Justified Right

Save the Paper! Should Newspapers Steer Clear of the Web?

It’s time for an end of the year wrap-up of the news delivery biz. We have a new and interesting topic –-should newspapers AVOID putting content on the Internet?

 

This past year was arguably the worst in history for American papers.

 

The New York Times owes approximately $400 million on credit lines and is considering refinancing its 8th Avenue building. The Tribune Company has filed for bankruptcy. The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Minneapolis Star-Tribune are restructuring debt. Cash-strapped McClatchy Company is selling The Miami Herald.

 

The knee-jerk analysis is that the Internet is killing the old inky broadsheet. This view was bolstered by a Pew Research study published last week that found more Americans are getting news from the Internet than from newspapers.

 

The zombie-like mantra of newspaper experts for 10 years has been that the road to success is to put your newspaper on the Internet.

 

“But that’s just suicide” said the mouse that roared. A small weekly paper out of Asbury Park, N.J. called the triCityNews has seen double-digit growth every year for the past 10 years. Their business model: AVOID PUTTING ANY CONTENT ON THE INTERNET! So successful is the triCityNews model that the paper has not raised advertising rates since 1999, and their ad sales have skyrocketed every year.

 

Web sites dedicated to media have been ablaze since last week with the topic, when the The New York Times media reporter David Carr did an expose on triCityNews, highlighting their “screw the Web” philosophy, making triCityNews publisher Dan Jacobson the modern-day boy who cried the emperor (the Web) has no clothes.

 

Full Disclosure: I started my career in journalism with triCityNews, penning the “Justified Right” column there for 7 years.

 

The Web resistant philosophy of publisher Dan Jacobson is easy to understand. Newspapers make money selling their content to readers and/or advertisers. Why in the world would you give you content away for free on the Internet? Duh!! Of course your business will fail if you give away your product for free!!

 

There is, however, more to the success of triCityNews that The Times’ Carr didn’t cover. Every paper in the country should take note.

 

The triCityNews is also on the cutting edge of how the news is presented. It is actually like the Internet in many ways: Its philosophy is that middle of the road objectivity by a reporter is a myth. Honest reporters will share their partisan views with you right up front, allowing the reader to better gauge fact from fluff. Just as Congressmen are identified on television with a D or an R after their names, the triCityNews reporters are identified by political philosophy as well.

 

I take pride that this week the Columbia School of Journalism picked up on triCityNews being a “plog,” — a word I invented. If a “blog” is a “Web log” triCityNews is a “printed-log. In other words… a plog. All the news is presented through partisan opinion pieces, not by reporters with phony claims of objectivity.

 

Fairness and balance at the triCityNews is achieved in the same way it is achieved at FOX News –- by making sure the entire political spectrum is given a chance to speak. Like FOX News, if there is an issue, triCityNews will make sure advocates for both sides of the issue are heard.

 

The entire news delivery industry has been moving in that direction on television for some time now. Harkening back to older cable TV shows like “Crossfire” right on up to today’s shows like “The O’Reilly Factor” or “Hannity & Colmes,” news is no longer a partisan posing as a non-partisan (like Dan Rather) telling you what to believe. The new way is to let advocates present their points and let the public decide who is right.

 

News delivery is starting to mirror how our legal jury system works, and it’s better for it.

 

On the Web the “jury” aka the public is given instant access to news articles in the comment sections underneath news articles. The public instantly gets to say yea or nay on a news story.

 

The triCityNews is also like the Web in that way. When that paper does a piece involving a person or business, that person won’t just get a letter to the editor to respond. The triCityNews will often allow that person to write a guest column the following week and they will display it as prominently as they did the column was that was written about them. –Try getting that much fairness out of the New York Times or any other paper when they target you.

 

What the recent Pew study about the Internet luring readers away from newspapers failed to report is that it is it is the partisan Web sites that are taking away readers, not newspaper Web sites.

 

For instance, it was recently reported that Michelle Malkin’s conservative Web site HotAir.com received about a third as many hits as did the entire L.A. Times Web site. — Further proof that people want news from reporters who are honest about who and what they are. They don’t want to be spoon-fed information and told what to think, they want all sides of an issue presented by advocates, so that they can decide what to think.

 

So what’s the moral of the story? Newspapers should act like newspapers and sell their content on paper. If they want to attract the Internet readers, start reporting in the papers like it’s an Internet Web site –- with partisan viewpoints competing to let the public decide the truth.

 

I’ll end with triCityNews publisher Dan Jacobson’s motto: “We’re the triCityNews. We’re here to help.”

Happy New Year.

Peace Today

President Huggy Bear

 

This post is about CLOTHES.

This post is NOT about skin color or blaxsploitation cinema.

So the PC Police can just shut up before they even start talking, particularly weird little government committees in New Jersey, like the one that met twice to condemn blogger Art Gallagher for reporting that Jesse Jackson used a racial slur, but didn't announce a meeting to condemned Jesse Jackson.

My commitment to the equality of all people is well documented.

My commitment to making fun of what we all wore in the 1970's is about to be documented.

Look, you me and everyone else wouldn't want pictures of us posted from the 1970's, because the 70's had some tacky styles.

But you, me and everyone else aren't running for President.  Disco Barry in the white hat was.

Which raises the issue of when Time Magazine came into possession of the photo.  Did they suppress it so that the issue of Obama's college party days would not be fueled to actual inquiry by the media during the election?

If so, that's some special treatment right there.

There was no shortage of news stories about George Bush's party days before his election.

Bill Clinton was forced to explain everything from drug use to draft dodging to his definition of "foreign affairs" being casual sex with strangers in Europe.

So while other candidates are made to explain personal failings, was Obama protected by Time Magazine or the photographer from having to explain a simple fashion faux pas?

If so, I'm upset. 

Imagine the fun we could have had during the election photoshoping Obama and his white hat into other pictures.

Like these:

        

Obama’s Russia Policy? Doc Brown’s Time Traveling DeLorean Should Take Him Back To The Future

 

Historic. As in having an affect or influence on the future.

 

Have you taken a good look at the word “historic” lately?  He’s all frayed around the edges.  He smells like he’s been rubbing BenGay on his tired muscles.  The poor word is absolutely exhausted!

 

The media has been working the word “historic” harder than a one-legged soccer player ever since Barack Obama became the first half Kenyan-American Presidential candidate.

 

A Google search on the words “Obama” and “Historic” turns up over 11 million hits.  “Historic” has to hustle every time Obama winks, sneezes or adopts a puppy (but not so much when he flip-flops on talking to Blago about his Senate seat).

 

The word “historic” asked me to tell you to let him rest now to save his strength, because on January 20 the media just might finish off the old boy.

 

So let’s focus instead on his cousin – “historical” – for whom he is often mistaken. Unlike historic who looks forward, “historical” only looks to the past.

 

The past is here again.  I turned on the television today and Russian battleships were heading to Cuba and a young Democrat President will have to deal with it.  It’s 1962.

 

1962!  Of all the years Doc Brown could have time-traveled us back to in the DeLorean, did it have to be the ‘60’s?  I refuse to grow sideburns.

 

This time though Russia isn’t cruising to just Cuba.  Her battleships led by the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko also visited with America-hater Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Nicaraguan leftist Daniel Ortega and took a sightseeing tour through the Panama Canal.

 

Do you hear that sound?  That’s Sarah Palin tapping on Mr. Obama’s shoulder and telling him, “See, I told you it was important that Russia is close enough to Alaska to see it.”

 

It appears Russia has its eye on influencing events on our side of the Prime Meridian. 

 

That means Doc Brown has to put Obama in the DeLorean and bring him back to December 2, 1823 to listen to President Monroe deliver his State of the Union address.  It was there that the “Monroe Doctrine” was announced.

 

President Monroe told the world that Europe better keep its snooty little imperialism out of North and South America, and if they try to influence the West, America will introduce them to foreign policy via Remington rifles. 

 

The Monroe Doctrine has been America’s foreign policy ever since.

 

Doc Brown should then give Obama a time-traveling DeLorean tour to watch past presidents enforcing the Monroe Doctrine.

 

Set the DeLorean’s “flux capacitor” date to December 29, 1845 for Obama to watch Texas become a State, done at the urging of President Polk (ratified by Tyler) to ward off British interest in the land.  That action saw the Monroe Doctrine teaming with Manifest Destiny for Western Expansion.

 

Set the date to 1850 and Obama can watch President Taylor end British designs on Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast and all of Central America with the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty.

 

Set the date to 1867 and Obama can watch the execution of Maximilian, ending the Austrian’s control of Mexico, which was helped by President Johnson keeping Napolean at bay using the Monroe Doctrine.

 

Set the date to 1898 and Obama can watch Colonel Teddy Roosevelt win a “splendid little” Spanish-American War.  The war concerned Cuban independence from Spain and was girded by the Monroe Doctrine.

 

Set the date to 1901 and Obama can watch President McKinley take control of building the Panama Canal with the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, based on the Monroe Doctrine.

 

Set the date to 1962 and Obama can watch President Kennedy quarantine Cuba with battleships and scare off the Russian Bear.

 

This cruise around history should make clear to Mr. Obama that the Monroe Doctrine is a deep line drawn in the Ocean sand that he better take as seriously as his predecessors did.

 

Since a broken clock is right twice a day we may be forced to admit that Joe Biden was right in predicting our young President will be tested soon after taking office.

 

Kennedy was similarly tested by Khrushchev at a meeting in Vienna in 1961. Khrushchev was left with the impression that Kennedy was weak, emboldening the Russian to set up nukes in Cuba. 

 

President Obama should avoid Kennedy’s mistake.  He needs to show strength right away and declare European and Asian war ships will be confronted and stopped should they enter Western waters.

 

That’s how American Presidents of all parties have kicked European rear since 1823.

Appearing on Fox's Strategy Room Next Monday

 

I'll be back as a guest on FoxNews.com's webcast, "The Strategy Room" on Monday December 15 at 9:00 am.

Hope you can catch the show.

Tommy.

Cursing Patti Blagojevich

Let’s first get the easy one out of the way – “Blagojevich” rhymes with a curse word, as in, “You son-of-a-Blagojevich.”

 

Usually I’m at the ready to bang up Democrats when they do something wrong. They deserve it.

 

However I don’t ever want to be unfair like Democrats are when they make up criticisms that shouldn’t be (see, for instance, Sarah Palin’s clothes).

 

Over the past couple of days there has been puritan shock and horror over Illinois First Lady Patti Blagojevich’s use of the “F” word.

 

She was overheard in the background of a conversation her husband the Governor had on the phone.  The topic was the Tribune Company looking for help selling Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs.  She said to her husband:

 

“Hold up that fu _ _ing Cubs sh _ _.    Fu _ _  them."

 

As if the Cubs don’t have enough troubles.

 

We need to add a bit of perspective.  Patti may have been in her own home at the time, not in public.  She thought she was talking only to her husband, not the rest of us.

 

No one should pretend that their own standards for behavior aren’t differnet in their home than in public.  It’s supposed to be that way.  If you act the same at home as in public, you’re either way too uptight in your house or you act and dress like a boor outside of it.

 

The taped conversation my have been at a campaign office.  I will note that every place I’ve ever worked it was clear that women cuss worse than men.

 

If private cursing were really an offense Hillary Clinton would have faced a firing squad by now.  More importantly, so would many of you have.

 

I do my best not to curse in or out of the house, especially around the kids.

 

There are two times though I really can’t stop cursing:  When I’m stuck in traffic or I stub my bare toe walking full stride.  I’m sure you have your own cursing indulgences.

 

I don’t know why, but sometimes nothing beats the catharsis of good cussword.  I dare you to break your pinky toe and yell nothing but “Cheeseburger!”  I couldn’t do it.

 

Now let’s get Biblical.  There are some references in the Bible to allowable cursing, conceding however they used none of George Carlin’s 7 dirty words.

 

In the Old Testament, Genesis 3:14, God cursed the serpent.  Noah cursed Canaan in Genesis 9:25.

 

In the New Testament, Matthew 25:41, Jesus is described as saying (interestingly enough to those described as being to the “left” of Him):  “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angles.”

 

I like that. I may use that the next time I’m talking to Democrats who are “left” of me.

 

So if a little cursing can come from God the Father, Noah and Jesus, who are we to not excuse Patti Blagojevich?

 

I’m betting that Fox Forum’s own Father Jonathan Morris can find us Biblical references against cursing and explain why we shouldn’t do it.  I can’t find them myself because in 10 years of Catholic School they only let us read the catechism but never the Bible (maybe someday Fr. Morris can explain that to me too).

 

Even without the good Father’s help, I know enough of my Bible to tell the folks judging Patti Blagojevich to cast the first stone only if they’ve never uttered a bad word themselves.

I'll Be On Fox News Thursday Morning at 10:30

On the streaming Internet show at FoxNews.Com called "The Strategy Room."  The host for that segment is Heather Nauert and there will be three other guests: Peter Feld, Bill Bailey and Kevin McCullough.

Hope you tune in.

Not the Rod Blagojevich Obama Knew? Or Not the Axelrod He Knew?

You know it's coming.  Another kiss-off of an Obama friendship to save face.

Obama was friends with racist Reverend Wright until it was politically damaging to know him, so Wright became "Not the Jeremiah Wright I knew."

Obama was friends with extortioner Tony Reszko until it was politically damaging so he became "Not the Tony Reszko I knew."

Obama was friends with terrorist Bill Ayers until it was politically damaging so he became "Not the Bill Ayers I knew."

Time for Act Four.

Here is what Senior Obama Advisor David Axelrod said of Obama's talks with Indicted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich concerning who will take Obama's Senate seat:

November 23: "I know he's talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them."

Here is what Obama said:

December 9:  "I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening."

So who is lying, Obama or Axelrod?

In the liberal world of moral relativism, no one is lying.  "Mistakes" were made.

Team Obama said Axelrod was mistaken, signaling Axelrod to say the same thing.

The problems is, in the Indictment of Hot Rod Blago, there are recorded conversations of the Governor being angry that Obama had at that point offered him nothing more than appreciation for picking Obama's favorite for the seat.

How would he know that if he and Obama or Team Obama had not talked?

So who in the end will get thrown beneath the bus to save Obama from yet another shady friendship? Will it be not the Rod Blagojevich he knew or not the David Axelrod he knew?

Count on Obama's Apostles in the mainstream media not to care if Obama lied.

Shhhh! Don’t Wake the Justice Department Anti-Trust Guys While We Bail Out These Companies

Too big to fail.  “Congressman, our company is too big to fail.” 

 

The hot new song all the kids from Wall Street to Capital Hill are singing these days is “Too big to fail.”  It’s got a brand new beat but I really can’t dance to it.

 

“Too big to fail” sounds dangerous.  What happens when a company that is “too big to fail” actually does fail?  Does a city fail?  Does a state fail?  Will America itself actually fail when a company “too big to fail” finally fails?  Do you believe any of it?

 

Maybe the problem is they are too big to succeed and that’s why they are failing.

 

Since national survival itself appears now to be tied to corporate survival, you’d think the government would have someone watching to make sure a company never achieves the critical mass of “too big to fail.”  Perhaps someone at the Department of Justice.  Maybe we can call it the Anti-Trust Unit.

 

So who has been asleep over at the DOJ-Anti-trust unit while so many American companies have become “too big to fail”? 

 

Thomas O. Barnett ran the Anti-trust unit from 2005 until last month when Deborah A. Garza took over.  She has been with the Anti-trust unit on and off since 1984.

 

Let’s call them “Rip Van Winkle” and “Sleeping Beauty.”

 

Before those two began their government funded nap, if a CEO was overheard bragging that his company had so much market share it was “too big to fail” the Justice Department would slap a lawsuit on them faster than they did when Bill Gates launched Windows and Internet Explorer.

 

How in the world have so many companies become “too big to fail” with no action by the DOJ Anti-trust unit?

 

If you are unfamiliar with the bureaucratic mission of the Anti-trust unit, let’s take a look at what their website says they do:

 

Essentially, [the Anti-trust] laws prohibit business practices that unreasonably deprive consumers of the benefits of competition, resulting in higher prices for inferior products and services.

Antitrust laws protect competition. Free and open competition benefits consumers by ensuring lower prices and new and better products. In a freely competitive market, each competing business generally will try to attract consumers by cutting its prices and increasing the quality of its products or services. Competition and the profit opportunities it brings also stimulate businesses to find new, innovative and more efficient methods of production.

I count a form of the word “competition” six times.  That’s the Free Market. Good businesses survive and the bad ones don’t. The Anti-trust guys are supposed to step in when arrangements artificially prop up the failing business causing consumers to pay higher prices for worse products.

These bailouts propping up bad businesses are contrary to the DOJ’s mission.

Are the shades drawn over at the Department of Justice? What’s it going to take to get Deborah Garza out of her pajamas and over to Capital Hill to testify against bailouts?

Check out this other little ditty from the DOJ-ATU website:

The Clayton Act prohibits mergers or acquisitions that are likely to lessen competition.

The Anti-trust unit has moved to stop such potential global economy killers as the merger between two newspapers in Charleston West Virginia and standardized test writers down in Texas.  Think of the horrors if those mergers were allowed to happen.

Yet here we are today, with the Big 3 automakers panhandling Congress because each is already too big to fail, threatening to merge and become the Big 2 with not even a snore heard from the anti-trust folks.

 I hate to break it the protectors of capitalism, but merging failing businesses with government money is exactly how Mussolini ran his Fascist Economy known as “Corporatism.”

What new line of cars can we expect from this business-government cartel?  The “fascist/socialist hybrid?”  We can drive around in search of the shrinking free market.

Rather than Barnett and Garza monitoring the growth of companies now being bailed out by Johnny Q. Public, they seem to like to give speeches.  Google searches on their names and the word “speech” gives a combined 1,800 hits.

Congress should invite them up to speak about the complicated issues involved in capitalism, business growth and anti-trust.

Unfortunately Congress is too busy getting to the bottom of the earth-shattering issue of whether auto industry CEOs traveled to Washington by plane, train or automobile.

Good grief.

 

Godless in D.C.

 

Jim DeMint (R, S.C.)

 

We know that Dirty Harry Reid thinks you stink.  He said so at the opening of the new Capitol Visitor Center:

Well South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint thinks the New Visitor's Center stinks - because it deletes references to America's history of religious belief.

Understand the Senator's point:  You can't change history.  Religion was an important part of the founding of America.  The Capitol itself doubled as a room for church services. 

No one wants to have a state religion, so don't try to prop up that strawman to knock down.  What you can't do is pretend history that happened never occurred.

Here's words from the Senator:

“The Capitol Visitor Center is designed to tell the history and purpose of our nation's Capitol, but it fails to appropriately honor our religious heritage that has been critical to America’s success. While the Architect of the Capitol has pledged to include some references to faith, more needs to be done. You cannot accurately tell the history of America or its Capitol by ignoring the religious heritage of our Founders and the generations since who relied on their faith for strength and guidance. The millions of visitors that will visit the CVC each year should get a true portrayal of the motivations and inspirations of those who have served in Congress since its establishment.

“The current CVC displays are left-leaning and in some cases distort our true history. Exhibits portray the federal government as the fulfillment of human ambition and the answer to all of society’s problems. This is a clear departure from acknowledging that Americans’ rights ‘are endowed by their Creator’ and stem from ‘a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.’ Instead, the CVC’s most prominent display proclaims faith not in God, but in government. Visitors will enter reading a large engraving that states, ‘We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution.’ This is an intentional misrepresentation of our nation’s real history, and an offensive refusal to honor America's God-given blessings. As George Washington stated clearly in his first inaugural address:

‘…[I]t would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official Act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the Councils of Nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the People of the United States, a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes: and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success, the functions allotted to his charge.’

“The fundamental principles of the freedom we enjoy in this country stem from our Founding Fathers’ beliefs in a higher power, beliefs put forth in the Declaration of Independence and manifest throughout our Constitution,” said Senator DeMint. “If we cease to acknowledge this fact, we may cease to enjoy some of the freedoms we take for granted. We must not censor historical references to God for the sake of political correctness. And we must truthfully represent the limited form of government the Constitution lays out so that our ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ So help us God.”

 

India Should Join Global War On Terror

When it comes to the War on Terror, India has always thought locally, not globally.

 

In 1998 India asked the U.S. and Great Britain to stop bombing strategic targets in Iraq.

 

In 2002 when the United States was considering the invasion of Iraq over weapons inspections and Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, India’s Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said that no country should “force it’s will on another.”

 

After the American invasion, India claimed there was no justification for it, while at the same time expressing belief that Iraq actually did have weapons of mass destruction.

 

Think about that last paragraph.  While hindsight may be 20/20, foresight is blind and requires judgment.  Any country (like India) that believed Hussein had WMD’s but still didn’t want to invade showed horrid judgment about security around the world.

 

What’s puzzling about India’s ambivalent position on the US fight against world terror is that India has far more frequent attacks on their soil than we in the US have on ours.

 

Nuclear power India sits next to historic enemy and fellow nuclear power Pakistan.  Their tensions focus primarily on Kashmir, currently controlled in 3 districts by India, Pakistan and China.

 

Terror attacks in India seem to focus on their regional problems with Pakistan.

 

Adding to that tension is that the most recent terror attacks are thought to have been connected a group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is thought by some to have historical connections to the Pakistani government.

 

To the contrary though, Condelezza Rice traveling in India today warned not to discount the possibility of Al-Qeada invovlement in the Mumbai terror.  She believes India and all countires should cooperate in a more thorough investigation of the identity of the torrorists.

 

If Rice’s Al-Qaeda theory pans out, India’s terror problem is no longer local but global.

 

It’s time for India to choose sides and throughly commit themselves to the American and British effort to fight terrorism all over the world.

 

With China breathing hotter fire down their necks as the Dragon grows stronger, India should want to make sure its Western ties aren’t frayed by amibivelace to the world terror problem and America’s attempt to stomp it out.