Rush Limbaugh

While the Conservative Talk Show Host Pulls in $400 Million from Clear Channel, the L.A.. Times Cuts Jobs and Pages

Here’s a sad juxtaposition.

The papers are full today of Rush Limbaugh’s new $400 million contract with Rush Limbaugh, which guarantees him a $50-million-a-year paycheck through 2016. And the Los Angeles Times – knifed once again by its erstwhile savior, Sam Zell — announced that it is cutting 250 jobs, including 150 newsroom staff.

It’s a sad commentary on what modern journalism could become. Limbaugh, who recently accused Michael J. Fox of faking his disabilities from Parkinson’s Disease, panders to the lowest common denominator among his radio listeners.  So does a big chunk of so-called news outlets in the blogosphere.

The moderate voices of traditional newspapers are ever more in danger of being silenced as publishers cut staff and pages to remain in business. It’s hard to imagine the L.A. Times continuing to grind out Pulitzers as its own voice is weakened by lower budgets.

It’s hard to blame publishers for trying to survive. But it’s a shame some of Limbaugh’s millions can’t be diverted to organs of expression actually worth hearing from.

See Also

• Los Angeles Times to cut 250 jobs, including 150 from news staff
  The newspaper cites falling ad revenue in economic slowdown.
• A Lucrative Deal for Rush Limbaugh
  Talk was never cheap for Rush Limbaugh, but now it is getting a lot more expensive.

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The hoary Financial Times is belatedly responding to Murdoch’s plans to make the Wall Street Journal’s copy free online.

Later this month, the FT will start making up to 30 pages available for free to non-subscribers — a retreat from its steep $180+ online charges, about twice the WSJ’s charges.

The two newspapers are virtually alone among major papers in their ability to get millions of customers to pay for their product — a fact directly correlated to their ability to instantly move markets.

The fact that even the FT and the Journal are going free speaks volumes about the growing clout of online advertising and the growing expectation among consumers that they deserve information for free. 

I’ll be especially interested to see how all this impacts my former employer, Bloomberg, which still manages to charge $1,500-plus a month for the right to access its news and financial data stream.

See Also

• INTERVIEW: New FT.com Model To Boost Ads, Subscription

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When I first started iHollywood Forum with my wife six years ago, my Uncle Irv from Castro Valley was skeptical about the idea of public conversations about digitized Hollywood content.

“Hollywood just makes crap for TV and movies,” he groused, showing a proper Bay Area disdain for all things L.A. “What’s there to talk about?”

“We’re not really talking about what’s in the programming,” I protested. “We’re talking about the new technologies for distributing and monetizing it: the Internet, cellphones and so forth.”

Technology, after all, makes Silicon Valley run, so Irv was satisfied. And so was I, going on to produce dozens of seminars and conferences about distributing and monetizing content.

But, coming off a 10-day meditation retreat, I find the content issue niggling at me. Here we have all this media consolidation happening: with News Corp (Charts, Fortune 500) bidding $5 billion for Dow Jones (Charts); Thomson chasing Reuters in a possible $17.5 billion merger; and Clear Channel Communications, Cablevision and Tribune in private equity firms’ crosshairs. These guys all want to put exabytes of TV shows, movies, games, newspapers, video footage, newspapers and other content on the Web, cellphones, XBoxes, home networks, portable DVRs, and every other imaginable platform and monetize it every conceivable way.

The problem is that the vast majority of the stuff is junk. At the risk of alienating my core audience (and my kids): most of the material on TV is mindless; most movies are designed to maximize studio cash flow, not enlighten audiences;  most cellphone games are inane (bowling, anyone?); most news outlets toady to their readers’ basest leanings — to say nothing of gambling, sex and more dangerous “content” accompanying it all.

If this content is king, let me out of the kingdom.

Admittedly, there’s plenty of great content out there, too. I love what’s happening with music, although — ironically, from the column’s standpoint — it’s being monetized the worst. There’s news on the Internet from great outlets like the Wall Street Journal (at least until you-know-who buys it), the New York Times and Reuters. And some TV shows, chat rooms, games (the massively social networking kind), virtual worlds,  movies and other content deserve to be on as many platforms as possible.

But if this is all about catering, as we do today, to the lowest common denominator to maximize cash flow on as many platforms as possible, what are we creating? What does constant exposure to junk and worse do to the minds of our children and our communities? What legacy are we leaving the world? Do we really aspire to make lots of money and nothing more of our lives?

For years, I’ve dreamed about doing a conference exploring these issues. The problem is, no one would come. There’s no money to be made.

See Also

• The return of media merger madness
• My recent musings about media

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As a young reporter, I was slipped a copy of the Wall Street Journal’s stylebook by a friend and former Journal employee.  I spent weeks studying how to build their famous "A-head" articles (those daffy articles in the middle of the front page), ledes for stories (yes, it is spelled that way), nut graphs and, most important, its rules for attribution and fairness.

If Rupert Murdoch succeeds in his bid for the Wall Street Journal, the Journal as we know it could disappear. In its place, we may find the biggest blogging platform ever launched for one man’s right-wing views.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit I’m liberal. (Don’t get me started on Iraq). And yes, this blog is biased. But I’m not telling you it’s news. It’s commentary.

Fox News is supposedly news. But anyone who’s spent any significant time watching it knows it has a significant right-wing bias.

Puh-lease don’t talk to me about the liberal media bias. Let’s say it exists. But any self-respecting newspaper or news source doesn’t present opinion as fact, doesn’t leave out the other point of view, doesn’t launch diatribes in the middle of a news program.

Those are all offenses I’ve seen committed on Fox News in the happily few times I’ve viewed it. I’ve only in the rarest instances seen blatant disregard for commonly accepted journalistic practices in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, which I read every day (Plagiarism aside, of course. That’s not as important, right? Just kidding).

Pardon me? You say the Wall Street Journal is well-known for its conservative views? Well, yes. The Journal’s editorials are somewhere to the right of the late Barry Goldwater. In fact, when you Google "Rupert Murdoch Wall Street Journal”, one of the first things you come up with is a 2004 article by Murdoch in the Wall Street Journal praising our dear President.

But Murdoch’s article appeared in the Opinion section, where it belongs.  Until now, the Wall Street Journal has  known the difference between opinion pieces (those are blogs on paper, youngsters) and objective reporting.

I’m not sure Murdoch does.

See Also

• Murdoch’s 2004 Wall Street Journal opinion piece
• Rupert Murdoch Built Global Media Empire with Bold Moves
• My recent blogs about media

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I wrote a blog a few weeks back entitled "The Fifth Estate" that said citizen journalists deserve to be the "Fifth Estate" behind the executive branch, Congress, the courts and "real" reporters. That’s because these citizen bloggers — or cloggers, as I termed them — have an increasingly important role in restraining errant members of the other four branches.

Well, so it is. Bloggers played a critical role in bringing about Don Imus’ well-deserved demise as a radio host at CBS.

A 26-year-old researcher for the liberal watchdog organization Media Matters for America was among the first to blog about Imus’ Wednesday morning reference to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as "nappy-headed hos”.

This relatively obscure group attracted dozens of heated comments to its postings of transcripts of the address on its website. But the major news outlets published nothing at all, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The National Association of Black Journalists and other individuals and groups added their voices to the "digital brush fire" that brought Imus down.

CBS, which Thursday merely suspended Imus for two weeks before firing him on Friday, did not ultimately fire him for making racially charged remarks.  The network, MSNBC, syndicators and other members of the media elite profited handsomely from his misogynous and racist comments over the years.

Advertisers didn’t drop out because they were disgusted, either.  They put up with his trash as long as they hit millions of demographic desirables.  

CBS and advertisers deserted Imus because of 3,435 enraged cloggers, by Google’s last count. 

And lest you grieve too much for Imus: how much do you want to bet he pops up on XM/Sirius or some other media outlet more concerned with profits than propriety?

Irony Dept.: Conservative talk show host Doug McIntyre of L.A.’s KABC remarked to the L.A. Times  with an apparently straight face that, "free speech was imperiled if ‘a joke — a lame, idiotic, stupid joke’ could get Imus fired".  Imus was fired by the public, not by CBS, Doug.  I do believe they get a vote in what garbage they listen to.

See Also

• The Fifth Estate
• Behind the Fall of Imus, a Digital Brush Fire
• Imus’ End May Be a Hopeful Sign
• Rice Calls Imus Remarks `Disgusting’
• Some Conservative Talk Show Hosts Angered by Imus’ Firing

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The Role of `Citizen Journalists’

Citizen journalists are creating quite a stir. Leonard Brody, CEO of NowPublic, says his network of thousands of amateurs around the world represent the biggest news gathering team in the world.

My friend Andrew Keen, meanwhile, believes that many of these people are hacks who give journalism a bad name.

"If we keep up this pace, there will be over five hundred million blogs by 2010, collectively corrupting and confusing popular opinion about everything from politics to commerce, to arts and culture," he writes in his book scheduled for release this spring, "The Cult of the Amateur: How the Democratization of the Digital World Is Assaulting Our Economy, Our Culture and Our Values."

I disagree with both. I think these amateurs are an entirely new animal. Call it the Fifth Estate.

Recall (from high school U.S. gov class) that there are four "estates" that serve to maintain a balance of power in the American democracy: the executive branch, the legislative branch, the judicial branch and, more informally, journalists. Congress nails the President, the President vetos bills, the Supreme Court overturns Congressional votes and the news guys  turn up dirt on everybody. (If they go too far, they get nailed by the courts, too).

Amateurs reporting on events or writing blogs are no more "journalists" than civics teachers are congressmen or Bush critics are Presidents. They’re something else. But they serve as a great check on the other four estates, as the growing influence of blogs suggests.

The reason people get away with calling amateurs "citizen journalists" is because there’s no licensing board to create journalists, as there is for the lawyers who dominate the first three estates. But most of these citizens could no more become reporters for the New York Times than I could practice law. At its best, journalism has clearly defined standards of impartiality, writing style and reporting — scandals and Fox News not withstanding.

Anyone who was at Digital Media Summit last week probably thinks I’m a hypocrite. I moderated a panel called "Confronting the Citizen Journalist" that included Brody and an exercised Keen in the audience.

Hey, a guy’s allowed to change his mind.

Exactly what to call the Fifth Estate I don’t know. CBS MarketWatch columnist Bambi Francisco, who also sat on the panel, has a blog (which this week also focused on confronting citizen journalists), and she’s certainly no amateur. So what do we call these citizen bloggers? I vote for cloggers.

See Also

• Bambi’s column
• Digital Media Summit
• Now Public
• Andrew’s website

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