Final Days? A Newsroom Diary
by Ian Lind, Star-Bulletin reporter
Final Days? A Newsroom Diaryby Ian Lind, Star-Bulletin reporter
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At 4 p.m. yesterday, the latest news was that tropical storm Daniel had intensified with winds measured at nearly hurricane strength, and was expected to pass within 30 miles of our exposed windward coastline sometime this morning. Kaaawa was at ground zero. But an hour later came official word the storm had spun to the north and will miss us altogether.
What a relief. Instead of hunkering down with eight caged cats while 50 mph winds batter the house, we had a beautiful sunrise and hopefully will get a relatively normal day. A reprieve of sorts.
The Star-Bulletin is now just days away from Friday's "due diligence" cutoff, which apparently will mean the closing of the so-called data room and the end of access to any financial data, setting the stage for the final deadline for submission of bids on Aug. 14. It's been a long wait, and we could use a reprieve here as well.
A diary reader pointed me to the Rob Morse column in Friday's SF Examiner, which reviews the impact of the Chronicle-Examiner court case. A great read, which ends with these words that hit home because it's the way we all feel:
We're about to merge with the Chronicle, to do we don't know what. We feel no dishonor. We have worked at the best of all failing newspapers.Yesterday's mail also brought this message of support:
Just a few words: I've really enjoyed your newsroom diary; I wish more readers (around the country) saw it. I worked for a Gannett paper (covering politics and writing editorials) here in Boise, Idaho, for several years - up to 1990, when I got sick of it and quit - and I have an idea of what you're up against. And it ain't pretty. Good luck!I thought I'd throw in one other bit of newspaper sales information (and this is what specifically prompted this mail). One of your recent entries noted a sale of a Santa Barbara paper to a local owner. A rarity, to be sure, but not entirely unique. In Lewiston, Idaho, the Morning Tribune, which was owned for decades by the Alford family, was sold off (owing to the usual family/money pressures) to Salt Lake City owners, who in turn were gobbled up by what was then TCI Cable. Then, a miracle. The long-time owner, Butch Alford, who had stayed publisher throughout all this, managed to buy his paper back from TCI, which had some second thoughts about getting into the newspaper business. He's operating now under considerable debt, but the paper is once again locally owned. It can happen.
Anyway - again, good luck!
And a special bit of thanks to everyone who sent kind thoughts for Mr. Buster.
Former Hawaii Congressman Cec Heftel predicts that the Star-Bulletin will be closed unless the court intervenes to extend the looming deadline and sweeten the terms of the current sale offer. That's what Peter Wagner reported in a story in yesterday's Star-Bulletin business section, "Potential S-B buyers seek more time for bids". Heftel and others complain that Gannett released critical data so close to the deadline that there isn't enough time to analyze it, develop a workable business plan, and sell that plan to potential investors.But the broker handling the deal continues to maintain that other potential bidders are not unhappy with the process, implying that the complaints are unfounded.
It's a strange process where the seller (or, in this case, Gannett, which is pulling all the strings of the seller) doesn't want a successful sale and appears quite creative in throwing roadblocks into the process where possible. I can't help thinking that if the Star-Bulletin were in as hopeless financial condition as Gannett has publicly argued, then it would have been in their interest to open the books completely and simply display the obvious futility of a sale. The fact that they haven't done that could be read as a signal that the financial picture isn't actually bleak as they have claimed when viewed from a competitive perspective rather than Gannett's "incremental cost" perspective.
The fact that Gannett could boost their profits by eliminating their JOA partner, which is the basis of their argument to date, does not translate directly into the Star-Bulletin losing vast sums, and that's probably the understanding that drives all the gamesmanship in the court-imposed sales process.
I received a nice note from former S-B assistant city editor Dana Williams, now happily resettled in Florida's competitive newspaper world. Dana accepted her new post after we received layoff notices last fall, but before the state lawsuit put the Star-Bulletin shutdown on hold.
Mostly, I wanted to tell you that I agree with the folks who want you to keep writing abut your feelings and opinions. There's no reason for you to deliver an objective report. We can get objectivity (sort of) through corporate financial statements and news stories about the attempted closure. But you are telling people what it feels like to be in the middle of an objective business decision. It feels sad, confusing, scary. That needs to be said. Almost every day for, geez, going on 11 months now, you've shown us the consequences of one business decision.
Just two days before Gannett assumed control this week of the Indianapolis Star, Arizona Republic, and other newspapers formerly owned by Central Newspapers, the Republic published a less than flattering assessment of Gannett's approach to newspapering. Focusing on the fate of the Louisville Courier-Journal, purchased by Gannett in 1986, the article notes an exodus of experienced reporters, an influx of Gannett editors without community roots, a cutback in news coverage, all accompanied by higher profits.[Note: I'm not sure if these links to stories from the Arizona Republic will work for you. The site offers free registration, but you may have to register first before reading these stories. A quick search for "Gannett" within the Republic's site will get you back to them.]
In another story the same day, Republic writer Catherine Reagor noted a familiar refrain:
One often-cited view is that Gannett's "cookie-cutter approach" to journalism tends to make small papers better but large papers mediocre. For example, News 2000, a recently abandoned companywide program, was widely criticized for forcing papers across the country to follow uniform standards of news coverage based on quantifiable categories.And here in Hawaii, a quip making the rounds of the Star-Bulletin newsroom suggests that Gannett's Honolulu Advertiser could save time and money by just skipping the initial stories and going straight to the corrections. It's an obvious overstatement, and a bit mean, but another indicator of the brittle relations between our newsrooms spawned by the pressures of the past 10-1/2 months.
It was a long night for me, a combination of background anxiety over tomorrow's Star-Bulletin deadline; hyper-vigilence after shifting our sick cat, Buster, to a new antibiotic; a running toilet that is resisting the easy fixes; and early morning playing by Leo, who now enjoys waking up, getting up behind our bed, and seeing if he can knock a lamp down onto us. Fun for him, instant awake for me.
For you cat people (not you, Donnelly): Buster's not feeling too well after the change in antibiotics, but the next most senior males, Lindsey and Silverman, are doing just fine and enjoying posing for the camera.
Lindsey, a handsome guy and two-time calendar cat as a kitten, once made it into the Star-Bulletin's Christmas card several years back.
Mr Silverman, who started dropping in for food nearly a year ago and, in the meantime, has allowed himself to be tamed.
Today is the deadline for potential buyers of the Star-Bulletin to complete their due diligence investigations. In practical terms, in means that the so-called "data room" will be closed at the end of the day, and the box of financial documents, meager as it is, will no longer be available for inspection. The next deadline is in 10 days, when bids have to be submitted. Whether or not there are interested parties actually intending to submit bids remains a mystery, although Mike McKenna was quoted as saying his group would make a bid.Ten days. Unless the court extends the deadline. Ten days.
In this morning's Advertiser, Walter Wright noted several of the Star-Bulletin's strengths, including a more affluent readership, but added this little twist:
Dave Gauger, a Washington state newspaper appraiser and acquisition consultant, said he believes the effort to sell the Star-Bulletin "is all window dressing."Most of the people (in the industry) are rolling their eyes," he said, adding that the publishers "have to jump through certain hoops before it can be shut down. They are playing the game of the final chapter of a joint operating agreement."
Meanwhile, in the midst of this, bargaining continues between the Hawaii Newspaper Agency (controlled by Gannett) and the unions that make up the Hawaii Newspaper and Printing Trades Council, which reports "a little progress on a few of the minor issues, but no progress on any of the major ones."
The current contract has already expired, although an agreement extends its terms in the interim.
Among the company proposals on the table:
• Cut maternity leave benefits to cover only the period a mother is medically disabled. This is the company's reaction to worry that the existing and more generous provision is discriminatory because it does not include paternity leave.•Extend the work week to 40 hours from the current 37.5, with no additional pay. This would devalue the hour wages of part-time employees by almost 7 percent.
•The Advertiser wants the right to require neighbor island reporters to move to Honolulu. Under the existing contract, such changes can be refused.
• The Advertiser wants to extend the definition of directly competing media to include any publication that has its own website, and then prohibit writers and photographers from doing any freelance work for any such publication. Currently, we are allowed to freelance as long as the publication doesn't compete for advertising in Hawaii.
• There's no pay proposal on the table, although Gannett keeps talking about the need to cut costs.
And so it goes in the bargaining process.
Mere reporters haven't felt the burden, but it's been a stressful week for those involved in the production process as the Star-Bulletin plunged into an upgrade to a new version of the Quark publishing system. This has not been a smooth transition, despite the presence of consultants to smooth the way. Files have mysteriously disappeared at key points, and moving files from the earlier version to the current version has been anything but transparent. It's caused missed deadlines and headaches all week.
It feels like we're cannon fodder again, thrown out in front to absorb the punishment and locate all the pitfalls in the upgrade process, so that the Advertiser will then be able to follow and benefit from all of our disasters.
For staffers in San Francisco's Chronicle and Examiner, the uncertainty continues despite the court ruling. Now the question is how Hearst will implement its promise to offer jobs to all Examiner employees. How will the newsrooms be merged, since no writers are expected to stick with the Examiner when it is transferred to the Fang family after several months of transition. As writer Gabriel Roth asks, " What do you do when you've got twice as many court reporters, twice as many sports writers, twice as many columnists as you need?"
It makes me wonder about the Star-Bulletin staffers who were offered jobs with the Advertiser back in the chaotic weeks before the court order put everything on hold? There must be an added layer of stress and uncertainty for those who saw the lifeline jerked out of reach at the last moment. There hasn't been much talk about this, since the offers created a de facto division between have and have-nots in our newsroom, and we're powered past such divisions to keep the Bulletin alive.
But, if current deadlines hold, we may find out quite soon.
Here's our situation in a nutshell. I've taken a few liberties with this little clip from yesterday's Star-Bulletin, just to make the point. I apologize in advance for the poor quality of the scan.
We've got no news editor, no city editor, and an acting managing editor.
The uncertainty of the paper's future precludes recruitment. Other staffers are filling the gaps to the best of their abilities, some wearing multiple hats and job descriptions, but the vacancies clearly take a toll.
The current deadline for bids is August 14. Frankly, in my view, not a moment too soon.
Sorry to inflict this on you again, but it's starting to remind me of another scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Scene 4, "None shall pass!"
The brave Black Knight ignores all injuries and keeps taunting, and fighting. Sounds familiar. If you want some of the audio, click here and look for Scene 4.
ARTHUR: I command you as King of the Britons to stand aside!
BLACK KNIGHT: I move for no man.
ARTHUR: So be it!
[hah]
[parry thrust]
[ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT's left arm off]
ARTHUR: Now stand aside, worthy adversary.
BLACK KNIGHT: 'Tis but a scratch.
ARTHUR: A scratch? Your arm's off!
BLACK KNIGHT: No, it isn't.
ARTHUR: Well, what's that then?
BLACK KNIGHT: I've had worse.
ARTHUR: You liar!
BLACK KNIGHT: Come on you pansy!It really is a funny scene, in its dark way, but it's not so funny played out in daily life.
We just call him "Big Guy". He's quite a handsome fellow, a feral rooster who considers our yard a main part of his territory. He's one of a flock of now free-range chickens rumored to be descended from fighting cocks freed by their owner several years ago.
He actually fought his biological father for control of this territory a couple of years ago and won. I dug a hole on the side of our yard and buried the original Big Guy after that fight. Junior has ruled the roost since then.
This, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with the Star-Bulletin, Gannett, or anything else. But he's part of daily life out here, so I thought it would be worth sharing.
Interesting news that the Los Angeles Times secretly loaned Singleton's MediaNews Group $50 million for its 1998 purchase of the L.A. Daily News. An article in the Times reports the loan was part of a strategy to keep the Daily News out of the hands of an owner that might be able and willing to compete directly for the premium Los Angeles market.
Instead of buying the paper, Times Mirror executives believed the loan would ensure that a relatively weak competitor would remain in The Times' marketplace, according to individuals familiar with the strategy. Equally important, they said, the deal gave Times Mirror an option to purchase the Daily News at a future point as federal media ownership regulations loosened.Such financial dealings between competitors might cut close to federal antitrust restrictions, but they also represent shrewd business strategy.
It's often better to have a weak competitor than no competitor, said Marvin Lieberman, a professor of business strategy at the Anderson School at UCLA. A market with no direct competitor leaves a company open to an assault by a well-heeled rival from another region, Lieberman said. But a weak competitor will often keep a third rival out by raising the cost of entry.
That reminds me an awful lot of Gannett's 1993 sale of the Star-Bulletin, minus its production assets and share of the JOA, to Rupert Phillips and Liberty Newspapers Ltd. Partnership, an equivalent deal to assure a cooperative junior partner as they looked forward to termination of the JOA.
If more than one bidder emerges for the Star-Bulletin, watch for Gannett to try to select the weakest viable candidate acceptable to the court, following the same "weak competitor" logic.
It's the 55th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Stop for a moment of silence and put our woes in perspective. [Oops. I initially described this as the 50th anniversary. Where is my brain? Can I plead Sunday morning fog? Hopefully I'm not that far off on other things. I can hear the giggles from across the hall now!]
Not much to say yet this Monday morning. We're just one week from the deadline for bidders and their bids. Seven more days. It will be another long week.I ran into a good little piece on the new Denver JOA in an online publication called westword.com. "Don't Bogart that Joint," by Michael Roberts, cuts through layers of public relations to take a hard look at the agreement between the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News.
It prompted me to take another look at last year's AJR story, "The Death of the JOA," which was published the same month that the Star-Bulletin closure was announced and was relied on in our reporting, and that of the Advertiser, at the time.
We're all creatures of habit. Buster reminded me of it this morning by holding out for food in his favorite spot on the front steps. This preference goes back ten years when he first moved into our yard from down the street. At the time, we were feeding Tommy, a tough gray-and-white tom cat who ruled this street and several others. Don't know where he came from, but he eventually made our house his home base, returning regularly for meals. Buster, then a young cat, became Tommy's buddy. They ate together on our front steps. We tried to return Buster to his own house, two doors up the street, but he would immediately hop the fence and head back.
We finally recognized the inevitable and adopted Buster, then gradually introduced him to being an inside cat. He enjoyed the move, but to this day thinks that food tastes a lot better when consumed outside on the steps.
The newsroom laugh of the day came when webmaster Blaine Fergerstrom posted a picture of the message posted in bright lights on the marquee above the entrance to the Dixie Grill, just a few blocks from here. Blaine said he saw it, couldn't believe his eyes, and immediately stopped and got a photo.
It was apparently reacting to a scathing and quite hostile Advertiser review of the production of the musical, Rent, which opened last week in Honolulu.
Nothing concrete about potential bidders for the Star-Bulletin emerged on Monday, although the ESOP committee had a telephone conference with it's investment banker, Josh Wolf-Powers, and there were whispers about one or more additional players with potential interest in the sale.
The newspaper market across the country appears red hot, with reports of papers changing hands appearing regularly these days. Newspaper broker Dirks, Van Essen & Murray estimates that $15 billion of daily newspapers will be bought and sold before the year is out.
Last week, Hollinger International Inc., owner of the Chicago Sun-Times, sold off 11 dailies, three weeklies and 21 shoppers in 10 states for $215 million. Hollinger is controlled by Canadian media baron Conrad Black. Buyers reportedly included Bradford Publications Co., Newspaper Holdings Inc., Paxton Media Group Inc. and Forum Communications Co.
In a separate move, Hollinger sold off most of its Canadian holdings in a huge $2.4 billion deal.
Whether this is good news for us or not isn't clear to me. Does it mean that newspaper properties are in such demand that the Star-Bulletin is seen as an unusual but tempting treat, or are there so many options available to buyers that the S-B will end up down towards the bottom of anyone's shopping list?
The "deadline" for bids is being moved again. The S-B's Peter Wagner jumped on the story yesterday and updated it during the day. Peter reports that a 30-day extension has been requested. The judge was in conference Tuesday morning with attorneys representing the various parties in the case, and is expected to issue an order this morning setting out a new schedule. Peter will probably have an update today with further details.Today's Advertiser ran a story as well, essentially a rewrite of Peter's.
If the deadline is officially rolled back this morning, as expected, it would appear that the court is willing to provide as much time as needed to accomplish a successful sale. That's good news for us as long as there is a real bidder involved.
As expected, the deadlines have been officially extended by order of the U.S. District Court in Honolulu. Peter Wagner again got the story in time for our final edition yesterday. Financial records will again be available, this time until August 25, and bids must be submitted by September 1. Magistrate Judge Barry Kurren also set a September 15 deadline for evaluation of the bids and selection of a buyer. Presumably, negotiations over final details then begin between the selected party and both Gannett and Liberty, focusing on unrealistic details in the current sales offer such as the "vacate on closing" clause.The September 15 deadline will also mark the one-year anniversary of the day when word of the Star-Bulletin's closing leaked out into the newsrooms from the executive offices. In some ways it seems like yesterday, with that hollow feeling that accompanied the many stages of disbelief felt as rumors, and then confirmations, flowed in from different sources.
Although the "official" announcement wasn't made until the next day, enough was known by late afternoon to feed prime time television news reports of the S-B's demise.
So here we go again. September 15, the sequel.
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As some staffers struggle privately with the urge to brush off resumes and consider options "just in case", there's a growing sense of optimism in other quarters that the legal wrangling over deadlines indicates the existence of one or more serious bidders, perhaps even resulting in competing bids being submitted on September 1.It isn't yet clear to me whether any bidder is a "good" bidder, at least from a self-interested staff standpoint, but it's a step ahead of no bidder and, at minimum, increases the odds that the paper will continue publishing.
Here in Kaaawa, technology is rising in revolt. My digital camera came back from the repair center in Chicago "dead on arrival" and has to go back for another round of repair. A toilet started running, necessitating a search for one of those obscure Kohler parts. Then early Thursday morning I awoke to the sound of the refrigerator at war with itself. I thought it was the ice maker self-destructing, accompanied by unexplained belches, groans and whines, but by evening it put out at least one batch of ice despite a lingering smell of burnt motor discernible whenever the freezer door is opened.
And for maximum disruption, there's a stranger in town, another Kaaawa cat slinking in through the cat door to reach one of the available cat food dishes. We just noticed him earlier this week, but it obviously wasn't his first time. Most of our cats retreat and watch, then process the area after he heads back outside. But Lindsey happened to be in the house when the outsider arrived early this morning (way too early, from my point of view), and he went into a full growl-a-thon before I intervened.
We're hanging in there with Mr. Buster. He still has some daily pleasures, and can still strike a handsome pose.
And it's Friday, which must count for something.
Friday's edition of Jim Romenesko's MediaNews, found at Poynter.org, prominently featured a link to Peter Wagner's Aug. 9 story reporting the extension of the deadline for Star-Bulletin bids to Sept. 1.Here's a fear shared with me in a newsroom conversation yesterday. What kind of buyer believes they can come into this market, retain the Guild contract, rebuild the Star-Bulletin with a brand new newsroom and printing arrangement; organize and staff sales, marketing, and distribution departments; then grab enough advertising and circulation to turn a healthy profit? All in the face of the fabled Gannett ruthlessness under competitive pressure, which by all reports borders on illegal forms of competition.
It will have to be a very unusual buyer, with deep pockets and a persuasive business plan. Or, my colleague mused, a buyer that already has an "understanding" with Gannett to provide just enough weak competition to both stave off further litigation and keep real competitors from entering the fray. Better a weak competitor than no competitor. Another Rupert Phillips, willing to fill the assigned space without posing any real problems for Gannett. And perhaps a tacit agreement to abandon the field after a polite period of time.
The problem with this scenario is that the existing court order establishing the conditions of the sale puts specific restrictions on bids by any parties related to Gannett, and any back room deals to assure weak competition would be subject to discovery and challenge. But could it happen anyway? You make the call.
Thanks to photographer George Lee for pointing me to another column by the SF Examiner's Rob Morse, which offers up a few more images of what it's like to be living in corporate newspaper limbo:One friend said the last year at The Examiner has felt like a Band-Aid being pulled off very slowly, one hair at a time.Another friend said it's like stepping into dog poo and thinking you got it off, but it's always there.
To me, a recent frequent flier, it's like one of those flights where you get stuck on the runway, unable to take off or go back to the terminal.
Now, at least, we're moving.
It happened again this week. As I try to record some of the events and feelings in the Star-Bulletin newsroom, occasionally I stray across unnoticed boundaries or touch on unrecognized issues in ways that unintentionally cause problems, or personal anguish, for fellow workers, friends, and colleagues.
In our current state of high anxiety, court-imposed secrecy, and investor posturing, these transgressions can apparently reverberate in surprising ways. I try to tread lightly, but sometimes misstep.
It's happened before in the course of this journal, and will probably happen again if the S-B's future isn't settled soon. I imagine it happens quite frequently with our regular reporting, but those impacted rarely complain to the newspaper. But this diary looks inward, turning the newsroom into the subject, a position few of us are accustomed to.
A notice on the newsroom bulletin board is seeking comments on Gannett's proposal to prohibit writers from freelancing for any publication that has its own web site, which would essentially eliminate virtually all freelancing or independent publishing.Existing contract terms, which have been in place for years, allow reporters to republish stories elsewhere, or freelance, as long as the publication doesn't compete directly for local advertising.
It's not even clear whether this diary would be allowed under the company's proposed contract provision.
Sitting at the bargaining table must be particularly hard this year with the bitterness of the Star-Bulletin battle constantly in the background. No wonder progress has been painfully slow.
This is a week of personal milestones. Tuesday is our anniversary. I won't say which one, but the year we got married was the year of "Easy Rider", "Midnight Cowboy", and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". Then another birthday rolls around on Thursday.
And the week started with a great sunrise this morning.
Until the recent court-ordered extension, yesterday was to have been the deadline for bids. My calendar still had the notation, "S-B bids due", which I stumbled over on the day's first calendar check. Another reminder that we're on borrowed time, and have been since last October 30, which was to have been our final edition under the original Gannett/Liberty plan.Asian Week recently ran an interview with Ted Fang, owner and publisher of the new San Francisco Examiner, and also owner of Asian Week. Fang's plan for the Examiner boils down to this:
The challenge for the Hearst Corp. is going to be to build a world class newspaper. The challenge for the new Examiner is going to be to create a newspaper that is uniquely San Francisco.Localized news coverage will be the key. Reflecting ethnic, cultural, political diversity of San Francisco will be equally important. Being in touch with all of San Francisco neighborhoods will be necessary to our success&emdash;and in a way, a large corporation like the Hearst will never be able to do that.
We're now waiting to see whether there will actually be realistic bids submitted on September 1, who the bidders are, and equally important, what their plans for the Star-Bulletin are. There's lots of hallway speculation these days which masks the high levels of uncertainty and anxiety. Take a deep breath and get through another day.
"This sucks," one reporter observed yesterday. I doubt anyone in the newsroom would disagree.
Then, to top things off, a letter from an old friend and former Hawaii resident arrived in Monday's mail. He's living in California now, recently retired, and finding all kinds of interesting things to do. He wrote to say he had just gotten a copy of the Advertiser and, not finding my name anywhere, wondered if I had resigned and freed myself from corporate restraints. It happens far too often, the public blurring of the two papers into one. Partly the result of the JOA, perhaps, but also due to the casual manner in which people now approach newspapers in general.
So it goes.
Since 11/2/99
