What's been lost at the Mercury News in the first year under Dean Singleton?
Former Merc staffers provide their observations over changes at the newspaper once rated among the nation's ten best.
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John McManus, founder of Grade the News, has created a new edition of Don't Be Fooled: A Citizen's Guide to News and Information in the Digital Age. It's designed to help people vet news and information purporting to be factual from any source in any medium. Find more information here.
California's news infrastructure and the amount of reporting on key issues confronting the state are in serious decline. This was the conclusion of a two-month series of interviews with 62 leaders from across the state -- including top journalists, educators and heads of civic organizations and state government -- conducted by the California Media Project in association with the Commonwealth Club of California. Read more
A multi-million dollar budget error may cost the Mercury News further positions in its newsroom. See former Mercury News advertising executive Lou Alexander's blog.
Today former San Mateo County Times Executive Editor John Bowman begins his blog. Read more
Newspapers simply cannot afford to continue this madness of competing with themselves for free on the Internet. More importantly, neither can society. Read more
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The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics suggests that journalists should “show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.” It’s hard to square that admonition with the Mercury News’ continuing promotion of eating contests on its front page and for the first time, on its editorial page at a time when obesity rates among American children are soaring. Read more
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John Bowman |
Two weeks ago, John Bowman reluctantly cut short a 31-year career in the news business that spanned investigative reporting as a TV journalist in Louisville, Ky., editing The Business Journal in San Jose, the Daily Review in Hayward and the San Mateo County Times. He describes what it's like inside the Bay Area's giant new newspaper company. Read more
On July 2, a list with 46 names of Mercury News journalists who would be laid off or not replaced after having resigned was circulated in the newsroom. The list did not contain the name of an additional staff member who is thought to have committed suicide. That brings the total to 47. The newsroom is now authorized for 200 full-time employees. Read more
Halberstam recognized what a privilege it was to have attained the recognition from peers and the ability just to write books for a living. But he also indicated that it was much, much more than a job. From covering the civil rights movement in the South in ways that most other reporters wouldn't or couldn't, to upending a nation's misconceptions about how the Vietnam War started, Halberstam was a guiding light for a profession now so commonly associated with shallow celebrity trash and flash -- or worse. Read more
Philip J. Trounstine |
The core counties of the San Francisco Bay Area have a population of about
six million people. In addition to their seven county governments, they
include scores of cities, towns, sheriff's and police departments; school
boards, planning commissions, municipal and superior courts; universities
and community colleges; water, solid waste and air boards; transportation
commissions and public utility, weed-abatement and mosquito control boards;
and many more government bodies.
In this region, one newspaper company -- MediaNews -- owns or controls every
paid-subscription daily newspaper except for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Read more
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Inflamatory coverage of mishap at a bicycle protest boosts paper's readership
SFGate.com, the Web site of the San Francisco Chronicle, last week provided a fascinating look at how both initial newspaper coverage and Web 2.0 technologies can help shape perception of a story. At issue is a confrontation between cyclists riding in San Francisco's monthly Critical Mass, and a mother from the suburbs and her family in a minivan who got caught behind the bike traffic. There was panic, there was a bicyclist hit (how hard is in question), and then someone broke the back window of her car.
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A new study warns that just 15% of the state's adults are deciding who governs California and which propositions pass. And that 15% is increasingly unrepresentative of the state's diversity. Politicians and news media must share much of the blame. Read more
When we look back on 2006, several decades from now, we may recall it as the good old days for news -- and everything else. Read more
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When Barry Bonds breaks a record, the world stops. Or at least Bay Area news media do. Read more
Grade the News has been named the 2006 receipient of the award for media criticism given by the Cultural and Critical Studies Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. GTN also won a citation from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism for uncovering ethical misdeeds of the news media. Read more
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The San Jose Newspaper Guild's map of the Bay Area illustrates the new MediaNews empire. |
The San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times were sold by the McClatchy Co. to the MediaNews Group of Denver as part of a four-newspaper $1 billion deal announced Wednesday. The sale would lead to an unprecedented concentration of ownership in Bay Area newspapers. Read more
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William F. Woo |
Grade the News lost a friend and guiding spirit Wednesday when Bill Woo succumbed to cancer. More importantly, the Bay Area, indeed the world, lost one of its most insightful journalists and educators. Read more
Now that the MediaNews Group, owner of nine metro dailies surrounding San
Francisco, has bid for the San Jose Mercury News and Contra
Costa Times, it may be instructive to look at the practice of sharing
reporters and centralizing publishing known as clustering.
At its Bay Area newspapers, MediaNews has pooled resources to keep moribund
papers alive and produce some in-depth journalism, say defenders. But skeptics
cite sparse news staffs and a single news angle as clusters limit competition.
Read more
The Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice has begun a series of interviews this week to determine whether the potential sale of Knight Ridder papers in the Bay Area to Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group might lead to higher prices for advertisers and less competition. Read more
On Tuesday night at the San Jose City Council meeting, Mercury News
Editorial Page Editor Steve Wright testified during a formal public hearing
on proposals for a new law providing for more open government.
It wouldn't have been appropriate for a reporter. But the editorial page
editor follows different rules. Read
more
The investor-forced sale of so esteemed and profitable a newspaper company as Knight Ridder means three things: Wall Street doesn't value quality journalism; The glory days of newspapers are behind us; The Bay Area could be on the brink of an unprecedented media monopoly. Read more
San Francisco station also ran press releases under his byline on Web
Syndicated multimedia medical reporter Dean Edell, who calls himself "America's Doctor," has for years taken credit on KGO Channel 7 for medical reports wholly or partially produced by an outside company. And his byline has appeared on the KGO Web site and a health-advice site over articles that were taken verbatim from medical center press releases. Read more
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The sale of Knight Ridder removes a landmark from San Jose. |
The sale of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain over the weekend, to a company that plans to resell three local titles, raises the possibility of an unprecedented concentration of ownership in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read more
Have you noticed a new feistiness among journalists? Maybe it was news
anchors flooded with despair in New Orleans showing images that put the
lie to FEMA pronouncements.
Or after President Bush's state of the union speech, NPR finding experts
to comment on the veracity of the president’s main points.
To some, challenging the Bush administration's grip on reality may seem
a slam dunk case of liberal bias. Read
more
GradeTheNews.org will run out of funds at the end of February. The site will not go dark, however. We will keep it going, in some capacity, on a volunteer basis. Still to come are two major analyses of Bay Area news media, including our annual report card detailing which of the region's most popular news media best served the public in 2005. Grade the News has succeeded in calling attention to a number of ethical problems in local media, many of which have been resolved. Still, there's much to do. Read more
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Milo Radulovich |
At 79, Milo Radulovich is as outraged about government-sponsored injustice as the day he stood up in 1953 on Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now" to proclaim his innocence of charges by the Air Force that he was a security risk. The real-life hero featured in the 2005 docudrama "Good Night, and Good Luck" speaks about Sen. Joseph McCarthy's legacy in the war on terrorism. Read more
SPJ's Northern California chapter will recognize retired Point Reyes Light publisher David Mitchell with the Norman S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award at the James Madison Freedom of Information Awards dinner March 16. Mitchell and 13 other winners will be honored a banquet at Sinbad’s Restaurant on the San Francisco waterfront. Read more at www.spj.org/norcal
John and I agree that the newspaper business is in trouble. From that point on, we disagree on the cause, the implications, and the solution. I believe that John’s attitude produces no discernible action steps, and represents little more than complaining about the problem. Read more
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Tony Ridder |
My fellow moguls: I could tell you there's more profit to harvest at Knight Ridder and bump up my stock portfolio by a couple of million. But instead I'm going to level with you: News is the only business where you are called on to alienate some of your best customers. You can't give advertisers the news stories they most want. And if you give readers what they want rather than what they need, you're not really in the news business at all. Read more
The Society of Professional Journalists and its Northern California Chapter call for an urgent national conversation about how to preserve public-service journalism in light of the likely sale of the Knight Ridder newspaper company. Read more at SPJ-Northern California | Backgrounder on Knight Ridder sale
The Chronicle, top, and Mercury
News, framed the MLK breakfast quite differently in their headlines. |
Did Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger get a "chilly reception" at a breakfast honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Monday, as the Oakland Tribune reported? Or was it a "surprisingly warm welcome," as the San Francisco Chronicle reported? Or was it "hostile," as the San Jose Mercury News reported?
The seemingly contradictory stories illustrate the subjectivity inherent in news-gathering, even when reporters are striving for objective accounts. Read more
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Jerry Ceppos |
Until he retired last September, Jerry Ceppos was the vice president for news at Knight Ridder, the person in charge of journalism ethics for the nation's second largest newspaper chain. He worries about widespread plagiarism, a disconnect between journalists and the public over what's ethical, and journalism educators taking ethics too lightly. Read more
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"Big" news. |
As sure as a hangover on New Year's Day, newspapers compile lists of the top stories in the last year. But such lists say more about journalists' selection values than what was significant in 2005. Read more
A union offer to orchestrate a "worker-friendly" buyout of parts of the Knight Ridder newspaper company, including the San Jose Mercury News but not the Contra Costa Times, has sparked excitement among employees at the chain's papers across the country, union leaders said this week. The company was skeptical of the Newspaper Guild's bid. Read more
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Anna Werner interviews an organic food advocate for "30 Minutes Bay Area." |
The CBS 5 show, "30 Minutes Bay Area," looks like the network show, in both style and substance. It offers a rare opportunity to glimpse what local TV news might look like if stations invested in in-depth journalism. Read more
The company that publishes the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times and 30 other metro dailies across the nation is likely to be bought by a consortium including Gannett, Dean Singleton's MediaNews and one or more investment firms.
The consortium would cluster KR papers with existing ones, such as the Oakland Tribune, Marin Independent Journal and San Mateo County Times, realizing economies in the newsroom and other departments. There's an outside chance Tony Ridder will try to take the company or parts of it private. Either strategy would probably lead to much deeper cuts in KR newsrooms than have already been exacted. Read more
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KRON-TV in San Francisco has eradicated the distinctions among reporters, editors and photographers, making everyone a "video journalist" with a camera and a laptop. The station says this move will be its salvation. Critics say this will be its undoing. Read more
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Bruce Sherman |
A single wealthy investor is threatening the civic vitality of 32 American
metropolitan areas by forcing the sale of their newspapers to new owners
merely to satisfy his demand for larger profits.
Can anyone stop him? Yes! Readers can, but only if they act together. Read
more
Write a letterIf you want to speak your own truth to power, here's a customizable letter to Bruce Sherman of Private Capital Management. Please cc us. Please forward this call to letters to others. If you'd like to help save quality local newspapers, please get in touch at jmcmanus (at symbol) gradethenews.org. |
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Lou Alexander |
The retired Mercury News ad executive who predicted Wall Street might move on Knight Ridder earlier this fall thinks the nation's second largest newspaper company is on the verge of a sale. Read more
New York Times reporter Judy Miller's testimony about Bush administration leaks may have cheered liberals. But those who value open government have more to lose than gain when reporters reveal confidential sources. Read more
If you have less-than-perfect eyesight, you might be excused for not seeing the disclaimer on a full-page ad in the San Jose Mercury News that said "Special advertisement feature." The page was laid out to look vaguely like a news story. An editor at the Mercury News said the ad violated the paper's policies. Read more
The San Jose Mercury News has accepted buyout requests from about 50 staff members, including some well known to local readers. Approximately 25 others who asked for buyouts were denied by the company. Among those leaving are author John Hubner, reporter/columnist Larry Slonaker, business writer/editor David Sylvester, business writers Michael Zielenziger and Margaret Steen and ethnic paper editors De Tran and Marina Hinestrosa. Read more
The San Jose Newspaper Guild circulated a memo today warning that were Knight Ridder to sell off some of its newspapers, the purchaser could cancel union contracts, fire the staff and unilaterally set new wages and working conditions. Were the chain sold as a whole, however, union contracts might be protected. Read more
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Lou Alexander |
Power brokers on Wall Street have ensured that the relatively comfortable
status quo employees and readers of Knight Ridder's newspapers and Web sites
enjoyed as recently as Monday is gone.
Things are going to change forever in the 29 markets the company serves
with daily newspapers and the 110 markets reached by Knight Ridder Digital.
None of the scenarios that can reasonably be anticipated allow Knight Ridder
and its newspapers to operate in the future as they have in the past. And
I assure you there will be chaos and uncertainty. Read
more
We hope to set the record straight on behalf of conscientious journalists around the country who support journalists' First Amendment responsibilities but are deeply troubled by Miller's earlier unprofessional conduct and SPJ's failure to fully apply its own Code of Ethics to this case. Read more on the SPJ-NorCal site
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Mattimore |
The media hit a trifecta the week before last. Three gruesome murder stories dominated the headlines. They made for sensational reading, but perhaps not for fair trials. Read more
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16-year-old Scott Dyleski's name and image were in the paper before he was charged. |
News organizations and journalism groups mostly urge caution in identifying juvenile suspects of crime. In the case of a 16-year-old arrested in connection with a high-profile murder case, editors diverged widely in their judgments. Some said their obligation was to be cautious in protecting juvenile suspects, while others said all bets are off if the crime is particularly gruesome. Read more, and then participate in our online straw poll
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Craig Newmark |
Craig Newmark, whose Craigslist.org deprives newspapers such as the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News of millions of dollars a year in classified advertising, has lost faith in traditional journalism's ability to safeguard the republic. Read more
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Lou Alexander |
Under previous management, the San Jose Mercury News started Viet Mercury and Nuevo Mundo for reasons that weren't limited to the bottom line. Read more
The management of the San Jose Mercury News today announced the closure of its Spanish-language weekly Nuevo Mundo and the impending sale its Vietnamese language weekly, the Viet Mercury. The weekly local Guide sections will also be discontinued. Read more
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The Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists announced the winners of its annual Excellence in Journalism awards contest. KALW general manager Nicole Sawaya was named journalist of the year for her important contributions to the diversity and availability of news programming in the Bay Area. Read the press release
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Shades of Scott Peterson? |
Like hyenas converging on spoil, Bay Area and national media are feasting
on the fame of attorney Daniel Horowitz and the bludgeoned body of his wife.
The murder of a celebrity's spouse will affect the lives of only a handful
of the Bay Area's seven million residents. For 99.9% of us, it's morbid
entertainment. Its news value is near zero. And yet news execs wonder why
the public holds them in low esteem? Read
more
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Whither network news? (Graphic by Albert Corona; reprinted with permission from the Riverside Press-Enterprise.) |
The three broadcast networks are rethinking how to gather and present their
evening newscasts with the hope of reclaiming lost audience or at least
holding current viewers.
The networks could boost the entertainment quotient of the news, as CBS
Chief Leslie Moonves suggests. Or they could follow the lead of one of only
two broadcast news media gaining audience -- Fox and National Public Radio.
They won't outfox Fox, but a visual in-depth approach to news a la NPR
might give people who already know the headlines a reason to reconnect with
the newscasts most American households once tuned in. Read
more
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With so many free options, who would pay for news? That's what paid papers are trying to figure out. |
'Micro-dailies' excel at efficiency, but the competition could displace experienced journalists
The free daily tabloid newspapers that have popped up around the Bay are flourishing, adding to the woes of major metro papers, which are cutting staff as they lose subscribers and advertisers. The trend bodes ill for the kind of depth reporting the paid broadsheets supply and for journalism as a craft that pays middle-class wages. Read more
Check out our chronological archives for older stories, or see the topic index
Monitoring the Bay Area's most popular news media:
MediaNews
Hearst
MediaNews
KTVU, Oakland (FOX)
KRON, San Francisco
KPIX, San Francisco (CBS)
KGO, San Francisco (ABC)
KNTV, San Jose (NBC)
Bay Area media advocates:
NOTE TO READERS
Grade the News' funding has lapsed. We are maintaining and occasionally updating the site. If you have ideas for fund raising, partnerships or new initiatives, we want to hear from you. Write to jmcmanus [AT] gradethenews.org. Thanks.
BLOG: NEWSPAPERS' FUTURE
Oct. 17 , 2007
Former Merc staffers provide their observations over changes at the newspaper once rated among the nation's ten best.
Past blogs from John Bowman and Lou Alexander...
BOUQUETS & BRICKBATS
Bouquet
to the San Jose Mercury News for an ambitious, must-read, nearly
book-length five-part series this week on how the criminal justice system
sometimes grossly fails to protect the rights of the accused.
THE COFFEEHOUSE
SF businessman Clint Reilly sues MediaNews on antitrust grounds.
Join the discussion ...
MAKE THE CALL
Should the news media reveal the name of a juvenile murder suspect before the police have charged him?
NOTABLE QUOTES
He said it was time to start giving consumers what they want, which was more entertainment news and 'less long series that we love to do but our readers hate to read.'
--William Dean Singleton, new owner of the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times, quoted in the New York Times, April 27, 2006.
2003-04 GRADES
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