RIP: Rocky Mountain News shuts down; can the Newspaper Industry Recover From this Chaos?

RIP: Rocky Mountain News shuts down; can the Newspaper Industry Recover From this Chaos?
By Marc Chamot

The future for newspapers is getting gloomier and gloomier as the days go by. After the San Francisco Chronicle claimed $50 million in loses last year, the Rocky Mountain News shut their doors with only $18 million in losses. It’s a far cry from the $50 million that the S.F. Chronicle claimed that they had lost, but sadly, the Rocky Mountain News still shut their doors.

What made E.W. Scripps decide to close down a 150-year Colorado institution is pretty much the same fate that’s happening with all newspapers around, they can’t get any buyers to dispose of a fast collapsing industry. No one wants to buy a losing enterprise these days.

What’s happening with newspapers it’s pretty much the same as to what is happening to American industries. Their managers have lost those “hands on” approaches to management style. It’s all about sitting behind glass walls, with cups of coffee, giving orders and shuffling papers, instead of getting out and getting their hands dirty. This mentality is most common with newspaper circulation department heads, which I have seen throughout my years working for newspapers, they are oblivious to the real problems at hand that goes on with the general workers that is affecting a company’s success.

Believe it or not, the good news for the newspaper industry is that there are things that they can do to survive. Newspapers must streamline their operations, those days of big multi-storied office buildings with lavish offices laden with many secretaries and receptionists are gone. That day when a publishers’ office was as lavish and as elegant to the one of the president of the United States is pretty much over.

Newspapers have to rethink as startups, not just give up. Newspapers still have the income coming in; even though it’s declining, and it should bottom out soon, but getting back to what it was may take a very long time. Part of the newspaper’s financial problems, is that they have become too dependent in national chains for their advertising needs, rather than promoting their local mom and pop businesses and classifieds. When these national chains are hurting, the newspaper advertising costs is the first to go. Most major advertisers no matter what industries they are from, they will still need that public exposure that newspapers provide for their advertising materials that the Internet, radio and television does not provide.

The Internet is fine for national and global reach, but reaching deeper into the average American local markets, the Internet cannot do what newspapers can. In truth, what has been hurting the newspapers industries with their advertising revenues are radio and television. As newspaper advertising costs began to skyrocket around the nation, advertisers went to the least expensive methods, like radio and television. Newspapers have begun to have a double whammy bestowed upon them; the loss of advertisers to radio and television and loss of readers to the Internet and it’s a real calamity for the industry.

In Debra J Saunders’ San Francisco Chronicle’s column yesterday, she blasted the readers anti-sympathetic response in a possible Chronicle shut down. She also mentions that most Internet users get their local news from newspapers, which is true. She goes on to say that if newspapers die, then reliable information will dry up. She said that newspapers are the public’s referees as to which information is credible. She also mentions about some stories that the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that impacted, and helped clean up the communities from corruption and other acts being perpetrated against its citizens. She talks about newspapers as being credible news sources and as to where people were going to get their information from down the line.

Last year on my blog, I had warned the newspapers industry that if they didn’t change their ways on editorials, like those that were always catering to the minority of viewpoints and the few, instead of the majority, then their end time was coming soon, and apparently it came sooner than what I thought it would. What Debra J Saunders forgets, is that newspapers brought it all upon themselves editorially speaking. They have become the new punching bag of some sort and they are on the blunt end of a reader’s backlash and they don’t realize it.

Yesterday, I talked to an acquaintance at the San Francisco Chronicle, a journalist I knew, I kind of wanted to gloat about the Chronicle thing with him. Lance Williams, (from the Barry Bonds, and BELCO case,) he’s someone I’ve known for many years; I told him that the end of time is beginning for that oversized and costly industry. I explained to him that’s what happens when you lose reader loyalties, especially through one sided editorials, such as what they did with the proposition 8, the homosexual marriage initiative of California. But, of course he denied that those were the reasons.

Lance Williams has that stereotypical newspaper journalist attitude that you see around most newspapers, just like Debra J. Saunders, who all live in a world of denial. They hate the Internet, they hate bloggers and they think that they are too good for anyone to find any faults with them and on their reporting and writings. They believe more in their newspapers owners and publishers, rather than what the reader believes in, they usually tow the line for their publishers ideals and AGENDAS, and they are the ones that are pushing these editorials on unsuspecting readers for their masters’ sakes, no matter how controversial or contradictory it can be for their newspapers.

So, to my friend Lance Williams and columnist Debra J Saunders, let’s get real about it. If you’re still on those denial aspects about the true causes for your newspaper’s situation, here’s a reality check and opinion from one of your own former readers to your newspaper, and of course, it’s not from me.

This was in today’s letter to the editor in the San Francisco Chronicle, in regards to their shutting down written by a former reader, who said it best: “Won’t be Missed: Over the years I have watched the quality of reporting at the Chronicle sink into a left-wing miasma of bias and omission, until the front page and the editorial page are virtually interchangeable. Now I see that you are teetering on the brink. Sorry to report that this is the 21st century, the age of the Internet, the iPhone, and cable news. Your readers are no longer stuck with a one sided rag, requiring a fleet of trucks and tons of paper. Goodbye and Good Riddance!” Jeff Beaver Mill Valley CA

Regardless of newspaper’s editorial problems, it can be solvable. I had been with the newspaper industry for over thirty years, and I know some things that newspapers can do to save their selves before they decide to shut their doors permanently. Circulation is a newspaper’s largest and costliest to newsprint, ink and printing. I have five things that newspapers can do to stay alive. It involves paid subscriptions, home deliveries, contracting out, re-inventing classifieds and a foolproof circulation marketing system. I have traveled abroad, believe it or not, most foreign country’s daily papers have a more advanced delivery-marketing system than we do, and they do not include home deliveries.

But of course, Marc Chamot, "moi", a former newspaper man with over thirty plus years in the newspaper marketing and delivery systems will certainly not give up this information for free, especially on the Net. If any newspaper management reads this and wants to contact me at marcchamot@yahoo.com , or hire me on as a consultant, I would be more than happy to show you on how to keep your newspaper going through these hard times.

In closing, newspapers for years have had pretty much a “free run” in pushing propagandas and unpopular opinions on their readers for so long, that now people have found better alternatives to squelch their thirst for information (the Internet,) and unfortunately they have pretty much stopped buying and reading your products entirely.

Final Edition: Rocky Mountain News to Shut Down Today
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, February 27, 2009; Page D03

Colorado's oldest newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, is shutting down today, and industry analysts say it won't be the last to be pulled under by a rising tide of financial woes.

E.W. Scripps announced yesterday that it is closing the 150-year-old Rocky, which has won four Pulitzer Prizes in the last decade, leaving Denver, like most American cities, a one-newspaper town.

These are dark days for the struggling news business. Hearst threatened this week to close the San Francisco Chronicle unless major budget cuts are imposed or a buyer is found, and is also prepared to close the Seattle Post-Intelligencer if it cannot be sold. The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News filed for bankruptcy protection this week, joining Chicago's Tribune Co. and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in Chapter 11 status.

Industry analyst John Morton called the Rocky's failure to find a buyer unsurprising. "The market is awash in newspapers for sale, and nobody is buying them," he said. "This recession has so impacted advertising revenue, particularly classifieds that it's driven into unprofitability those who are in a precarious position."

Scripps said in a statement that the tabloid became "a victim of changing times in our industry and huge economic challenges. The Rocky is one of America's very best examples of what local news organizations need to be in the future. Unfortunately, the partnership's business model is locked in the past."

That model is a joint operating agreement, an eight-year-old arrangement blessed by the Justice Department, in which the Rocky has shared business and production costs with the rival Denver Post. Each has a daily circulation of 210,000. Scripps said in December that it would try to unload the Rocky.

As grim-faced staffers looked on yesterday, Editor John Temple introduced two Scripps executives, who said that Denver could no longer support two newspapers. They said there was only one potential buyer, who backed out.

"This is a really sad end to a beautiful thing," Temple told his staff, adding that the final edition was like "being given the chance to play the music at your own funeral."
In an online blog, the paper reported: "The mood in the room is getting nastier and bitter, reporters wondering if the execs tried hard enough to save the paper or put pressure on the Rocky Mountain News."

On Twitter, one staffer wrote: "In news meeting, puffy-eyed Managing Editor is handing out assignments."

Readers posted reactions on the Rocky's Web site: "This is such a sad day." "It will leave a huge unfillable void in the Denver and Rocky Mountain region." "Bye old friend."
M.E. Sprengelmeyer, who lost his job as Scripps's Washington correspondent for the Rocky, said the paper "really was a scrappy little place. It had a little more bulldog in it than terrier. It's a place where you could pitch the wacky stuff," as he did by moving to Iowa for a year before last year's presidential caucuses.

The Denver Post, which reached an agreement with local unions this week to cut costs by 11.7 percent, is owned by William Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group. Singleton said in a statement that "the Rocky will forever be remembered for its vital role in the city's history and the city's success. Although we competed intensely, the talented staff of the Rocky earned our respect with each morning's edition." The Post said it will hire a number of Rocky reporters, columnists and editors, but this amounts to less than 5 percent of the paper's 200-person newsroom. Story http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/26/AR2009022602108.html

Shocking Poll Shows 61 Percent of Americans either Don’t Care or is Oblivious To & Lack the Proper Knowledge to Opinion on the Economic Crisis:

Shocking Poll Shows 61 Percent of Americans either Don’t Care or is Oblivious To & Lack the Proper Knowledge to Opinion on the Economic Crisis:
By Marc Chamot

"Is this why the government wants to enact the Fairness Doctrine (regulating conservative talk radio) and regulate Internet Bloggers? Do they want to keep us Americans more Dumb and Dumber than what we are?"

Even though 85 percent of Americans say they have a need in knowing what’s going on with the economy, according to a Pew survey. “The economy has a personal connection that most stories don’t,” said Carroll Doherty, editor of the Pew Research Center for the People & Press.

Pew asked a random sample of 1,000 Americans whether they had started to tune out the dire economic coverage. Fewer than 15 percent said yes.

Forty-six percent said that they don’t have enough knowledge and background information to understand the crisis or evaluate proposed solutions.

People just keep brief attention to economic news because it affects them, 40 percent of the respondents have been touched by job worries over last year, layoffs, reductions in pay, hours or job loss by family members and friends.

Survey had showed that 80 percent of Americans had cut spending because of the economic situation. 30 percent of them had to cut cost because they were faced with worsening finances.

I can understand that 15 percent of the American people want to tune out bad news, but what’s got me totally surprised is that only 39 percent of Americans are truly informed as to what the heck is going on around us, and what? A whopping 46 percent of Americans don’t know what’s going on with the economy, and cannot opinion about it?

It’s pretty sad folks; its borderline tragic, because I can of suspected it for years. With tons of media, television, radio and Internet coverage on the issue, some people, actually, a little less than half of the American population still isn’t well informed to make an opinion on issues that is affecting their very own lives.

No wonder we keep on electing these same worn out career politicians over and over again. And no wonder this country is getting far worse and worse.

It may also explain as to why most bloggers like me, who have a lot of less than five seconds traffic on blogs from search engines errors.

According to my statcounter on traffic coming to my blogs from the United States, and these are mainly from people who have accidentally stumbled upon my blogs through search engines by mistake or miss-keyed, and those who are looking for certain subject matters, but when they realize it’s not the right place to look, they leave immediately.

They don’t even take the time and opportunity to get acquainted with that blog, and they don’t have the interest in what the blog offers and is all about.

The reason why I am mentioning this, it’s pretty ironic, because it’s about the same percentage point as the above stats, of 61 percent. Actually, my stats are a little bit higher; it’s between 67 to 70 percent of uninterested parties, heads in the sand type of people that venture into my blogs.

Throughout my years in the publishing business, I noticed that some Americans have two traits. One is gullibility, they believe everything newspapers, radio, and TV news Medias tell them, and some even hold the media more sacred than the Bible and the word of God.

Others are incapable of keeping an open mind, or in having the interest to investigate further if what they are being told is true. Secondly, there are some that don’t like to hear the truths. There is that famous Jack Nicholson’s movie line in A Few Good Men, “You don’t want the truths, and you can’t handle the truths!” But maybe, is it because the truth hurts and that’s why some people stick their heads in the sand? I can see the frustrations from my many other fine fellow political bloggers on both, Entrecard and Zimbio.

I sure hate to say it, we’re all just preaching to the choir here. And I now know exactly as to what my fellow blogger EuroYank thinks about it. He’s pretty much hit it right on the nail about his observations, about some Americans on his blogs and bio. Luxembourg? It’s a very nice place to be, to escape from all of this insanity.

When we’ve got only 39 percent of Americans that knows and care about what the hell is happening to our country, then 15 percent who don’t care, and another 46 percent saying that they don’t know, it’s a disaster waiting to happen for this country. At this rate, these politicians can have their way with us any time they want to.

They can even bring back that “fairness doctrine” and regulate the Internet if they want to, because half of the country “don’t give a damn and don’t know,” and for the rest of us, are we going to hell in a hand basket within a New York minute?

Latino Groups File FCC Complaint on Radio Talk Shows & Television News Personalities as Hate Speech Mongers:

Latino Groups File FCC Complaint on Radio Talk Shows & Television News Personalities as Hate Speech Mongers:
By Marc Chamot

California based National Hispanic Media Coalition delivered a petition on hate speech in the media to the Federal Communications Commission. According to their data, from the FBI shows that hate crimes against Hispanics have increased by 40 percent in the last four years.

Organization president Alex Nogales was Joined by five other representatives from partnering organizations, to bring up the NHMC’s concerns to the FCC, and to see if any federal laws were being broken by these mediums.

During Nogales’ meeting in front of the National Press Club in Washington, he said that it’s a strategy for them to attack what he defined as “a huge and growing national problem talking negative on the air waves against Hispanics in America” and he says “this is the kind of stuff that is going on the radio, that is going on television day in day out, and on the Internet is even worse.”

Accompanying Nogales was Francisco Javier Iribarren, assistant director of the University of California at Los Angeles Chicano Studies Research Center, which they all conducted a study to measure hate speech in talk radio. From the study, came enough information that could be used to prove hate speech from some of these media personalities.

Georgetown University Law Center attorney Jessica Gonzalez delivered the petition personally to the FCC. Hate speech has been a factor in crimes against Hispanics, added Nogales.

While these groups are calling on the FCC to investigate, the National Hispanic Media Coalition is also requesting that the Secretary of Commerce or Congress to direct the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to follow up on its 1993 report on telecommunication hate crimes.

After I get done, even Marc Chamot will be accused by these left loony groups as a hate speech monger. Well, here I go!

First of all VATOS, I’m calling it a spade when it’s a spade, and these are the cold hard facts. Let’s get real? If it weren’t for the illegal alien problems in the United States we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.

Yes, and that means you, Mr. pimping Alex Nogales at NHMC and your group must be pretty damn stupid to think that we are going to fall for your Hate speech idiocy.

You VATOS are evidently talking about our treatment towards “illegal aliens” not with the Latinos as a whole with your FCC complaint episodes.

Your group resent it when we call your compatriots “illegal aliens,” while you prefer them being called undocumented immigrants. You’re right in one thing and wrong on the other, they are undocumented, but immigrants they are not! Immigrants in America are usually legal foreigners, that have all of the legal PAPELES, and they usually come here through the legal process and by permission. These foreign immigrants that I am talking about are not the run in the mill border jumpers, or Rio Grande river swamp rats like most of your compatriots that come to America.

Secondly you VATOS, your attacks are mainly against conservative talk radio show hosts, like Michael Savage and TV news anchors like Lou Dobbs who don’t support your open border and amnesty agenda for illegal aliens. It’s quite evident that you want to blame your opponents by restricting free speech as hate crimes, those who oppose your left wing agendas. And people like those and me, who don’t fall for your lunatic garbage one little bit. You find it offensive when they use the words "illegal aliens," and I find it even more offensive when you push for their rights that they don’t even have!

Thirdly VATOS, it’s a fact, that illegal aliens in this country have stolen a lot of jobs from hard working Americans and I am formerly one of them. They have also depressed wages around many communities, and they don’t spend a dime to sustain their American communities, because they send most of their money that they earn back to Mejico and Central America where they came from.

Fourthly VATOS, it’s also a fact that most of your COMPATRIOTAS among other illegal aliens from Asia, Europe, Africa, India and the Middle East are killing our medical infrastructure for your free medicine and medical costs where as most Americans themselves cannot even get! Americans with social security numbers when they owe for unpaid medical costs, are sent to a never ending Hell-Hole, in personal economic disaster that illegal aliens would never know about.

Take a look at California the state that has the largest concentration of illegal aliens in America, it is going fiscally broke because of illegal aliens! Besides hospitalization, did I say California prisons? That is the largest financial cost in the state of California next to medical, with 49 percent of your criminal illegal compatriotas are currently being incarcerated there at taxpayer expense.

Fifthly VATOS, it’s a fact that most of your descendents from illegal aliens are the bulk of the gang problems, and violent crimes in American major cities.

And finally, let me ask you a question my little VATO friends, on my sixth and last comment about this nonsense. Who do we go to when your compatriotas like to call us, pinche GUERO, pinche GABACHO and or pinche GRINGO, and who watches your compatriotas’ hate speech mongers mi bueno VATO amigos, eh?

Ungrateful & Selfish Kidnapped Tennessee Kids Refuse to Meet with their Parents After 20 Years:

Ungrateful & Selfish Kidnapped Tennessee Kids Refuse to Meet with their Parents After 20 Years:
By Marc Chamot

Marc Chamot’s blogs usually has no tolerance for ignorant stupid people, and let alone for ungrateful and selfish brats like Christi, and her brother Bobby Baskin.

Mark and Debbie Baskin really want to see their kids that were stolen from them by their maternal grandparents twenty years ago. This scum bucket, Marvin Maple the grand father, was found and arrested in San Jose for stealing these two brats from their parents during a bitter custody dispute, which he and his now dead wife Sandra lost their custody case.

These kids are now all grown up. 28 years old Christi and her 27 year old brother Bobby Baskin are refusing to meet with their parents since the arrest of Marvin Maple, the grandfather who stole them and lived a double life. Maple went by the phony name of John Bunting and kept himself hidden from the law in San Jose California for most of those years.

Debbie and Mark Baskin, the mother and father, went on a press conference to plead their case in tears for their two ungrateful and selfish brats to speak with them. Apparently Christi Baskin was at home when her thieving grandfather got arrested for their kidnappings. Christi told the Tennessee authorities at the time that she wasn’t in a rush to meet her former family, and with that same typical old dumb blonde routine, “I am confused!” she said.

Marvin Maple the thieving grandfather, who has waived extradition, is scheduled to return Friday to Murfreesboro Tenn., to face kidnapping charges. They all disappeared from Tennessee around 1989.

First of all, and here it comes, the Marc Chamot point blunt opinion about this matter. It certainly won’t be very pretty at all.

Get real Christi! Drop that dumb blonde routine, wake up and smell the coffee. Since being eight years old, after all of these years, didn’t you ever once think about your parents?

Most of you, as well as I, know the damage that this inconsiderate, scum of a pig, of a grandfather did to the parents of these two brats, but mainly to his own daughter. These parents went through twenty years without ever seeing their own kids growing up! They never knew if their kids were dead or alive.

Can you imagine what these parents missed, by not having their kids around? Twenty years in lost birthdays, report cards, seeing them at school, caring them when they were sick, going on vacations, eating dinners, going to church, family photos, their first dates, and many other long lasting memories, you name it. That is what Marvin Maple stole from their grieving parents for twenty years! And these two grown up selfish brats don’t think about that, do they?

I certainly hope that the state of Tennessee throws the book at this one old geezer, and for Debbie and Mark? Don’t let these two brats convince you otherwise either. I have one big advice for both Christi and Bobby; get your heads out your rear ends and just Grow UP!

Some of World’s Brightest Economic Minds and World Leaders Meet in Davos to Avert Global Economic Doom:

Some of World’s Brightest Economic Minds and World Leaders Meet in Davos to Avert Global Economic Doom:
By Marc Chamot & Source: AP

Some of the world’s brightest economic minds and world leaders met in Davos, Switzerland to figure out what is going wrong with the global economy, and the declining world economic crisis. They all failed to come up with a plan to stem, or reverse the global financial meltdown. The five day summit resulted in an atmosphere of doom and gloom, with the realization that the depth of the crisis is unknown and there are no real solutions.

“No one seems to have a clear understanding of how big this crisis is and what we need to do to get out of it,” said Lee Kuan Yew, a public policy expert from Singapore.

World leaders from China’s Premier Wen Jiabao to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, other world leaders like Russian Prime (Sinister) Vladimir Putin, British PM Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and bankers of course!

These business and government leaders all came down to one conclusion, blaming the United States for starting the financial crisis that is now turning into a global recession.
It’s turning ugly; the global blame game has just begun.

Last year, these same people had a widespread belief that the new major emerging economic powers, China, India, Russia and Brazil, could survive an American recession, because of their growth potential. But that philosophy has proved wrong, many said.

I will say this, and I will say it again, on my blogs for the umpteenth time! You screw with the American economic structure, our GNP; it may end up biting ours and the world’s rear ends. And it finally has.

They are right to blame the United States for this global economic disaster. And we as citizens of this country have the right to blame our government and greedy Wall Street, and the bankers for these economic ills they have thrown upon us.

It doesn’t take a real rocket scientist, and even these so called idiotic economic experts that go into the national media and newspapers should do a little math 101once in a while.

Take a look at the GNP of the world’s 3 top economies of the world next to the USA. By adding them all up comes to $11.20 trillion, with about $2.6 trillion left over in comparison to the United States’ totals of $13.8 trillion. If you add another country to it, like Great Britain, France, or Italy then they would all equal to the United States total GNP. GNP by the numbers: The United States is at $13.8 trillion, Japan is at $4.4 trillion, China is at $3.5 trillion, and Germany is at $3.3 trillion.

Now we’re seeing a semblance of a picture of what the problem may be. It’s without a doubt that the United States is the most economically powerful country in the world. It takes up to five foreign competitors to equal the output of the United States. The next thing one has to look at what makes a GNP?

There are many factors that play into a country’s GNP. Take America first, we are the most employed, we are the most business owned, the most paid, and we have the most industries. We are also the most industrialized in the world, and the world’s biggest consumer. That means we have a lot of money and we spend it. The average American has enough money to equal four runner ups in GNP of the world.

So when these economic business experts and world leaders had that widespread belief that the new major emerging economic powers, of China, India, Russia and Brazil, whose countries are nowhere near the level in GNP to the United states, or even Japan and Europe for that matter. So how could they survive an American recession, without the American spending power? It was just too asinine for them to believe and think this way that it could be possible.

So basically, the world’s economy does revolve around the United States. But, something happened to the United States to cause this disaster, someone tinkered with our GNP.

Our factories have been leaving our nation in droves for the past eight years, we have transferred our imports, shipping and manufacturing industries to foreign countries, and we have the highest unemployed since the Great Depression, wages have gone down, we have thousands of businesses shutting their doors daily. California, a state considered number seventh in GNP of the world is in shambles, and our real estate mortgage industry is collapsing.

In one swoop, we went from the largest consumer of the world to a mediocre one. And somehow our spending abilities have dried up. So when we Americans cannot buy things, travel to foreign countries, and even buy their products, it caused such a domino effect that we now have globally.

The bottom lines to these wannabe think tankers, if the United States economic structure falls, so does the world.