The management shakeup at Sun-Times Media Group Inc. continued Wednesday, as the Chicago newspaper publishing company’s newly installed board tapped one of the company’s directors to serve as chairman and interim chief executive officer.
The new chairman is Jeremy Halbreich, former general manager of the Dallas Morning News and one of three directors elected last month when a dissident shareholder’s successful proxy fight ousted all but one of Sun-Times Media’s sitting directors. As chairman, Halbreich succeeds Raymond Seitz, who lost his seat in January in the proxy fight.
Halbreich founded American Consolidated Media roughly 10 years ago after he left the Dallas Morning News. The newspaper group grew and was sold to Macquarie Media Group (for $80 million) a few months before I left the Waxahachie Daily Light (an ACM owned paper).
With the money and backing of the Australian Macquarie Media Group Halbreich told the Dallas Business Journal that “ACM has grown into the fifth-largest community newspaper group in the U.S.”
Halbreich remained as CEO of American Consolidated until August 2008 when he stepped down and Liam Stewart, an ACM asset manager, was appointed interim CEO.
“Now that the planned acquisition and expansion phase of ACM is complete, it is an appropriate time for me to step down from full-time responsibilities,” Halbreich said at the time of his resignation.
Some have suggested that the Macquarie Media Group purposely purchased up many of the smaller-town newspapers along I-35 in order to help control the local media as it relates to the Trans-Texas Corridor (aka the suggested Mexico to Canada toll road). Macquarie Bank (MMG’s parent company) is heavily invested in toll projects around the US and many expect them to play a roll in many future projects as well.
After Mike and I have talked this week about the future of print media (newspapers in particular) we began thinking about the future and how our company can succeed.
He had an interesting meeting with a client who pretty much told him, they (as well as others in their industry) don’t even consider newspapers a valid place to advertise in their market.
“I don’t read. And neither do our customers. If we want information we watch it on the news or grab it off the internet.”
So in an effort to re-focus some things, I’ve refocused myself on the paper’s website today and tonight.
I’ve been piecing together a hopefully decent database driven site.
I was able to post the entire A section of our paper online in approx. 12 minutes today, where I was spending 30-45 for the same amount of news in Belton.
It’s not quite where I want it yet — but the times are a changing.
Apparently a week or so ago, “my best friend” Shawn Michaels was interviewed before his match with WWE Superstar Edge (Adam Copeland). The brilliant journalist apparently mixed up The Edge of U2 with Edge of WWE. Way to go.
MARIA: Shawn Michaels, tonight you’re facing The Edge. Do you think you can win?
SHAWN: I’ll tell you what, Maria, I — did you just call him The Edge?
MARIA: [nods proudly]
SHAWN: …okay. You asked me if you thought I could win too, didn’tcha?
MARIA: [nods proudly]
SHAWN: I dunno, I guess now that I think about it, yeah! Yeah, I do think I can win. Especially after last week. You know something, Shelton Benjamin I have to admit gave me a run for my money last week. Shelton Benjamin, you are the finest piece of young talent that I have faced in this industry in the last 20 years, and you my friend have an incredibly bright future. Now that notwithstanding, someone’s future who is not looking so bright is … [points at Maria] The Edge! Haha! The name problems aside, he’s facing the Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels.
Quality journalism there.
We had a discussion today in our office (however brief it was) about problems in journalism reporting.
This Monday, Newsweek magazine reported that a story that ran on May 9 was inaccurate. Now, an error in a news story is not that shocking, but the results of mistake is where the horror comes in.
The Newsweek article reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personal at a Cuba detention center had flushed the Koran down the toilet as a means to get al-Queda and Taliban operatives to talk.
While it may seem harmless, 16 people were killed and more than 100 were injured in Afghanistan when angry protests were sparked from the report.
Desecration of the Koran is punishable by death in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and The Arab League have all condemned the report.
Now Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker said he regretted that any part of the story was wrong.
“We extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst,” Whitaker wrote in the Monday, May 16 issue.
The magazine said that the information had come from a “knowledgeable government source.” Only now the source said he could not be certain he had seen the account of the Koran incident.
What does it say about our media, when we’re so pressed to get a news story that we find one “knowledgeable government source” to base an entire story on? What happened to being “democracy’s guardian angel?â€
For some reason, “find at least three sources for every story” still echoes in my head from my journalism classes.
Where have we, as the media, gone wrong?
Where did we cross the line that having an exclusive or keeping advertisers happy became the standard?
Why are we as a country more concerned with who testifies in Michael Jackson’s case or Kobe Bryant’s case, than the continent of Africa going up in flames with an AIDS crisis?
When did covering a congressional hearing on steroid abuse become more important than covering the thousands of lives that have been lost to civil war in the Darfur region?
Recent reports confirm that up to 400,000 people have died in Darfur as a result of the government-sponsored genocide. The New York Times reported recently that President Bush has actually asked Congress to delete provisions about Darfur from upcoming legislation.
Yet while this genocide continues to go on, the top stories online are, “Abu Ghraib abuser sentenced to six months prison” and “British lawmakers ask Congress to back off.”
According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, “News is the reporting of current events usually by local, regional or mass media in the form of newspapers, television and radio programs, or sites on the World Wide Web. News reporting is a type of journalism, typically written or broadcast in news style. Most news is investigated and presented by journalists (or reporters) and often distributed via news agencies. If the content of news is significant enough, it eventually becomes history.
“To be considered news, an event usually must have broad interest due to one or more news values:
Impact (how many people were, are or will be affected?)
Timeliness (did the event occur very recently?)
Revelation (is there significant new information, previously unknown?)
Proximity (was the event nearby geographically?)
Entertainment (does it make for a fun story?)
Oddity (was the event highly unusual?)
Celebrity (was anyone famous involved?)
“News coverage often includes the “five W’s and the H†— who, what, where, when, why, and how.â€
That last news value always upsets me.
So I think the real question is, who decides what the news is?
Does the public decide? With some of the phone calls and press releases I get, I have trouble believing sometimes the general public knows what news is. But granted, we are a hometown newspaper, where hometown events, however small, are important.
Maybe instead, managing editors and publishers who know the business side of the paper should decide what the news is.
Or maybe, we should leave it up to the wide-eyed, green journalism interns.
I don’t know for certain.
I don’t think anyone really knows. But we must keep the discussion open.
When the U.S.S. Maine was sunk in the late 1800’s, Stewart reports that the papers were more than willing to tell the story as they saw fit.
“The pairs blend of fiction, bigotry and jingoism became known as ‘Yellow Journalism,'” Stewart writes. “Later the term was shortened to ‘Journalism.'”
A free, honest and independent press is essential to democracy.
Without it, we might as well all take out lifetime subscriptions to the Thrifty Nickel.
“By removing the investigative aspect of investigative journalism, today’s modern media finally has the time to pursue the ultimate goal the founding fathers invisioned for news gathering organizations,†Stewart writes. “To raise the stock price of the media empire that owns them.â€
