Politics and Prose has found a buyer
Melina Mara / THE WASHINGTON POST -
Politics and Prose, D.C.’s iconic independent bookstore, has found a buyer.
For nearly 30 years, Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade were the Cal Ripkens of bookselling, seemingly never leaving their perch at Politics and Prose. They were so in sync in their stewardship that they often showed up for work wearing the same color.
Eras end. Cohen is gone now, succumbing to cancer last year, and on Tuesday, Meade and Cohen’s husband revealed that they had found new owners for the 27-year-old store. They are former Washington Post journalists Bradley Graham and his wife, Lissa Muscatine.
“The hardest part of all this was losing Carla,” Meade said in an interview. “I told Carla it would be too lonely to run a business by myself.”
Meade and David Cohen settled on the couple’s offer after narrowing a flurry of propositions down to five or six serious offers. One of the final bidders was a group including ex-New Republic editor Franklin Foer, Atlantic magazine writer Jeffrey Goldberg, literary agent Rafe Sagalyn and a real estate company.
Terms of the deal were not released, but a person with knowledge of the negotiations said that the purchase price was about $2 million.
Meade and Cohen said price was not the sole factor in determining the buyer of the store, which has remained profitable despite catastrophic changes in the industry for bricks-and-mortar stores. Rather, they picked Graham and Muscatine because they think the couple is uniquely qualified to extend the store’s reputation as a gathering place for ideas and civic discourse.
Graham began working at The Post in 1978, serving as a business reporter, foreign correspondent, editor and Pentagon correspondent. He is the author of two books, including “By His Own Rules,” a biography of Donald Rumsfeld. He is a graduate of Yale and Stanford Business School and comes from a family that made its money in the ice cream cone and plastics industries.
Muscatine, a Rhodes scholar, worked at the Post for 12 years as a reporter and editor before becoming an aide and confidante to President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Most recently, she was the State Department’s director of speechwriting. Meade liked the idea of a female owner considering the store had always been run by women.
“We understand that Politics and Prose is much more than a bookstore,” Graham told the store’s staff in a gathering held where novelists, presidents and eggheads alike have signed books. “It is an integral part of the Washington community, a community that Lissa and I have served for much of our careers already as journalists, authors and, in Lissa’s case, a senior government staff member. It is a very special culture here, a culture we want to see survive.”
A longtime shopper listening nearby liked what she heard. “They sound like people of the book, which is what the store needs,” said Lenore Weinberg of Northwest Washington, who shops at Politics and Prose often for her grandchildren. “This store is in a class by itself, and I hope it stays that way.”
The deal is expected to close in about 45 days. Graham and Muscatine plan to work full time in the store, taking control, with some guidance from Meade, as the bookstore industry has been battered by e-books and the digitization of information. Borders recently filed for bankruptcy, shutting down hundreds of stores, including several in the Washington region. Barnes & Noble, for sale for months, has struggled to find a buyer.
But many observers think there is still a role for independent bookstores in hand-to-hand bookselling, with smaller overheads, strong customer relationships and the ability to create a tightknit community around words with author events and classes — areas in which Politics and Prose already excels. Using new print-on-demand technology, some independent bookstores are publishing original books or printing not-in-stock items.
Graham, who is not related to Post Co. Chairman Donald Graham, said he approached the idea of buying the store as a reporter, travelling across the country to talk to other successful independent bookstore owners. One stop was at Village Books, in Bellingham, Wash.
“Brad’s eyes were wide open,” said Chuck Robinson, longtime owner of Village Books. “I don’t think he has any great illusions of making a lot money, but if there’s any bookstore in this country that has the potential of continuing to do well, it’s Politics and Prose.”
Graham and Muscatine said they weren’t ready to discuss details. Instead, they want to gather the perspective of the store’s fiercely loyal staff, which Graham called its “greatest asset.” They did say that they plan to put their own money into expanding the store.
And they acknowledge, like other bookstore owners, that the path ahead is somewhat uncertain.
“We are all a little crazy,” Robinson said. “It’s almost as bad as being in the newspaper industry, which Brad of course knows.”
Monday, March 28, 2011
Magazine for Gay Military Launches
Magazine launch for gay military members announced
Washington (CNN) -- A magazine designed for and by gay military members may soon be displayed at military installations worldwide, an advocacy group announced Monday.
"Our first objective with the magazine is to let all the gay, lesbian, bi, and trans members currently serving know that they are not alone," an active-duty officer who goes by the pseudonym JD Smith said in a statement.
Smith, along with co-director Ty Walrod lead the organization known as OutServe, the group describes themselves as an underground network of actively serving military members of the United States Armed Services who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
"Visibility is key," Smith said, who added that OutServe hopes to have its next version available in print at "some larger military bases."
The magazine can currently be downloaded from the internet, the statement said.
"We are not about highlighting our differences." Smith said the goal of the publication is to demonstrate "how LGBT troops are proud soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coasties, and Marines just like everyone else."
The magazine will contain features about "Don't Ask Don't Tell" repeal implementation and OutServe chapters, as well as other information of interest to currently-serving LGBT military members, the statement said.
"We also want to communicate to all troops that there are capable gay military members serving honorably, and that accepting that and moving on will make our military stronger," said Smith.
On December 22, President Barack Obama signed the DADT bill repealing the 17-year-old law.
The repeal "will strengthen our national security and uphold (America's) ideals," Obama said. "No longer will tens of thousands of Americans in uniform be asked to live a lie."
"Don't ask-don't tell" became law in 1993, after opposition ballooned to then newly elected President Bill Clinton's plan to lift the military's complete ban on gay service members.
The policy stopped the practice of asking service members if they are gay, but still called for the dismissal of openly gay service members.
Washington (CNN) -- A magazine designed for and by gay military members may soon be displayed at military installations worldwide, an advocacy group announced Monday.
"Our first objective with the magazine is to let all the gay, lesbian, bi, and trans members currently serving know that they are not alone," an active-duty officer who goes by the pseudonym JD Smith said in a statement.
Smith, along with co-director Ty Walrod lead the organization known as OutServe, the group describes themselves as an underground network of actively serving military members of the United States Armed Services who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
"Visibility is key," Smith said, who added that OutServe hopes to have its next version available in print at "some larger military bases."
The magazine can currently be downloaded from the internet, the statement said.
"We are not about highlighting our differences." Smith said the goal of the publication is to demonstrate "how LGBT troops are proud soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coasties, and Marines just like everyone else."
The magazine will contain features about "Don't Ask Don't Tell" repeal implementation and OutServe chapters, as well as other information of interest to currently-serving LGBT military members, the statement said.
"We also want to communicate to all troops that there are capable gay military members serving honorably, and that accepting that and moving on will make our military stronger," said Smith.
On December 22, President Barack Obama signed the DADT bill repealing the 17-year-old law.
The repeal "will strengthen our national security and uphold (America's) ideals," Obama said. "No longer will tens of thousands of Americans in uniform be asked to live a lie."
"Don't ask-don't tell" became law in 1993, after opposition ballooned to then newly elected President Bill Clinton's plan to lift the military's complete ban on gay service members.
The policy stopped the practice of asking service members if they are gay, but still called for the dismissal of openly gay service members.
NY Times Paywall Goes Active Today
New York Times paywall goes live today
By Allan Chernoff, CNN senior correspondent
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Beginning at 2 p.m. ET Monday, The New York Times will try to harness the force that has been wrecking the newspaper business: free access on the Internet.
The nation's most prestigious general interest paper will now charge readers for extended access to its web site, NYTimes.com. In erecting a paywall, executives at the Times are trying to walk a fine line: generate subscription revenue from avid readers willing to pay, while still retaining more the casual customers who boost advertising revenue with their clicks.
1Email Print Analyzing online readership habits and polling data led the Times to set that fine line at 20 articles every four weeks. Click on fewer and you'll have free access -- but to get article #21, you'll have to pay up.
Readers will need to shell out $15 every four weeks for unlimited online and smartphone content, $20 for online access and the iPad tablet app, or $35 for the full digital smorgasbord. (Print subscribers get it all at no additional cost.)
That pricing structure is subject to tweaking, according to Martin Nisenholtz, The New York Times' head of digital operations.
"We're as confident as we can possibly be in a research setting. Obviously, whenever research hits the real world, there are changes," he said.
"A bet on the future" is how managing editor Jill Abramson describes the plan -- a gamble to raise revenue so the organization can maintain the breadth and depth of its news coverage. Sitting in her office, lined with books and baseball memorabilia, Abramson says she is confident of winning that bet.
"I believe strongly that the quality of our journalism is at such a level that people should be willing to pay to read it," Abramson said. "I don't know if there are that many other general interest newspapers that are offering that same kind of highest-quality journalism, so I'm not sure that everyone else is going to dive into this pond."
While business papers like the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times have long charged for online content, the New York Times is the largest general interest paper to end free, unlimited access to its website.
WSJ.com costs $155 a year, and the Financial Times charges $260 annually for FT.com.
As newspapers have given away their digital product for free, paper subscriptions have plunged. The prestigious Times is no exception. Circulation is down to 877,000 for the weekday edition and 1.35 million on Sunday. Meanwhile, readership at NYTimes.com is steadily climbing. According to ComScore, NYTimes.com had 48.5 million unique visitors in January.
Web advertising now accounts for one quarter of the ad revenue of the Times and its overseas sister, the International Herald Tribune. But that hasn't made up for the drop in print revenue, which has fallen sharply over the past few years. The Times' News Media Group, which includes both newspapers, reported revenue of $2.3 billion last year, off 3%.
So the NYTimes can't afford to retain the status quo. It needs a second stream of online revenue -- and company executives say now is the right time to start charging.
"A lot of things have changed recently. One is that people are more used to paying for digital content with the advent of apps and the app store," said Paul Smurl, NYTimes.com' vice president for paid products.
Even so, the Times will allow access to its site through links on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, to bring in the large audience that makes NYTimes.com appealing to advertisers. In fact, the Times anticipates the vast majority of online readers will not reach the paywall limit. Its hope is simply that devoted readers will reach into their wallets, just as they used to for their daily newspaper.
If any general interest publication can pull it off, it should be the New York Times. But getting people to pay for something they've been getting for free is not easy in any industry. Competing newspaper publishers will be watching very closely.
By Allan Chernoff, CNN senior correspondent
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Beginning at 2 p.m. ET Monday, The New York Times will try to harness the force that has been wrecking the newspaper business: free access on the Internet.
The nation's most prestigious general interest paper will now charge readers for extended access to its web site, NYTimes.com. In erecting a paywall, executives at the Times are trying to walk a fine line: generate subscription revenue from avid readers willing to pay, while still retaining more the casual customers who boost advertising revenue with their clicks.
1Email Print Analyzing online readership habits and polling data led the Times to set that fine line at 20 articles every four weeks. Click on fewer and you'll have free access -- but to get article #21, you'll have to pay up.
Readers will need to shell out $15 every four weeks for unlimited online and smartphone content, $20 for online access and the iPad tablet app, or $35 for the full digital smorgasbord. (Print subscribers get it all at no additional cost.)
That pricing structure is subject to tweaking, according to Martin Nisenholtz, The New York Times' head of digital operations.
"We're as confident as we can possibly be in a research setting. Obviously, whenever research hits the real world, there are changes," he said.
"A bet on the future" is how managing editor Jill Abramson describes the plan -- a gamble to raise revenue so the organization can maintain the breadth and depth of its news coverage. Sitting in her office, lined with books and baseball memorabilia, Abramson says she is confident of winning that bet.
"I believe strongly that the quality of our journalism is at such a level that people should be willing to pay to read it," Abramson said. "I don't know if there are that many other general interest newspapers that are offering that same kind of highest-quality journalism, so I'm not sure that everyone else is going to dive into this pond."
While business papers like the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times have long charged for online content, the New York Times is the largest general interest paper to end free, unlimited access to its website.
WSJ.com costs $155 a year, and the Financial Times charges $260 annually for FT.com.
As newspapers have given away their digital product for free, paper subscriptions have plunged. The prestigious Times is no exception. Circulation is down to 877,000 for the weekday edition and 1.35 million on Sunday. Meanwhile, readership at NYTimes.com is steadily climbing. According to ComScore, NYTimes.com had 48.5 million unique visitors in January.
Web advertising now accounts for one quarter of the ad revenue of the Times and its overseas sister, the International Herald Tribune. But that hasn't made up for the drop in print revenue, which has fallen sharply over the past few years. The Times' News Media Group, which includes both newspapers, reported revenue of $2.3 billion last year, off 3%.
So the NYTimes can't afford to retain the status quo. It needs a second stream of online revenue -- and company executives say now is the right time to start charging.
"A lot of things have changed recently. One is that people are more used to paying for digital content with the advent of apps and the app store," said Paul Smurl, NYTimes.com' vice president for paid products.
Even so, the Times will allow access to its site through links on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, to bring in the large audience that makes NYTimes.com appealing to advertisers. In fact, the Times anticipates the vast majority of online readers will not reach the paywall limit. Its hope is simply that devoted readers will reach into their wallets, just as they used to for their daily newspaper.
If any general interest publication can pull it off, it should be the New York Times. But getting people to pay for something they've been getting for free is not easy in any industry. Competing newspaper publishers will be watching very closely.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Increasing Risk to Journalists
Rash Report: Press under fire, and not just in war zones
Foreign correspondents and local reporters alike are increasingly targeted for killing, kidnapping or incarceration.
Star Tribune , By John Rash
On Monday, after six days of captivity, four New York Times journalists -- Anthony Shadid, the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning Beirut bureau chief, Stephen Farrell, a reporter and videographer, and Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario, both photographers -- were finally freed from forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
The reporters recounted their harrowing ordeal in a first-person account in the Times. They were repeatedly beaten, threatened with decapitation, and Addario was particularly singled out because of her gender, just as CBS reporter Lara Logan was when she was assaulted in Cairo.
The four journalists were among the 60 so far who have been targeted in Libya, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending the rights of reporters worldwide.
Seven other journalists are listed as "missing." Two -- Mohammed al-Nabbous, founder of opposition broadcaster Libya Alhurra TV, and Ali Hassan al-Jaber, an Al Jazeera cameraman -- were killed in the conflict, which is only weeks old.
The high number of incidents is indicative of how changes in warfare, war coverage and the perception of the press among some combatants has shifted in the post-9/11 era.
It's a significant shift from World War II, when uniformed armies had uniform rules, approved by the Geneva Convention, that classified journalists the same as soldiers -- with the same rights if captured, according to Joel Simon, executive director of the CPJ.
But post-Vietnam, the Geneva Convention was amended to treat journalists as citizens, reflecting how reporting had changed.
Today, asymmetric warfare has been met with asymmetric treatment of journalists in combat zones. Some recent wars, such as those in the Balkans, still operated with some semblance of understanding of reporters' roles.
More recently, the rise in rogue regimes and militant groups has resulted in increasingly dangerous conditions.
David Rohde, a colleague of the Times reporters liberated from Libya, knows both sides well. The Pulitzer Prize winner was kidnapped by Bosnian Serbs in 1996, but was released due to diplomatic pressure, because Bosnia still cared about its international image.
Conversely, his 2008 kidnapping by the Taliban, chronicled in the Times and in his 2010 book "A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping From Two Sides," ended only after he escaped to a Pakistani military base.
"The nature of war has changed, and there's less of a delineation between combatant and civilian," he said in an interview.
"Journalists, fairly or unfairly, are viewed as extensions of certain political parties or governments, so if they are viewed as a citizen of a country that is viewed as an enemy, then the journalists themselves are enemies."
American journalists in particular are suspected of working for the CIA or the State Department, a charge Rohde called "extraordinarily widespread, very prevalent, and completely unfair and wrong."
The high profile of prominent journalists in harm's way is actually a small slice of the perils reporters face, however.
Since CPJ started keeping track in 1992, of the 852 journalists killed because of their job, defined as "motive confirmed" (an additional 320 deaths are categorized as "motive unconfirmed"), 87 percent were local reporters who didn't have the protection of large news organizations and couldn't flee the fighting.
"People have this notion of war correspondents traveling from one conflict to another, but the reality is most journalists who are killed didn't go looking for the war -- the war came to them," said Simon.
And nowadays, more often than not, it's not crossfire, but crossing local politicians or criminals that costs journalists their freedom or their lives.
Of the 44 "motive confirmed" killings of journalists last year (an additional 31 "motive unconfirmed" murders occurred), only 25 percent were war correspondents.
Conversely, 48 percent covered politics, 30 percent corruption and 20 percent crime (totals exceed 100 percent due to some reporters having multiple beats).
Last year's suspected perpetrators apparently didn't think everything is news that's fit to print: 22 percent were part of a political group, while government officials, criminals and mobs accounted for 19 percent each.
Comparatively, military officials, who are often more professional and disciplined, accounted for only 4 percent of those accused.
And typically those accused are never convicted.
Last year, those responsible for 96 percent of the deaths of journalists received complete impunity. In the rare instance someone is held accountable, the wheels of justice grind slowly.
Such is the case in the Ukraine, where former President Leonid D. Kuchma was officially named a suspect on Wednesday in the 2000 killing of journalist Georgy Gongadze, whose headless corpse was dumped in a forest outside the capital, Kiev.
Ukraine illustrates that the dangers aren't limited to war zones such as Iraq (147 killed since 1992), Algeria (60), Pakistan (35) and Afghanistan (22).
In the same time period, 52 journalists have been murdered in Russia, 27 in India, 24 in Mexico, and an astonishing 71 in the Philippines, including 29 who were slaughtered in one 2009 incident.
The stark statistics of those killed are eclipsed by the number of jailed journalists. Worldwide 145 were incarcerated in 2010, with China and Iran each locking up 34. Nearly half of them write online only, often as opinion journalists.
What's at stake for journalists is clear. What's at stake for society is the fundamental ability of the press to present the world as it is.
And especially now, we're interested: The Pew Research Center reported on Wednesday that since January's Egyptian uprising, foreign news has accounted for 40 percent of overall media coverage, which is twice the normal rate.
But it takes robust reporting on the ground to make an indigenous story international. And that reporting is threatened, along with journalists themselves.
"The irony and tragedy of the situation is that with all of the partisan punditry that's occurring, it's more important than ever that journalists get on the ground in these foreign countries and see what's actually happening," Rohde said.
Simon summed it up this way: "There's kind of an ecology of information, and it starts with local reporters who are doing the kind of nuts and bolts information gathering that feeds the international press corps."
Let's hope that for journalists' sake -- and the public's -- this ecology isn't further endangered. Reporters need, and deserve, protection. And our world in crisis needs their journalism now more than ever.
Foreign correspondents and local reporters alike are increasingly targeted for killing, kidnapping or incarceration.
Star Tribune , By John Rash
On Monday, after six days of captivity, four New York Times journalists -- Anthony Shadid, the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning Beirut bureau chief, Stephen Farrell, a reporter and videographer, and Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario, both photographers -- were finally freed from forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
The reporters recounted their harrowing ordeal in a first-person account in the Times. They were repeatedly beaten, threatened with decapitation, and Addario was particularly singled out because of her gender, just as CBS reporter Lara Logan was when she was assaulted in Cairo.
The four journalists were among the 60 so far who have been targeted in Libya, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending the rights of reporters worldwide.
Seven other journalists are listed as "missing." Two -- Mohammed al-Nabbous, founder of opposition broadcaster Libya Alhurra TV, and Ali Hassan al-Jaber, an Al Jazeera cameraman -- were killed in the conflict, which is only weeks old.
The high number of incidents is indicative of how changes in warfare, war coverage and the perception of the press among some combatants has shifted in the post-9/11 era.
It's a significant shift from World War II, when uniformed armies had uniform rules, approved by the Geneva Convention, that classified journalists the same as soldiers -- with the same rights if captured, according to Joel Simon, executive director of the CPJ.
But post-Vietnam, the Geneva Convention was amended to treat journalists as citizens, reflecting how reporting had changed.
Today, asymmetric warfare has been met with asymmetric treatment of journalists in combat zones. Some recent wars, such as those in the Balkans, still operated with some semblance of understanding of reporters' roles.
More recently, the rise in rogue regimes and militant groups has resulted in increasingly dangerous conditions.
David Rohde, a colleague of the Times reporters liberated from Libya, knows both sides well. The Pulitzer Prize winner was kidnapped by Bosnian Serbs in 1996, but was released due to diplomatic pressure, because Bosnia still cared about its international image.
Conversely, his 2008 kidnapping by the Taliban, chronicled in the Times and in his 2010 book "A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping From Two Sides," ended only after he escaped to a Pakistani military base.
"The nature of war has changed, and there's less of a delineation between combatant and civilian," he said in an interview.
"Journalists, fairly or unfairly, are viewed as extensions of certain political parties or governments, so if they are viewed as a citizen of a country that is viewed as an enemy, then the journalists themselves are enemies."
American journalists in particular are suspected of working for the CIA or the State Department, a charge Rohde called "extraordinarily widespread, very prevalent, and completely unfair and wrong."
The high profile of prominent journalists in harm's way is actually a small slice of the perils reporters face, however.
Since CPJ started keeping track in 1992, of the 852 journalists killed because of their job, defined as "motive confirmed" (an additional 320 deaths are categorized as "motive unconfirmed"), 87 percent were local reporters who didn't have the protection of large news organizations and couldn't flee the fighting.
"People have this notion of war correspondents traveling from one conflict to another, but the reality is most journalists who are killed didn't go looking for the war -- the war came to them," said Simon.
And nowadays, more often than not, it's not crossfire, but crossing local politicians or criminals that costs journalists their freedom or their lives.
Of the 44 "motive confirmed" killings of journalists last year (an additional 31 "motive unconfirmed" murders occurred), only 25 percent were war correspondents.
Conversely, 48 percent covered politics, 30 percent corruption and 20 percent crime (totals exceed 100 percent due to some reporters having multiple beats).
Last year's suspected perpetrators apparently didn't think everything is news that's fit to print: 22 percent were part of a political group, while government officials, criminals and mobs accounted for 19 percent each.
Comparatively, military officials, who are often more professional and disciplined, accounted for only 4 percent of those accused.
And typically those accused are never convicted.
Last year, those responsible for 96 percent of the deaths of journalists received complete impunity. In the rare instance someone is held accountable, the wheels of justice grind slowly.
Such is the case in the Ukraine, where former President Leonid D. Kuchma was officially named a suspect on Wednesday in the 2000 killing of journalist Georgy Gongadze, whose headless corpse was dumped in a forest outside the capital, Kiev.
Ukraine illustrates that the dangers aren't limited to war zones such as Iraq (147 killed since 1992), Algeria (60), Pakistan (35) and Afghanistan (22).
In the same time period, 52 journalists have been murdered in Russia, 27 in India, 24 in Mexico, and an astonishing 71 in the Philippines, including 29 who were slaughtered in one 2009 incident.
The stark statistics of those killed are eclipsed by the number of jailed journalists. Worldwide 145 were incarcerated in 2010, with China and Iran each locking up 34. Nearly half of them write online only, often as opinion journalists.
What's at stake for journalists is clear. What's at stake for society is the fundamental ability of the press to present the world as it is.
And especially now, we're interested: The Pew Research Center reported on Wednesday that since January's Egyptian uprising, foreign news has accounted for 40 percent of overall media coverage, which is twice the normal rate.
But it takes robust reporting on the ground to make an indigenous story international. And that reporting is threatened, along with journalists themselves.
"The irony and tragedy of the situation is that with all of the partisan punditry that's occurring, it's more important than ever that journalists get on the ground in these foreign countries and see what's actually happening," Rohde said.
Simon summed it up this way: "There's kind of an ecology of information, and it starts with local reporters who are doing the kind of nuts and bolts information gathering that feeds the international press corps."
Let's hope that for journalists' sake -- and the public's -- this ecology isn't further endangered. Reporters need, and deserve, protection. And our world in crisis needs their journalism now more than ever.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Oxford Dictionary Adds Internet Terms
OMG! Abbreviations make the dictionary
LOL, IMHO, and BFF also added
JILL LAWLESS,Associated Press
LONDON (AP) - OMG! LOL! The venerable Oxford English Dictionary approves of the three-letter, Internet-inspired expressions you use for "Oh, my God!" and "Laughing out loud."
It is adding them to the authoritative reference book's latest online update.
You can now text the news to your BFF. That's "best friends forever."
All three expressions — and IMHO, or "in my humble opinion" — are among 900 new words included this week. Cracking the dictionary, however, is no easy task.
"The OED is quite cautious," said Graeme Diamond, OED's principal editor for new words.
Terms made popular online are only included among the dictionary's 300,000 entries when they have crossed over into everyday use, Diamond said.
Although the new abbreviations are associated with modern electronic communications, some are surprisingly old. The first confirmed use of OMG was in a 1917 letter by a British admiral.
"Things people think are new words normally have a longer history," Diamond said.
Editors publish updates to the online Oxford every three months.
The OED's Internet version was launched in 2000 and gets 2 million hits a month from subscribers. It may replace the mammoth 20-volume printed edition, last published in 1989.
The new update also includes:
— "muffin top," ''a protuberance of flesh above the waistband of a tight pair of trousers."
— wag, "wives and girlfriends." It was first used in 2002 to describe the female partners of members of the England soccer team. Now it denotes the glamorous and extravagant female partners of male celebrities.
"By our standards, wag is a real rocket of a word," Diamond said. "To go from being coined in 2002 to being included in 2011 is quite unusual."
— "heart" as a verb, a casual equivalent of "to love" that is represented with a symbol, as seen on millions of souvenirs proclaiming "I (heart) New York."
It may be the first English usage to come from T-shirts and bumper stickers. "At some point, people started to vocalize what the symbol was rather than what the symbol stood for," said Fiona McPherson, another editor. "People now talk about hearting things left, right and center."
Well, the latest update hearts the Road Runner cartoon character. The word "meep" — a short high-pitched sound — made the cut.
There are other new terms from the online world, including ego-surfing (the practice of searching for your own name on the Internet) and dot-bomb (a failed Internet company).
Diamond said the Internet has revolutionized the way lexicographers work, giving them a huge amount of new evidence of word use.
Which brings us to another new online-inspired word: TMI, "too much information."
LOL, IMHO, and BFF also added
JILL LAWLESS,Associated Press
LONDON (AP) - OMG! LOL! The venerable Oxford English Dictionary approves of the three-letter, Internet-inspired expressions you use for "Oh, my God!" and "Laughing out loud."
It is adding them to the authoritative reference book's latest online update.
You can now text the news to your BFF. That's "best friends forever."
All three expressions — and IMHO, or "in my humble opinion" — are among 900 new words included this week. Cracking the dictionary, however, is no easy task.
"The OED is quite cautious," said Graeme Diamond, OED's principal editor for new words.
Terms made popular online are only included among the dictionary's 300,000 entries when they have crossed over into everyday use, Diamond said.
Although the new abbreviations are associated with modern electronic communications, some are surprisingly old. The first confirmed use of OMG was in a 1917 letter by a British admiral.
"Things people think are new words normally have a longer history," Diamond said.
Editors publish updates to the online Oxford every three months.
The OED's Internet version was launched in 2000 and gets 2 million hits a month from subscribers. It may replace the mammoth 20-volume printed edition, last published in 1989.
The new update also includes:
— "muffin top," ''a protuberance of flesh above the waistband of a tight pair of trousers."
— wag, "wives and girlfriends." It was first used in 2002 to describe the female partners of members of the England soccer team. Now it denotes the glamorous and extravagant female partners of male celebrities.
"By our standards, wag is a real rocket of a word," Diamond said. "To go from being coined in 2002 to being included in 2011 is quite unusual."
— "heart" as a verb, a casual equivalent of "to love" that is represented with a symbol, as seen on millions of souvenirs proclaiming "I (heart) New York."
It may be the first English usage to come from T-shirts and bumper stickers. "At some point, people started to vocalize what the symbol was rather than what the symbol stood for," said Fiona McPherson, another editor. "People now talk about hearting things left, right and center."
Well, the latest update hearts the Road Runner cartoon character. The word "meep" — a short high-pitched sound — made the cut.
There are other new terms from the online world, including ego-surfing (the practice of searching for your own name on the Internet) and dot-bomb (a failed Internet company).
Diamond said the Internet has revolutionized the way lexicographers work, giving them a huge amount of new evidence of word use.
Which brings us to another new online-inspired word: TMI, "too much information."
NY Times and its New Paywall
(CNN) -- The New York Times plans to add a paywall to its website on Monday in the United States. And the internet isn't too happy.
People who don't want to pay for the Times' content -- or who believe the internet is and forever should be an endless vat of free stuff -- already have created a few work-arounds that let people continue to read nytimes.com stories without paying for them.
The Times has taken note. According to a report in Forbes, the well-respected newspaper company asked Twitter to shut down the @FreeNYTimes Twitter feed, which had planned to post every New York Times story on its page so that people could access stories for free.
Because of an exemption in the Times' payment model, people who find New York Times stories through search engines or social media sites like Twitter don't have to pay to read the full version of the story.
A message on the @FreeNYTimes page now says: "Sorry, the profile you are trying to view has been suspended."
Other work-arounds include a bookmark link called NYTClean that, when clicked, claims to let readers bypass the Times' paywall.
The Times will continue to let anyone read up to 20 articles per month without paying. Beyond that, readers will need a digital subscription to access stories directly from nytimes.com. Subscription prices range from $15 to $35 per month. As noted above, you can get around this just by clicking on NYT links from Google or Facebook (if you find an article you like on the homepage you could just Google that headline and then follow the link).
But there's a limit to how far that back-door approach can take you. The Times is clearly aware of such tricks.
"For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles," the company says in a letter outlining these payment plans.
This isn't the internet's first paywall show-down. Payment models from The Wall Street Journal and Pandora were met with similar digital groans.
People who don't want to pay for the Times' content -- or who believe the internet is and forever should be an endless vat of free stuff -- already have created a few work-arounds that let people continue to read nytimes.com stories without paying for them.
The Times has taken note. According to a report in Forbes, the well-respected newspaper company asked Twitter to shut down the @FreeNYTimes Twitter feed, which had planned to post every New York Times story on its page so that people could access stories for free.
Because of an exemption in the Times' payment model, people who find New York Times stories through search engines or social media sites like Twitter don't have to pay to read the full version of the story.
A message on the @FreeNYTimes page now says: "Sorry, the profile you are trying to view has been suspended."
Other work-arounds include a bookmark link called NYTClean that, when clicked, claims to let readers bypass the Times' paywall.
The Times will continue to let anyone read up to 20 articles per month without paying. Beyond that, readers will need a digital subscription to access stories directly from nytimes.com. Subscription prices range from $15 to $35 per month. As noted above, you can get around this just by clicking on NYT links from Google or Facebook (if you find an article you like on the homepage you could just Google that headline and then follow the link).
But there's a limit to how far that back-door approach can take you. The Times is clearly aware of such tricks.
"For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles," the company says in a letter outlining these payment plans.
This isn't the internet's first paywall show-down. Payment models from The Wall Street Journal and Pandora were met with similar digital groans.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Example: Personality Feature With News Hook
Here is an excellent example of a personality feature article with a news hook (in this case, "time is running out.") This is an excerpt from the Washington Post. To read the entire article click here.
Evangelist Charles Colson’s final mission: Spiritually cloning himself
Charles Colson assembles the newest members of his Christian army at a Loudoun County convention hall on a winter Saturday.
Former Nixon aide-turned-evangelist embarks on his final mission.
Seated before the aging Watergate-era felon-turned-evangelical leader are dozens of handpicked disciples: a woman who sings at patriotic events, a sports psychology professor, a real estate developer, a pharmaceutical salesman.
They’ve spent the year — and as much as $4,000 — reading the books Colson reads, watching the movies he watches, praying the way he prays. It’s all part of an ambitious effort by Colson to replicate his spiritual DNA and ensure that his vision of Christianity doesn’t die when he does.
“This is the time for us to metastasize and impact society!” the gravelly-voiced former Nixon aide tells his rapt audience. “And this is a really, really urgent hour.”
For decades after emerging from a federal penitentiary, Colson focused on building what has become the world’s biggest prison ministry. Now, at 79, he has shifted his attention to the final mission of his remarkable life: saving what he regards as true Christianity from American extinction.
Time is running out.
Evangelist Charles Colson’s final mission: Spiritually cloning himself
Charles Colson assembles the newest members of his Christian army at a Loudoun County convention hall on a winter Saturday.
Former Nixon aide-turned-evangelist embarks on his final mission.
Seated before the aging Watergate-era felon-turned-evangelical leader are dozens of handpicked disciples: a woman who sings at patriotic events, a sports psychology professor, a real estate developer, a pharmaceutical salesman.
They’ve spent the year — and as much as $4,000 — reading the books Colson reads, watching the movies he watches, praying the way he prays. It’s all part of an ambitious effort by Colson to replicate his spiritual DNA and ensure that his vision of Christianity doesn’t die when he does.
“This is the time for us to metastasize and impact society!” the gravelly-voiced former Nixon aide tells his rapt audience. “And this is a really, really urgent hour.”
For decades after emerging from a federal penitentiary, Colson focused on building what has become the world’s biggest prison ministry. Now, at 79, he has shifted his attention to the final mission of his remarkable life: saving what he regards as true Christianity from American extinction.
Time is running out.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Good Example of Investigative Article
This article is a good example of some nice investigative reporting--note the number of sources and the sidebar article that compares situations in neighboring states.
Allegheny River towns fight to save locks
By Mary Ann Thomas, ASPINWALL HERALD
Barges of scrap metal, coal and petroleum products predictably lumber along the Allegheny River.
Towns, water companies and industries draw 524 million gallons daily from that river.
And in the summer, several thousand pleasure boats and personal watercraft zip through its waters, with some passing through its locks to the more rural and wooded pools in the upper reaches of the Allegheny in Armstrong County.
All benefit from the river, but only the commercial barge traffic has paid directly -- via a marine diesel fuel tax -- for upkeep of the Allegheny's locks and dams, which were installed in the 1920s and 1930s to turn erratic pockets of deep and shallow water into reliable pools of slack water.
Therein lies one of the problems with paying for the $8 million annual price tag just to operate the locks on the Allegheny.
When Congress authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to build those locks and dams, it was to meet the needs of businesses to ship commodities, not to help municipalities or industries draw water or sewage authorities to release wastewater or boaters to enjoy a little water skiing.
President Obama's proposed 2012 fiscal budget slashes the corps' Allegheny budget by 50 percent. At least two locks, No. 8, just north of Kittanning, and No. 9 in Rimer, will likely close to recreational boaters and be put in "caretaker status."
Commercial vessels will be able to pass through all locks by appointment.
The corps will decide which locks will see cuts in operating hours on March 31.
But no matter where the ax falls, it's another lean budget and another lean year. Maintenance will be deferred on the aging locks' structures, which are in poor condition, according to Dave Sneberger, chief of the corps' locks and dams branch, Pittsburgh District.
At two public meetings last month, boaters told the corps they are willing to pay a fee and do whatever it takes to keep the all the locks open.
With five locks in Armstrong County, the county commissioners there are rounding up boaters, businesses and state and federal lawmakers to assemble a public/private partnership to help keep the locks open in the upper pools.
They are looking for any new source of revenue to keep their county's waterways open.
Budgets running dry
The money hasn't run out just because of tight economic times.
The corps has been threatening to close some of the Allegheny's locks for decades. It cut operating hours at Locks 5 through 9 in the 1980s as the volume of commercial boat traffic tumbled.
Federal funding for operating the locks and dams is based on commercial tonnage floated down the river.
The Allegheny ranks low in priority. For example, 10 times more cargo passes through the Emsworth lock on the Ohio River each year than does the entire Allegheny lock system, according to Col. William Graham, the Coprs' Pittsburgh District engineer.
So the question is: Where to get more money, and who else can pay?
"I don't think anybody can be dragged kicking and screaming to make a contribution unless it is in their best interest to do so," said James McCarville, executive director of the Port of Pittsburgh.
"I think people have got to understand what is at risk, and they have to make that calculation of what would be the catastrophic loss if they would lose the pools. And, is it worth contributing to keep them open?"
For example, the water companies and authorities that draw from the river and its aquifers aren't bound to the fate of the locks. And the fixed dams on the Allegheny are for navigation, not to control water flow or flooding. That's controlled by reservoirs upstream.
But they benefit from the pools of water and are in no danger, presently, of losing them. So why would they pay for them?
"Municipal water customers of systems that draw from the Ohio River Basin have the benefit of using a source that the Army Corps of Engineer's calls the 'most reliable water system in the country,'" said Don Amadee of the Municipal Authority of Buffalo Township.
"Floods and droughts and pollution still occur, obviously, but our water quality and availability are rarely a concern," Amadee said. "Not every system has that luxury. I don't want my customers to have to start paying for the privilege of using the river. But, if this comes to pass and they start to define who the river users are, we would certainly qualify."
Businesses continue to use the river for water intakes, water cooling and discharges. But they don't see a danger in the pool of water going away, said Mark Devinney, vice president of Freeport Terminals in Freeport. His company ships commodities down the river such as sand, scrap, fertilizer, grain and petroleum-based products as far as New Orleans and Texas.
"In the present economic climate, nobody would be comfortable with additional taxes and user fees, especially municipalities," Devinney said. "They're hard pressed.
"The pools are there, and they don't have a dog in that particular fight, directly," Devinney added.
McCarville disagrees, at least in terms of the long run.
The Allegheny River has weathered lean budgets for years, accumulating a backlog of almost $49 million in critical maintenance, according to Dan Jones, spokesman of the Army Corps of Engineers, Pittsburgh District.
And the proposed federal budget for the 2012 fiscal year pays nothing into maintenance for the aging navigation system.
Just last year, the corps had to shut down a portion of Lock 2 at Highland Park when a section of one of the concrete lock walls crumbled into the river.
As the navigation system is starved for repairs, McCarville fears that the state of decay will eventually render the structures unreliable for use for generations to come.
"To put something in caretaker status allows for further deterioration," said McCarville.
"We're looking at saving short-term operations and maintenance costs and not preserving the valuable capital asset that might play a much greater role in the future."
And the corps should modernize the locks, he said.
"It's like they have to pay more to fix that '57 Chevy instead of it selling it off and buying something a little more modern."
The dams are in good shape, according to Sneberger. "At this time, maintenance of the pools on the Allegheny is not an immediate concern," he said. "But 10 years from now, it might be."
The immediate concern is the lack of maintenance of the lock structures, Sneberger said.
"If we have a major breakdown," he said, "we won't be able to use the lock until it's fixed."
Something old, something new
Since federal funding is based on commercial traffic, some observers want to increase the commercial traffic.
Armstrong County Commissioner Jim Scahill and state Rep. Jeff Pyle, R-Ford City, said they need to spur more commerce on the river so it gets more federal funding.
They are looking to more dredging operations, which have trickled down to almost nothing because of environmental and other regulations, according to Scahill and Pyle.
"We've got to re-establish commercial traffic," Pyle said. "I'm not willing to go after the municipalities."
Pyle wants to help the dredging industry steer through some of the regulations and dredge the sand and gravel and move it again through Armstrong County's upper pools.
And there could be new river commerce with the Marcellus shale natural gas boom, they say.
Businesses have been inquiring about transporting Marcellus fracking water via local rivers. Devinney already provides water transport of fracking sand for the industry.
"Our area stands poised to explode with Marcellus shale well development," Pyle said. "We need to have the ability to move sand and chemicals along the river."
U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire recognizes not only the dilemma with the current corps budget, but the importance of the Allegheny's navigation system to attract new business.
"Our ability to increase waterways traffic is directly related to the status of the structure of each entity on the river," he said. "If people are unsatisfied with the long-term prognosis, they'll avoid our region all together."
To prevent the Allegheny's locks and dams from going into worse disrepair, Altmire and others say more money has to be added to the Inland Waterways Trust Fund, which is paid in to by a 20-cent-per-gallon diesel fuel tax levied on the commercial towing industry.
The fund pays for 50 percent of the federal capital investment in the nation's inland waterways and is "grossly insufficient to meet all of the demands," said McCarville.
"The Port of Pittsburgh is working with operators to come to an agreement with the trust fund," Altmire said. "There has to be recognition and more funding in the trust fund because state and federal governments are definitely cutting spending."
McCarville reports that the operators agreed to increase their contribution to the trust fund by up to nine cents a gallon for the modernization of lock chambers.
However, it also called on the federal government to pick up 100 percent of the cost of the dam repairs and smaller lock improvements, according to McCarville. That plan is has been rejected by the administration, he said.
"Now, we're going directly to Congress to see if they can establish the new plan for the trust fund," he said.
Proposed user fees
There is one funding source ripe for a toll or user fee: for pleasure boats.
Although recreational boaters pay a boat registration fee to the state Fish and Boat Commission, none of that money goes toward the river's navigation system, which the boaters use for free.
During the corps' public meetings last month, a number of boaters suggested an EZ pass system, the toll collection used by the Pennsylvania Turnpike, or an extra fee for their boat registration.
Pyle is investigating a fee or toll system for the locks.
"I want to get some kind of numbers drummed up including how many recreational boaters could pay in," he said. "There's a lot of calculating."
If lawmakers and boaters are serious about establishing a lock fee, it would require congressional approval to allow the corps to use those funds, according to Lenna Hawkins, deputy district engineer for the corps' Pittsburgh District.
A nonprofit group or a governmental entity such as a county or a state could be set up to collect fees toward lock operations, she said.
"There could be a host of funding streams, and we are going to search what has been done across the country," she said.
Hawkins and Col. Graham have already spoken to local members of Congress about the prospect.
"They all seem supportive of a potential public-private partnership," she said.
In the meantime, the Armstrong County commissioners are trying to gather stakeholders, local businesses, and boaters to form a coalition.
"If there's a partnership," Commissioner Jim Scahill said, "I can't see the state of Pennsylvania not being involved.
"Our struggle is to get everyone in the room together and some common voice out of it."
Scahill concedes that they still need to find a "champion -- someone to go to bat for us nationally."
But it's early in the game, with the Army corps cuts only proposed last month.
"We need to process this properly," Scahill said, "and have to be given the time to do it."
Same scenario plays out in other parts of country
The demise of commercial boat traffic and resulting drop in federal funding for inland lock systems has played out in other parts of the country.
It's the same tale as the Allegheny River.
The typical scenario: Commercial traffic vanishes, federal funding is cut, locks decay and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reduces service. Then it puts the facilities in "caretaker status" and maybe transfers the facilities to state or local government.
In the past 20 years, the corps has divested 24 locks to states and municipalities, according to Jim Walker, navigation manager at the Corps of Engineers headquarters in Washington.
"We're looking at reducing federal expenditures at low, commercial-use locks either by turning them over to a non-federal operator or by reducing operating hours and applying the savings to keep high commercial-use locks operating," Walker said.
In Kentucky, the state has closed most of the locks on the Kentucky River because of disrepair and lack of funding.
Conversely, the Muskingum River in Ohio still has its locks open because the state considers it a prime recreational area.
In both cases, a state agency stepped in to pay for or take over the locks and established fees.
There also are examples of private-public partnership such as the Willamette River in Oregon, where a coalition formed to help bring in more money to the lock system.
Kentucky River, Kentucky
The Kentucky River Authority, a state agency, was established in 1986 to take over 10 locks and dams from the Corps of Engineers.
At that point, there was little commercial boat traffic and the locks and dams were put in caretaker status.
A drought in 1986 caused some restrictions for drinking water from the river, motivating the state to protect and improve the waterway.
The state later closed its locks because of the maintenance issues, according to David Hamilton, an engineer at the river authority in Frankfort, Ky.
Concrete barriers were installed to ensure the pools remained, in case a lock chamber gave way.
"With all our dams we have water supply in each pool," said Hamilton. "The concern is if gates fail that would jeopardize the communities' water supply."
The state funds the operations of the lock-and-dam system with a fee passed on to water users, with a typical household paying 25 to 35 cents a month on their water bills, according to Hamilton.
That is changing.
"We've used water money specifically for maintaining the water supply portion of the river," he said. "Now we're looking to change to have water user fees to pay for recreational boat traffic at locks, 1, 2, 3 and 4.
"There's been a good push for it to encourage recreational boat traffic for economic reasons," Hamilton said.
Muskingum River, Ohio
A system of 11 locks and dams completed by 1841 made the Muskingum River navigable from Marietta to Dresden and connected to the Ohio and Erie Canal.
The locks and dams deteriorated in late 19th century and the Army Corps of Engineers took them over and restored the structures. Then after damages from a flood in 1913, the Army corps spent five years repairing the system, which never again flourished commercially.
In 1948, the corps decided not to provide upkeep for the navigation system. Residents pressured the state to take over the lock system in 1958 and restore the locks for recreational boat traffic.
Currently, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources manages the system.
The state renovated much of the system; only the northern-most lock, no. 11, near Dresden is closed, due to deterioration and lack of traffic, said Mike Jarvis, assistant park manager of the Muskingum River Parkway.
"The locks didn't have near the number of boats that were in the lower part of the river, and we used what money we had at the more heavily used locks," he said.
In 1991, the state introduced lock passage fees to helped supplement funding.
The river averages about 8,000 recreational boats per season, with the locks operating from May through October on Fridays through Mondays.
Jarvis said that a number of factors account for the longevity of the system.
"The recreational boaters have a strong driving interest," he said. "They're the ones that insist to move forward.
"And the state parks department is dedicated to preserving the cultural history of it," Jarvis said. "We have history on our side."
The 160-year-old lock system is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Read more: Allegheny River towns fight to save locks - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/leadertimes/news/s_728310.html#ixzz1HEeWqGFu
Allegheny River towns fight to save locks
By Mary Ann Thomas, ASPINWALL HERALD
Barges of scrap metal, coal and petroleum products predictably lumber along the Allegheny River.
Towns, water companies and industries draw 524 million gallons daily from that river.
And in the summer, several thousand pleasure boats and personal watercraft zip through its waters, with some passing through its locks to the more rural and wooded pools in the upper reaches of the Allegheny in Armstrong County.
All benefit from the river, but only the commercial barge traffic has paid directly -- via a marine diesel fuel tax -- for upkeep of the Allegheny's locks and dams, which were installed in the 1920s and 1930s to turn erratic pockets of deep and shallow water into reliable pools of slack water.
Therein lies one of the problems with paying for the $8 million annual price tag just to operate the locks on the Allegheny.
When Congress authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to build those locks and dams, it was to meet the needs of businesses to ship commodities, not to help municipalities or industries draw water or sewage authorities to release wastewater or boaters to enjoy a little water skiing.
President Obama's proposed 2012 fiscal budget slashes the corps' Allegheny budget by 50 percent. At least two locks, No. 8, just north of Kittanning, and No. 9 in Rimer, will likely close to recreational boaters and be put in "caretaker status."
Commercial vessels will be able to pass through all locks by appointment.
The corps will decide which locks will see cuts in operating hours on March 31.
But no matter where the ax falls, it's another lean budget and another lean year. Maintenance will be deferred on the aging locks' structures, which are in poor condition, according to Dave Sneberger, chief of the corps' locks and dams branch, Pittsburgh District.
At two public meetings last month, boaters told the corps they are willing to pay a fee and do whatever it takes to keep the all the locks open.
With five locks in Armstrong County, the county commissioners there are rounding up boaters, businesses and state and federal lawmakers to assemble a public/private partnership to help keep the locks open in the upper pools.
They are looking for any new source of revenue to keep their county's waterways open.
Budgets running dry
The money hasn't run out just because of tight economic times.
The corps has been threatening to close some of the Allegheny's locks for decades. It cut operating hours at Locks 5 through 9 in the 1980s as the volume of commercial boat traffic tumbled.
Federal funding for operating the locks and dams is based on commercial tonnage floated down the river.
The Allegheny ranks low in priority. For example, 10 times more cargo passes through the Emsworth lock on the Ohio River each year than does the entire Allegheny lock system, according to Col. William Graham, the Coprs' Pittsburgh District engineer.
So the question is: Where to get more money, and who else can pay?
"I don't think anybody can be dragged kicking and screaming to make a contribution unless it is in their best interest to do so," said James McCarville, executive director of the Port of Pittsburgh.
"I think people have got to understand what is at risk, and they have to make that calculation of what would be the catastrophic loss if they would lose the pools. And, is it worth contributing to keep them open?"
For example, the water companies and authorities that draw from the river and its aquifers aren't bound to the fate of the locks. And the fixed dams on the Allegheny are for navigation, not to control water flow or flooding. That's controlled by reservoirs upstream.
But they benefit from the pools of water and are in no danger, presently, of losing them. So why would they pay for them?
"Municipal water customers of systems that draw from the Ohio River Basin have the benefit of using a source that the Army Corps of Engineer's calls the 'most reliable water system in the country,'" said Don Amadee of the Municipal Authority of Buffalo Township.
"Floods and droughts and pollution still occur, obviously, but our water quality and availability are rarely a concern," Amadee said. "Not every system has that luxury. I don't want my customers to have to start paying for the privilege of using the river. But, if this comes to pass and they start to define who the river users are, we would certainly qualify."
Businesses continue to use the river for water intakes, water cooling and discharges. But they don't see a danger in the pool of water going away, said Mark Devinney, vice president of Freeport Terminals in Freeport. His company ships commodities down the river such as sand, scrap, fertilizer, grain and petroleum-based products as far as New Orleans and Texas.
"In the present economic climate, nobody would be comfortable with additional taxes and user fees, especially municipalities," Devinney said. "They're hard pressed.
"The pools are there, and they don't have a dog in that particular fight, directly," Devinney added.
McCarville disagrees, at least in terms of the long run.
The Allegheny River has weathered lean budgets for years, accumulating a backlog of almost $49 million in critical maintenance, according to Dan Jones, spokesman of the Army Corps of Engineers, Pittsburgh District.
And the proposed federal budget for the 2012 fiscal year pays nothing into maintenance for the aging navigation system.
Just last year, the corps had to shut down a portion of Lock 2 at Highland Park when a section of one of the concrete lock walls crumbled into the river.
As the navigation system is starved for repairs, McCarville fears that the state of decay will eventually render the structures unreliable for use for generations to come.
"To put something in caretaker status allows for further deterioration," said McCarville.
"We're looking at saving short-term operations and maintenance costs and not preserving the valuable capital asset that might play a much greater role in the future."
And the corps should modernize the locks, he said.
"It's like they have to pay more to fix that '57 Chevy instead of it selling it off and buying something a little more modern."
The dams are in good shape, according to Sneberger. "At this time, maintenance of the pools on the Allegheny is not an immediate concern," he said. "But 10 years from now, it might be."
The immediate concern is the lack of maintenance of the lock structures, Sneberger said.
"If we have a major breakdown," he said, "we won't be able to use the lock until it's fixed."
Something old, something new
Since federal funding is based on commercial traffic, some observers want to increase the commercial traffic.
Armstrong County Commissioner Jim Scahill and state Rep. Jeff Pyle, R-Ford City, said they need to spur more commerce on the river so it gets more federal funding.
They are looking to more dredging operations, which have trickled down to almost nothing because of environmental and other regulations, according to Scahill and Pyle.
"We've got to re-establish commercial traffic," Pyle said. "I'm not willing to go after the municipalities."
Pyle wants to help the dredging industry steer through some of the regulations and dredge the sand and gravel and move it again through Armstrong County's upper pools.
And there could be new river commerce with the Marcellus shale natural gas boom, they say.
Businesses have been inquiring about transporting Marcellus fracking water via local rivers. Devinney already provides water transport of fracking sand for the industry.
"Our area stands poised to explode with Marcellus shale well development," Pyle said. "We need to have the ability to move sand and chemicals along the river."
U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire recognizes not only the dilemma with the current corps budget, but the importance of the Allegheny's navigation system to attract new business.
"Our ability to increase waterways traffic is directly related to the status of the structure of each entity on the river," he said. "If people are unsatisfied with the long-term prognosis, they'll avoid our region all together."
To prevent the Allegheny's locks and dams from going into worse disrepair, Altmire and others say more money has to be added to the Inland Waterways Trust Fund, which is paid in to by a 20-cent-per-gallon diesel fuel tax levied on the commercial towing industry.
The fund pays for 50 percent of the federal capital investment in the nation's inland waterways and is "grossly insufficient to meet all of the demands," said McCarville.
"The Port of Pittsburgh is working with operators to come to an agreement with the trust fund," Altmire said. "There has to be recognition and more funding in the trust fund because state and federal governments are definitely cutting spending."
McCarville reports that the operators agreed to increase their contribution to the trust fund by up to nine cents a gallon for the modernization of lock chambers.
However, it also called on the federal government to pick up 100 percent of the cost of the dam repairs and smaller lock improvements, according to McCarville. That plan is has been rejected by the administration, he said.
"Now, we're going directly to Congress to see if they can establish the new plan for the trust fund," he said.
Proposed user fees
There is one funding source ripe for a toll or user fee: for pleasure boats.
Although recreational boaters pay a boat registration fee to the state Fish and Boat Commission, none of that money goes toward the river's navigation system, which the boaters use for free.
During the corps' public meetings last month, a number of boaters suggested an EZ pass system, the toll collection used by the Pennsylvania Turnpike, or an extra fee for their boat registration.
Pyle is investigating a fee or toll system for the locks.
"I want to get some kind of numbers drummed up including how many recreational boaters could pay in," he said. "There's a lot of calculating."
If lawmakers and boaters are serious about establishing a lock fee, it would require congressional approval to allow the corps to use those funds, according to Lenna Hawkins, deputy district engineer for the corps' Pittsburgh District.
A nonprofit group or a governmental entity such as a county or a state could be set up to collect fees toward lock operations, she said.
"There could be a host of funding streams, and we are going to search what has been done across the country," she said.
Hawkins and Col. Graham have already spoken to local members of Congress about the prospect.
"They all seem supportive of a potential public-private partnership," she said.
In the meantime, the Armstrong County commissioners are trying to gather stakeholders, local businesses, and boaters to form a coalition.
"If there's a partnership," Commissioner Jim Scahill said, "I can't see the state of Pennsylvania not being involved.
"Our struggle is to get everyone in the room together and some common voice out of it."
Scahill concedes that they still need to find a "champion -- someone to go to bat for us nationally."
But it's early in the game, with the Army corps cuts only proposed last month.
"We need to process this properly," Scahill said, "and have to be given the time to do it."
Same scenario plays out in other parts of country
The demise of commercial boat traffic and resulting drop in federal funding for inland lock systems has played out in other parts of the country.
It's the same tale as the Allegheny River.
The typical scenario: Commercial traffic vanishes, federal funding is cut, locks decay and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reduces service. Then it puts the facilities in "caretaker status" and maybe transfers the facilities to state or local government.
In the past 20 years, the corps has divested 24 locks to states and municipalities, according to Jim Walker, navigation manager at the Corps of Engineers headquarters in Washington.
"We're looking at reducing federal expenditures at low, commercial-use locks either by turning them over to a non-federal operator or by reducing operating hours and applying the savings to keep high commercial-use locks operating," Walker said.
In Kentucky, the state has closed most of the locks on the Kentucky River because of disrepair and lack of funding.
Conversely, the Muskingum River in Ohio still has its locks open because the state considers it a prime recreational area.
In both cases, a state agency stepped in to pay for or take over the locks and established fees.
There also are examples of private-public partnership such as the Willamette River in Oregon, where a coalition formed to help bring in more money to the lock system.
Kentucky River, Kentucky
The Kentucky River Authority, a state agency, was established in 1986 to take over 10 locks and dams from the Corps of Engineers.
At that point, there was little commercial boat traffic and the locks and dams were put in caretaker status.
A drought in 1986 caused some restrictions for drinking water from the river, motivating the state to protect and improve the waterway.
The state later closed its locks because of the maintenance issues, according to David Hamilton, an engineer at the river authority in Frankfort, Ky.
Concrete barriers were installed to ensure the pools remained, in case a lock chamber gave way.
"With all our dams we have water supply in each pool," said Hamilton. "The concern is if gates fail that would jeopardize the communities' water supply."
The state funds the operations of the lock-and-dam system with a fee passed on to water users, with a typical household paying 25 to 35 cents a month on their water bills, according to Hamilton.
That is changing.
"We've used water money specifically for maintaining the water supply portion of the river," he said. "Now we're looking to change to have water user fees to pay for recreational boat traffic at locks, 1, 2, 3 and 4.
"There's been a good push for it to encourage recreational boat traffic for economic reasons," Hamilton said.
Muskingum River, Ohio
A system of 11 locks and dams completed by 1841 made the Muskingum River navigable from Marietta to Dresden and connected to the Ohio and Erie Canal.
The locks and dams deteriorated in late 19th century and the Army Corps of Engineers took them over and restored the structures. Then after damages from a flood in 1913, the Army corps spent five years repairing the system, which never again flourished commercially.
In 1948, the corps decided not to provide upkeep for the navigation system. Residents pressured the state to take over the lock system in 1958 and restore the locks for recreational boat traffic.
Currently, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources manages the system.
The state renovated much of the system; only the northern-most lock, no. 11, near Dresden is closed, due to deterioration and lack of traffic, said Mike Jarvis, assistant park manager of the Muskingum River Parkway.
"The locks didn't have near the number of boats that were in the lower part of the river, and we used what money we had at the more heavily used locks," he said.
In 1991, the state introduced lock passage fees to helped supplement funding.
The river averages about 8,000 recreational boats per season, with the locks operating from May through October on Fridays through Mondays.
Jarvis said that a number of factors account for the longevity of the system.
"The recreational boaters have a strong driving interest," he said. "They're the ones that insist to move forward.
"And the state parks department is dedicated to preserving the cultural history of it," Jarvis said. "We have history on our side."
The 160-year-old lock system is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Read more: Allegheny River towns fight to save locks - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/leadertimes/news/s_728310.html#ixzz1HEeWqGFu
Saturday, March 19, 2011
HERE's an Interesting Ethical Issue!
Detroit News publisher pens front-page apology
The editor and publisher of The Detroit News has written a front-page apology over the newspaper's decision to change sections of a scathing review of the Chrysler 200 after an advertiser complained.
Jon Wolman wrote in the Saturday column that he owed readers and the writer "an explanation and an apology for the lapse that raised questions about our credibility."
Wolman says former critic Scott Burgess was asked to change several passages of his review of the car promoted in a popular Super Bowl television ad featuring rapper Eminem. Wolman says that happened after an advertiser complained about "acerbic and disrespectful" material.
Burgess says he resigned Wednesday after meeting with Wolman.
The original review appeared in the newspaper's March 10 print edition and changes were made to the online version.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The editor and publisher of The Detroit News has written a front-page apology over the newspaper's decision to change sections of a scathing review of the Chrysler 200 after an advertiser complained.
Jon Wolman wrote in the Saturday column that he owed readers and the writer "an explanation and an apology for the lapse that raised questions about our credibility."
Wolman says former critic Scott Burgess was asked to change several passages of his review of the car promoted in a popular Super Bowl television ad featuring rapper Eminem. Wolman says that happened after an advertiser complained about "acerbic and disrespectful" material.
Burgess says he resigned Wednesday after meeting with Wolman.
The original review appeared in the newspaper's March 10 print edition and changes were made to the online version.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thoughtful Analysis of the Pew Report
Here's a thoughtful and stimulating analysis of the recent Pew Report which gives us a great deal to think about regarding the future of our various news media.
Rash Report: New news study shows Web's peril, promise
Many may view the shifts in the news industry as inside baseball -- but the very ability to be informed is in play.
By JOHN RASH, Star Tribune
Bit by bit, byte by byte, Americans are increasingly turning to the Internet for information, according to the annual "State of the News Media" report released Monday by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ).
In answer to where they received "most of their news about national and international issues," only online readership rose from the prior year.
It increased 17 percent, while every other platform fell: local TV (-1.5 percent), network TV (-3.4 percent), printed newspapers (-5 percent), radio (-6 percent), magazines (-8.9 percent) and cable TV (-13.7 percent).
The growth in Internet usage is making the future of journalism an increasingly dramatic story line. And it's one with considerable consequences.
For the information industry, to be sure, but also for democracy and the informed electorate it depends on.
But so far this isn't a political story. In fact, despite the drumbeat from critics on the right and left, Americans aren't rejecting the mainstream media news model.
Indeed, PEJ found that the vast majority of what's consumed online is original reporting from professional media organizations, including newspapers and TV stations.
Clearly transformational technologies have changed how news is consumed. In the process, Internet intermediaries -- social networks like Facebook, device makers such as Apple and aggregators like Google -- are complicating efforts to extract revenue from readership, listenership and viewership.
This emerging shift in the media business model means that "the news industry is becoming more of a follower and less of a leader in these new layers of relationships," said Amy Mitchell, deputy director of PEJ and one of the coauthors of the report.
As with any relationship, the one between media content and distribution is two-sided. But that doesn't mean it is equal.
"This behavior pattern, the extent to which people are getting this online content from legacy providers, is a major part of the problem," said Mitchell, speaking of the challenge of longstanding mainstream media models.
"Because as people are moving online at a more rapid pace than ever before, the news industry that they are consuming has yet to find a way to create a significant revenue stream from those consumers."
Not all media suffers similarly. The PEJ reports that in 2010, revenue actually rose 17 percent for local TV, 8.4 percent for cable TV and 6.6 percent for network TV. That's in part because of TV's law of supply and demand.
The supply of commercials is about the same (despite what it seems like from your couch), but viewers are down. So even if advertising demand is static, fewer viewers per program means advertisers have to buy more commercials just to reach the same audience.
And thanks to a surge in spending on campaign ads made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United case, demand wasn't static. It was high, particularly for local TV.
Newspapers get relatively little campaign spending. And they don't have chronological commercial limitations like TV.
Newspaper revenues slid 6.4 percent in a year and 48 percent in four years. Nationally, circulation eroded 5 percent daily and 4.5 percent on Sundays.
This corrosive combination of lower revenues and circulation led to staffing cuts of another 3 to 4 percent last year, which was actually an improvement over previous years.
But the news isn't all bad for newspapers. Indeed, PEJ reports that when print and online readership is combined, many newspapers have larger audiences than ever before.
That's the case with the Star Tribune, which has also managed to record some recent circulation success. The paper is expected to report a circulation increase in April, according to Michael Klingensmith, publisher and CEO of the Star Tribune.
The Audit Bureau of Circulation reported a 5.7 percent Sunday gain and a 2.3 percent daily decline for the paper in its October release. And online, StarTribune.com had nearly 6.2 million visits and more than 1.5 million unique visitors in February, according to Compete, an online analytics ratings agency.
There's no blueprint yet for making money on digital media. But multiple news organizations are drawing up plans.
Currently there are only about three major media outlets -- the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Bloomberg -- that ring the register online. On Thursday, the New York Times announced plans it hopes will make it the fourth.
Its metered model for readership, which is similar to but more expensive than a Star Tribune version to be introduced later this year, will offer a number of print and online subscription options, including one that will ask online readers to sign up for a digital subscription plan at $15 a month after they've hit a 20-article monthly limit for free reading.
Rash Report: New news study shows Web's peril, promise
Many may view the shifts in the news industry as inside baseball -- but the very ability to be informed is in play.
By JOHN RASH, Star Tribune
Bit by bit, byte by byte, Americans are increasingly turning to the Internet for information, according to the annual "State of the News Media" report released Monday by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ).
In answer to where they received "most of their news about national and international issues," only online readership rose from the prior year.
It increased 17 percent, while every other platform fell: local TV (-1.5 percent), network TV (-3.4 percent), printed newspapers (-5 percent), radio (-6 percent), magazines (-8.9 percent) and cable TV (-13.7 percent).
The growth in Internet usage is making the future of journalism an increasingly dramatic story line. And it's one with considerable consequences.
For the information industry, to be sure, but also for democracy and the informed electorate it depends on.
But so far this isn't a political story. In fact, despite the drumbeat from critics on the right and left, Americans aren't rejecting the mainstream media news model.
Indeed, PEJ found that the vast majority of what's consumed online is original reporting from professional media organizations, including newspapers and TV stations.
Clearly transformational technologies have changed how news is consumed. In the process, Internet intermediaries -- social networks like Facebook, device makers such as Apple and aggregators like Google -- are complicating efforts to extract revenue from readership, listenership and viewership.
This emerging shift in the media business model means that "the news industry is becoming more of a follower and less of a leader in these new layers of relationships," said Amy Mitchell, deputy director of PEJ and one of the coauthors of the report.
As with any relationship, the one between media content and distribution is two-sided. But that doesn't mean it is equal.
"This behavior pattern, the extent to which people are getting this online content from legacy providers, is a major part of the problem," said Mitchell, speaking of the challenge of longstanding mainstream media models.
"Because as people are moving online at a more rapid pace than ever before, the news industry that they are consuming has yet to find a way to create a significant revenue stream from those consumers."
Not all media suffers similarly. The PEJ reports that in 2010, revenue actually rose 17 percent for local TV, 8.4 percent for cable TV and 6.6 percent for network TV. That's in part because of TV's law of supply and demand.
The supply of commercials is about the same (despite what it seems like from your couch), but viewers are down. So even if advertising demand is static, fewer viewers per program means advertisers have to buy more commercials just to reach the same audience.
And thanks to a surge in spending on campaign ads made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United case, demand wasn't static. It was high, particularly for local TV.
Newspapers get relatively little campaign spending. And they don't have chronological commercial limitations like TV.
Newspaper revenues slid 6.4 percent in a year and 48 percent in four years. Nationally, circulation eroded 5 percent daily and 4.5 percent on Sundays.
This corrosive combination of lower revenues and circulation led to staffing cuts of another 3 to 4 percent last year, which was actually an improvement over previous years.
But the news isn't all bad for newspapers. Indeed, PEJ reports that when print and online readership is combined, many newspapers have larger audiences than ever before.
That's the case with the Star Tribune, which has also managed to record some recent circulation success. The paper is expected to report a circulation increase in April, according to Michael Klingensmith, publisher and CEO of the Star Tribune.
The Audit Bureau of Circulation reported a 5.7 percent Sunday gain and a 2.3 percent daily decline for the paper in its October release. And online, StarTribune.com had nearly 6.2 million visits and more than 1.5 million unique visitors in February, according to Compete, an online analytics ratings agency.
There's no blueprint yet for making money on digital media. But multiple news organizations are drawing up plans.
Currently there are only about three major media outlets -- the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Bloomberg -- that ring the register online. On Thursday, the New York Times announced plans it hopes will make it the fourth.
Its metered model for readership, which is similar to but more expensive than a Star Tribune version to be introduced later this year, will offer a number of print and online subscription options, including one that will ask online readers to sign up for a digital subscription plan at $15 a month after they've hit a 20-article monthly limit for free reading.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Ten Newspapers Who Do It Right
Here is an excerpt from a long article on 10 newspapers who are "doing it right." To read the entire article, click here.
10 Newspapers that Do It Right
By: Kristina Ackermann and Deena Higgs Nenad
Published: March 15, 2011
When we set out to feature 10 newspapers that "do it right," we didn't quite realize the magnitude of the project we were undertaking. That's not to say we thought that selecting 10 newspapers from a sea of thousands would be easy, we just underestimated the number of truly noteworthy ideas we would end up sorting through. Never mind the fact that we neglected to define what "it" was and what our criteria for doing it "right" would be.
We asked you for the best you've got - your brightest "a-ha!" moments and your most successful "we may as well try" endeavors - and you, dear readers, delivered the goods. We were amazed at the creativity and innovation demonstrated by newspapers small and large, daily and weekly, free and subscription-based. It quickly became apparent that we would be doing you a disservice if we only featured 10 newspapers, so we modified our strategy.
There were a handful of papers that stood out as obvious candidates: They had several areas of innovation that produced measurable results. Some of them were so excited to tell us about their projects that their submissions started to rival War and Peace (I'm looking at you, Times of Northwest Indiana). Other papers took a more focused route and stuck to one or two things they do expertly, such as hyperlocal content or coverage of high school sports. There was a lot of overlap among this second group - believe it or not, there's more than one newspaper that copied Groupon and launched a daily coupon program.
10 Newspapers that Do It Right
By: Kristina Ackermann and Deena Higgs Nenad
Published: March 15, 2011
When we set out to feature 10 newspapers that "do it right," we didn't quite realize the magnitude of the project we were undertaking. That's not to say we thought that selecting 10 newspapers from a sea of thousands would be easy, we just underestimated the number of truly noteworthy ideas we would end up sorting through. Never mind the fact that we neglected to define what "it" was and what our criteria for doing it "right" would be.
We asked you for the best you've got - your brightest "a-ha!" moments and your most successful "we may as well try" endeavors - and you, dear readers, delivered the goods. We were amazed at the creativity and innovation demonstrated by newspapers small and large, daily and weekly, free and subscription-based. It quickly became apparent that we would be doing you a disservice if we only featured 10 newspapers, so we modified our strategy.
There were a handful of papers that stood out as obvious candidates: They had several areas of innovation that produced measurable results. Some of them were so excited to tell us about their projects that their submissions started to rival War and Peace (I'm looking at you, Times of Northwest Indiana). Other papers took a more focused route and stuck to one or two things they do expertly, such as hyperlocal content or coverage of high school sports. There was a lot of overlap among this second group - believe it or not, there's more than one newspaper that copied Groupon and launched a daily coupon program.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Internet Now News Destination of Choice
Here's an excerpt from an AP article. To read the entire article, click here.
Report: Online news consumption only area of industry showing growth
Associated Press
NEW YORK - The rapid growth of smart phones and electronic tablets is making the Internet the destination of choice for consumers looking for news, a report released Monday said.
Local, network and cable television news, newspapers, radio and magazines all lost audience last year, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research organization that evaluates and studies the performance of the press. News consumption online increased 17 percent last year from the year before, the project said in its eighth annual State of the News Media survey.
The percentage of people who say they get news online at least three times a week surpassed newspapers for the first time. It was second only to local TV news as the most popular news platform and seems poised to pass that medium, too, project director Tom Rosenstiel said. Local TV news has been the most popular format since the 1960s, when its growth was largely responsible for the death of afternoon newspapers, he said.
"It was a milestone year," he said.
People are just becoming accustomed to having the Internet available in their pockets on phones or small tablets, he said.
Report: Online news consumption only area of industry showing growth
Associated Press
NEW YORK - The rapid growth of smart phones and electronic tablets is making the Internet the destination of choice for consumers looking for news, a report released Monday said.
Local, network and cable television news, newspapers, radio and magazines all lost audience last year, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research organization that evaluates and studies the performance of the press. News consumption online increased 17 percent last year from the year before, the project said in its eighth annual State of the News Media survey.
The percentage of people who say they get news online at least three times a week surpassed newspapers for the first time. It was second only to local TV news as the most popular news platform and seems poised to pass that medium, too, project director Tom Rosenstiel said. Local TV news has been the most popular format since the 1960s, when its growth was largely responsible for the death of afternoon newspapers, he said.
"It was a milestone year," he said.
People are just becoming accustomed to having the Internet available in their pockets on phones or small tablets, he said.
In Social Media, Libel Abounds but Few Sue
This article is specific to Minnesota (it's from the StarTribune), but it raises a generic issue that we all must think about. I see this as a good trend article.
In social media, why let the facts get in the way?
Libel abounds, but libel lawsuits are rare.
By Kevin Giles, Star Tribune
One Facebook user, angry over a dispute with a neighbor, ridicules her online as a thief and a liar. On Twitter, someone accuses a murder suspect of being a killer. A blogger discloses sensitive details about a political candidate's personal life.
In Minnesota, and everywhere else, a perplexing phenomenon has emerged as millions of people have their say in social media.
In today's world, libelous online comments are rampant -- and yet with the notable exception of the "Johnny Northside" blog case, very few people have filed lawsuits over reckless and untrue statements.
Court actions involving users on youth-dominated social media remain surprisingly low, suggesting a new outspoken culture that's more tolerant of lies, rude behavior and character assassination.
"They've come to accept this kind of hurly-burly Internet conversation as normal," said Mark Anfinson, a Minneapolis media attorney. "There are a lot of folks out there who never had a voice before. They now talk in a context just like in a bar or across the backyard fence."
While loose lips have become common in social media exchanges, consequences loom for people who launch false attacks that threaten to inflict serious harm on someone's reputation. Libel cases, often driven by anger and a quest for vengeance, can cost tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees and result in unflattering publicity.
Few suits over comments
In Minnesota, only a handful of people have been sued for comments they made online and even fewer cases go to trial. Reasons for this, experts say, include:
•Attorneys can't sue Internet companies -- who have the deep pockets -- for what individual users say because of protection from the federal Communications Decency Act.
•A blurring between fact and fiction continues unabated on Internet sites.
•Many states have no laws to address the endless ways people fabricate information.
•Many online postings are never seen in the first place. Unlike permanent comments in newspapers, postings can slide past without being noticed -- but whether they ever disappear from databases remains in dispute.
•Online postings, depending on how they're delivered, can have narrow audiences.
Ordinary folks are held to the same legal standards as news reporters and anyone else who makes written statements in public, but few seem to know that -- or care.
"People do and say things online that they aren't likely to do in the physical world," said David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School in Boston. Libel suits related to social media are rare nationwide, he said, in part because users can fire off instant replies to nasty comments.
"There's this feeling of engagement that people have available to them, tools they didn't have in the past," Ardia said.
In Minnesota, social media engages millions of residents who post comments on Facebook, My Space, Twitter, personal blogs and elsewhere. Some are citizen journalists, some are back porch commentators, but most are just chatterers who want a say in the world around them.
An estimated 3 million Minnesotans sign onto Facebook alone, although actual use is difficult to verify. Many offending comments relate to politics, religion and interpersonal relationships -- topics sure to inspire arguments in face-to-face conversations.
Social media, Ardia said, has made the world into one big chat with everyone speaking at once. The cacophony of voices seems to race at Mach speed, with new comments continually burying old ones, but experts say it's a mistake to presume libelous comments will disappear entirely.
Writer's responsibility
"The rule is you're responsible for what you say," said Minneapolis attorney Leita Walker. Whether posting on Facebook, writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper, blogging or otherwise expressing an opinion, "you strive to be accurate and fair and make sure what you write is true. You don't want to repeat a rumor to find out the rumor isn't true."
This past week, a challenge over statements that Minneapolis blogger Johnny Northside made in 2009 led to a jury determination Friday that he must pay $60,000 in damages. Northside, whose real name is John Hoff, was sued by Jerry Moore, former director of the Jordan Area Community Council. Northside wrote about Moore's associations with a major mortgage fraud case that sent one man to prison for 16 years. Moore was never charged in the case.
Moore said posts by Hoff or anonymous people caused the University of Minnesota to fire him. In reply, Hoff defended his comments as protected speech, but the jurors disagreed.
Suits against bloggers -- often known as "citizen journalists" -- won't make much money for anyone seeking damages, said Jane Kirtley, a University of Minnesota professor of media law and ethics. "A lot of people recognize that these unaffiliated bloggers don't have a lot of financial resources."
That's another reason many victims don't sue.
Libel also can be hard to prove. Plaintiffs have to show damage to their reputations.
The motivation, then, for filing suit? Anger, outrage, a sense of being violated in a public way among friends and neighbors.
From the opposing point of view, a blogger might embrace free speech protections under the First Amendment. Or, more commonly, a caustic-tongued user on Facebook or My Space doesn't know the law and doesn't care.
Anfinson, who teaches a media law course at the University of St. Thomas, said younger people today worry far less about libeling someone because of a higher tolerance for online name-calling that older readers of newspapers won't accept.
To younger people, Ardia said, suing somebody seems like a heavy-handed, disproportionate way to respond to offending comments. But he also thinks it's hard to track much of the underlying turmoil.
Many people, instead of hiring attorneys, will send threatening letters and e-mails to people they think have done them harm, demanding that the offensive post be removed.
"The surface might seem very calm," Ardia said, "but below it there might be a lot more going on than we're aware of."
In social media, why let the facts get in the way?
Libel abounds, but libel lawsuits are rare.
By Kevin Giles, Star Tribune
One Facebook user, angry over a dispute with a neighbor, ridicules her online as a thief and a liar. On Twitter, someone accuses a murder suspect of being a killer. A blogger discloses sensitive details about a political candidate's personal life.
In Minnesota, and everywhere else, a perplexing phenomenon has emerged as millions of people have their say in social media.
In today's world, libelous online comments are rampant -- and yet with the notable exception of the "Johnny Northside" blog case, very few people have filed lawsuits over reckless and untrue statements.
Court actions involving users on youth-dominated social media remain surprisingly low, suggesting a new outspoken culture that's more tolerant of lies, rude behavior and character assassination.
"They've come to accept this kind of hurly-burly Internet conversation as normal," said Mark Anfinson, a Minneapolis media attorney. "There are a lot of folks out there who never had a voice before. They now talk in a context just like in a bar or across the backyard fence."
While loose lips have become common in social media exchanges, consequences loom for people who launch false attacks that threaten to inflict serious harm on someone's reputation. Libel cases, often driven by anger and a quest for vengeance, can cost tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees and result in unflattering publicity.
Few suits over comments
In Minnesota, only a handful of people have been sued for comments they made online and even fewer cases go to trial. Reasons for this, experts say, include:
•Attorneys can't sue Internet companies -- who have the deep pockets -- for what individual users say because of protection from the federal Communications Decency Act.
•A blurring between fact and fiction continues unabated on Internet sites.
•Many states have no laws to address the endless ways people fabricate information.
•Many online postings are never seen in the first place. Unlike permanent comments in newspapers, postings can slide past without being noticed -- but whether they ever disappear from databases remains in dispute.
•Online postings, depending on how they're delivered, can have narrow audiences.
Ordinary folks are held to the same legal standards as news reporters and anyone else who makes written statements in public, but few seem to know that -- or care.
"People do and say things online that they aren't likely to do in the physical world," said David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School in Boston. Libel suits related to social media are rare nationwide, he said, in part because users can fire off instant replies to nasty comments.
"There's this feeling of engagement that people have available to them, tools they didn't have in the past," Ardia said.
In Minnesota, social media engages millions of residents who post comments on Facebook, My Space, Twitter, personal blogs and elsewhere. Some are citizen journalists, some are back porch commentators, but most are just chatterers who want a say in the world around them.
An estimated 3 million Minnesotans sign onto Facebook alone, although actual use is difficult to verify. Many offending comments relate to politics, religion and interpersonal relationships -- topics sure to inspire arguments in face-to-face conversations.
Social media, Ardia said, has made the world into one big chat with everyone speaking at once. The cacophony of voices seems to race at Mach speed, with new comments continually burying old ones, but experts say it's a mistake to presume libelous comments will disappear entirely.
Writer's responsibility
"The rule is you're responsible for what you say," said Minneapolis attorney Leita Walker. Whether posting on Facebook, writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper, blogging or otherwise expressing an opinion, "you strive to be accurate and fair and make sure what you write is true. You don't want to repeat a rumor to find out the rumor isn't true."
This past week, a challenge over statements that Minneapolis blogger Johnny Northside made in 2009 led to a jury determination Friday that he must pay $60,000 in damages. Northside, whose real name is John Hoff, was sued by Jerry Moore, former director of the Jordan Area Community Council. Northside wrote about Moore's associations with a major mortgage fraud case that sent one man to prison for 16 years. Moore was never charged in the case.
Moore said posts by Hoff or anonymous people caused the University of Minnesota to fire him. In reply, Hoff defended his comments as protected speech, but the jurors disagreed.
Suits against bloggers -- often known as "citizen journalists" -- won't make much money for anyone seeking damages, said Jane Kirtley, a University of Minnesota professor of media law and ethics. "A lot of people recognize that these unaffiliated bloggers don't have a lot of financial resources."
That's another reason many victims don't sue.
Libel also can be hard to prove. Plaintiffs have to show damage to their reputations.
The motivation, then, for filing suit? Anger, outrage, a sense of being violated in a public way among friends and neighbors.
From the opposing point of view, a blogger might embrace free speech protections under the First Amendment. Or, more commonly, a caustic-tongued user on Facebook or My Space doesn't know the law and doesn't care.
Anfinson, who teaches a media law course at the University of St. Thomas, said younger people today worry far less about libeling someone because of a higher tolerance for online name-calling that older readers of newspapers won't accept.
To younger people, Ardia said, suing somebody seems like a heavy-handed, disproportionate way to respond to offending comments. But he also thinks it's hard to track much of the underlying turmoil.
Many people, instead of hiring attorneys, will send threatening letters and e-mails to people they think have done them harm, demanding that the offensive post be removed.
"The surface might seem very calm," Ardia said, "but below it there might be a lot more going on than we're aware of."
Another View of the Abramoff Story
Please read the following review AFTER you have viewed the Gibney film on Abramoff. The author of the review is also a self-proclaimed liberal, but he has quite a different view of some of the personalities and events Gibney portrays in the film.
A Disappointing, One-Sided, Unobjective Analysis of a Complex Political Scandal, September 3, 2010
By Gary S. Chafetz
I recently watched Alex Gibney's "Casino Jack" in a virtually empty movie theater, the new documentary about Jack Abramoff. (Gibney won an Oscar for Documentary Feature in 2008.) "Casino Jack" simply regurgitated the story the media had already conveyed about "evil" Abramoff, and thematically repeated a Bill Moyers documentary several years ago. Gibney's film would have been far more insightful and compelling had it been even-handed.
Disclaimer: Even though I found his Abramoff documentary tendentious and flawed, I admire and respect Gibney's work very much. Politically, we are hard-core liberals. Because I was writing a book about Abramoff (and secretly interviewing him before and during his imprisonment,) Gibney and I have been occasionally meeting and talking about the Abramoff scandal for the past three years.
There are so many disappointing things with this documentary I don't know where to begin. My overarching problem was that Gibney made no attempt to be objective, and that he omitted a plethora of important information that might have afforded the audience a chance to draw a more balanced, nuanced, and more informed conclusion about this complex scandal.
Gibney knew what his conclusion would be long in advance. Presumably for that reason, he did not interview anybody who defended Abramoff or anyone who argued that this scandal was far more convoluted than the simplistic, black-and-white narrative that has been repetitiously presented to the public and now by Gibney.
The film opens with footage of the 2001 mob murder of Florida businessman Gus Boulis, even though Abramoff had met Boulis only once and had nothing to do with his murder. (Boulis had just sold SunCruz casinos to Abramoff and his partner Adam Kidan.)
Soon, there is footage of the casinos operated by Abramoff's tribal clients. Clearly, these casinos are on par with those in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. And clearly, these thriving casinos, earning hundreds of millions of dollars a year, belong to Indians who are well-to-do, not bumpkins that just fell off a log. They can afford the best consultants, lawyers, accountants, and lobbyists. Hence, these particular Indians-for whom Abramoff was the lobbyist-were hardly unsophisticated, which I doubt anyone in the audience have grasped. Gibney should have made this point clear.
(A large part of the virulent antipathy toward Abramoff was fueled by our collective guilt over the genocide our European ancestors committed against the Native Americans. In 1892, there were wild celebrations across the nation. In New York City, for example, a statue was erected of the Great Navigator in an area re-named Columbus Circle. But in 1992, there were essentially no national or regional celebrations to mark a stellar numerical anniversary: the quincentenary of the European discovery of the New World. The reason? We were too ashamed.)
Yes, the public was infuriated with Abramoff. Here was this white man-(that he was an Orthodox Jew only made matters worse)-stealing candy from these poor, unsophisticated Indians. The Washington Post, which broke this story, exploited this undercurrent of shame brilliantly and cynically. I feel it was disingenuous of Gibney not to make clear that these particular Indians-whom Abramoff was accused of defrauding-were not your stereotypic unemployed Indian, boozing it up on a hard-scrabble reservation. In the end, these Indians proved to be far more sophisticated than Washington uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The other impression Gibney, The Washington Post, and Sen. John McCain, (former chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which also investigated Abramoff,) wanted to impart was that not only had Abramoff defrauded his clients, but he had been a lousy lobbyist. In other words, they wanted the public to believe that all these gullible, unsophisticated Indians had not only been bamboozled into paying Abramoff gargantuan sums, but had received nothing in return.
This is untrue. Abramoff was perhaps the most effective Indian lobbyist who ever lived. It would have been fair if Gibney had at least made that clear. But he did not. Apparently, Gibney preferred Abramoff's iconic image as the indelibly vile pariah, Indian exploiter, and corrupter of the democratic process.
TAXING TRIBAL CASINOS
The most compelling example of Abramoff's lobbying magic was his successful efforts for three successive years to defeat Republican-controlled congressional legislation that would have taxed tribal casinos. (Federally recognized Indian tribes are "sovereign nations" and are supposedly exempt from federal and state taxes.) Had that legislation passed, tribal casinos would have been required to pay about 33% of their profits to the US Treasury. By killing this legislation, Abramoff has cumulatively saved Indian Country about $30 billion for the past 12 years and counting, exponentially more than the relative pittance he charged them for his services. But once again, Gibney omitted this Abramoff triumph from his film.
THE CHOCTAWS OF MISSISSIPPI
Gibney describes how Abramoff, (remember, a lobbyist advocates for and protects his clients as does a lawyer), protected the interests of his client, the Choctaw Indians of Mississippi, so that its casino could keep making money. If a nearby casino opened up, it would hurt his client's revenue stream. So Abramoff worked hard to kill all competing casinos. (This is precisely what anyone hiring a lawyer/lobbyist wants done-the American Way, for better or worse.)
The Choctaws ran a lucrative casino near the Alabama border. The Jena Tribe, also located nearby in Mississippi, wanted to open its own casino, which would have put a big dent in the Choctaws' profits. But first, the Jena Tribe needed federal approval. With the help of Tom DeLay and other Republican lawmakers in Washington, Abramoff blocked the Jena's casino. But Gibney made it seem that Abramoff's successful efforts were somehow sleazy. Perhaps they were. But that's not the point. Abramoff did his job. He may have charged a lot, but he did save the Choctaws many hundreds of millions of dollars-far in excess of what he charged his client. Gibney should have pointed that out.
Gibney also completely omitted another far more spectacular Choctaw success Abramoff engineered. He somehow stopped a referendum in next-door Alabama that would have led to the opening of Indian casinos in that state. Since most of the Choctaw casino clients came from Alabama, the passage of that referendum would have probably put their casino out of business. Again, Abramoff saved his client hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, something Gibney did not to mention.
THE COUSHATTA TRIBE OF LOUISIANA
Gibney omitted another impressive Abramoff lobbying coup involving the wealthy Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, which also operated a casino and resort.
The Louisiana Coushatta had applied to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in 1927 for permission to purchase about 9,000 acres of land "in trust" to add to its reservation. For nearly 75 years, the BIA did nothing but sit on that application. It was Abramoff, with the help of Tom DeLay, who forced the BIA to grant the Coushatta's request. Again, Gibney made no mention of this.
Abramoff's biggest lobbying coup for the Louisiana Coushatta was shutting down a casino east of Houston, Texas, that may have put his client's casino out of business. It may seem hard to believe, but a complicating factor involved his also shutting down the casino of a tribe 1000 miles away in El Paso, Texas.
THE TIGUA TRIBE OF EL PASO, TEXAS
Gibney focused much attention on the Tigua tribe of El Paso. This pivotal and controversial episode in the Abramoff scandal is the one which reporter Susan Schmidt of The Washington Post, (whom Gibney interviewed extensively in the film), manufactured so that Abramoff appeared to be the most deceitful villain to have ever slithered out of the slime.
Schmidt claimed that Abramoff had secretly shut down the Tigua's casino simply so he could appear the next day to persuade the tribe to hire him to get its casino reopened! The ultimate sleazebag, right? Well, not quite. It was Schmidt who was sleazy-some would say dishonest-in how she manipulated the facts. Her little work of fiction created such a firestorm of public fury against Abramoff that it helped her win a 2005 Pulitzer Prize, (which, in my opinion, should be rescinded.) What's more, it was also the final straw that made Abramoff's imprisonment inevitable.
The problem is that Schmidt withheld a crucial bit of information from her story. Here are the facts. (Please bear with me.This is a bit complicated.)
Back in 2001, there was one tribal casino in Texas, and it was being operated illegally (something Gibney neglected to mention) by the Tigua Tribe in El Paso. There was a second tribe preparing to open its own illegal casino 700 miles away, east of Houston. That second tribe is confusingly called the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas. A pending bill in the Texas state legislature would have legalized both tribal casinos. Abramoff's client-the Louisiana Coushatta, (who had just purchased 9,000 acres of land thanks to Abramoff and DeLay), operated a very lucrative casino near the Texas border-felt threatened. Most of its gamblers drove three hours from the Houston area to play slots and blackjack in its casino. Had the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas opened its own casino east of Houston, Abramoff's client, the Louisiana Coushatta, might have been forced out of business. (Why drive three hours to gamble when a new casino has just opened minutes away?)
Here's the point of this complex-sounding story. Abramoff needed to stop that Texas bill which would have legalized the two tribal casinos, even though only one of them-the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas-threatened his Louisiana client. Obviously, Abramoff had absolutely no interest in shutting down the Tigua casino, because it was located in El Paso, 1000 miles from (and therefore no threat to) his client in Louisiana. But, yes, if Abramoff could find a way to kill the bill, the Tigua casino would also be shut down.
In another brilliant lobbying coup, (which Gibney once again failed to point out), Abramoff managed to derail the Texas bill. (The bill had already passed in the Texas House by an 83-vote margin. It would have easily passed in the Texas Senate by an even greater margin, but Abramoff was able to stop the bill from reaching the Senate floor for a vote! Hence, the bill failed to become law; both tribal casinos were shut down.)
But The Washington Post's Susan Schmidt never mentioned the part about the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas in her story! She claimed that Abramoff's sole purpose was to shut the Tigua's casino so he could persuade them to hire him to get it reopened. She completely omitted the fact that the casino of another tribe-the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas-was the only one he was interested in shuttering. Did Schmidt know that the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas even existed and that it was a threat to Abramoff's client in Louisiana? Indeed, her name had appeared on a recent story in which those two facts were identified by her! Hence, it would appear that Schmidt deliberately omitted this key bit of information simply so her story would make Abramoff's behavior seem so reprehensible.
I discussed this complicated story a number of times with Gibney. He didn't seem as outraged as I. But he did end up conceding in his film that Abramoff's shuttering of the Tigua casino was "collateral damage." Schmidt, on the other hand, never used the term collateral damage-or any similar term, because that would have undermined her fairy tale of righteous indignation. She simply omitted the name of the second tribe and, most importantly, that the second tribe was Abramoff's real target. Given Schmidt's previous reporting, she knew that the real reason for Abramoff's actions were not what she reported, but rather to protect his Louisiana-based casino client.
In the film, Gibney did not call Schmidt on the carpet for her journalistic transgression or question her on this matter at all. Why he gave her a free pass I find puzzling.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN
Let's take a look at the illustrious Sen. John McCain. Although Gibney was well aware that there was bad blood between McCain and Abramoff, he failed to mention this in his film. First of all, Abramoff was an arch conservative, allied with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, former Christian Coalition chairman Ralph Reed, right-wing ministers James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and others. They all loathed "maverick" John McCain, who then touted himself as a moderate Republican.
Secondly, Abramoff had inadvertently funded the notorious and scurrilous "black baby smear" campaign that had helped to sink McCain's presidential bid in the South Carolina Republican primary of February 2000. So it could be argued that McCain's investigation of Abramoff was in large part motivated by personal vendetta. Gibney omitted this.
Although Gibney did mention that McCain had suppressed many of Abramoff's subpoenaed emails, Gibney did not provide a readily available and widely known specific numerical percentage. Straight-talk McCain suppressed 99% of Abramoff's emails! In other words, he only released 1% to the public. This highly selective release of emails allowed McCain to paint Abramoff in the worst possible light, especially since Abramoff foolishly decided not to defend himself during the hearings. (On advice of counsel, he exercised his Fifth Amendment right, which led many to conclude he was guilty.)
Gibney did point out that McCain suppressed many of Abramoff's emails, but that he did so to avoid injuring his fellow Republicans. That was only partly true. The tiny fraction of emails McCain released had been selected and taken out of context in order to generate the greatest possible damage to Abramoff. Gibney knew this, because we discussed it many times, but did not mention it.
SUNCRUZ CASINO
Regarding the purchase of SunCruz casino, Abramoff had been indicted for wire fraud, involving a forged $23 million wire transfer, supposedly the down payment for the $147.5 million purchase of SunCruz casino. Abramoff, however, knew nothing about this phony wire transfer. I interviewed Adam Kidan, Abramoff's SunCruz partner, for over 100 hours. I asked him if Abramoff knew about this forged wire transfer. Kidan repeatedly told me that Abramoff knew nothing about it. Since I had told Gibney this fact and since Gibney also interviewed Kidan for the film, I was quite surprised that Gibney did not mention it.
So why did Abramoff plead guilty to wire fraud in the SunCruz matter if he knew nothing about the concocted $23 million wire transfer? Here's another key issue that Gibney chose not to address in his film.
WHITE-COLLAR GUILTY PLEAS AND HONEST-SERVICES FRAUD
Like many defendants, especially white-collar defendants, Abramoff pleaded guilty, because he was afraid not to. (The New York Times reported that over 25% of convicted and imprisoned rapists and murderers, later exonerated by DNA evidence, had pleaded guilty!) The truth is that Abramoff was intimidated and pressured into pleading guilty, even though he didn't think he was guilty. First, his legal fees were becoming astronomical. Second, federal prosecutors threatened to sentence him to 30 years in a maximum-security prison with violent offenders. Abramoff was told, however, if he agreed to plead guilty to whatever they told him to plead guilty to, his sentence would be reduced to four years and he would do his time it in a cushy prison camp close to home, conveniently allowing his wife and five children to visit him. Again, Gibney failed to mention this.
What exactly was Abramoff guilty of? Bribing congressmen? He never did that, (although he did plead guilty to it.) Tax evasion? Doubtful, (although he did plead guilty to this. Even some of the federal prosecutors who worked on the case disagree on this tax-evasion charge.) Wire fraud? Definitely not, (though he did plead guilty to this too.) Defrauding his tribal clients? Well, now we've now arrived at the crux of the criminal matter, which centers on the "kickback" scheme involving Abramoff's public-relations colleague, Michael Scanlon.
THE "KICKBACK" SCHEME
Gibney prominently mentions that Abramoff took "kickbacks" from Scanlon. The Post and McCain contend that Abramoff should have informed his tribal clients that he was getting a "kickback" from Scanlon, whom they hired at Abramoff's behest. But there is nothing criminal in not informing his clients. And calling it a "kickback" is a misnomer. It was a perfectly legal referral fee, something that orthopedic surgeons, lawyers, and mortgage brokers engage in everyday without informing their clients. Federal prosecutors knew it wasn't a crime, but had to conjure up something to charge Abramoff with so he could appear to plead guilty to defrauding his tribal clients. The conjured-up was "honest-services fraud," a nebulous felony impossible to define. In fact, the U. S. Supreme Court recently declared this controversial law unconstitutionally vague...and yet Gibney did not choose to mention anything at all about the storm swirling around the honest-services fraud statute and its pivotal effect on the Abramoff scandal.
THE GUILTY PLEA OF REP. ROBERT NEY
Gibney extensively interviewed former Ohio Congressman Robert Ney, who spent nearly a year in prison as a result of the Abramoff scandal. For a long time, Ney had stubbornly refused to plead guilty, claiming he had done nothing wrong. And in my opinion it is unlikely that Ney would have ever been indicted, never mind found guilty of any charge related to the Abramoff scandal. What cooked Ney's goose, however, was not Abramoff. Ney was caught accepting a $50,000 cash bribe from a Syrian businessman who asked Ney's help in obtaining spare parts for Iranian military jets, something Abramoff had nothing to do with. With that little incriminating tidbit, however, federal prosecutors were able to tighten the screws on Ney until he squealed guilty to the Abramoff charges as well, in return for a reduced sentence in a cushy prison camp. Gibney knew all about that fat Syrian businessman, but did not to mention it.
Gibney also mentioned that Ney had placed at Abramoff's behest two statements in the Congressional Record-one that disparaged SunCruz owner Gus Boulis and a subsequent one that praised Adam Kidan. Well, this isn't exactly true. Those statements had not been placed in the Congressional Record, but in the Congressional Records Extensions, an obscure publication that essentially no one reads, in which lawmakers insert statements praising local boy-scout troops; honoring a constituent's birthday, marriage, graduation, or death. Gibney made a big deal out of that frivolous favor. Frivolous comments made in an obscure publication pale in comparison to helping the terrorist state of Iran and sworn enemy of the United States obtain spare parts for its aging American fighter jets. But Gibney said nothing about this.
FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER TOM DELAY
As for Tom DeLay, former Republican House speaker and Abramoff's most valuable asset, Gibney makes it clear how much he loathes his politics and his tactics-and so do I. And I can't stand Abramoff's politics as well, (even though he tried to change my mind during the 100 hours I interviewed Abramoff). Gibney did his best to make DeLay, who was extensively interviewed in the film, look hypocritical and sleazy. Gibney even included clips from DeLay's embarrassing appearance on the TV show "Dancing With The Stars." This was gratuitous and only served to make DeLay look foolish, which I thought was unfair. No matter how unsavory Gibney tried to make DeLay appear in the film, there is one incontrovertible fact that Gibney failed to concede. DeLay would never be indicted for anything related to the Abramoff scandal. Indeed,the Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced that it had dropped its six-year investigation of DeLay. (And Abramoff, who has been cooperating with federal prosecutors for nearly six years, repeatedly told me how badly the DOJ wanted to indict DeLay.)
ADAM KIDAN
Even minor things were not dealt with even-handedly in Casino Jack. For example, Gibney interviewed Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW (Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), a liberal, non-profit watchdog group. She stated that Adam Kidan, Abramoff's SunCruz partner, had been disbarred for fraud. But Gibney chose not to give Kidan a chance to respond or defend himself. It just so happens that those charges were brought by Kidan's stepfather, the controversial owner of adult video stores. They were embroiled in a business dispute. However, the stepfather later wrote to the authorities withdrawing his complaint. (These letters are archived and readily available in Brooklyn and Long Island courthouses.)
Furthermore, Naomi Seligman, former deputy director of CREW and one of Sloan's dearest friends, used to date Kidan. Perhaps this was not worth mentioning in the film, but Gibney knew this.
THE EELEMOSYNARY ABRAMOFF
In the tradition of Orthodox Judaism, Abramoff had been an extraordinarily generous person. Essentially, he gave away much of his money, often anonymously, mostly to Jewish charities. He never even paid off his own home mortgage. And yet Gibney didn't mention any of this at all. It's as if he went out of his way to avoid saying anything that might cast Abramoff in a positive light.
CONCLUSION
Gibney ends the film decrying lobbying. He cites how banking and financial lobbyists are preventing the government from reigning in and controlling derivatives, such as credit-default swaps, which recently nearly triggered an economic depression. He also cites the recent Supreme Court decision, allowing corporations to spend as much as they want on lobbying. And somehow he compares those cataclysms to the alleged crimes of Jack Abramoff.
What crimes did Abramoff actually commit? He got Rep. Bob Ney to insert frivolous comments in the frivolous Congressional Records Extensions. Abramoff gave lawmakers and their staff free meals, drinks at his restaurant and free seats at sporting events, and subsidized a few golf trips. And what did he get in return? He helped his tribal clients' casinos remain profitable. He wangled an audience with President George W. Bush for the prime minister of Malaysia. So what? This is inconsequential compared to the great evils perpetuated by the financial-industry lobbyists, the health-care lobbyists, the tobacco lobbyists, the National Rifle Association, etc. And for these petty gems of sleaze and corruption, Abramoff is sent to federal prison for four years? Seems to me like much ado about nothing.
What Gibney did not mention in his film is that lobbying-the right to petition Congress-is protected by the very First Amendment to the Constitution. Sure, every liberal wants elections to be publicly financed, but it will never happen because of something called the "incumbency advantage." Incumbents get reelected about 90% of the time, thanks, in part, to the money that lobbyists funnel into their reelection campaigns. (Yes, the "bad" lobbyists include Exxon Mobil, the National Right to Life Committee, and the National Rifle Association, as well as the "good" lobbyists like the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP and the AARP.) It's doubtful that current lawmakers are going to pass legislation that would make it easier for their opponents to take away their jobs.
When Abramoff stopped the Republican-controlled Congress from taxing Indian casinos, do you know how he did it? He didn't do it with free drinks and meals at his restaurant, free tickets to sporting events at his skyboxes, or golf trips. What those freebies got him was access to the lawmakers and their staff, so he could present a compelling argument. And what was that compelling argument that killed the bill? He told Republican lawmakers that they should vote against this bill because it was a tax, and Republicans were supposed to be anti-tax fanatics. It worked, but people who see the documentary won't know that, because Gibney didn't mention it.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. Remember those naïve, unsophisticated Indians that Abramoff bamboozled? Well, they all sued the law firms that Abramoff used to work for. And guess what? They all won huge settlements, so that in the end, they got Abramoff's phenomenal lobbying services for a pittance...Gibney forgot to mention that too.
Someone of Gibney's caliber should not have resorted to such transparent tendentiousness.
Gary S. Chafetz is the author of The Perfect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
A Disappointing, One-Sided, Unobjective Analysis of a Complex Political Scandal, September 3, 2010
By Gary S. Chafetz
I recently watched Alex Gibney's "Casino Jack" in a virtually empty movie theater, the new documentary about Jack Abramoff. (Gibney won an Oscar for Documentary Feature in 2008.) "Casino Jack" simply regurgitated the story the media had already conveyed about "evil" Abramoff, and thematically repeated a Bill Moyers documentary several years ago. Gibney's film would have been far more insightful and compelling had it been even-handed.
Disclaimer: Even though I found his Abramoff documentary tendentious and flawed, I admire and respect Gibney's work very much. Politically, we are hard-core liberals. Because I was writing a book about Abramoff (and secretly interviewing him before and during his imprisonment,) Gibney and I have been occasionally meeting and talking about the Abramoff scandal for the past three years.
There are so many disappointing things with this documentary I don't know where to begin. My overarching problem was that Gibney made no attempt to be objective, and that he omitted a plethora of important information that might have afforded the audience a chance to draw a more balanced, nuanced, and more informed conclusion about this complex scandal.
Gibney knew what his conclusion would be long in advance. Presumably for that reason, he did not interview anybody who defended Abramoff or anyone who argued that this scandal was far more convoluted than the simplistic, black-and-white narrative that has been repetitiously presented to the public and now by Gibney.
The film opens with footage of the 2001 mob murder of Florida businessman Gus Boulis, even though Abramoff had met Boulis only once and had nothing to do with his murder. (Boulis had just sold SunCruz casinos to Abramoff and his partner Adam Kidan.)
Soon, there is footage of the casinos operated by Abramoff's tribal clients. Clearly, these casinos are on par with those in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. And clearly, these thriving casinos, earning hundreds of millions of dollars a year, belong to Indians who are well-to-do, not bumpkins that just fell off a log. They can afford the best consultants, lawyers, accountants, and lobbyists. Hence, these particular Indians-for whom Abramoff was the lobbyist-were hardly unsophisticated, which I doubt anyone in the audience have grasped. Gibney should have made this point clear.
(A large part of the virulent antipathy toward Abramoff was fueled by our collective guilt over the genocide our European ancestors committed against the Native Americans. In 1892, there were wild celebrations across the nation. In New York City, for example, a statue was erected of the Great Navigator in an area re-named Columbus Circle. But in 1992, there were essentially no national or regional celebrations to mark a stellar numerical anniversary: the quincentenary of the European discovery of the New World. The reason? We were too ashamed.)
Yes, the public was infuriated with Abramoff. Here was this white man-(that he was an Orthodox Jew only made matters worse)-stealing candy from these poor, unsophisticated Indians. The Washington Post, which broke this story, exploited this undercurrent of shame brilliantly and cynically. I feel it was disingenuous of Gibney not to make clear that these particular Indians-whom Abramoff was accused of defrauding-were not your stereotypic unemployed Indian, boozing it up on a hard-scrabble reservation. In the end, these Indians proved to be far more sophisticated than Washington uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The other impression Gibney, The Washington Post, and Sen. John McCain, (former chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which also investigated Abramoff,) wanted to impart was that not only had Abramoff defrauded his clients, but he had been a lousy lobbyist. In other words, they wanted the public to believe that all these gullible, unsophisticated Indians had not only been bamboozled into paying Abramoff gargantuan sums, but had received nothing in return.
This is untrue. Abramoff was perhaps the most effective Indian lobbyist who ever lived. It would have been fair if Gibney had at least made that clear. But he did not. Apparently, Gibney preferred Abramoff's iconic image as the indelibly vile pariah, Indian exploiter, and corrupter of the democratic process.
TAXING TRIBAL CASINOS
The most compelling example of Abramoff's lobbying magic was his successful efforts for three successive years to defeat Republican-controlled congressional legislation that would have taxed tribal casinos. (Federally recognized Indian tribes are "sovereign nations" and are supposedly exempt from federal and state taxes.) Had that legislation passed, tribal casinos would have been required to pay about 33% of their profits to the US Treasury. By killing this legislation, Abramoff has cumulatively saved Indian Country about $30 billion for the past 12 years and counting, exponentially more than the relative pittance he charged them for his services. But once again, Gibney omitted this Abramoff triumph from his film.
THE CHOCTAWS OF MISSISSIPPI
Gibney describes how Abramoff, (remember, a lobbyist advocates for and protects his clients as does a lawyer), protected the interests of his client, the Choctaw Indians of Mississippi, so that its casino could keep making money. If a nearby casino opened up, it would hurt his client's revenue stream. So Abramoff worked hard to kill all competing casinos. (This is precisely what anyone hiring a lawyer/lobbyist wants done-the American Way, for better or worse.)
The Choctaws ran a lucrative casino near the Alabama border. The Jena Tribe, also located nearby in Mississippi, wanted to open its own casino, which would have put a big dent in the Choctaws' profits. But first, the Jena Tribe needed federal approval. With the help of Tom DeLay and other Republican lawmakers in Washington, Abramoff blocked the Jena's casino. But Gibney made it seem that Abramoff's successful efforts were somehow sleazy. Perhaps they were. But that's not the point. Abramoff did his job. He may have charged a lot, but he did save the Choctaws many hundreds of millions of dollars-far in excess of what he charged his client. Gibney should have pointed that out.
Gibney also completely omitted another far more spectacular Choctaw success Abramoff engineered. He somehow stopped a referendum in next-door Alabama that would have led to the opening of Indian casinos in that state. Since most of the Choctaw casino clients came from Alabama, the passage of that referendum would have probably put their casino out of business. Again, Abramoff saved his client hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, something Gibney did not to mention.
THE COUSHATTA TRIBE OF LOUISIANA
Gibney omitted another impressive Abramoff lobbying coup involving the wealthy Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, which also operated a casino and resort.
The Louisiana Coushatta had applied to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in 1927 for permission to purchase about 9,000 acres of land "in trust" to add to its reservation. For nearly 75 years, the BIA did nothing but sit on that application. It was Abramoff, with the help of Tom DeLay, who forced the BIA to grant the Coushatta's request. Again, Gibney made no mention of this.
Abramoff's biggest lobbying coup for the Louisiana Coushatta was shutting down a casino east of Houston, Texas, that may have put his client's casino out of business. It may seem hard to believe, but a complicating factor involved his also shutting down the casino of a tribe 1000 miles away in El Paso, Texas.
THE TIGUA TRIBE OF EL PASO, TEXAS
Gibney focused much attention on the Tigua tribe of El Paso. This pivotal and controversial episode in the Abramoff scandal is the one which reporter Susan Schmidt of The Washington Post, (whom Gibney interviewed extensively in the film), manufactured so that Abramoff appeared to be the most deceitful villain to have ever slithered out of the slime.
Schmidt claimed that Abramoff had secretly shut down the Tigua's casino simply so he could appear the next day to persuade the tribe to hire him to get its casino reopened! The ultimate sleazebag, right? Well, not quite. It was Schmidt who was sleazy-some would say dishonest-in how she manipulated the facts. Her little work of fiction created such a firestorm of public fury against Abramoff that it helped her win a 2005 Pulitzer Prize, (which, in my opinion, should be rescinded.) What's more, it was also the final straw that made Abramoff's imprisonment inevitable.
The problem is that Schmidt withheld a crucial bit of information from her story. Here are the facts. (Please bear with me.This is a bit complicated.)
Back in 2001, there was one tribal casino in Texas, and it was being operated illegally (something Gibney neglected to mention) by the Tigua Tribe in El Paso. There was a second tribe preparing to open its own illegal casino 700 miles away, east of Houston. That second tribe is confusingly called the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas. A pending bill in the Texas state legislature would have legalized both tribal casinos. Abramoff's client-the Louisiana Coushatta, (who had just purchased 9,000 acres of land thanks to Abramoff and DeLay), operated a very lucrative casino near the Texas border-felt threatened. Most of its gamblers drove three hours from the Houston area to play slots and blackjack in its casino. Had the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas opened its own casino east of Houston, Abramoff's client, the Louisiana Coushatta, might have been forced out of business. (Why drive three hours to gamble when a new casino has just opened minutes away?)
Here's the point of this complex-sounding story. Abramoff needed to stop that Texas bill which would have legalized the two tribal casinos, even though only one of them-the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas-threatened his Louisiana client. Obviously, Abramoff had absolutely no interest in shutting down the Tigua casino, because it was located in El Paso, 1000 miles from (and therefore no threat to) his client in Louisiana. But, yes, if Abramoff could find a way to kill the bill, the Tigua casino would also be shut down.
In another brilliant lobbying coup, (which Gibney once again failed to point out), Abramoff managed to derail the Texas bill. (The bill had already passed in the Texas House by an 83-vote margin. It would have easily passed in the Texas Senate by an even greater margin, but Abramoff was able to stop the bill from reaching the Senate floor for a vote! Hence, the bill failed to become law; both tribal casinos were shut down.)
But The Washington Post's Susan Schmidt never mentioned the part about the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas in her story! She claimed that Abramoff's sole purpose was to shut the Tigua's casino so he could persuade them to hire him to get it reopened. She completely omitted the fact that the casino of another tribe-the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas-was the only one he was interested in shuttering. Did Schmidt know that the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas even existed and that it was a threat to Abramoff's client in Louisiana? Indeed, her name had appeared on a recent story in which those two facts were identified by her! Hence, it would appear that Schmidt deliberately omitted this key bit of information simply so her story would make Abramoff's behavior seem so reprehensible.
I discussed this complicated story a number of times with Gibney. He didn't seem as outraged as I. But he did end up conceding in his film that Abramoff's shuttering of the Tigua casino was "collateral damage." Schmidt, on the other hand, never used the term collateral damage-or any similar term, because that would have undermined her fairy tale of righteous indignation. She simply omitted the name of the second tribe and, most importantly, that the second tribe was Abramoff's real target. Given Schmidt's previous reporting, she knew that the real reason for Abramoff's actions were not what she reported, but rather to protect his Louisiana-based casino client.
In the film, Gibney did not call Schmidt on the carpet for her journalistic transgression or question her on this matter at all. Why he gave her a free pass I find puzzling.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN
Let's take a look at the illustrious Sen. John McCain. Although Gibney was well aware that there was bad blood between McCain and Abramoff, he failed to mention this in his film. First of all, Abramoff was an arch conservative, allied with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, former Christian Coalition chairman Ralph Reed, right-wing ministers James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and others. They all loathed "maverick" John McCain, who then touted himself as a moderate Republican.
Secondly, Abramoff had inadvertently funded the notorious and scurrilous "black baby smear" campaign that had helped to sink McCain's presidential bid in the South Carolina Republican primary of February 2000. So it could be argued that McCain's investigation of Abramoff was in large part motivated by personal vendetta. Gibney omitted this.
Although Gibney did mention that McCain had suppressed many of Abramoff's subpoenaed emails, Gibney did not provide a readily available and widely known specific numerical percentage. Straight-talk McCain suppressed 99% of Abramoff's emails! In other words, he only released 1% to the public. This highly selective release of emails allowed McCain to paint Abramoff in the worst possible light, especially since Abramoff foolishly decided not to defend himself during the hearings. (On advice of counsel, he exercised his Fifth Amendment right, which led many to conclude he was guilty.)
Gibney did point out that McCain suppressed many of Abramoff's emails, but that he did so to avoid injuring his fellow Republicans. That was only partly true. The tiny fraction of emails McCain released had been selected and taken out of context in order to generate the greatest possible damage to Abramoff. Gibney knew this, because we discussed it many times, but did not mention it.
SUNCRUZ CASINO
Regarding the purchase of SunCruz casino, Abramoff had been indicted for wire fraud, involving a forged $23 million wire transfer, supposedly the down payment for the $147.5 million purchase of SunCruz casino. Abramoff, however, knew nothing about this phony wire transfer. I interviewed Adam Kidan, Abramoff's SunCruz partner, for over 100 hours. I asked him if Abramoff knew about this forged wire transfer. Kidan repeatedly told me that Abramoff knew nothing about it. Since I had told Gibney this fact and since Gibney also interviewed Kidan for the film, I was quite surprised that Gibney did not mention it.
So why did Abramoff plead guilty to wire fraud in the SunCruz matter if he knew nothing about the concocted $23 million wire transfer? Here's another key issue that Gibney chose not to address in his film.
WHITE-COLLAR GUILTY PLEAS AND HONEST-SERVICES FRAUD
Like many defendants, especially white-collar defendants, Abramoff pleaded guilty, because he was afraid not to. (The New York Times reported that over 25% of convicted and imprisoned rapists and murderers, later exonerated by DNA evidence, had pleaded guilty!) The truth is that Abramoff was intimidated and pressured into pleading guilty, even though he didn't think he was guilty. First, his legal fees were becoming astronomical. Second, federal prosecutors threatened to sentence him to 30 years in a maximum-security prison with violent offenders. Abramoff was told, however, if he agreed to plead guilty to whatever they told him to plead guilty to, his sentence would be reduced to four years and he would do his time it in a cushy prison camp close to home, conveniently allowing his wife and five children to visit him. Again, Gibney failed to mention this.
What exactly was Abramoff guilty of? Bribing congressmen? He never did that, (although he did plead guilty to it.) Tax evasion? Doubtful, (although he did plead guilty to this. Even some of the federal prosecutors who worked on the case disagree on this tax-evasion charge.) Wire fraud? Definitely not, (though he did plead guilty to this too.) Defrauding his tribal clients? Well, now we've now arrived at the crux of the criminal matter, which centers on the "kickback" scheme involving Abramoff's public-relations colleague, Michael Scanlon.
THE "KICKBACK" SCHEME
Gibney prominently mentions that Abramoff took "kickbacks" from Scanlon. The Post and McCain contend that Abramoff should have informed his tribal clients that he was getting a "kickback" from Scanlon, whom they hired at Abramoff's behest. But there is nothing criminal in not informing his clients. And calling it a "kickback" is a misnomer. It was a perfectly legal referral fee, something that orthopedic surgeons, lawyers, and mortgage brokers engage in everyday without informing their clients. Federal prosecutors knew it wasn't a crime, but had to conjure up something to charge Abramoff with so he could appear to plead guilty to defrauding his tribal clients. The conjured-up was "honest-services fraud," a nebulous felony impossible to define. In fact, the U. S. Supreme Court recently declared this controversial law unconstitutionally vague...and yet Gibney did not choose to mention anything at all about the storm swirling around the honest-services fraud statute and its pivotal effect on the Abramoff scandal.
THE GUILTY PLEA OF REP. ROBERT NEY
Gibney extensively interviewed former Ohio Congressman Robert Ney, who spent nearly a year in prison as a result of the Abramoff scandal. For a long time, Ney had stubbornly refused to plead guilty, claiming he had done nothing wrong. And in my opinion it is unlikely that Ney would have ever been indicted, never mind found guilty of any charge related to the Abramoff scandal. What cooked Ney's goose, however, was not Abramoff. Ney was caught accepting a $50,000 cash bribe from a Syrian businessman who asked Ney's help in obtaining spare parts for Iranian military jets, something Abramoff had nothing to do with. With that little incriminating tidbit, however, federal prosecutors were able to tighten the screws on Ney until he squealed guilty to the Abramoff charges as well, in return for a reduced sentence in a cushy prison camp. Gibney knew all about that fat Syrian businessman, but did not to mention it.
Gibney also mentioned that Ney had placed at Abramoff's behest two statements in the Congressional Record-one that disparaged SunCruz owner Gus Boulis and a subsequent one that praised Adam Kidan. Well, this isn't exactly true. Those statements had not been placed in the Congressional Record, but in the Congressional Records Extensions, an obscure publication that essentially no one reads, in which lawmakers insert statements praising local boy-scout troops; honoring a constituent's birthday, marriage, graduation, or death. Gibney made a big deal out of that frivolous favor. Frivolous comments made in an obscure publication pale in comparison to helping the terrorist state of Iran and sworn enemy of the United States obtain spare parts for its aging American fighter jets. But Gibney said nothing about this.
FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER TOM DELAY
As for Tom DeLay, former Republican House speaker and Abramoff's most valuable asset, Gibney makes it clear how much he loathes his politics and his tactics-and so do I. And I can't stand Abramoff's politics as well, (even though he tried to change my mind during the 100 hours I interviewed Abramoff). Gibney did his best to make DeLay, who was extensively interviewed in the film, look hypocritical and sleazy. Gibney even included clips from DeLay's embarrassing appearance on the TV show "Dancing With The Stars." This was gratuitous and only served to make DeLay look foolish, which I thought was unfair. No matter how unsavory Gibney tried to make DeLay appear in the film, there is one incontrovertible fact that Gibney failed to concede. DeLay would never be indicted for anything related to the Abramoff scandal. Indeed,the Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced that it had dropped its six-year investigation of DeLay. (And Abramoff, who has been cooperating with federal prosecutors for nearly six years, repeatedly told me how badly the DOJ wanted to indict DeLay.)
ADAM KIDAN
Even minor things were not dealt with even-handedly in Casino Jack. For example, Gibney interviewed Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW (Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), a liberal, non-profit watchdog group. She stated that Adam Kidan, Abramoff's SunCruz partner, had been disbarred for fraud. But Gibney chose not to give Kidan a chance to respond or defend himself. It just so happens that those charges were brought by Kidan's stepfather, the controversial owner of adult video stores. They were embroiled in a business dispute. However, the stepfather later wrote to the authorities withdrawing his complaint. (These letters are archived and readily available in Brooklyn and Long Island courthouses.)
Furthermore, Naomi Seligman, former deputy director of CREW and one of Sloan's dearest friends, used to date Kidan. Perhaps this was not worth mentioning in the film, but Gibney knew this.
THE EELEMOSYNARY ABRAMOFF
In the tradition of Orthodox Judaism, Abramoff had been an extraordinarily generous person. Essentially, he gave away much of his money, often anonymously, mostly to Jewish charities. He never even paid off his own home mortgage. And yet Gibney didn't mention any of this at all. It's as if he went out of his way to avoid saying anything that might cast Abramoff in a positive light.
CONCLUSION
Gibney ends the film decrying lobbying. He cites how banking and financial lobbyists are preventing the government from reigning in and controlling derivatives, such as credit-default swaps, which recently nearly triggered an economic depression. He also cites the recent Supreme Court decision, allowing corporations to spend as much as they want on lobbying. And somehow he compares those cataclysms to the alleged crimes of Jack Abramoff.
What crimes did Abramoff actually commit? He got Rep. Bob Ney to insert frivolous comments in the frivolous Congressional Records Extensions. Abramoff gave lawmakers and their staff free meals, drinks at his restaurant and free seats at sporting events, and subsidized a few golf trips. And what did he get in return? He helped his tribal clients' casinos remain profitable. He wangled an audience with President George W. Bush for the prime minister of Malaysia. So what? This is inconsequential compared to the great evils perpetuated by the financial-industry lobbyists, the health-care lobbyists, the tobacco lobbyists, the National Rifle Association, etc. And for these petty gems of sleaze and corruption, Abramoff is sent to federal prison for four years? Seems to me like much ado about nothing.
What Gibney did not mention in his film is that lobbying-the right to petition Congress-is protected by the very First Amendment to the Constitution. Sure, every liberal wants elections to be publicly financed, but it will never happen because of something called the "incumbency advantage." Incumbents get reelected about 90% of the time, thanks, in part, to the money that lobbyists funnel into their reelection campaigns. (Yes, the "bad" lobbyists include Exxon Mobil, the National Right to Life Committee, and the National Rifle Association, as well as the "good" lobbyists like the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP and the AARP.) It's doubtful that current lawmakers are going to pass legislation that would make it easier for their opponents to take away their jobs.
When Abramoff stopped the Republican-controlled Congress from taxing Indian casinos, do you know how he did it? He didn't do it with free drinks and meals at his restaurant, free tickets to sporting events at his skyboxes, or golf trips. What those freebies got him was access to the lawmakers and their staff, so he could present a compelling argument. And what was that compelling argument that killed the bill? He told Republican lawmakers that they should vote against this bill because it was a tax, and Republicans were supposed to be anti-tax fanatics. It worked, but people who see the documentary won't know that, because Gibney didn't mention it.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. Remember those naïve, unsophisticated Indians that Abramoff bamboozled? Well, they all sued the law firms that Abramoff used to work for. And guess what? They all won huge settlements, so that in the end, they got Abramoff's phenomenal lobbying services for a pittance...Gibney forgot to mention that too.
Someone of Gibney's caliber should not have resorted to such transparent tendentiousness.
Gary S. Chafetz is the author of The Perfect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Crowley Removed as State Dept. Spokesman
Crowley out as State Department spokesman
By: CNN Senior White House Correspondent Ed Henry
Washington (CNN) - P.J. Crowley is abruptly stepping down as State Department spokesman under pressure from the White House, according to senior officials familiar with the matter, because of controversial comments he made about the Bradley Manning case.
Crowley will step down as early as Sunday afternoon, the officials said, because White House officials are furious about his suggestion that the Obama administration is mistreating Manning, the Army private who is being held in solitary confinement in Quantico, Virginia, under suspicion that he leaked highly classified State Department cables to the website Wikileaks.
Speaking to a small group at MIT last week, Crowley was asked about allegations that Manning is being tortured and kicked up a firestorm by answering that what is being done to Manning by Defense Department officials "is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid."
Crowley did add that "nonetheless, Bradley Manning is in the right place" because of his alleged crimes, according to a blog post by BBC reporter Philippa Thomas, who was present at Crowley's talk.
But Crowley has told friends that he is deeply concerned that mistreatment of Manning could undermine the legitimate prosecution of the young private. Crowley has also made clear he has the Obama administration's best interests at heart because he thinks any mistreatment of Manning could be damaging around the world to President Obama, who has tried to end the perception that the U.S. tortures prisoners.
Nevertheless, Crowley's political fate was sealed on Friday when Obama was asked at a White House news conference about his comments regarding Manning.
Obama revealed that he had asked Pentagon officials "whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of (Manning's) confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards."
In a comment that drew howls of protest from liberals, Obama added that Pentagon officials "assure me that they are. I can't go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Private Manning's safety as well."
Manning's treatment has become a flashpoint for liberals, with Amnesty International noting he has been confined to a windowless cell for 23 hours a day, is stripped down to his boxers at night and is not given pillows or blankets.
Manning's lawyer also says the young private recently had to sleep in the nude because defense officials thought there was a suicide threat and decided to take away his boxer shorts.
Crowley is highly respected on foreign policy matters, dating back to his time as National Security Council spokesman under then-President Bill Clinton. He has been the Obama administration's public face on many international stories as the daily briefer at the State Department for Secretary Hillary Clinton.
But he has not had a completely smooth relationship with officials in the Obama White House, and eyebrows were raised several months ago when White House aide Mike Hammer was sent over to the State Department to serve as Crowley's deputy. Hammer is now expected to replace Crowley as the assistant secretary for public affairs.
A little-known factor in Crowley's comments about Manning was revealed Saturday by April Ryan, a White House correspondent for American Urban Radio who covered Crowley in the Clinton White House.
Ryan wrote on Twitter that Crowley "dislikes treatment of prisoners as his father was a Prisoner of War."
While it's true that Crowley's father was imprisoned during World War II, people close him downplay that as a major factor in his comments about Manning, saying the biggest factor is simply that Crowley believes what he said.
Asked to comment on Crowley stepping down, Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council, referred questions to the State Department.
Friday, March 11, 2011
So. Bend Tribune Discusses Media Mix
It might surprise you, given all the pessimism about newspapers in recent years, to learn that The Tribune has more readers than ever before.
That's because even though there are fewer print subscribers than when the newspaper was essentially the sole source for news, our web audience has grown exponentially.
Digital page views for our sites were up 20 percent year-over-year at the end of 2010.
Those of you who follow SouthBendTribune.com regularly know there are reasons for those numbers. We're the leading news site for north central Indiana and southwestern Michigan; our coverage of high school and college sports, weather, and business and economic development is unmatched. And readers come to us from all over the globe to read about the University of Notre Dame.
Now SouthBendTribune.com is taking another leap forward. We've switched this week to a new content management system that allows us to organize and present material more attractively and effectively.
For example, you'll find that the local news pages offer stories by category -- "government and politics," "crime and courts," "education, " etc.
Because our new system, Tribune Digital, links us up with a number of newspapers and television stations around the country, we'll offer you extra packages of articles, photos, and live streaming video that will help you make sense of the day's major stories. We'll have stories and photos, for instance, from The Los Angeles Times, the nation's leading source for news about entertainment and the TV/movie industry, and we'll have the last word on Chicago sports from The Chicago Tribune. There also will be more news from around the nation and world.
Most significant will be the improvements to our local news presentation. The new system also allows us to link up more effectively with our partners at WSBT-TV and WSBT Radio. All of us are owned by Schurz Communications Inc., which is in the process of converting all of its properties to Tribune Digital.
With all three news operations able to share information seamlessly, we'll bring you even faster breaking news, weather and traffic reporting and more video and audio to complement our writing and photos.
In January, we launched a new Classified website that gives visitors more information and easier ways to search for what you are looking for. New features include an easier way to sort information, maps to locate real estate, garage sales, and auctions, and "Contact the Seller" button where you can ask the seller a question via anonymous email.
We know that more and more of our readers get at least some of their news from our digital products. With our new system in place, your visits to SouthBendTribune.com will bring you deeper, wider choices than ever before.
That's because even though there are fewer print subscribers than when the newspaper was essentially the sole source for news, our web audience has grown exponentially.
Digital page views for our sites were up 20 percent year-over-year at the end of 2010.
Those of you who follow SouthBendTribune.com regularly know there are reasons for those numbers. We're the leading news site for north central Indiana and southwestern Michigan; our coverage of high school and college sports, weather, and business and economic development is unmatched. And readers come to us from all over the globe to read about the University of Notre Dame.
Now SouthBendTribune.com is taking another leap forward. We've switched this week to a new content management system that allows us to organize and present material more attractively and effectively.
For example, you'll find that the local news pages offer stories by category -- "government and politics," "crime and courts," "education, " etc.
Because our new system, Tribune Digital, links us up with a number of newspapers and television stations around the country, we'll offer you extra packages of articles, photos, and live streaming video that will help you make sense of the day's major stories. We'll have stories and photos, for instance, from The Los Angeles Times, the nation's leading source for news about entertainment and the TV/movie industry, and we'll have the last word on Chicago sports from The Chicago Tribune. There also will be more news from around the nation and world.
Most significant will be the improvements to our local news presentation. The new system also allows us to link up more effectively with our partners at WSBT-TV and WSBT Radio. All of us are owned by Schurz Communications Inc., which is in the process of converting all of its properties to Tribune Digital.
With all three news operations able to share information seamlessly, we'll bring you even faster breaking news, weather and traffic reporting and more video and audio to complement our writing and photos.
In January, we launched a new Classified website that gives visitors more information and easier ways to search for what you are looking for. New features include an easier way to sort information, maps to locate real estate, garage sales, and auctions, and "Contact the Seller" button where you can ask the seller a question via anonymous email.
We know that more and more of our readers get at least some of their news from our digital products. With our new system in place, your visits to SouthBendTribune.com will bring you deeper, wider choices than ever before.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Pulitzer Winner Broder Dies
Washington (CNN) -- David Broder, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post political columnist, died Wednesday from complications relating to diabetes, the newspaper said.
He was 81.
Broder, known as the "dean of the Washington press corps," won the Pulitzer in 1973 for his coverage of the Watergate scandal. He covered every national political convention since 1956, according to the Post.
"David spent his professional life with political leaders at all levels of society, from precinct captains to presidents, on Capitol Hill, and in State Houses and City Halls in all fifty states," Broder's family said in a statement posted on the Post's website.
"His greatest admiration and respect were always for the voters themselves, who would answer a knock on their door, let him into their homes, and share their observations on the issues of the day. Their passion for this country and its possibilities mirrored his own. To the countless thousands who ... inspired his curiosity and informed his reporting, we offer our thanks."
President Barack Obama issued a statement praising Broder's reputation as "the most respected and incisive political commentator of his generation."
"Through all his success, David remained an eminently kind and gracious person, and someone we will dearly miss," the president said.
NPR's CEO Resigns
Washington (CNN) -- National Public Radio CEO Vivian Schiller resigned Wednesday, according to NPR.
Schiller's resignation comes a day after Ron Schiller, NPR's former senior vice president for fundraising, was shown in an undercover video calling the Tea Party "racist" and "scary" and questioning whether NPR needs federal funding. Ron Schiller, no relation to Vivian Schiller, issued an apology Tuesday night and said his already-announced resignation would be effective immediately.
Dave Edwards, chairman of NPR's board of directors, said in a statement on the NPR website that the board accepted Vivian Schiller's resignation "with understanding, genuine regret and great respect for her leadership of NPR these past two years."
Edwards said he recognizes "the magnitude of this news -- and that it comes on top of what has been a traumatic period for NPR and the larger public radio community. The board is committed to supporting NPR through this interim period and has confidence in NPR's leadership team."
Joyce Slocum, NPR's senior vice president of legal affairs and general counsel, was appointed as interim CEO under a succession plan the board adopted in 2009, Edwards' statement said. The board will establish a committee "that will develop a timeframe and process for the recruitment and selection of new leadership," he said.
Edwards credited Vivian Schiller with bringing "vision and energy" to NPR and leading it back from "the enormous economic challenges of the previous two years. She was passionately committed to NPR's mission and to stations and NPR working collaboratively as a local-national news network."
NPR spokeswoman Anna Christopher said she could not confirm reports that Vivian Schiller was forced out.
Filmmaker James O'Keefe said Tuesday the video featuring Ron Schiller was part of a sting operation. He said the idea stemmed from an incident in October when NPR fired analyst Juan Williams after Williams said he got scared when people wore Muslim garb on airplanes.
"My colleague Shaughn Adeleye who posed as one of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood was pretty offended with what happened with Juan Williams and he suggested looking into NPR after that incident back in the fall," O'Keefe told CNN's Brian Todd on Tuesday. "My other colleague, Simon Templar, came up with the idea to have a Muslim angle since Juan Williams was fired due to his comments. So we decided to see if there was a greater truth or hidden truth amongst these reporters and journalists and executives."
Williams has since been hired full-time by Fox News.
O'Keefe gained notoriety for posing as a pimp and secretly taping damaging conversations with employees at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN). He was also involved in a failed plot to embarrass a CNN correspondent on hidden camera.
Ron Schiller and another NPR executive are shown on the video having lunch with potential NPR donors, who were really working for O'Keefe undercover. In the video, they pose as representatives of a Muslim organization considering making a $5 million donation to NPR.
"Tea Party people" aren't "just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic," Ron Schiller says on the recording. "I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."
He went on to say, "The Tea Party is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian. I wouldn't even call it Christian. It's this weird evangelical kind of move."
In the video, Ron Schiller says that NPR, which is partially funded by government money, would be "better off without federal funding."
"The problem is that if we lost it now, a lot of stations would go dark," he said.
Late Tuesday evening, Ron Schiller issued an apology through NPR.
"While the meeting I participated in turned out to be a ruse, I made statements during the course of the meeting that are counter to NPR's values and also not reflective of my own beliefs," Schiller said in a statement. "I offer my sincere apology to those I offended. I resigned from NPR, previously effective May 6, to accept another job. In an effort to put this unfortunate matter behind us, NPR and I have agreed that my resignation is effective today."
NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm on Tuesday condemned Ron Schiller's remarks, saying they "are contrary to everything we stand for ... and we completely disavow the views expressed."
"NPR is fair and open minded about the people we cover," Rehm said. "Our reporting reflects those values every single day -- in the civility of our programming, the range of opinions we reflect and the diversity of stories we tell."
Rehm also decried Ron Schiller's statement that NPR would be "better off without federal funding," saying it "does not reflect reality. The elimination of federal funding would significantly damage public broadcasting as a whole."
Schiller's resignation comes a day after Ron Schiller, NPR's former senior vice president for fundraising, was shown in an undercover video calling the Tea Party "racist" and "scary" and questioning whether NPR needs federal funding. Ron Schiller, no relation to Vivian Schiller, issued an apology Tuesday night and said his already-announced resignation would be effective immediately.
Dave Edwards, chairman of NPR's board of directors, said in a statement on the NPR website that the board accepted Vivian Schiller's resignation "with understanding, genuine regret and great respect for her leadership of NPR these past two years."
Edwards said he recognizes "the magnitude of this news -- and that it comes on top of what has been a traumatic period for NPR and the larger public radio community. The board is committed to supporting NPR through this interim period and has confidence in NPR's leadership team."
Joyce Slocum, NPR's senior vice president of legal affairs and general counsel, was appointed as interim CEO under a succession plan the board adopted in 2009, Edwards' statement said. The board will establish a committee "that will develop a timeframe and process for the recruitment and selection of new leadership," he said.
Edwards credited Vivian Schiller with bringing "vision and energy" to NPR and leading it back from "the enormous economic challenges of the previous two years. She was passionately committed to NPR's mission and to stations and NPR working collaboratively as a local-national news network."
NPR spokeswoman Anna Christopher said she could not confirm reports that Vivian Schiller was forced out.
Filmmaker James O'Keefe said Tuesday the video featuring Ron Schiller was part of a sting operation. He said the idea stemmed from an incident in October when NPR fired analyst Juan Williams after Williams said he got scared when people wore Muslim garb on airplanes.
"My colleague Shaughn Adeleye who posed as one of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood was pretty offended with what happened with Juan Williams and he suggested looking into NPR after that incident back in the fall," O'Keefe told CNN's Brian Todd on Tuesday. "My other colleague, Simon Templar, came up with the idea to have a Muslim angle since Juan Williams was fired due to his comments. So we decided to see if there was a greater truth or hidden truth amongst these reporters and journalists and executives."
Williams has since been hired full-time by Fox News.
O'Keefe gained notoriety for posing as a pimp and secretly taping damaging conversations with employees at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN). He was also involved in a failed plot to embarrass a CNN correspondent on hidden camera.
Ron Schiller and another NPR executive are shown on the video having lunch with potential NPR donors, who were really working for O'Keefe undercover. In the video, they pose as representatives of a Muslim organization considering making a $5 million donation to NPR.
"Tea Party people" aren't "just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic," Ron Schiller says on the recording. "I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."
He went on to say, "The Tea Party is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian. I wouldn't even call it Christian. It's this weird evangelical kind of move."
In the video, Ron Schiller says that NPR, which is partially funded by government money, would be "better off without federal funding."
"The problem is that if we lost it now, a lot of stations would go dark," he said.
Late Tuesday evening, Ron Schiller issued an apology through NPR.
"While the meeting I participated in turned out to be a ruse, I made statements during the course of the meeting that are counter to NPR's values and also not reflective of my own beliefs," Schiller said in a statement. "I offer my sincere apology to those I offended. I resigned from NPR, previously effective May 6, to accept another job. In an effort to put this unfortunate matter behind us, NPR and I have agreed that my resignation is effective today."
NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm on Tuesday condemned Ron Schiller's remarks, saying they "are contrary to everything we stand for ... and we completely disavow the views expressed."
"NPR is fair and open minded about the people we cover," Rehm said. "Our reporting reflects those values every single day -- in the civility of our programming, the range of opinions we reflect and the diversity of stories we tell."
Rehm also decried Ron Schiller's statement that NPR would be "better off without federal funding," saying it "does not reflect reality. The elimination of federal funding would significantly damage public broadcasting as a whole."
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