Media commentary

The New York Daily News “Bloodbath”

Clickford, Steven M.

In New York media today, a massive layoff at the New York Daily News has rivaled as mass layoff, putting the torturous   “Massacre of 1996” that took 6 anchors off a job from the newscast at WCBS-TV (of which one of the papers called it the said title at that time) to put shame very lightly. It’s much worse.

Channel 2’s loss 20+ years ago is pure child’s play. And in fact, this may impact the Daily News in almost a similar PR crisis, unlike local TV, you can beat the odds of bad TV ratings 10 years is not something a newspaper in the 2010s can do, especially in a different business climate.  Over 40 newsroom employees got the boot, most in the sports unit and photogs that got a notice today, as the paper was sold to Tronic last fall, (aka the Chicago Tribune company… for all intensive purposes, I’m going to just call it Tribune because I feel every time I mention it, I have to pay Disney or somebody for mentioning part of a movie of yesteryear.)

When I saw Tronic trending, I was surprised to see the Daily News in the same graph. I didn’t know they were sold. According to The New York Times, it was actually sold for a $1 by Mort Zuckerman, the former owner.

Some of these people are critical for a news operation, such as assignment editors and sports writers, of which now New York Yankees stories may very well come from a blog or a wire service going to a “local” “hometown team” paper. Even worse, the Bronx Bombers are in Tampa Bay and the writer has been relieved of his duties prior to coming back home to the Five Boroughs.

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The Lack of General News Coverage

Clickford, Steven M.

The sudden death of designer Kate Spade was basically non existent amongst most of the media except for the breaking news nature when the story started to peculate around 12:00 ET yesterday when a call to the NYPD by her housekeeper found her dead with a note nearby. Early and late reports are classifying this as an “apparent” suicide.

There has not been much follow up on the national media (I didn’t check the “breakfast TV” shows), the Fox News Chanel, CNN, CNBC, did not have this as a lead. The local New York TV stations had this on their lead, but not even their all newsradio station had no blurb online.

Online it was worse, it took me from heading home from Nashua, half way through the ride before I found a story on foxnews.com vis-a-vis an article that combined other sudden deaths.

The stories of yesterday, the alleged sudden cancelation of the Philadelphia Eagles’ trip to the White House, and Presidant Trump replacing the ceremony to honor our country; lingering legal scandals in the White House, CNN on fire for releasing a story that had to be retracted (via Fox News); CNBC having other stories focusing on President Trump’s political dramas, etc.

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Review of the Art and Ethics of TV Manipulation at the NH Telephone Museum

Clickford, Steven M.

So six months has gone by, and one of my drafts was a review of the New Hampshire Telephone Museum’s “Forth Phriday” event from last year. The wonderful people at the NHTM, Laura, Graham and Paul had speakers come in on the forth Friday of the summer months. The first one was from the infamous E9-1-1 department, and the last one was some guy out west in my state, and spoke for nearly an hour about the ethics of TV editing and manipulation.

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Howie Carr – Once a Funny Man

Clickford, Steven M.

Howie Carr, has been a legend in Boston media for longer than I have been alive. Depending on your cultural tolerance or political views, you love him or you wished Whitey Bulger’s accomplices got the right house address in Somerville with that basketball with some “See Fouahh” that should’ve gone four houses up not down. Kidding aside, Howie has really past his prime. Men in media tend to have a shelf life. If you watch men for looks and alleged credibility, they’ll age like fine wine, but sometimes their brains do not age well. Anger ensues, and they become a turnoff. If you want some fairness, Dan Kennedy from WGBH has really fallen off the rails in terms of intellectual stability where he’s been so bitter and on the Beat The Press’  “Rants and Raves” tends to be on the former more and more. And he’s a liberal.

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7 Years Ago This Holiday – Steve Jobs’ Attempt for a Holiday News Dump

Clickford, Steven M.

For politicians, if you don’t want to be on the news, you dump unpopular stories on a Friday in the summer. If you want to expose a story, you do it on a Monday or Tuesday morning.

If you don’t want to freak out investors, disclose your story on a bank holiday. In the U.S. Martin Luther King Day occurs on the 3rd Monday every January. Steve Jobs who was getting very ill, thought his PR folks at Apple dump the story that morning, and no one will notice since most Wall Streeters are not in the trading floor – even for a holiday.

Most of the cable business channels, CNBC and Bloomberg do not have staff who come in, except for European closes when there is major events that break. But in recent years, they just run whatever is set on the playout servers.

Fox Business Network, whether they had that year or did since the start, would be on every bank holiday. Even a holy day like Good Friday. FBN was on a regular scheduled Business Day programming with a ticker with Friday’s quotes and live bugs that were of the futures. The story was  Steve Jobs’ leave of absence, and if memory serves, he resigned from Apple in August and passed in October of that year.

The most ironic thing was CNBC and Bloomberg did not touch the story on cable. Their sites had the story, but not one reporter could do a live phoner with a still graphic or have someone come in and do a live shot or what. Since technology and business do go hand and hand, this was a major breaking news story in this realm. The established cable business news channels were MIA. No person did not want to be bothered at CNBC to go into Englewood Cliffs and do a five minute breakin, or Bloomberg for that matter. Bloomberg West I believe came on the air just before or after that time, though did some live program out west I believe by 6:00 Eastern. CNBC by late afternoon ET did ran a crawl of this earth shattering headline in the business world but had limited information prior to. Meanwhile FBN owned this story throughout the day and into the evening, and repeated that story every hour. I remember my mother was ether sick or got snowed in and we learned the news when Don Imus’ then show was on that network since FBN in those days had better news coverage in business.

You wouldn’t think that after a significant member of technology and business made news and a scrappy network on 1211 6th Ave would own the story, that they would have plans in the future. FBN was still a ratings challenged network for the time, but they made major improvements as time went on.

I would bet this story made them look really decent because of their continued business news despite a holiday. And today the tag had the annual “While CNBC is on reruns, we’re open for business!”

Steve Jobs was the winner for choosing to be low key, however he was naive that FBN was the domestic news agency that would ran with the story – the same day – making him not run away of burying a material news story, while the established CNBC was the looser.

Steve Jobs was a man who did transform the world’s technology and Apple was always a popular news story amongst the technical and business press, and on cable news. While I don’t think what he did was wrong, what was wrong was how the competing cable channels just was unable respond – on a holiday mostly for financial workers, and schools and government.

The egg was on CNBC’s face for sure!

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