Remembering Jeff and Ann Fairbanks

It will be ten years this Friday, Nov. 25th.

On Nov. 25, 1995, a tragic car accident on Highway 46 claimed the lives of Jeff and Ann Fairbanks, their daughter Sienna, and two other people. It was also, I submit, the beginning of the end of local media on the Central Coast.

Jeff Fairbanks was the editor of the Telegram-Tribune, having joined the paper as a reporter in the late '70s and working his way up the ranks to the top spot. His wife Ann, a graduate of both Stanford and Columbia Universities, was quite simply the best reporter to ever work on the Central Coast in either print or broadcast. The couple stayed on the Central Coast to raise their three daughters and rejected offers at larger papers. Ann covered health issues for the paper and wrote amazing feature articles about the California Valley and a Cal Poly provost battling depression.

They were coming home from Fresno that Saturday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend, their oldest daughter having run in a high school cross country meet. About 22 miles east of Paso Robles, an RV drifted across the road and smashed head on into the Fairbanks' Volvo. The couple and one daughter were killed instantly. A second daughter was miraculously pulled from the car before it completely burst into flames.

To me, this tragedy marked a seismic shift in the local media community. Prior to 1995, we had folks like Jeff and Ann, along with Dorie Bentley, Carol Roberts, Dan Clarkson, Bill Benica, Fred Peterson --- broadcast and print professionals who decided to make a career on the Central Coast. Being a part of the community they covered. No more. Now both KSBY and the Tribune are a revolving door for reporters anxious to move on to bigger markets. Management no longer promotes from within so now we have editors and news directors who hail from Kentucky and Colorado. It's all Knight-Ridder and Clear Channel, with talk now of a national chain taking over New Times this spring.

The transformation of Central Coast media took ten years. It started on a crisp November afternoon out on Highway 46 with the deaths of two of the best and the brightest.

I hope you'll take a moment sometime this week and keep a good thought for Jeff and Ann. We will not see their likes again.

Trouble Ahead for Knight Ridder?

From Editor & Publisher. Keep in mind that the Tribune is a KR paper.

Knight Ridder Reporter Warns of Hostile Takeover--with Political Twist
As reports swirl that KR could or should be sold, under new pressure from what he calls a "pro-GOP" big investor, a longtime Philly Daily News scribe charges that this would be "bad news" for the chain--and all of American media.

By Will Bunch

PHILADELPHIA (November 02, 2005) -- As you probably know if you're a newspaper junkie, and may not know if you're a normal human being, a Florida-based investment group -- with zero fanfare -- this summer bought up 19% of the stock of Knight Ridder, Inc., the owners of the Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer, not to mention the Miami Herald, the San Jose Mercury News, and a bunch of other big names in the dead-tree world.

And now, apparently unaware that newspaper readership has been dropping steadily for a half-decade and that advertisers are starting to follow readers to this new-fangled Internet thingee, the investors -- named Private Capital Management -- are shocked, shocked to learn that they aren't getting the greatest return on their investment.

And so their solution, having been around for all of four months: They want to sell the company.

This is probably very bad news, for a couple of reasons. And even if you're one of the many people who thinks that newspapers are dinosaurs and believe it doesn't matter whether they live or die, you should pay attention to this.

No. 1: Are you concerned about pro-GOP Big Business taking over America's media business? Then you should be concerned about this deal.

My initial research shows that top executives of Private Capital Management donated $112,000 in late 2003 and early 2004 to help President Bush and Dick Cheney get re-elected. On Nov. 6 and 7, 2003, in what would appear to be a coordinated effort, six PCM executives each gave the maximum of $2,000 to Bush-Cheney '04.

Then on the same day, April 8, 2004, the head of PCM, Bruce Sherman, and company executive Gregg Powers gave $50,000 each, or $100,000 total, to the Republican National Committee. Company executives gave no money to Democrats during the 2003-04 cycle, according to the Political Money Line database.

Say what you will about Knight Ridder's business practices, but when it comes to journalism, they do a remarkably good job of getting out of the way. Thus, the liberal editorial voice of the Daily News and the Inquirer, and the amazing work by Knight Ridder's Washington bureau, which was one of the few media voices casting doubt in 2002 and 2003 on whether Iraq had WMD and posed a threat to America.

Now, big-time Republican donors want a piece of the action? Interesting.

No. 2: According to one Wall Street expert, the potential outcomes of the Knight Ridder turmoil may be good financially for some of the players, but not so good for the practice of journalism.

According to a report sent this morning to clients by analyst Stuart M. Rossmiller and his colleagues, Knight Ridder faces a 40% probability "that a strategic buyer [most likely Gannett] steps forward with a cash offer" of "up to $80/share" to buy Knight Ridder. And a 15% probability Knight Ridder will be purchased by private investors, increasing debt that would probably force the buyers to sell some newspapers.

Gannett, as newspaper junkies know, is notorious for stressing the bottom line over investigative reporting. And a sale to either Gannett or the Tribune Co. would create a journalistic monolith that would seek "synergy" by slashing reporters (well, the jobs -- hopefully not the actual reporters) from Washington to Baghdad.

The other two outcomes both involving increasing debt -- simply put, that means that money that could go for aggressive reporting will be wasted on paying bankers instead.

We only see one good solution here, and it's a long-shot -- but I'm going to throw it out there. It's clearly possible that some Knight-Ridder papers could be sold off individually. Wouldn't it be great if the stock in a new Philadelphia Daily News Corp. were owned by the non-profit Pew Charitable Trusts?

Something like this had been done in Florida, where the St. Petersburg Times is owned by the non-profit Poynter Institute. And it sounds like a win-win situation to us:

If our owner demanded profits be twice as high as they are, it would inevitably cut into our ability to hire enough people and buy enough newsprint to really tell you what is going on in our communities. We run a nicely profitable business so we can be an excellent newspaper; all too many companies print newspapers so they can make a lot of money.

The price of our paper is low. We keep it that way so all citizens can be informed, not just the well-to-do. We believe our democracy depends on informed citizens.

We give away money to local charities. We support political debates. We support dozens of scholarships annually. We believe it is our duty and privilege as citizens to do so.

These new developments aren't just a business deal -- they're important for a free media, and important for democracy.

Wake up, everybody.

Hyatt Checks into The Tribune

Abraham Hyatt, the highly regarded investigative reporter for New Times, has resigned and is moving down Higuera Street to work at The Tribune. Hyatt will cover Los Osos for the Trib.

Meanwhile, rumors continue to fly around the future of the alternative weekly. Scenario One has Moss family members holding on to the paper as a tribute to their late brother and continuing publication. Scenario Two has the family selling out to a syndicate like New Times (no relation), which owns LA Weekly and the Village Voice. Observers suggest the telltale sign for New Times will come early in 2006 when inheritance taxes will be due.

Scott Taylor has left the morning news anchor position at KVEC to shift to afternoons on Clear Channel's Cat County 96.1 (formerly KSLY). No word of a replacement yet, but perhaps Clear Channel can snag KSBY morning news anchor Shari Small, whose days on the hill are apparently numbered.

Finally, congratulations to writer Cathe Olsen of Arroyo Grande who was recently appointed the new director of the Cuesta College Writers' Conference. WCXXII is scheduled for Sept. 15-16, 2006. Earlene Fowler will keynote.

Good Night, and Good Luck

I just want to add a quick post here in praise of the new George Clooney movie, "Good Night, and Good Luck." Charlotte and I caught it last weekend while down in Santa Barbara and any and all media junkies will want to see GNGL when it eventually opens in San Luis Obispo.

Directed by Clooney and shot completely in black-and-white, GNGL captures the on-going war of words between Edward R. Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954. There is an eerie ring to Murrow's speeches and the audience repeatedly applauded him throughout the movie. Forget Michael Moore. GNGL is a scathing indictment of the sewer the national media has become and there are definite parallels between McCarthy and the Bush White House.

David Straithairn gives an amazing performance as Murrow, but equally impressive is the decision to just let McCarthy speak for himself on newsreel footage. George Clooney plays Fred Friendly, who was Murrow's producer and cohort. When I was a college professor, I always made my students read "Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control" by Friendly and I still consider it one of the finest books ever written about journalism.

Good night, and good luck!

The Death of Newspapers?

Interesting perspective from Media Daily News

IT'S OFFICIAL: 2005 WILL BE the newspaper industry's worst year since the last ad industry recession. And things aren't looking much better for next year either, according to a top Wall Street firm's report on newspaper publishing. "Sadly, 2005 is shaping up as the industry's worst year from a revenue growth perspective since the recession impacted 2001-2002 period," says the report from Goldman Sachs, adding a warning that meaningful growth in 2006 is "very unlikely."
In particular, national advertising has under-performed, remaining essentially flat this year, as has the retail category, the report said--while classified, both print and online, has shown positive gains so far this year, up 4-5 percent.

The weak ad environment for newspapers has caused Goldman to scale back its 2006 growth forecast to 3.5 percent from 4.0 percent. The note said national ad growth would once again be weakest at 1.0 percent, followed by retail, 2.5 percent, and classifieds at 3.6 percent. The bright spot continues to be online newspaper revenues, which are projected to grow an impressive 25 percent in 2006. Despite this, online will still represent 5.0 percent of total newspaper revenues.

The only really good news for publishers is that the investment firm believes the cost of newsprint, which has risen recently, is likely to fall slightly in 2006, as demand falls more quickly than production capacity. The report said newsprint prices would peak and then slowly recede in the second half of the year.

Even so, this good news is scant relief for an industry besieged by flat ad revenues, falling stocks, and fleeing subscribers. Last week, Rishad Tobaccowala, chief innovation officer for Publicis Groupe, told a newspaper--the Chicago Tribune--"newspapers are at a tipping point," in which online media will start to take more readership and more ad dollars. He added that newspapers are in the worst situation of all news media for growth as "the least visually engaging and least youth oriented" medium.