Left In Lowell

Well, I’m back of sorts, with some of my projects (and the holidays) behind me, and lo and behold, all sorts of juicy controversy happened in my absence. Nothing like getting your outrage on to bring you back to blogging.

Yes, my blood pressure boiled a bit reading about the stupidity from the editor in charge of the Lowell Sun. How can someone with so much responsibility be so childish? Honestly. It’s like we’re living in kindergarten in this town sometimes.

Besides the well-known facts that Mr. Campanini has a fairly poor grasp of general logic, as well as a writing style that is like fingers on a chalkboard (and not in a good way), we also get the curtain pulled back once again to reveal the ethics problems of said leader of the local paper-of-record, when Howe revealed that just a week prior to Campy’s Rant, Dick had turned down advertising in the Sun’s little Obama special. Little minds think small, I guess, and the vindictive nature of Mr. Campanini never fails to surprise me, even though I know it’s bound to come.

I thought it would be fun to post my responses to many of the silly things that Campanini wrote in the Lowell Sun regarding newspapers and their future. It was a hilarious romp through the mind of someone who just doesn’t like bloggers, and thinks we all should crawl back to the cave from which we emerged. I’m not above snark and satire to prove a point, and anyway, Campanini started it…so…away we go!

First, the title.

Believe in newspapers

Clap harder! Every time someone says they don’t believe in newspapers, a newspaper falls down dead.

The fact is newspapers do a great job covering themselves, and making full disclosure on declining profits and job losses often paints a skewed picture in the minds of the misinformed.

I can’t even write a straight sentence, I’m laughing so hard…newspapers do a great job covering themselves? Are you kidding? What about Campanini’s conflict of interest in owning horses and spending so much ink writing about horse racing? Never saw that mea culpa in print…or the one where he’s BFF’s with a former CM of which the editor still can’t get over the loss?

Anyway, there’s one shining little fact that is correct, though Campy doesn’t bother actually spelling it out right for the reader so they can understand, of course…prior to the heavy media consolidation of the last two decades, newspapers enjoyed high profitability - higher than most industries. When they were bought by conglomerates with shareholders, however, any drop in that profitability - even if it was bringing that profit in line with any other business - caused the stock prices to drop, which in turn caused the panic cuts we see at many papers, which causes a drop in quality, which in turn causes a drop in profitability…and so on. The smaller papers, however, especially ones not part of big chains, are doing okay. So give Campy his due here, though I wonder if he really understands what that all means.

The real news is this: Fifty-four million Americans — more than one-sixth of the population — read a daily newspaper.

Waitaminute…there’s lies, damned lies, and statistics, right? One-sixth translates to about…16%. If only 16% of people drove cars, for instance, that would be an epic fail right there. Just sayin’. And since that number appears to be declining, it’s not a good thing.

Bitter local bloggers, including an elected official whose family lives at the public trough, are rooting for The Sun’s demise.

Wait, is he talking about Dick Howe, or Bernie Lynch (not elected, but definitely “official”)? Or maybe Methuen Mayor Bill Manzi? I mean, how are we to know now that so many elected officials have blogs these days?

But obviously, he was attacking Dick Howe, and of course, 100% unfairly as is his wont. Let’s explore word for word, shall we? Starting with “bitter.” What in tarnation does Mr. Howe have to be bitter about? One wonders if Mr. Campanini is projecting, here. After all, with all the astounding circulation that the Sun has (more on that later), what does Campy care what Dick Howe says, in any respect, about his paper? Or maybe he thinks Dick Howe is jealous? Heh.

“Local bloggers.” Hmm, wonder if we here at Left in Lowell are bitter too? I honestly don’t feel bitter. Just annoyed that words and feelings are being attributed to me and my fellow bloggers. Oh, and maybe a touch of pity for the pity party Campanini seems to want to throw…

Now for “whose family lives at the public trough.” This is, of course, a standard attack pattern for deriding any public official. Not very imaginative of Campanini! Through no fault of Campy’s clumsy pen, this standard phrase also very subtly implies that, of course, Howe and his family don’t deserve to be paid with public funds…that the job he does is either extraneous, or else corrupt, or under some other derogatory cloud. Last I checked, not only does Dick enjoy his job, but does it well. Funny, Campy declines to name said public official, leaving the reader to figure it out if they can. Is that because actually using Dick Howe’s name would get Campy laughed out of the lower locks?

And he calls us “bitter”?

And finally, “rooting for The Sun’s demise.” Hilarious. Not once on any of our blogs has any of us said this, but since reading comprehension isn’t on Campy’s list of talents, he apparently missed it. What we’ve said is that we want a better Sun, a well-run Sun, a Sun that abounds in journalistic excellence, but certainly, not its demise. In fact, all blogs across the country, local and national, whether in a friendly rivalry, or a dead-on competition with their local paper or the media…all admit that without “regular” journalism, ie paid journalism, our democracy would be deader than dead.

This blog and others have praised good work at the Lowell Sun as often as it’s appeared - and it’s appeared often. The reporters at the paper deserve all the kudos and back-pats they can get for working under such horrific conditions. Is the Sun exemplary most of the time? Not on your life, particularly in the lack of context and coverage of the real stories in the 2007 City Council and School Committee races. But that’s about the leadership at the Sun, not the hard working reporters.

Now, I am going to admit something publicly that I have not before, though it can be seen in the context of many of my critical Sun posts…I am actually rooting for something. I am rooting that Campanini gets gone (fired or leaving, I could care less) and we receive better, more fact-obsessed journalistic leadership at the Lowell Sun someday. It is a (not so secret) burning dream of mine.

Let’s see…what else can we tear apart…he goes into a overly-flowery speech about the newspaper industry…using such clichéd words as “storied,” “glory,” “renaissance”…I especially love the grammar of this sentence: “Likewise, the newspaper industry is evolving to new reading habits.” You evolve to new habits? I never knew. I thought you developed them.

And so on and so forth…*yawn*

Ah yes, here we are again, damned statistics.

Daily, The Sun sells 46,000 newspapers. On Sunday we sell over 52,000. Our Web site reaches another 26,000 readers daily, on average.

All right, let’s digest this, shall we? This’ll be fun! Let’s say there’s zero overlap in the 46,000 daily subscribers (that’s incredibly generous of me), that the 26,000 is a unique hits a day number (which is not indicated, and if I were a rank cheerleader like Campy, I’d include the total hits, not the unique hits, to pump up my numbers, so this could be very generous too). That’s a total of 72,000 readers. Of course, of that 26,000 hits on the website, lots of them are not people, but search engine and other ‘bots, so this is heavily inflated. Keep that in mind.

You can easily say that the Sun covers and circulates in the Greater Lowell area, Billerica, Lowell, Chelmsford, Dracut, Tewksbury, Tyngsborough, Westford. The total population of all these together (as of the 2000 census) is 238,403. So, if the Lowell Sun readers were only from these towns, that’d be 30% of readers. That would be impressive, except the coverage and selling range of the Sun is much further than that. Let’s be real generous and exclude Lawrence, Andover and Methuen. So we’ll include Groton, Pepperell, Carlisle, Ayer, Dunstable, Townsend, Fitchburg, Lunenburg, Harvard, Bolton, Leominster, and Clinton. The total population of all of the above is 396,696. We’re now down to 18% of these towns, on average, reading the Sun in some form, online or print.

Now, let’s go back to the numbers of readers…72,000 is way too generous, because the 26,000 number does not include just individual eyeballs. At least a quarter (usually much higher) of these hits are from search engines, aggregators, and other forms of information collection that are not actual people. Down to 66,000 readers. (I also wonder about the 46,000 print readers; for instance, does the Sun include the papers it often gives away or discounts at such places as train stations as “sold” papers? That is not specified.) Another, perhaps, one-sixth could be print readers checking the website online as well. Let’s be generous and say 1/8th instead. Rounding up, that’s around 58,000 “unique” readers. This knocks us down to 14% of the local area of circulation actually reading the Lowell Sun (print and online).

What all this number crunching bologna amounts to is that numbers sound impressive when you put them one way, not so much when you spell it out another way. I think it’s funny that the Sun brags about a 46,000 print circulation. That doesn’t sound inspiring to me.

So then in the editorial, Campanini goes on to kiss the ass…er, praise his boss, Dean Singleton, at the Big Conglomerate in the Sky (aka Colorado) and tout Singleton’s optimism about the future of their 56 dailies. Except for this tidbit from “bitter and gleeful” Dick Howe writing about MediaNews Group:

Earlier this month, Moody’s Investors Services downgraded almost $1 billion of the debt of the parent company of the Lowell Sun from B3 to Caa3. According to Moody’s, MediaNews Group (the owner of the Sun) has a “heightened probability of default” on these loans.

“Heightened probability of default.” Oops… But there’s more! The company went back to its unions at the Denver papers and asked, then demanded, that they reopen negotiations and slash $20M from wages and benefits. Then, Dick links and quotes a memo sent to all MediaNews employees that all company 401K contributions are suspended in 2009.

By the way, since papers are soooo good at covering themselves, is the Sun going to print this information about their parent company?

Now, none of us bloggers is actually gleeful about this. There are some great reporters and employees at this paper and others facing cutbacks or layoffs, and I for one do not want see one more reporter leave the Sun. The paper’s thin and pathetic enough as is.

However, I have advice for Singleton - I can tell you how to increase the revenue of Lowell Sun instantly! I guarantee most of the people I know would immediately take out a full paper subscription (myself included!) if you fired Mr. “Ethically-Challenged” Campanini and hired yourself a real editor in his stead. Preferably one that can actually write and edit. Given the climate of today’s economy and the newspaper industry, I’m certain you can find many more qualified people willing to take the helm.