Big Media Myopia

It's hard to empathize with struggling newspapers when those running them continue to suffer from the short-sightedness that got their industry into a mess.

The editors at the Washington Post put on a display of such backward thinking on Saturday, when they published an op-ed by two lawyers from the influential D.C. firm Baker Hostetler.

In writing this op-ed, the lawyers hide certain conflicts of interest that should weigh heavily against their analysis. The Post 's editors might have connected the dots for readers, but didn't.

But the piece is just so stunningly stupid that it falls apart all by itself. In it, Esq. Bruce W. Sanford and Bruce D. Brown call for reactionary legal measures that would stifle access to news and information and return us to the grand old days of consolidated ownership, bloated media giants and information gatekeepers.

To save journalism, Brown and Sanford argue, we must "eliminate ownership restrictions" and open floodgates to a new wave of media concentration.

We should also "grant an antitrust exemption" for consolidated media, allowing them to join together and wall off content from users. "Antitrust immunity is necessary because most individual news sites can't go it alone," they explain in the op-ed. "Readers will simply jump to sites that are still free."

They urge readers to support more stringent copyright restrictions that would bar bloggers, Web sites and all others from the online sharing of even a small portion of mainstream media news content.

Nowhere in this silliness do they see the consolidation and walling off of news for what it is: more the real culprit in the demise of newspapers than is their favorite bogeyman -- the free flowing Internet.

We have nearly survived an era of media mergers that shackled newspapers with massive amounts of debt and high shareholder expectations. Look no further than real estate magnate Sam Zell, who in 2007 purchased the Tribune Company using financial contortions and shifting debt structures that made heads spin among even the most seasoned bean counters.

Zell is not alone. Media consolidation over the last 20 years has been typified by leveraged deals and unserviceable debts.

But consider this. Just a few years ago, the average profit margin for newspapers was 20 percent -- with some raking in twice as much or more.

"Did they use these astronomical profits to invest in the quality of their products or to innovate for the future?" asked Free Press' Craig Aaron on Thursday. "No. They just bought up more newspapers and TV stations." (On May 12 Free Press released a National Journalism Strategy that outlines forward-thinking policies to save journalism, and not merely prop up the creaking old guard.)

This debt-loaded structure began to implode as their monopolies over local advertising revenue were undercut by Internet upstarts such as Craigslist and Google News.

The recent economic downturn was the final straw. And the aftermath has been dire -- at least for journalists. By one count, 24,000 journalism jobs have been lost since 2008. Foreign, Washington and statehouse bureaus have been shuttered. Major news organizations are in bankruptcy. Others, like the Rocky Mountain News, have closed their doors for good. Newspaper circulation is nose-diving. The Seattle Post Intelligencer and Tuscon Citizen have shed their print operations opting (far too late) to take exclusively to the Web.

In Saturday's Post op-ed, both Brown and Sanford are nostalgic for the corporate media oligarchs that predated the Internet. This fantasy is so far removed from the contours of today's media landscape that it's easy to dismiss these two lawyers as ancient barristers who rely on secretaries to print and hand deliver their email.

They aren't. And that is what's disturbing about this article.

Undisclosed by neither Brown and Sanford nor the Washington Post is the A-list of corporate media clients represented by the authors.

Here's what I found from quick scan of the Baker Hostetler Web site: Sanford has been counsel in cases representing publishers E.W. Scripps Co, Tribune Co., the Hearst Corporation, Random House, Simon & Schuster and Bertelsmann, A.G. He also represents consolidated broadcasters Clear Channel Communications, ABC/Disney, NBC, Fox Television as well as AOL/Time Warner. Brown has represented Scripps Howard Broadcasting Co. and the New York Times.

This list is not complete. (I encourage people to use the comment thread to add new names of the firm's mainstream media clients.)

As far as I can tell the Post doesn't seek counsel from Baker Hostetler. But that doesn't preclude the paper's publishers from benefiting from Brown and Sanford's myopia.

That these two lawyers have sold themselves out to corporate media seems no surprise in a city of lobbyists and snake oil. What's disturbing is the lengths to which the Washington Post will go to promote such swill without full disclosure to readers.

 

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Comments

[Queenofthedamned]

Having worked in television stations owned by Scripps, ABC, and NBC, among others, Baker- Hofstetler was well-known to us mid-level executives. While there is a clear need for a new business model that will fairly compensate legitimate journalism enterprises and journalists v. bloggers, pundits, etc., turning to a group of trapped-in-amber white guys serving as legal counsel to trapped-in- amber white guys is hardly the place to begin to find a solution. They propose the SAME "solutions" they've been touting for the last 25-ish years--massive deregulation, JOA's and FCC waivers re ownership limits were happily, readily agreed to by Republican administrations beginning with Reagan. Unfettered monopolies are the ONLY ways these guys can think of to make money. If they ever had a vision or an original thought, their collective white-haired, pink-faced heads would implode.

[BBinMT]

It's the same problem as in every other sector of the economy. Bigger is better and putting out a superior product has succumbed to profits and keeping the investors happy. Innovation and staying ahead in the marketplace can't hurt, either. But, when the bottom line is the only driving force, nothing else matters.

[noamjunior]

this op-ed is the perfect example of why newspapers are failing- people don't feel the need to pay to get corporate propaganda when so much of it is available for free

[noamjunior]

the music bizz already tried this- using lobbyist to write new laws that protect their outdated distribution and economic practices at the expense of their customers fair use rights- how is that working out?

[LewDan]

Newspapers succumbed to Republican demands that opinion is news and news is just opinion forcing their readers to seek other sources to tell which is which -- to get the news!

What did they think would happen?

[ProgressiveBum]

Saving newspapers by intensifying the problems that got them to this point in the first place? Doubling down on an unsustainable business model? WOW!

[Timothy Karr - Huffpost Blogger]

Markos chimes in:

” For two lawyers who supposedly specialize in media and First Amendment law, these guys were so full of stupid I'm embarrassed for them.”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/17/732381/-Clinging-to-a-dead-biz-model-for-dear-life

[noamjunior]

another great commentary

[Timothy Karr - Huffpost Blogger]

Matthew Yglesias writes:

"This op-ed seems designed to push whole new frontiers in bad policy. The idea is that in order to save newspapers, congress should (a) grant newspapers an anti-trust exemption so they can collude and fix prices and (b) make search engine indexing of whole web pages a violation of copyright laws. Thus equipped to extract monopoly rents from readers and Google alike, the thinking goes, the news business can be saved."

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/05/killing-the-internet-in-order-to-save-newspapers.php

[pbg]

The problem with the newspapers is not that online news is easier: it's not. It requires an expeensive machine to read. It takes electrical power and costs money to connect to the Internet. It often has annoying blinking ads next to it.
A newspaper is reasonably compact, requires no devices, is perfectly portable and can be bought cheaply without requiring a subscription. If you do subscribe, people will hand deliver it to you every morning. Pretty nice deal. And they have comics!
What did they do to blow this?
1) They published bad, superficial news stories, puff pieces and crappy features.
2) They lied to us.

The mainstream media could easily have deflated the Internet threat by doing two things:
1) Search out the hottest internet talent doing great writing (often for nearly nothing) and hire them.
2) Become actual news aggregators themselves.

That, though, would have involved giving progressives a voice. And we can't have that.

[nevergiveup]

Bravo. The truth be told.

Newspapers committed suicide when they fell in love with LYING to the American People about Iraq, and the STUPIDITY of the American People. Newspapers wanted to have it easy and dumb down their products just as TV has dumbed down everything they produce. The race to the bottom--the race to appeal to our basest instincts--is being won by TV, but Newspapers still lost because they played on their own weaknesses instead of their strengths. I will miss newspapers --but not the rich, corporations and fools who own them and ran them into the ground.

Corporate America hates Truth, Patriotism and America. They love GREED and STUPIDITY. It makes them lots of dough.

[3fingerbrown]

Internet = truth? Google, YouTube, Yahoo and other multibillion-dollar rackets stand for truth, justice, and the American way? C'mon, guys, snap out of it. Your thinking is so 10 years ago.

The fact is, the Internet has been the "mainstream" media for a while now. Once an information provider accepts advertising and sells stock, it's mainstream media, no matter what the delivery system happens to be. The top news and commentary sites and search engines are now subject to the same compromises and cop-outs that publishers have been making since Ben Franklin sold his first line of ad space.

[ThoughtfulDavid]

I think that rather than lying, they mostly became lazy. It's a lot easier just to copy down the latest talking points handed to you, than to actually think. And heaven forbid that you might offend some wingnut who claims the earth is flat (or that evolution is "only" a theory, or that Junior Bush didn't lie us into a war)--it's a lot easier just to print "both sides" of a story, even if one side is that of an idiot. Then you can head back to your nice warm jacuzzi, and don't have to think again for days, or maybe even weeks, if you're lucky.
And in being lazy, they gave up on their jobs. And people noticed, and quit reading them. The internet isn't perfect, but it isn't lazy. There are some really hard-working, intelligent, thoughtful people out there on the tubes, who finally have a way to get their voices heard, around the lazy gatekeepers at the MSM.

[caphillprof]

Basically, Sanford and Brown were making the very kind of argument that lost John McCain the last election. Methinks the rich, white guys remain in denial.

[josephebacon]

I read The Economist, The UK Guardian and the UK Independent and I watch the BBC world news because the so-called American "Mainstream media" is nothing but an endless propaganda organ for the Republic Party. Since the advent of Reagan, the American press acts just like Izvestia and Pravda did in the USSR. If the Corporate Controlled Conservative Press (CCCP) says it, then it must be a lie.

[Merlin7]

The mainstream media simply are not credible anymore. Most Americans see them as part of the problem, not as honest brokers of information. The MSM -- especially CNN and the other broadcast networks -- serve mainly as megaphones for the federal government. Indeed, as we all now know, they withhold much more timely information than they provide, especially if that information might reflect badly on the so-called war on terror or other major corporate interests. To really learn about a news topic today, you get the headline from the MSM, then go to the internet to find out what is really going on while the boys and girls at CNN talk endlessly about money and how cute Michelle Obama looks.