On Monday my Gmail/Gchat was aflutter with these kinds of messages: "Did you hear?" "Good thing you got out in time!" "Are you a soothsayer?" Everyone was referring, of course, to the Tribune Company having just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Most of you know that Tribune will go down in my life history as my first full-time employer. I was a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times' California section before I quit and hightailed it to San Francisco for a career in the Internet/new media realm this past April.
I wish I could say that news of the nation's second-largest newspaper company's bankruptcy came as at least something of a surprise. The truth of the matter, though, is that it was exceedingly obvious even from the get-go, and before this economic meltdown, that things were not going well and weren't going to get any better any time soon.
For starters, my job interview last spring coincided with the first of what became a regular string of layoffs and forced early retirements over the past year and a half. During my time in the Times' newsroom, I saw a new publisher come on (only to leave soon after I did), the editor-in-chief dismissed, another take over, and Sam Zell take over the parent company. Oh yeah, and my workspace was whored out for weeks to a Hollywood shoot populated by Robert Downey, Jr., Catherine Keener, and Jamie Foxx (watch for my cameo "performance" when the film releases). Clearly, we were very, very strapped for cash.
Despite all these clear signs of trouble for the company and the newspaper, it wasn't easy to hand in my resignation. Ever since high school, my dream was to be a newspaper reporter. Countless internships, fellowships, freelance stringing gigs, and even an entire "active citizenship in journalism" volunteer project I started and coordinated during my college years made applying for the few open staff positions at the most respected papers in the country not completely out of reach. When I was offered the LAT gig a month before graduating, I didn't think twice about leaving my East Coast life behind for a city I'd only ever been to once, for the job interview.
The people I worked with in that newsroom are certainly the smartest, bravest, and best writers and editors I know. Every day I was there, I was aware of the heavy degree of intellect and professionalism that defined the career of a newspaper journalist and editor. It is because of the people I worked with and for there that it was hard to make the decision to leave years before my time was up.
In my bio on this site, it says that while at the Times, I "realized that old-school media is, indeed, old." That was the ultimate problem. As a child of the computer age, I didn't ever—not once—in my entire time I was there, read the paper in broadsheet form. It seemed anachronistic to care whether my story was on the front page because I never held it in my hands. What I did care about was why my story wouldn't go live on the site immediately even when it had gone through the editing and fact-checking process. Why are we waiting for the morning edition? I asked myself many, many times. Several other times, my art-heavy story would go online without the photographs, making the entire story essentially meaningless to the online reader. The last story I worked on (which was ultimately rewritten by another reporter) was one of the first to involve original video production. Toward the end of my short-lived tenure there, news blogs started to come to fruition. They weren't great ones, but they were a start. There was talk of moving the online department to the same floor as the newsroom—a simple, very good idea. But they weren't there yet (though that may have changed by now). During the California wildfire season, the Times' website was the place to get breaking news, at all times of the day. Episodes like those showed we had it in us, just not full-time.
The dissonance between the incredible journalism the LAT produces and the reality of the "first draft of history" that takes place online is ultimately what felt so old-school about an otherwise incredible, storied institution of respected journalism.
The good news, of course, is that filing for bankruptcy may take the LAT and the Chicago Tribune to where they have to go in terms of new media—mostly because they have no other choice. The Washington Post and New York Times have been headed in that direction far longer than they have, so speedy catch-up is necessary for these incredible bastions of journalism to stay relevant and, of course, economically viable.
It's because I know what the people behind the Los Angeles Times are capable of that reading the news of Tribune's bankruptcy felt so bittersweet. I can't wait to see what good will come of this, because it will, indeed, be good. The bailout necessary in newspaper journalism is not economic, it's paradigmatic. And that bailout just arrived—in Chapter 11 wrapping paper.
-- Daniela Perdomo
"We must patiently explain why taxing or regulating noble things (like work, saving, and entrepreneurial risk-taking) means you’ll get less of what makes America great and why subsidizing other things (like idleness and single parenthood) means you’ll get more of the destructive behaviors that ultimately will drag us down."
— An excerpt from a piece in the National Review by the vice president of government relations for the Heritage Foundation.
What struck me most as I read Franc's piece on the National Review's website, was how much of his prose could be turned around and used to make arguments that nullify his own.
For example, he writes: "All policy battles on Capitol Hill require an adult to temper the animal spirits and childishness that so often induce lawmakers to enact irrational and damaging laws." According to Franc, this "childishness" applies to people who believe in income taxes and providing temporary sustenance to those who can't find work. I can earnestly say the exact same thing about somebody who believes that single parenthood corrupts society and spreading wealth and opportunity destroys it. Further, I can't hesitate to call laws that tax the poorest people at the same rate as the richest or that make inheritances immune to taxation "irrational and damaging."
In a way, I could even write something like this, though in a less pompous tone: "We must demonstrate that, so long as our alternatives are grounded in a proper appreciation and understanding of human nature and demand the best from our citizens, Americans will rise to the challenges ahead." The difference, of course, would be that my understanding of human nature is completely different from his, because I don't frame my view of my fellow citizens in a binary, hard-coded moral spectrum.
Therein lies the problem with an argument like Franc's: It frames every policy discussion—including this economic debate over taxes and subsidies—in terms of moral inequalities, instead of in terms of structural inequalities. The fact of the matter is that issues like poverty, crime, and unemployment are the result of structural differences, not moral differences. One cannot vilify the poor, simultaneously lionize the rich, and expect the less fortunate to believe and fight for that old American Dream. Forgive me the Marxist tone, but this type of inequality in power and reward, quite obviously, leads to more of the same, more of the same.
The way I see it, Mr. Franc, the most "destructive behavior that ultimately will drag us down" is continuing to define our structural problems as moral problems. To continue to do so seems, frankly, immoral.
-- Daniela Perdomo
Surely I am not the only one who has been recently barraged with Chevron's "I will" PR campaign, right?
I come home from work, open the New Yorker (above), and it's there. My friend goes to an independent café near our place in San Francisco's Mission District, and her latté is delivered in a "Human energy" coffee sleeve. I see ads on decidedly lefty websites.
The "human energy" campaign isn't new—it's been around since September last year, but the "Will you join us?" ads are only about a month old. I hardly believe that the new influx of Chevron ads is a coincidence, especially here in San Francisco, where the completely under-publicized Bowoto v. Chevron Corp. case started a few weeks ago at the Supreme Court of California. (Full disclosure: My roommate is a lawyer in the case. Guess which side.)
It's a landmark human rights case. Earth Rights International—one of the non-profit organizations representing the plaintiffs in the case—describes their case succintly:
"Chevron was complicit in gross human rights abuses committed against [Nigerian] villagers who peacefully protested environmental abuses and other harm caused by Chevron's oil production activities. The protest took place at a Chevron drilling platform. Chevron paid and ferried members of the notorious Nigerian military and 'kill and go' mobile police to the platform in Chevron-leased helicopters and Chevron personnel supervised the operation. Two protesters were shot and killed in the brutal attack – including one who was shot in the back - and others were injured."
You might wonder why I'm bringing this up seeing as how this is not the first time a corporation has tried to cover up its spotted past with a friendly publicity push. (In fact, it's definitely not the first time for Chevron.) See, for example, BP's "Beyond Petroleum" roll-out, or ExxonMobil's new "Fuels Marketing" ad (which features The Postal Service's music). I'm sure there are other clever power/energy puns I've missed.
I'm writing this post because I'm perturbed by the fact that there hasn't been a single word in the media—mainstream or otherwise—about this new campaign coinciding with the start of this trial. It's not like the trial is a secret. Yet despite this, I personally know a New York magazine reporter who was sent to write about the "cool, new" Chevron campaign this month and didn't even know about the trial! Talk about wool over the eyes.
Earlier this week, fellow Whyrooter Nathan and I discussed the socially responsible trend in corporate America. I said that if there was any corporate trend I could stand behind, it was one where for profit ventures are forced to be of true benefit to greater society. (Nathan argued that they need only be regulated more stringently, and I replied that what we were saying need not be mutually exclusive.)
This new Chevron "I will" ad campaign is part of this corporate social responsibility trend, but its timing is clearly an attempt to pre-emptively deal with a potentially heinous PR situation when the trial ends later this month. They ought to be called out on it.
-- Daniela Perdomo
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