility problems for newspapers today.

    There’s more bad news. The meteoric rise of a million bloggers in their pajamas is maddening. These parasitic information gatherers leech onto the news content that your edit staffs produce, pay nothing to print newspapers or to staff overseas bureaus, yet steal huge chunks of your readership daily. The news business still hasn’t found a solution to the increasingly partisan nature of media organizations or its inexorable drift toward sensationalism, entertainment and shouting-to-be-heard.

    No less an authority than Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett, perhaps the greatest investor ever, was asked by a shareholder about prospects for the newspaper business at his firm’s annual meeting on May 6. Speaking off-the-cuff but with his customary intelligence, Buffett carried on about the dismal state of the newspaper industry.

    Undeterred, Gannett continues to post fantastic numbers. Bravo, Mr. Dubow.

    And your competition among newspaper operators? A quick look at the financials of the high-end newspaper companies—the ones with all those Pulitzer Prizes, columns of serious journalism and big-name contributors—is revealing. According to the latest Value Line report, with less than half Gannett’s revenues, the venerable New York Times Co. posted a meager net profit of $234 million last year. Dow Jones & Co.—owner of the esteemed Wall Street Journal—mustered a paltry $82 million in after-tax profits. The Washington Post Co. posted a $314 million profit, but that had nothing to do with its underperforming newspaper business and everything to do with the continued runaway success of its Stanley Kaplan college prep operation.

    Yes, the numbers are boring, Mr. Dubow, but you ought be laughing all the way to the bank. Your operating profit margin last year was a whopping 30.6 percent, significantly better than your elitist competition, those who snicker behind your back at Gannett’s all-color weather maps and 3-inch fluff stories. Herewith, the competitions’operating profit margins, as reported by Value Line: Dow Jones (13.6 percent); New York Times (14.9 percent); and Washington Post (20.1 percent). While these bastions of journalistic excellence are laying off their bow-tied-wearing, leftward-tilting, Ivy League-educated journalists, Gannett marches on. Yes, Mr. Dubow, congratulations. You’re not a news snob; you’re a success story.

    Which brings us back to Nashville, where The Tennessean continues to hemorrhage paying readers (roughly 4,000 a year) and yet makes gobs of money for Gannett. Advertisers will, of course, over time get fed up with the dwindling number of subscribers and drift away, but anybody who picked up last Sunday’s hefty paper knows we’re not there yet.

    Bottom line: a Gannett editor needn’t be smart or forward-thinking. A Gannett editor just needs to be willing to churn out a mediocre product with an overworked, underpaid and unimpressive news staff. Others are catching on. Consider that Time magazine recently upped and fired perhaps the two greatest investigative reporters working today, the legendary, award-winning tandem of Donald Barlett and James Steele—in a round of cost-cutting! Yes, Mitchell knows the score—chop the living bejeezus out of the editorial budget to pare expenses down and get the darn paper out on time.

    Perhaps there’s no better example of this phenomenon that Gannett’s flagship newspaper, USA Today. Launched in 1982, USA Today’s most noteworthy journalistic achievement in recent years has been the rise and fall of ace foreign correspondent Jack Kelley. For those who have forgotten, Kelley was the journalist who made up his colorful stories from thin air, was exposed and then fired in disgrace.

    But you know what I know, Mr. Dubow: USA Today’s readership continues to grow, despite jacking up the single copy price from 50 cents to 75 cents last September. Business travelers love the paper because it’s widely available, a quick read and generally relevant. The most recent data from the Newspaper Association of America pegged USA Today’s weekday readership at an extremely robust 6.98 million. Although your people won’t comment publicly, it’s possible that, on a Monday-to-Friday basis, this bubble gum card of a graphics-heavy newspaper may, in fact, be more profitable than The New York Times or The Washington Post. Because its raw readership numbers are so massive, USA Today likely has more of the highly desirable affluent readers than does its highbrow competition. Who’s snickering now?

    If the brain trusts behind the elitist papers were fed sodium pentothal and then queried on their papers’ prospects, I suspect the unvarnished truth would sound something like this: “Gannett has the right formula—put out local content at minimal costs and distribute this content on as many platforms as possible. But we are stuck with our brand and our niche—that of providing high-end news to the highly educated. And we simply can’t risk moving away from our core business in the hopes of replicating Gannett’s success. Our customers wouldn’t tolerate us going down-market. So, long term, we are in a bad place.”

    What of the future? Herewith, five predictions about the news business:

    1. The newspaper business will remain enormously profitable and spin off huge wads of cash for the foreseeable future. That’s why McClatchy ponied up $4.5 billion for Knight Ridder’s newspapers, even though it plans to turn around and sell 12 of the chain’s less desirable papers pronto. Gannett, which generated $2.3 billion in operating cash flow in 2005, will continue for some time to benefit enormously from this phenomenon. How right you were, Mr. Dubow, at the 2005 UBS Annual Global Media Conference, when you said, quite simply, “What we have is cash flow.”

    2. These days of heady profits and strong cash flow will at some point be a distant memory. A new generation of tech-savvy kids will grow up and get their news from sources other than newspapers. Sure, print media may always be around. Or not. Your grandchildren, Mr. Dubow, may think it quaint when you explain that grown-ups used to shove quarters in metal boxes on street corners to buy newspapers made out of paper.

    3. As a result, newspaper companies as we know them today will largely cease to exist. They will be replaced by businesses known as “content providers.” Their business cards won’t have the same cache at Upper West Side brie-and-chardonnay soirees, but foreign correspondents may be sending their dispatches off to Google or Yahoo! rather than to The New York Times. The key, of course, is to provide content of any sort—movie listings, restaurant reviews, sports scores—in a customer-friendly way. And don’t underestimate the significance of Yahoo!’s recent hiring of veteran television reporter Kevin Sites to write original stories from around the globe.

    4. If Gannett is to succeed in the new digital media world, it will need to get both the best local content and the right search technology. People are not going to be searching for big, John Seigenthaler-esque articles that garner investigative journalism awards. They’re going to want to know who’s the best dry cleaner in town. Any idiot can find this content; you don’t need to hire my smart students.

    5. The newspaper companies that successfully survive this transition to becoming “content providers” will be those that figure out how to use today’s profits and strong cash positions to place smart strategic bets on what the new media world will look like. I commend your perspicacity, Mr. Dubow, in trying to establish strategic partnerships to make Gannett’s local content available on cellular phones, PDAs and the like. Gannett, like your competition, is trying to find the right ways to provide relevant content on as many types of vehicles and platforms as possible. It’s kitschy, to be sure, but I like this line you’ve been using with the analysts: “We expect to become far more customer-centric in the way we approach ‘anytime, anywhere’, regardless of platform.” Two smart moves you’ve already made: investing in the content aggregator topix.net, and buying PointRoll Inc., the ad designer for new media.

    As you well know, these predictions are hardly earth-shattering, but are virtual certainties, Mr. Dubow. That’s why it basically doesn’t matter who’s running Gannett newspapers around the country and which bubbleheads they’re hiring to write the news. I’m not advocating hiring mediocre people to produce news content but merely looking objectively, as you do, at the question of whether spending the money to hire hoity-toity journalists will translate into more readers or profits.

    Of course, this approach can be taken too far. If you print rubbish for content, it doesn’t matter if you can put it on a cellular phone. It’s still rubbish. And people won’t pay for such rubbish, absent a monopoly situation in which they have few alternatives. (See The Tennessean for details!)

    The huge question mark is how long the newspaper party will last. A decade? Less? Twenty years? More? Who knows? You are 51 years old today. I suspect by the time you retire, Gannett will be well on its way to being a savvy content provider.

    One final thought. Your stock price, hovering near $54 today, is surprisingly low, which, as you well know, means your public valuation is all out of whack. Your share price-to-earnings ratio is 11 today, well below an industry average in the neighborhood of 16.5. That could present a big opportunity. Have you thought about borrowing money to take Gannett private, and using your firm’s strong cash flow to quickly pay down the debt? Such a strategy would then give you two options to make a killing: (1) sell off the newspapers and TV stations piecemeal to the highest bidders at a tidy profit; or (2) spend three to five years reformatting the company into a lean, mean digitalized content provider, and then taking it back public at a much higher valuation. The buyout firms are flush with cash today.

    That’s that. I’m an admirer, Mr. Dubow. If you ever find yourself in Nashville for business or personal matters, give a holler. The ink-stained wretches down here at the Scene would love to meet. First drink’s on us.

    —Willy Stern

    A former staff writer at Forbes, Business Week and this newspaper, Willy Stern won a bucket load of national journalism awards for his investigative reporting before he turned to teaching.
    .

19. Fitrakissaysreadthis says: says:
    21 Jun 2006  at  09:37 am | #

    Warren County revisited
    by Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.
    June 12, 2006

    Editor’s note:With the attacks coming fast and furious from the mainstream corporate press and their apologists like Farhad Manjoo of salon.com, the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism/freepress.org continues to do the difficult work of counting ballot by ballot, precinct by precinct in Ohio. The more we count on the precinct level, the more Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s thesis in the Rolling Stone article is confirmed. As pollster Lou Harris informed us, once the precincts are counted in the “rural and exurbia areas” of Ohio, the more readily apparent the election theft becomes. The Free Press will have shocking information within the next few months, that is being verified ballot by ballot as I write. I’ve enclosed the latest research from Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D. from his recent trip to Warren County. Recall Warren County called a bogus Level 10 terrorist alert on Election Day and diverted the ballots to an unauthorized warehouse under the control of a Republican operative. Remind people that this is exactly the type of research that Manjoo and other apologists and deniers refuse to do.

    The more closely one examines election results, the larger the anomalies become.  Just as election results at the county level mask anomalies at the precinct level, election results at the precinct level mask anomalies at the ballot level.  This is because there will always be some who vote in a manner opposite to the anomaly.  For example, Ellen Connally got more votes than John Kerry in only 12 of 88 counties in Ohio.  Analysis at the county level, or at the precinct level, will underestimate the number of persons who were counted as having voted for both George W. Bush and Ellen Connally, because some people voted for both John Kerry and Thomas Moyer.  Similarly, where George W. Bush got more votes than Issue One, county or precinct analysis will underestimate the number of persons who were counted as having voted for gay marriage and for George W. Bush, because some people voted against gay marriage and for John Kerry.

    Warren County was one of the few which exhibited both a “Connally anomaly” and a “gay-friendly Republican anomaly.” At present we have photographs of punch card ballots for twelve precincts in Warren County.  I have had time to analyze the ballots for four of these precincts.  Analysis at the precinct level had indicated that at least 155 persons must have voted for both Bush and Connally, and that 256 persons must have voted for gay marriage and for Bush.  These are the numbers upon which I based my previous estimate of the number of votes shifted from Kerry to Bush.  I always believed those estimates to be conservative.  Analysis of the actual ballots reveals that in these four precincts, 486 persons were counted as having voted for both Bush and Connally, and 472 persons were counted as having voted for gay marriage and for Bush.  Thus it can now be demonstrated that if 256 votes are subtracted from Bush’s total, he still gets 230 of 842 (27.3%) of the Connally voters, and 216 of 940 (23.0%) of the gay marriage supporters.  These percentages appear too high when compared to these: Kerry got only 159 of 1422 (11.2%) of the Moyer voters, and only 175 (9.5%) of the gay marriage opponents.  Considering that 11.2% of the Connally voters would amount to 94 votes, and 9.5% of the gay marriage supporters would amount to 89 votes, I may have underestimated the vote shift by 127 to 136 votes in these four precincts, or 32 to 34 votes per precinct.  There are 157 precincts in Warren County.  It is possible that I have underestimated the vote shift by 5000 votes, and the net loss to Kerry by 10,000 votes, countywide.

    TOTAL, FOUR PRECINCTS

    Analysis:

    Bush got 1263 of 1422 (88.8%) of the Moyer voters 159

    486 of 842 (57.7%) of the Connally voters 356

    1661 of 1836 (90.5%) of the Yes voters 175

    472 of 940 (50.2%) of the No voters 468

    If 256 votes were shifted:

    Bush got 1263 of 1422 (88.8%) of the Moyer voters 159

    230 of 842 (27.3%) of the Connally voters 356

    1661 of 1836 (90.5%) of the Yes voters 175

20. says:
    22 Jun 2006  at  01:35 am | #

    Mr. Ballot analyser, if you go look at a black inner-city precinct I’ll bet you’ll find a whole bunch of people who voted for both Kerry and against gay marriage.  Does that mean there was ballot stuffing?  No, because many of these voters are social conservatives who vote Democratic.  I think its great you are looking closely at these ballots because every American should be for fair elections above everything else.  But don’t let your partisan biases (if you have any) limit your openness to all possible explanations.  I’m no expert on Warren County, but from what I hear it is where many of the rich (mainly white), professional class of Cincinnati live (West Chester & Mason I believe are there).  These are just the kind of people who are socially liberal (pro gay marriage) and politically practical (voted for Bush because they thought him better on national security).  As for the Connely anomaly, I thought Mr. Manjoo did well in pointing out this could be explained by the probability that a large majority of people may not have known who they were voting for (since OH judicial elections don’t list party). (I know I probably keep up with politics more than 75-80% of voters and I honestly have no idea who is on the OH Supreme Court.)

21. Dragnet says:
    22 Jun 2006  at  11:32 am | #

    Trey, you come up with lots of theories, now you just need to back them up with evidence. That’s what a political scientists with a Ph.D does.

    Just the facts ma’am.

22. says:
    22 Jun 2006  at  11:17 pm | #

    Dragnet, I’m sorry I’m so bold as to question someone with a PH.D but the comment in #19 above made a big deal about the fact that he found ballots that had both a Bush vote and a pro-gay marriage vote on them.  This is not a big shock to me as I explained above.  I don’t need no big theory to say there are many social liberal Republicans (Rudy Guilliani,etc.).  Its common knowledge.  But please answer the question why these “split” votes are such great evidence when you can find other “split” votes (Kerry & anti-gay-marriage) in the black, inner-city precincts I mentioned above?

23. says:
    23 Jun 2006  at  01:45 am | #

    Dragnet, come to think of it, the stolen election crowd has come up with some truly huge theories (like a stolen election) and really have not supplied any hard evidence (at least not any in a form an average Joe can understand-and that includes you).  The one piece of hard evidence provided by Kennedy (the Bush-Connely anomaly) turned out to be completely cherry-picked and revealed obvious bias in the author (and to me, at least, called into question any claims to even a smidgen of objectivity).  I mean how can you fail to mention that judicial races in OH don’t list party affiliation, an obvious piece of key information.  But anyway, if your heroes(the stolen election investigators) can come up with some understandable hard evidence, I’m sure everyone would like to hear it. (even the mainstream media who, according to another one of your crowd’s grand theories, is ignoring this earth-shattering truth: because, I guess, they woudn’t know what to do with all the extra ad revenue they’d get as everyone tunes in to see this once-in-a-lifetime story)

24. Meat & 3 Sides says:
    23 Jun 2006  at  06:46 am | #

    even the mainstream media who, according to another one of your crowd’s grand theories, is ignoring this earth-shattering truth: because, I guess, they woudn’t know what to do with all the extra ad revenue they’d get as everyone tunes in to see this once-in-a-lifetime story

    False argument and you know it. The major media ignores huge stories all the time. The reasons vary. Presumably you’re unaware of Project Censored, FAIR, and numerous other organizations on all sides of the political spectrum who document blackouts or avoidance of major news stories.

    As for Cincinnati, the Dean’s blog and other blogs have been reporting major stories being ignored by the local media.

    Re: RFK’s Rolling Stone article, in fact, it has helped jump start the story, including this Editor & Publisher article which include:

    Carl Weiser, government and public affairs editor for the Cincinnati Enquirer, agreed. “I read it and nothing in there was really new,” he said. “The folks who know Ohio elections best checked into it and found there was no conspiracy.”

    As we can all read above, the Dean asked recently asked Weiser to name these “folks.” Weiser refused. Then the Dean asked Tom Callinan who hasn’t answered, despite two requests.

    Why don’t we go back to that subject? Trey and others (like Nia who was asking for ideas for activism), why don’t you ask Callinan for an answer and post the results here? I’m looking forward to hearing what you find out. (I’d write him myself, but I can’t because I have a professional relationship with the Enquirer.)

    Tom Callinan, (513)768-8551, tcallinan@enquirer.com

25. says:
    23 Jun 2006  at  02:53 pm | #

    Dragnet, I did as you asked and went to the election archives and found some evidence to one of my theories (the one about heavily democratic precincts voting in large number against gay marriage).  In one precinct in Hamilton County, (#30) Kerry got 302 votes and Bush got 23 and the gay marriage vote was split 165-144 (I can’t remember which way--go see for yourself).  Now if I follow the logic from the stolen election crowd, this provides strong evidence that ballots were stuffed for Kerry instead of the commonsense knowledge that this precinct has residence who are social conservative-Democrats.  This trend can be seen throughout many Cincinnati precincts.

26. says:
    24 Jun 2006  at  02:01 pm | #

    Dragnet, you wanted facts -here you go. The so-called Connally-Moyer anomaly is almost assuredly a hoax.  The anomaly, according to Kennedy and others, was that an underfunded black liberal candidate outpolled John Kerry in 12 rural white counties. This larger down-ballot vote is supposedly not supposed to happen.  But ,as pointed out by Mr. Manjoo at Salon.com, this can be explained by the fact judicial candidates aren’t listed by party in Ohio so ,in essence, a significant number of voters voted blind and by name only.  This naturally led to odd poll results.  In fact, the anomaly should be changed to a rule: which is ,if a precinct or county went 75-95% to one prez candidate, the losing prez candidate is always (I checked around 100 such precincts) defeated by the judicial candidate of his party.  For example:Lincoln Heights went 1,766-76 for Kerry but the white Republican judicial candidate (Moyer) received 318 votes against his black, liberal opponent (Connally).  That scenario is repeated without exception in both heavy Dem and heavy Repub precincts.  So the reason those odd results appeared in the 12 rural counties is simply because they voted heavily for Bush-nothing more.

27. Dragnet says:
    25 Jun 2006  at  02:13 pm | #

    Trey, why don’t you compare the number of foot notes RFK has to Manjoo?

    I never made any argument regarding gay marriage, therefore I won’t defend it. Kerry supported the gay marriage ban in Missouri and Clinton wanted him to come out strong against gay marriage, so that’s not an argument that has impressed me either way.

    Fitrakissaysreadthis, should respond. He probably pulled that article from the Free press. You can probably reach Richard Phillips there. If by chance you do decide to write him, please post it here for us all to read.

    How do you explain the security scare in Warren County? Was Bin Laden in Ohio on election day?

28. says:
    26 Jun 2006  at  03:11 pm | #

    Dragnet, I am just a layman with no great academic credentials but I can say with 99% certainty that Manjoo is right in saying the so-called “Connally anomaly” is a total lie.  So Kennedy may be able to claim the silly prize for most footnotes but Manjoo gets the nod for telling the truth.  And I don’t know which is scarier: the thought that someone with the stature of the Kennedy name would so willfully attempt to mislead people on such an important subject or the thought that someone who had such access to good education would be so dumb to actually believe the “Connolly anomaly”.  (Not to mention all the Phd.’s who provided the scholarship behind this stupidity.) As to the Warren County bomb scare: it is not as outlandish as some would have you believe.  Recall if you will:1. Bin Laden released a tape the Sat. before the election giving an implied endorsement for Bush’s defeat.  2.only a few months earlier a bombing by Muslims in Spain just day before their election led to a victory by the “dove” party and Spain’s pull-out from Iraq.  3. Ohio was regarded as “the” key state in the election by nearly everyone. 4.Warren County was one of the biggest Republican majority counties in the state (if terrorist could disrupt the count there, they could greatly impact the election) 5. the 2000 election results nearly created a constitutional crises in this country (so a bombing in the key state could cause the leftover rift to actually lead to a fundamental crises).  So as you can see a terrorist would really help his cause by bombing someplace like Warren County and somebody probably actually called in a bomb threat.

29. Dragnet says:
    27 Jun 2006  at  11:01 am | #

    "I am just a layman with no great academic credentials but I can say with 99% certainty that Manjoo is right in saying the so-called “Connally anomaly” is a total lie.”

    Trey, As Fitrakis points out, Manjoo doesn’t have good credentials either. Even if you are correct and they got that one wrong, there is still lots more evidence you have to discount.

    Once again you fail to support your Bin Laden was in Warren County theory with any evidence. Who issued the warning and what was the evidence??? Was it Homeland Security, the FBI or someone else. Even if I play along and pretend Warren County was bombed, don’t you think they would’ve held the election the next day?

    The 2000 election was stolen by Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris and other republican operatives. Google Greg Palast from the BBC for that major scoop that the corporate media ignored.

    Do you think it makes sense to have private partisan companies in charge of counting our votes without real oversight???