Rogue Columnist

Larry Beaupre, an appreciation

I was heartbroken to hear of the passing of my friend, Larry Beaupre, too young, at the age of 68. He was still working, running a newspaper, serving the public trust. I would have expected no less. We have lost one of America's great journalists and newsroom leaders.

Let's help the Times

A few years ago, when it seemed that Phoenix had become the nation's fifth most-populous city, the New York Times decided to post a reporter to this unknown land somewhere on the other side of Jersey. Recently, the job has been handed off to Fernanda Santos. Lately, the Newspaper of Record has uncovered that it's hotter than hell in the un-air-conditioned atrium of the Sandra Day O'Connor Federal Courthouse (a plan which I remain convinced starchitect Richard Meier just pulled off the shelf from his student days, although others say he was enamored by the misters at a restaurant at Arizona Center). Santos has also revealed for the Times' influential readership the tortilla factory at the Ranch Market on Roosevelt at 16th Street.

Then came the topper: A story this week on the excessive heat that never mentioned the worsening urban heat island because of the loss of agriculture and sprawl, much less climate change and its dire potential consequences for a big city where, to paraphrase Ed Abbey, one should not be. The conclusion of this bastion of sophisticated journalism: It's very hot in Phoenix in August.

To be fair, Santos was said to looking for a house in the historic districts, according to sources who wished to remain anonymous because they wished to remain anonymous, as the Times might put it. Good for her. She has done some (reactive) lifting on the Badged Ego's legal troubles and immigration. And one never knows the misguidance being given by editors. But Phoenix desperately needs all the real enterprise journalism it can get, however much it discomfits the local-yokels. Let's help out the Old Gray Lady.

What we won't discuss

I was tied up Thursday with my Sunday column for the Seattle Times. It was a good thing; otherwise, my head might have exploded. All the oxygen in the mediasphere was taken up by a "Democratic strategist" named Hilary Rosen, who said of Ann Romney on CNN, "Guess what, his wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and how do we — why do we worry about their future?" Vast condemnation ensued, ending with Rosen apologising. This wasn't just taking up space on Twitter or new-media sites, but the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, among others. A blogger for The Nation argued why Rosen was correct. I can't even imagine the wall-to-wall coverage on the boob tube.

As Evan McMorris-Santaro blogged at Talking Points Memo, "Welcome to the next seven months."

So if it wasn't already obvious, there are certain things that won't be discussed in Campaign 2012. The perhaps-failed launch of a proto-ICBM by nuclear-armed North Korea got short shrift Thursday. It may eventually be used as a cudgel against President Obama, but not today. Look over there — it's Hilary Rosen! Iran is pursuing both nuclear arms and long-range delivery systems, or not. Will we dig deep on this issue in the public square, including how Israel is driving American foreign policy not to our best interests? Don't count on it.

Paul Babeu open thread

By now, you know the allegation that Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu threatened to have his Mexican ex-boyfriend deported. New Times and the Republic have the stories. He's now wrapped up a press conference where he 1) Denied the allegations 2) Said he was gay and came out for marriage equality and gays in the military, and 3) Said he's staying in the congressional race.

That Babeu is gay is only relevant if he previously supported GOP policies against equality or that hurt gays. If so, he's not just a hypocrite but one who had power to hurt others. Now we'll see if Arizona still has a real press corps: Who will be investigating these allegations, and if nobody, why not? If this was planted by his political enemies, as Babeu claims, who are they? Dig deeper. Who are Babeu's backers and contributors? What are their agendas? How has his secret life informed his performance as sheriff? And how about him making his political name by immigrant bashing? What connections does he have to the for-profit prison industrial complex? Get every piece of every paper trail. Follow the money. And when Babeu laments the economic condition of Pinal County, remind readers that it has been under conservative control forever, its leaders allowed it to be victimized by a vast real-estate hustle, and this is the Randian paradise produced by the policies he's campaigning on.

Rogue readers may take it from here...

Here and Now and gone

As I reported exclusively last week, KJZZ will soon be ending its weekly local Here and Now with Steve Goldstein. With it goes the only locally produced public affairs radio program in the nation's sixth most populous city. With this move the incredibly narrow media spectrum in Phoenix becomes even more narrow. It's a terrible loss to discourse, journalism and democracy.

Goldstein had me on over the years, even after I was shown the door by the Republic for having the temerity to warn of the housing depression that now lays heavy on the land. He was unfailingly gracious, a class act. But more than that, his program was wide-ranging and fair to a fault, a forum for the Krackpots as well as for the sane elements in the state. He's a talented, intelligent broadcaster who could be a star in any major market. My sources say he'll stay on as a news announcer. One said plans call for "nine-minute daily segments," whatever that means. It can't replace an hour of thoughtful information, give-and-take and smart conversation about Arizona's most pressing issues.

My warning signals went up. Here was a program that couldn't fail to irritate the Real Estate Industrial Complex and the Kookocracy. But one source says its demise is more prosaic: internal politics.

Eating our future

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred. — Franklin Roosevelt

It's true I give a good speech. What can I do? — Barack Obama

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism. — Herbert Hoover

 

We do not need clairvoyance to predict the general outcome from the protracted and ugly debt-ceiling negotiations between President Hoover and the House Republicans. This is because, contrary to the the mainstream media narrative, Washington is not composed of equal parts of hardcore conservatives, hardcore liberals and centrists, with the only trick being for them to get along and "stop acting like children."

In reality, one of the two major parties has become totally captured by extremist ideology that would make William F. Buckley turnabout his sailboat and head for France. The other party, the Democrats, are leaderless, captured by corporate interests and lacking any major liberal lions. Liberalism is essentially dead in America as far as governing is concerned, a development with far-reaching and unexamined consequences. Over all this, and interlocked with the right-wing machine, is unprecedented corporate control of the government, from the statehouses to Washington, D.C. More than $50 million has been spent this year alone in lobbying Congress to further weaken regulation of Wall Street and the big banks.

Finally, President Hoover is not willing to fight, much less for liberalism or for the American middle class. He seems desperate to grasp at virtually every "deal" that floats daily before his finely chiseled face. The latest, according to Talking Points Memo, is that good ole "grand bargain" that would involve massive spending cuts "set in stone," with maybe "revenues some time in the future." Whatever the final settlement, this is the trajectory. It's time to consider how this will play out.

Rules of engagement

Last night, I finished the late Alan Bullock's magnificent book, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. It's a reminder that no matter how much one has studied a topic, he or she can have vast new landscapes opened by the best historians as tour-guides. The book was completed just as the Soviet empire that Stalin built was falling apart, and the moment was marked by the greatest hope. Yet Bullock also reminded us of the bloody paths that contingency can create, particularly when broad social, economic and cultural forces and destabilization ("history from below") are harnessed by evil genius ("history from above"). The book ends with a deeply moving coda of promise. But that comes after a thousand pages examining the two greatest mass murderers in history; worse, men who could move nations to do their killing.

I think about all this as we sit seemingly becalmed, summer opening. Americans could be forgiven a moment of desire for, as Frank Fukuyama put it, the end of history after the long standoff of the Cold War. But this is not 1989-90. Now we are a nation of simpletons in denial. Thus, President Obama could make a speech about Afghanistan where the media report it as if we're actually leaving this hopeless morass. He can say, "it's time to focus on nation-building here at home" but he lacks the conviction to build even one — just one — segment of true high-speed rail. We treat Randian ravings as serious policy options and allow the cruelest policies to be passed by those who also brandish their "Christian" values at every speech. One of our two major political parties' platforms is essentially based on returning America to the 1880s, without a frontier and with more than 300 million people in a complex society.

As I write this morning, I see headlines for stories saying the United States and its allies will "release 60 million barrels of oil to offset supply disruptions caused by unrest in Libya." And presumably also to help keep gas prices down for the trip to Wal-Mart (recent acquisition: the U.S. Supreme Court). And they note oil prices fell. I want to scream, "America uses 20 million barrels of oil every day and China is fast catching up, you fools! Prices are falling because of fears of a new recession!" But, in a calmer state, I think, maybe it's me. I don't understand the new rules of engagement:

Nullification

The latest Kookocracy folly in Arizona is a nullification bill. According to the Arizona Republic, "proponents, including Gov. Jan Brewer and many GOP lawmakers, call their effort renewed federalism and cheer the push to reassert states' rights." States' rights, of course, is longstanding American paranoid code for de jure racism. Now, beyond that, it's used as a trope to do away with Obamacare and the EPA. But does anyone think a GOP federal government would allow, say, California to nullify a white-right law? This is just another set piece of white-right theater to keep the duhs and ignos distracted. Or is it? With more than six million people, Arizona has turned from national joke to national trend-setter, from its Jim Crow anti-immigration law to its becoming the most prominent hotspot for political violence (and isn't it interesting how quickly the national media backed away from any censure of the climate of violence and "anti-liberal" hate speech that led up to the assassination attempt on Gabby Giffords). What happens in Arizona doesn't stay in Arizona. And indeed, other red states want nullification, especially of the hated Obama health care revamp.

It's useful to recall the last time nullification was part of the national conversation. South Carolina passed a nullification act in 1832, to assert that the state would not be bound by a federal tariff that adversely affected the agrarian South. The South Carolinians backed down when they realized that President Andrew Jackson, no Barack Obama to put it mildly, would administer federal law with armed force — and if push had come to shove, Old Hickory would have done so with a bloody-mindedness than would have made Abraham Lincoln look like a pacifist, and the hotheads in Charleston and Columbia knew it. All this being history about which the Huppenthal home- and charter-schooled white-right are abysmally ignorant. Nevertheless, the Nullification Crisis was a step along the road to the Civil War. It was a sympton of an underlying unsustainable situation.

The crisis took place during a national economic downturn, as well as increasing sectional tension. Both of which apply today — and if the battle lines appeared more neatly drawn than today, it's useful to recall that most Southern states had strong pro-union movements. One of the most articulate anti-secessionists was Sam Houston. Again, we have sectional strife combined with a severe recession, and while the economy is on the mend the federal protection afforded the risky practices of the banksters virtually ensures another panic, sooner than later, and globalization is making the losers hurt ever more. All this drives political extremism.

The best of the year

The most popular Rogue posts of 2010:

Difficult Days Ahead

Friday Night Lights

Blue Highways

Phoenix 101: The Economy

Phoenix 101: Growing Up

Rogue: The user's guide

We had a lively give-and-take in the comments section of the most recent post. It began when Joe offered this comment:

"I enjoy your commentary... however, the unending hate/sarcasm tossed @ PHX is getting a bit old and tiresome. Not at all rebutting any of the crystal clear facts you present. However, at one point do you stop being an interested commentator and more of the type of people you seem to rail against on a steady basis?? Rather than simply toss out attack after attack after attack — which is starting to take on a feel of virtual hate, if not bordering on offering the perception that you actually desire to see PHX fail, how 'bout offering up some constructive/practical solutions? Or, is all this is left to do is to toss barbs and lose all hope??"

Many jumped in — all civil and smart (no more of Zbig and his thugs from my old AZCentral blog). Soleri made some essential points:

Joe, we're talking about a city that doesn't self-critique except from its Seattle outpost. It's really that bad. If anything, it's been getting worse over the past 20 years. Talton's punchy writing style (think of writers like Mencken, Breslin, Hamill, Mailer, Ivins, Taibbi) is really a compliment to Phoenix. It says if you're big enough to play in the majors you shouldn't mind hearing the truth. What's really depressing is that well-meaning folks like yourself get upset by one of the very few authentic voices Phoenix has produced

The "solutions" (here it helps to imagine a universe where Phoenix is actually conscious) are trotted out from time to time. Here again, Talton is probably the only well-known writer with contacts deep enough to write knowledgeably about the problems themselves. The solutions necessarily sound less convincing knowing what we do about denial and Phoenix's reflexive boosterism.

The small community that meets here is not a church. There's no real dogma or cognitive style except thinking outside the Phoenix box. I hope you come back and think "out loud" about this place. We don't really need an "amen corner" here or want one.

I take Joe at his word and don't believe he's a plant or the kind of "seminar commenters" paid by right-wing groups to post talking points on blogs around the country. We absolutely don't need an amen corner. I wish more who disagreed would make comments, and you can tell from some of the conversations in the comments section that we have vigorous debates already.

That said, perhaps I should have offered a "user's guide" to Rogue Columnist when it began in January 2008. 

Peak oil and its deniers

UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong has a running feature on his blog called, "Why, oh why, can't we have a better press corps?" Amen, brother. But even the best newspapers have blind spots, and that has especially unfortunate consequences when those dark zones concern some of the biggest issues of the day. The New York Times is already terrified of climate-change stories and won't plumb seriously into the soft empire we've created and its crushing costs. One of its biggest deficiencies is coverage of energy, especially the oil industry. Hence, we were served a story on Sunday about peak oil that failed to define the term and consigned the people in the story to the survivalist fringe. This from a newspaper that also publishes a deferential story about the retrograde nihilist Rand Paul and shrinks from nailing the tea party for its racist supporters, incoherent positions and — especially — shadow control by big corporate money.

Peak oil doesn't mean "we're about to run out of oil." Even defining it as "demand outstripping supply" is incomplete. Peak oil means the world has reached a point where half of the planet's oil has been burned up (see, "climate change"). The remainder will be increasingly hard to reach and more expensive to refine. America hit its national peak in the early 1970s. The North Sea has passed peak. Several of the world's giant "elephant fields" are near or past peak. This is a simple fact of geology about which there's no disagreement among most experts (the outlier: the oft-quoted and highly-paid-by-industry Daniel Yergin). Peak oil was being used in ads by major oil companies and speeches by their CEOs in the mid-2000s. As with climate change, the debate is over details; in this case, when will peak hit and what will be its effects?

Not for nothing did America fare well in World War II because it was a petro superpower and the world's leading oil exporter. Neither Hitler nor the Japanese Empire had much in the way of oil resources. Hitler failed to make the Caucasus oilfields an immediate priority in his attack on the Soviet Union, a geopolitical example of when cops say, "Thank god for stupid criminals." Now, more than three decades after hitting peak, America still produces oil, especially in Texas, Alaska, California and Louisiana. We're even still one of the world's larger oil producers, but that is way outstripped by our appetite.

Roll over, Gene Pulliam

The Arizona Republic on Sunday published a remarkable front-page editorial concerning the pile of feces into which the state has done a face-plant, otherwise known as its attempt to "address" illegal immigration. It was not remarkable for its placement — old-time newspaper publishers often did page-one opinion pieces, perhaps most famously the Republic's own Eugene C. Pulliam. Rather, this article, pretty as it was with the paper's current obsession with design, proved astonishing in its intellectual shallowness, dishonesty and desperate pretzel-twisting to cast "blame" equally in every direction. And all the while demanding "leaders." Rarely has an institution in the broad land of vapid corporate newspapers made such a gaudy display of its daft cowardliness. One is reminded of Lincoln's line: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

"Old Man Pulliam," who ran the Republic and Phoenix Gazette for decades, occasionally published — and even wrote, for he was a newspaperman to his marrow — thundering page-one editorials. They were not intended to compete in the Society for News Design. They were sometimes long, always trenchantly and even intellectually argued. I recall one from the late '60s (I believe) that was a fierce jeremiad against rising government bureaucracy. You always knew where his newspaper stood. Pulliam was a man of the right but he would not be allowed into today's Republican Party or corporate journalism club. He was too independent, endorsing LBJ over Barry Goldwater in 1964 and renouncing the idea of a newspaper as merely a business. It is said he wrote a trust to prevent the sale of his beloved papers to the likes of Gannett, but that's another story.

There's no doubt that were he alive today and running the Republic, he and his famed investigative reporters would make short work of Russell Pearce and Joe Arpaio.

'A Christian thing'

Of all the detail that emerged about the Michigan so-called militia, which hoped to start an uprising against the government by killing a police officer and then bombing the funeral, two stand out. One was when a neighbor, asked about such groups, their heavy armament and violent beliefs, responded that it was "no big deal" around there. Another came from the ex-wife of the accused ring leader, who told the Associated Press, "It started out as a Christian thing. You go to church. You pray. You take care of your family. I think David started to take it a little too far."

Ya think?

As a Christian, it's painful to hear the media incessantly describe this as a "Christian militia." Being a Christian is about far more than going to church, praying and taking care of your family. It's not about premeditated murder. It's not about revolution against the government, for Christianity in practice is revolutionary enough (e.g., love our enemies, such as Osama bin Laden). It is about helping the least, the last and the lost. It is about social justice, and forgiveness, and grace. Jesus ministered to the poor, ate with sinners and didn't deny healing based on pre-existing conditions. The faith is, in other words, about many things that American right-wing Christianity despises — a Christianity not merely preached in snake-handling backwoods outposts but in some of the largest mega-churches. Better to pick highly selectively from the Old Testament: keep women down, stone gays, smite and slay mercilessly in the name of the Lord, overthrow the government (of the Antichrist!) and establish a theocracy. So in Holy Week, these so-called Christians would have Jesus suffer yet again.

What a columnist does

As regular newspaper readers have waned, more people are confused about what I do, both in my day job and on this blog. Clark Hoyt, public editor of The New York Times talks to the newspapers' op-ed editor to offer this a useful primer:

The license and responsibilities of an Op-Ed columnist...are similar in some fundamental ways to those of a news reporter but profoundly different in other ways.

First, the similarities. A columnist is subject to the same standards of factual accuracy as any writer in The Times, on any page. If a columnist writes that something happened on a certain date, or that the government spent a certain amount of money on something, or that a specific number of people have died in the war in Iraq, to pick a few examples, it is his or her responsibility to make certain that information is correct. Columnists must make sure that when they describe an event they are being accurate in their description. When they quote someone, they are required to do so accurately. Errors that are made must be corrected openly and quickly.

Oh, for a newspaper in Phoenix

Phoenix, the nation's fifth-largest city, hasn't had a newspaper since 2007. I'm not being snarky. The storied, beloved and hated Arizona Republic was replaced by The Information Center. Its owner Gannett was very clear about this when the change was made. Staffers were told over and over: "We're not a newspaper anymore." It shows.

That's too bad, because troubled places, corruption, exploitation of the weak and the crushing of fair play thrive when there's no real newspaper. Wal-Mart quit the despicable practice of taking out insurance policies -- payable to the company -- on its minimum-wage, part-time workers only when the practice was reported by the Wall Street Journal. Exposing wrongs in a complex world, and explaining that world, usually takes highly trained, highly motivated, intensely curious veteran journalists. Such work can't be done by "crowd-sourcing" or "citizen journalists" or any of the cheap fads publishers have used to get rid of their cranky, higher-paid intellectual capital. Some fine journalists remain at The Information Center, but they are rarely allowed to really follow their calling, especially upon a growing herd of sacred cows.

Oh, for a newspaper in Phoenix. One to write hard-news-put-'em-in-jail investigative journalism. One to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. To report the news and raise hell. To dig through court, government and business records, and cultivate deep, authoritative sources. To illuminate and hold accountable the most dominant institutions. If it existed, I can think of ten major stories to get it started:

The debates we're not having

As masterful as President Obama's health care speech was, he operates in a nation that is increasingly losing the capacity to govern itself. The blurt of the loutish South Carolina Republican congressman, calling the president a liar, something I have never heard in listening to presidential addresses before that body since JFK...well, that's the least of the problem.

Health care reform foundered on the vicious lies of a well-organized minority and, apparently, the simple-mindedness of the American people (all manipulated by the health industries' hundreds of millions of lobbying dollars). The side dish was the ongoing hyperventilation over the president's citizenship or lack thereof. Then came the hysteria over his "indoctrination" of schoolchildren from a harmless speech (two other presidents have done this, with no controversy). All this from a minority of nuts -- and their reactionary masters -- who nonetheless dominated the television from which most Americans get their "news." This is how we spent our summer. One would never know who won the election last fall.

Think of all we're not discussing. Not even thinking about as a nation.

Arizona: Image and reality

It's easy to return from vacation because the Arizona Laff Riot writes my best material for me. Case in point: A Page One story in the Information Center headlined, "Does Arizona have an image problem?"

When some future Gibbon writes about the decline and fall of American civilization -- which you're getting to live through -- he or she will find ample material in the treasure paid out to management consultants. One of their favorite tricks is to distract productive employees with drivel over "image" and "branding." This works to the advantage of entrenched management and culture because it avoids dealing with real problems that are substantive, not image. And so it is, especially, with the Grand Canyon State.

The Information Center editors apparently gave the reporter the task of blaming the state's recent high-profile troubles on "the spotlight cast by cable-news pundits, newspaper editorials and blogs - including censure from a world-renowned travel writer" and "the flow of bad publicity." The real danger posed by an assault-rifle wielding man at an appearance by the president -- danger in itself, and the menace it unleashes in the minds of the already unhinged lunatic fringe -- was merely a "stunt." Phoenix's lethal achievement as America's people-smuggling and kidnapping capital, as well as a major distribution center for drugs to the U.S. and guns to Mexico -- all airy misperceptions.

On the edge of Waterloo

Republican South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint says if Obama fails on healthcare, it will "break him"; it will be "his Waterloo." DeMint is right.

Those of a certain age remember the Jeff MacNelly cartoons during the Carter administration. As each day seemingly brought fresh setbacks, MacNelly's cartoon president shrank until he was a mini-me struggling amid the vast space of the presidential chair. Although he lacks Carter's tut-tut lecturing and, so far, foreign policy disasters, although Americans are proud of themselves for electing an African-American president, I sense Obama shrinking every day.

Many of the failures are not his. Obama inherited a nation in greater trouble than at any time since 1933, perhaps 1861. Not for nothing did the Onion have the headline: "Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job." In addition to the financial panic, Obama got two wars, foreign policy in disarray, a huge budget deficit, a government that had attacked civil liberties and enshrined torture as policy. He took over a nation that is in hock to China and the petro-states, that has been deindustrialized and seen its middle class devastated by policies to serve the corporate elite. And a nation ill-prepared for climate change or peak oil -- indeed, one digging itself ever deeper in the hole.

He and his party, however, continue to make critical missteps.

Peak oil — nevermind

One way to remain popular as a hip, iconoclastic media brand in America is to reinforce the conventional wisdom -- in a hip, iconoclastic way, of course. I've learned this from Freakonomics. Take the recent blog post entitled, "Has 'Peak Oil' Peaked?" Author Stephen Dubner asserts that with oil prices way down from their 2008 highs, the media "frenzy" over peak oil has faded away -- but without the media doing a reality check on this hysteria they were peddling to a gullible public.

Huh?

My memory of that time is quite a bit different. The mainstream media did little on peak oil and Freakonomics' partner, The New York Times, was nearly silent on the issue. All the air in the media bubble was being taken up by shrill blaming of the major oil companies (even though they were delivering a commodity prized by the world to American gas pumps with no lines or interruptions). Or it concerned sinister futures traders somehow gaming the market. Most of the discussion on peak oil was confined to sites such as The Oil Drum, the "doomer blogs" -- and inside the oil industry itself.

Newspapers and democracy

I confess: I'm tired of arguing about newspapers. In my city, one of the most literate in America, there's still a numb feeling from the loss of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Rocky Mountain News is barely cold in the ground. Thousands of skilled journalists are unemployed and perhaps can never regain their former living standards. The suicide of the industry has little to do with what the dumb-downers and consultants claim. All the enemies we made over the years can dance on our graves. But the issue is pretty well settled. Some newspapers will remain in some form. But the era of great newspapering is over.

So comes Jack Shafer's latest rattle-the-cage piece on Slate, "It's Time to Kill the Idea that Newspapers are Essential for Democracy." Shafer claims he likes newspapers, but...the Republic did fine for its first 100 years without investigative journalism, most people don't care whether newspapers survive, many newspapers did mediocre work and even the best journalism rarely kept government honest for long. Also, "political parties, special interests, and government itself all have a stake in the maintenance of elections and democracy."

Rocky Mountain requiem

For a moment this morning I thought about asking a friend in Denver to send me a copy of the last edition of the Rocky Mountain News. But, no. It would hurt too much. After nearly 150 years, one of America's very good, and sometimes great, newspapers died today. Denver and America will be the worse for it.

For those of you dancing on the graves of newspapers, and the others who have their pet ideas for "saving" them, which always seem to continue the failed dumbing-down policies of the past 25 years (oh, but with streaming video and mom pages!). For those who think crowdsourcing and local opinion blogs can replace professional journalists in the lives of communities. All of you can stop reading now. I'm also tired of discussing the demise of the press -- I've already made my views known. I hope the rest of you will stay for the wake.

Let there be no false sentimentality. The Rocky considered me a traitor because I chose to leave in 1993. I was young and ambitious and stupid. Yes, a traitor. We were in a war with the Denver Post -- and what a war it was.

Why newspapers matter, still

Seattle's recent snowbound mess offered an object lesson in why newspapers remain essential to communities. With analysts expecting several major newspapers to shut down in 2009, including those in one-paper cities, it's worth noting what happened in the Emerald City.

A little background: On Dec. 18, it began snowing here, even at sea-level downtown. Snow is a rarity in this city of hills -- even though enough falls to stick every three years or so. This was reportedly the worst snowfall in a dozen years. We got about six inches downtown, and it was far worse in other parts of Seattle. The city has 27 snowplows. The city was paralyzed.

More newspaper suicide...

An excellent observation from Talking Points Memo:

The most depressing thing I've heard in a while was Wall Street Journal reporter Shira Ovide on Chicago public radio this morning describing Tribune Co.'s predicament. She pointed out that the Chicago Tribune itself actually has pretty good cash flow (relatively speaking) and some cash reserves. In other words, this is a company that should still be leading the industry - if it weren't for its massive, crippling debt.

That debt comes from two of the worst decisions in recent corporate history. The first was Tribune's purchase of Times Mirror in 2000 for the vastly inflated price of $8 billion, which made the company double down on old media without gaining any strategic benefit. The second bad decision piggy-backed on the first. Swooning from the fallout of the Times Mirror deal (including a very foreseeable $1 billion tax penalty), they paid another $8 billion to put a man who actively hates newspapers in charge of one of the nation's biggest newspaper operations. What could possibly go wrong?

Now we lose the Rocky

Unending sadness.

Now comes word that E.W. Scripps has put the Rocky Mountain News "up for sale." That means it will probably be closed in 2009 and America will lose one of its great newspapers. Even its name evoked romance and adventure. At the entrance to the Rocky's downtown Denver office building was a monument to the First Amendment.  I was honored to work at the Rocky in the early 1990s, going to Denver to start over after divorce. Those were the days of the thrilling newspaper war with the Denver Post -- not in a joint operating agreement, but two independent newspapers battling every day. The competition made both better, and made Denver a better city. And Denver was a literate, newspaper-hungry city (and a young city, so much for the stereotypes of readers).

I spent some great years in Denver and learned much at the Rocky. This is a deep, personal grief. Denver will not be a better city for having only one newspaper. No blog or 'zine or electronic distraction can replace two real news organizations paying professional journalists to do their best work in a competitive environment. As is the case everywhere, the Rocky suffered because its owners stuck with the old advertising business model and failed to capitalize soon enough on new technologies. Scripps had moved on, emotionally and financially, to projects such as Home & Garden television. After awhile, Scripps caved into a JOA with the Post, the first death knell. Still, the Rocky soldiered on with distinction and honor under John Temple. If the Rocky must go down, at least it will go down swinging.

One last lamentation is the industry's utter lack of creativity, even at a time when we may face mass closings. As with the recently closed Cincinnati Post, I can't understand why the Rocky couldn't be reinvented as an online newspaper. It would have a small staff, to be sure. But sustainable business models exist to make success possible. Denver would still have the essential public benefit of competing newspapers. But Scripps has apparently moved on. Moved on, too, from serving the public trust.

The chickens come home to roost at Gannett

A reader asks, "how come you have not weighed in on the Gannett bloodbath that is going on with the layoffs all across the board? The Republic, as a big fish, should be pretty hard hit...I know there is no love lost there, on your part, but it is your hometown and your hometown paper and you still are friends with some of the folks there. Anyway, just curious."

I don't know many specifics, but the outcome will be bad. According to Gannett Blog, it is part of the largest mass layoff in newspaper history. The paper has been quietly cutting staff for two years, and the losses have been heavily centered on the most experienced journalists. In other words, the institutional knowledge and highest journalistic skills have been slashed. It's as if Microsoft fired its leading sources of intellectual capital. The result is predictable: a further erosion of the newspaper industry, whose journalism is a practice so vital to the health of the nation that it is enshrined in the Constitution.

I worked for the nation's largest "newspaper" company twice. Once as business editor for the Cincinnati Enquirer and then as a columnist at the Arizona Republic. In general, I was treated fairly, although this was certainly not the case with many employees. I was allowed to commit real journalism, although in both cases after a few years this was made impossible, and so I moved on. I learned a few things, chiefly that Gannett is not really a newspaper company. Yet it will be remembered as the company that destroyed newspapers.

Death of a salesman nation

Whatever its complicated and ambivalent historical roots, the ideal of Thanksgiving is offering gratitude for the grace of our creator, if you swing that way, or at the very least to others who came together to create even a moment of common purpose and bounty. It's about looking outside ourselves.

The problem of American holidays being ever more commercialized is old. But over the past decade, maybe longer, something else has overtaken us. We've gone from a nation with hucksters to being a nation of hucksters. Suffice it to say that this was not the great commercial republic that Hamilton had in mind. In God We Trust? No. Always Be Selling.

I thought of this as I read a Washington Post piece on how banking regulators were not actually regulating the industry, but rather acting as an advocate for it. Yes, ideology and its handmaiden deregulation are to blame for the financial catastrophe. But so is the perverse mutation of American optimism just as the economy became driven more and more by financial swindles.

They don't wish they knew how to quit him

Like the mistreated girlfriend who just can't quit the abusive fighter jock, the national press is again scritch-scritch-scritching at John McCain's door. His concession speech -- actually fumbling and average before a typically thuggish Phoenix crowd -- was "dignified," "his best speech of the campaign," and "where was this guy during the campaign?". Now the media are busy predicting the re-emergence of the "old McCain" to do good things for the republic, maybe even build bridges between the conservatives and the Obama administration.

Illusions die hard. John McCain worked hard throughout his career to cultivate the national media -- and for all our bravado, even the toughest in the working press can be seduced (whether they bend their principles as a result is another matter). He called them "his base" before the campaign required him to run as a hard-right extremist, right down to the media-blaming rhetoric.

Unfortunately for the media, they finally got a taste of the real, real McCain: a rather undisciplined, herky-jerky, shoot-from-the-hip opportunist, and most of the time a doctrinaire gunslinger for bankrupt, discredited conservatism. When he supported George Bush on torture after opposing him, he cut the last thread of my willingness to believe he was a "maverick" even on a few issues.

The McCain-Palin war on journalists continues.

We saw the worst of this with the police state in St. Paul for the Republican National Convention (shamefully undercovered by the corporate media). Here, a reporter was assaulted as a Palin rally. No wonder Palin's staff keeps her away from news reports so she won't get "depressed."

Why is the press letting Palin play them for fools?

After eight years of lethal and constitutionally dangerous outrages, the cloistering of Sarah Palin from the press might seem like a small thing. It's not. Gov. Palin aspires to be the vice president for an old man with a body broken by Vietnamese torture and recurrent cancer (and for those of you who aren't from Arizona, melanoma is extremely serious).

Palin has been all over "the media" -- but this is a channel largely for entertainment and distraction. Unlike any vice-presidential candidate in the modern era, she has been kept from the normal press conferences and give-and-take with professional journalists that come with seeking this position. Similarly, the McCain handlers would only agree to a highly scripted vice-presidential debate, with very limited time for answers. Today, she apparently answered a few reporter questions, finally, but this entire affair is extremely unsettling.

What is the McCain camp hiding, besides her inexperience and callowness, both of which are considerable? She makes Dan Quayle look like Pericles by comparison. Or that McCain didn't choose her -- she was forced on him by the real powers behind his would-be throne? Or her own extreme views...? The secrecy and censorship recall the past eight years of Bush and Cheney.

But shame on the enablers in the press. Even the New York Times ran a front-page photo of Palin, leggy in a suit, sitting with Henry Kissinger in her first meeting with "wise men" and foreign dignitaries. This when reporters were excluded and no questions allowed. Why is the press playing along? My credo as an editor would be: no access, no coverage. We're not your publicists and we're not your propaganda organ.

We shouldn't be surprised. Wrecked by greed and bad leadership, most of the press has been devastated. Those left are terrified of being portrayed as sexist if they demand the same accountability of a female candidate as a male one. Or if they mention Palin's appearance, even though she plays it to the hilt, indeed, just above the knee. (Maureen Dowd is an exception). But the sins of the press are more grievous: failing to play every torture story on Page 1; falling for jargon such as "enhanced interrogation" and "surge"; failing to push for full disclosure on McCain's medical records and Cindy's tax records; pretending there's a legitimate debate left on global warming.

Yes, Palin was intended by McCain handler Steve Schmidt as a distraction. But she's a very serious issue. She can't be ignored.

McCain mobilizes, and cows, his 'base'

"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half." -- Gore Vidal

"The (Bush) aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.' " -- Ron Suskind

"This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates." -- Rick Davis, McCain campaign manager

Unfortunately Vidal is probably wrong, considering that most Americans get their tiny bits of information from television. Davis may well be right, despite the critical issues facing the country, and that his campaign is running to continue the very Bush-Cheney "faith-based" policies that created the disaster of the past eight years.

This is the background you need to understand the successful McCain effort to cow the corporate media into submission in the final weeks before the election. Remember that McCain called the big-time media "his base" and there's been a long love-fest between them. But the old fighter jock will now slap around and intimidate his love -- and many Americans will approve. It will be the Rovian tactic that puts the race within stealing distance, if not produce an outright McCain victory.

Today's must read: What we lost

Steve Smith of the Spokesman Review in Spokane has written the best elegy I've found so far to my dying calling. Some of the blog comments that follow are clueless and boneheaded. But Smith's essay is important and beautifully done. Among his passages:

Newspapermen worked hard and played hard. The bartender at the dive across the street knew how many beers each reporter could consume between editions. And after the last edition went to press, the bar lights would be turned up just enough to let the newspapermen read those papers pulled fresh from the press.

The newspaperman was respected in the community. There was a mystique, a glamor that really didn't exist but which the newspaperman happily cultivated. In the movies, the editors were Cary Grant. Or Clark Gable. Or Jack Webb. Or Humphrey Bogart, the greatest of all.

The young newspaperman wanted to be Bogie, standing in the press room, screaming into the phone, "That's the sound of the press, baby." The young newspaperman aspired to challenge authority, defend the defenseless and right wrongs. If he was a Don Quixote with a pen, his windmills were politicians, bureaucrats, crooks and thugs. He thought of his job as a calling and truth was his holy grail.

Today's cubicle proles, plugged into the Matrix, must wonder if this life ever existed. It did. I am just old enough to have lived the last of it, when the best compliment a journalist of either gender could receive was, "You're a good newspaperman." No wonder being a "mojo" typing school lunch menus (with video!) just doesn't hold any appeal.

R U raising stupid children?

When people tell me their children don't read newspapers, I usually say, "Wow, you don't seem like someone who would raise stupid children." This invariably takes them aback, perhaps if for no other reason than it's not the typical hangdog response from newsies of, "I know."

My point to that the people who will tell their children what to do as adults will get factual information, sophisticated analysis, in-depth context and investigative reporting, whether it's delivered online, on dead trees, or through implants in their Botox injections. The people who will rule the world will consume and read journalism. The most gifted of them will also have gained the singular insights into human nature and the world that come from literature and history.

It says something about so many American parents that they are content to raise stupid children into stupid young adults. So I pretty much knew what to expect from a Sunday front page story in the New York Times headlined "Literacy Debate: Online R U really reading."

Is Phoenix really such a sleepy little Mayberry for news?

Today the Republic changed the online pages that contain the day's newspaper to the uniform template that Azcentral.com recently adopted. The site looks very quiet now, even compared to some other big Gannett papers. It certainly lacks the production values, much less the substance, that make the Online Wall Street Journal, Washington Post or New York Times such eyeball grabbers (if only online ads paid the same rates as print). Nor is it any competition for such online successes as Huffington Post.

It's almost as if they are trying not to attract attention. Saying: Nothing to see here. There is a certain numbing repetition to the news cycle in Phoenix: the latest outrages of Sheriff Joe and the Legislature (written with a straight face); traffic and freeway news; illegal immigration; Maryvale crime and the lurid stuff that happens out in the 'burbs "where this kind of thing just doesn't happen"; kids left in hot cars; weather stories; did I say freeway and traffic news?; those embarrassing reports on serious local issues that surface from time to time; the well-meaning white papers that will never be implemented; the drearily predictable right-wing voices, lacking in grace or even humor, and an unending vomitus of features, rewritten press releases and boosterism, especially about Glendale!, Chandler!, Gilbert!, and, especially, Scottsdale!! Until lately, there was much "growth" news -- the latest sprawl crap to be built. Now it's foreclosures.

Some members of the staff are still capable of fine work. It's rare they are allowed to do it. But the truth is, not much happens in Phoenix for a city of such size. By that I mean the level of commerce, decision-making, world connections and newsmaking one would expect from "the nation's fifth largest city." Reality flows like underground magma: the place is unsustainable. Otherwise, same stuff, day after day. That's not to say there's no news agenda to be had.

Newspaper suicide watch: the folly of "local-local"

The Wall Street Journal took a look at what it calls a "big daily's hyperlocal flop," as the Washington Post poured resources into creating a "local-local" product for an affluent county.

For believers in the power of rigorous local coverage to help save newspapers, the Washington Post's launch of LoudounExtra.com last July was a potentially industry-defining event. It paired a journalistic powerhouse with a dream team of Internet geeks to build a virtual town square for one of Virginia's and the nation's most-affluent and fastest-growing counties.

Almost a year later, however, the Web site is still searching for an audience. Its chief architect has left for another venture in Las Vegas, and his team went with him. And while Post executives say they remain committed to providing so-called hyperlocal news coverage, they are re-evaluating their approach.

This was sadly predictable, and indicative of the group-think that is causing newspapers to commit suicide.

The Republic looks at a tale of three cities

The Arizona Republic's Chad Graham traveled to Austin and Seattle to report on some lessons recession-slammed Phoenix might learn. Numerous Rogue Columnist readers have asked for my reactions. Chad is a fine journalist and a friend. His story fits into a continuum of sometime efforts by the newspaper to educate the public and policy makers about the real world -- this goes back at least to the 1980s. These efforts are ignored as population growth resumes and the nation's last big factory town returns to churning out suburban tract houses.

The editors tip their hands by, I would assume, inserting this sentence to make defensive "Valley residents" feel better: "Phoenix will never have a gateway seaport to Asia that hums with activity. Seattle will never have the potential solar power of Phoenix." The sad reality is that the center of solar research, entrepreneurship and use is cloudy Germany. Phoenix literally started the solar power movement in the 1950s and let it get away -- therein lies the tale of the town.

Graham's important point is that Seattle and Austin "have learned the lesson that Phoenix is now being taught: Economic downturns hit harder when you are overly reliant on one industry."

Rather than go through the story, or even rehash my years of "controversial" efforts to raise these issues, I'd rather make a few key points among dozens that could be discussed. My perspective is as a Phoenician who has lived in Seattle for nearly a year and has seen both close up.

The Stack: Super Loss; McCain greenwash; kid gloves for polygamists; Karen's no crackpot; peak oil

The funniest story in the stack is an item reporting that Glendale did not even recoup what it spent as host "city" for the Super Bowl.  For years ahead of the spectacle, Phoenix media reported what an economic boon it would be. This is a classic example about how critical thinking is neither taught nor valued in today's newsrooms (gee, why do we keep losing readers?).

A basic analysis of the hype would have shown that the promised economic benefits would be modest. It happened during high season, so resorts and hotels would already be booked. Indeed, considering the NFL demands blocks of rooms at a discount, the hotel industry probably made less money than it would have otherwise. Sales of souvenirs? Most of the profit goes back to the NFL. Restaurants would have similarly been packed anyway. And so on.

It's not that the Super Bowl doesn't bring benefits, in terms of exposure and the gathering of big deal makers. Too bad it took place in an amorphous place without an identity and a stadium in a cotton field on the metro fringe, in a place with little economy besides the great -- now shuttered -- housing factory. But the media shouldn't have bought into the economic hype. Alas, the pressure is always extreme to "say something positive." Unfortunately, many reporters today would never even have applied the basic bullshit detector that was once a standard-issue item in their craft.

Read on for more of the Stack.

Newspaper acts cowardly and stupid, but there are silver linings?

Only in the Arizona Republic would you see a front-page headline that says:

Grim economy, but there are silver linings

What's even worse is the story that follows, desperately trying to ignore the factors that will make this economy very difficult for a long time to come, whatever the increasingly irrelevant GDP numbers say. It would be funny if the cost were not so high from a major newspaper failing to do its job in a) reporting on the real, devastating recession in the state; b) failing to crusade for a more competitive economy, which begins with great schools, and holding legislators accountable; c) continuing to blow the whistle on the unsustainability of the migropolises around Phoenix.

Past headlines we can imagine from this crew:
"Black death devastates Europe, but there are silver linings"
"South secedes and Lincoln calls for volunteers, but there are silver linings"
"Titanic strikes iceberg and sinks, but there are silver linings"
Add your favorites.

The real elite and what they don't want discussed

ABC deserves every hit it has taken for the "debate" that focused on swift-boating Barack Obama, including a question fed to former Clinton intimate George Stephanopoulos by right-wing thug Sean Hannity. A couple of other points deserve our attention -- indeed, they are the real story.

First, most television "news" stopped being journalism years ago. This has been aggravated by the elimination of the fairness doctrine and deregulation that allowed consolidation in the media. Now the owners of the public airwaves have no requirement to support the public trust by providing balanced news. They have a powerful interest in supporting the corporate tilt of Washington, which even manifests itself in Charlie Gibson's flat-wrong assertions about the capital gains tax. Talk about elitists. The corporate electronic media are part of the elite (Charlie wants his tax breaks and completely understands man-of-the-people McCain with his eight houses and millions).

With silliness such as the taped "questions" by "average" uninformed (God help us) voters, such as the poor woman who asked about the flag pin, it's obvious this elite has an agenda. They have chosen sides. Note McCain never gets questioned about his genuinely questionable ties. They want us stupid. The public schools have been destroyed. Even the conservative Economist says meritocracy is dead in America. Endless hours of television and cheap electronic distractions add to the mindness suckling at the Matrix. Just to be sure, we have "debates" such as the one in Philadelphia.

What on earth might we realize if we didn't have our minds on flag pins and Obama's pastor?

The 'liberal' New York Times is baffled, baffled...

Today the Times finally reports on the February endorsement of John McCain by preacher John Hagee, who, among other things, said New Orleans deserved Hurricane Katrina because of its "level of sin." He considers the Roman Catholic Church "the great whore of Babylon." It was an endorsement sought by McCain, who also considers Rev. Rod Parsley his "spiritual adviser." Parsley argues American has a divine mission to eradicate Islam. Anyway, the Times headline is: "For McCain, Little Talk of a Controversial Endorsement."

The story appears in page A-18. This from a newspaper that reported extensively, and on page one, about Sen. Obama's "preacher problem."

Maybe there's "little talk" because the corporate media won't report on the real John McCain.

A new home page unveiled at azcentral.com

The Arizona Republic has unveiled a redesign of its Web site, azcentral.com. I'm sure there's some explanation somewhere, but when you click on the story titled "A new look for Arizona's home page," it takes you to a 404 page saying "the page you are looking for could not be found." Technology.

It's cleaner than the old home page. My big complaint as a newspaper reader is that it's much more difficult to find the Republic (on the old site, it was one click to that day's newspaper). This is especially bothersome because one can't easily find the opinions section. While it's tedious and predictable at the Republic, the editorial/opinions section is still critical to a newspaper/Web site's ability to analyze the news and have some influence.

There are some contemporary tech doo-dads, but much of the page looks very, er, 1999. For example, the news stories lack the hypertext links that can refer you to other stories on the topic, etc. My other impression is that there is even less journalism than before. Celebutard "news" is prominent. People are invited to submit their own "stories," etc. That's a fatal misreading of the Web today, where sophisticated, exclusive and breaking content -- backed by the depth of techy doo-dads -- is the gold standard.

For years, the AZR "information center" has largely rewritten press releases or regurgitated the pronouncements of local pols, as skeptical, sophisticated enterprise reporting has become less and less frequent or encouraged. That's too bad because enterprise is what brings eyeballs. And Arizona is so corrupt and screwed up, it's a target-rich environment for such work. "Citizen journalists" and the bored housewife in Desert Ridge aren't going to do this work. Nor are the unmentored, uncoached, largely unedited young people increasing on the payroll.

Oh, well.

The strange media romance with John McCain

Breaking up is hard to do, particularly with a lover you've idealized to the point of pathology. So what if the reality is as jarring, even dangerous, odds with the ideal? So it is with the mainsteam media and John McCain.

We were treated to this once again in the Sunday New York Times. A front page story described how this "maverick," "insurgent," "one of the most disruptive figures in his party" and "rebel" is now trying to be a standard-bearer who can unite his party. There was mention of his "volcanic" blowups, but in an admiring way.

On the op-ed page, Nicholas Kristof writes, "Even for those of us who shudder at many of John McCain’s positions, there is something refreshing about a man who wins so many votes despite a major political shortcoming: he is abysmal at pandering."

Such is the scary fog of McCain worship that envelops even smart people writing for the best newspaper in America. The reality is quite different.

The recession this time

Another recession, and for many Americans the post-2001 recovery and expansion felt like one long tough slog. It would have felt worse had they been living within their means, but liar-loan mortgages, bottomless credit cards and cheap stuff from China allowed them to think they were rolling in the good times, just like the hedge-fund managers and CEOs.

Another recession, and it won't be like 2001, when a fraud-driven bubble burst, or 1991, when the savings-and-loan scandal sank the economy. It will have fraud, bursting bubbles and unsustainable finance, to be sure. But it may be far worse than anything we have experienced since 1982, maybe longer.

Who is this 'maverick' I keep hearing about?

Every time I hear the media say Sen. John McCain "of Arizona" it makes me crazy. McCain has done as little for Arizona as possible and it shows. The state is Mississippi in the Southwest, an Appalachia with golf courses, the epicenter of a brewing socio-environmental calamity. It is a place frighteningly behind in the competitive world of the 21st century, however much it provides a haven for a certain kind of rich person and, until recently, for real-estate players. Arizona was never anything but a national political platform for McCain.

If McCain had been governor, his apathy would be an especially tempting target. Even so, as a senator he has done as little as possible in education, research, transportation, health care, the environment...the list goes on and on. Most days one wondered if Arizona even had senators representing it, rather than trying to be national political figures.

What's really wrong with newspapers

The iconic scene in "Deadline USA," where Humphrey Bogart is a crusading newspaper editor in the pressroom. The mobster on the phone demands to know the roar he hears in the background. Bogart: "That's the press, baby. The press! And there's nothing you can do about it. Nothing!"

Mary McCarthy said famously of Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”

It’s tempting to say the same about the many diagnoses of what ails the newspaper world. We hear endlessly that the troubles are a result of the Internet, new technology, “people don’t read anymore,” and, my favorite, “people don’t have as much time as they used to.” As if there was once a 36-hour day, or people who once worked 12-hour shifts while raising large families had this abundance of time.