The Herald's conflict of interest

The Herald's parent company, the Journal Register Co. is selling The Herald building to the Arete Development Co., a company that apparently has a downtown redevelopment agreement with the city, according to The Herald in this June 12 report. (I'm not certain if the agreement is final or just pending.)

The Herald reported on June 4 its plan to sell its building to Arete. Its report included this sentence:

Meanwhile, a plan released early this year hints the newspaper offices could be replaced by a six- to eight-story apartment building and a four-story building with retail and office space. Between them would be a semi-public garden.

What does the word hints mean in a news report?

In that same story, this is what the developer had to say about JRC's building sale:

“This is a strategic partnership. I’m very focused on finding a new space for The Herald that’s a part of the downtown plan,” said Michael Bailkin, chairman of Arete.

This isn’t a news story. It’s a press release, and that’s exactly where The Herald’s downtown development coverage is likely to head, now that it is in a “strategic partnership” with Arete. What does that hint at?

The Herald now has a conflict of interest in covering the downtown development story. It has to recognize it. Its reporters and editors have been put in a very difficult position. I don't know how the newspaper is going address it, but it can't ignore it.

In my view, The Herald has been effectively neutered as source of independent news on downtown development.

What about The Courant? I’ve given up on this newspaper. Is it capable of in-depth local reporting? It is caught in its own ownership swamp. The company is being run by bean counters. The parent company, the Tribune Co., is planning major cutbacks, according to The New York Times in a June 6 report.

It is the most disheartening thing in the world to see the newspaper industry unravel.

But I digress.

Regarding the Arete plan -- a list of obvious questions should include:

How does the city get out of the agreement and at what cost?

How will the city use its eminent domain power that is evidently (according The Herald report) part of the agreement? And over what area?

What does this plan obligate the city to?

What costs will the city incur? Will there be any surprise bonding measures?

What’s the time frame for deliverables?

The newspaper reports indicate a potential multi-million dollar benefit to the city if the development proceeds. That's all well and good. But I'd like to see a better understanding of the risks in these reports as well.

What happens if another developer comes along with a better plan for a particular parcel?

Also, I think the city should post on its Web site as much information about this development deal as possible. Closed-door negotiations? Interested residents should challenge any closed door meeting as well as request under the state's Freedom of Information laws access to as much of the information as they can get. Why accept 'no' without a fight? What has hurt New Britain the most is the lack of sunshine on its development deals. This information is going to come out sooner or later, and it will be much better if it can be examined now by sharp and interested minds in the community.

I did like this quote The Herald’s story about the city's agreement.

“This is the most important vote we’ve ever taken,” said Tony Cane, the commission’s secretary, just before the unanimous ruling. “I’ve seen so many plans fall flat. We’ve had projects come and go. We’ve had movie theaters torn down. This vote can make more empty parcels, or it can bring life back into downtown.”

Great quote. Mr. Cane has summarized the city's development history. What’s the follow-up story?

What's next for local journalism?

On the Journal Register Co. corporate Web site, there are slides from a presentation that the company made two years ago a financial meeting. One slide, on page 29, is titled "Proven Ability to Delever." The typo says it all about the attention the JRC gives to its editorial products.

The JRC’s stock price has fallen below the cost of a single copy of a newspaper and it now faces delisting from the New York Stock Exchange.

The JRC has hired an investment bank “as an adviser as it weighs restructuring,” reports the New York Times. (For more background see Editor & Publisher; JRC Q4 2007 earnings call transcript from Seeking Alpha; Debt Keeps Journal Register a Hold, Zacks.com via Yahoo Finance.

So that’s it.

The JRC is sinking under its debt and a management approach that emphasized cost-cutting over everything else.

What’s here to save?

Restructuring can lead to anything. If the JRC can get rid of some of its debt, find new investors and corporate management committed to typo-free excellence, then perhaps restructuring may help.

It may also lead to a sell-off of assets, something the JRC is already doing. It sold the Middletown Press building and is reportedly interested in selling The Herald’s downtown building. Perhaps The Herald will be sold as well and become independent again. One can only hope.

Where does this leave The Herald?

If The Herald can find new owners committed to local journalism, then anything is possible.

Why are newspapers important?

Call me old fashion, but I still think the role of reporters and editors is to be watchdogs – to ask difficult questions that help keep government honest.

If The Herald doesn't survive the JRC then what's left for New Britain? What options?

The Courant? Even if The Herald disappears, The Courant isn’t going to add more reporters to try to improve its coverage. It is no longer a locally owned regional newspaper. It’s a JRC in waiting.

The Record Journal in Meriden? This newspaper has fought off the JRC to stay independent. It has proven that independents can survive as long as they keep faith with their communities and turn out a good product. The newspaper surrounds New Britain with weekly newspapers, including The Berlin Citizen and The Plainville Citizen. These are good newspapers and expanding into New Britain is an obvious move.

It's possible that online only operations similar to the New Haven Independent will emerge. The Independent is professionally run publication that appears to be operating on start-up funds supplied by community groups. It's the type of emerging model that could work. The New Britain Community News is embryonic, but has potential to develop into an online focal point for community journalism.

Local blogs. Any person with the inclination can offer news about their street, neighborhood and even the city. It’s the sum total of these little efforts that can help keep government honest and engaged with its citizens. It’s this grassroots model that I think has potential of renewing journalism in New Britain.

Why doesn't The Herald engage readers?

A friend forwarded a link from the Hartford Business Journal about the Journal Register Co., which owns The Herald. It begins:

Dailies In Danger
JRC, parent company of New Haven Register, Connecticut Magazine, in financial crisis

By Sean O’Leary

Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer

Today

The finances of the Pennsylvania parent company of 75 Connecticut publications, including the New Haven Register and Connecticut Magazine, have hit an all-time low, prompting surprise newsroom layoffs and threatening the delisting of its stock.

The decline of the Journal Register Co.’s financial condition has been swift and steep. After earning $42.4 million in 2005, the company lost $9.7 million in 2006 and $130.1 million in 2007.

And its financial woes continue to worsen. Last month, the New York Stock Exchange halted floor trading of shares of JRC because they slipped below the exchange’s $1.05 per share floor-trading threshold. ….

The JRC's stock was trading below 60 cents today.

I have not been in touch with people at The Herald for many years, so I have no idea how this is impacting that newspaper if at all.

The JRC bought The Herald, Middletown Press, Bristol Press and a number of other Connecticut publications beginning in the early 1990s. The JRC’s strategy is fairly simple: Buy distressed independently owned newspapers located in close proximity to one another and through centralized management, combined advertising and cost cutting, make them profitable. For a time, it seemed to work.

The JRC’s stock price was over $20 just a few years ago. The company has grown aggressively in multiple states and took on a lot of debt. The JRC is under enormous pressure.

I want to make one observation that illustrates what's wrong with the JRC.

One of the most important things a publication must do today is build community with its readership. It is for that reason why most newspapers let readers comment on stories.

There is no obvious way to comment online in response to a story on The Herald’s web site. I suspect that Herald reporters and editors would like a Web site that is modern and interactive but they are obviously at the mercy of the JRC executive management.

But even on their own blogs, The Herald’s approach is confusing. The blog “Blog Central,” a sports blog, has set comment moderation, meaning that comments have to be approved by the blog author. The same is true for Talkn’ Sports. But “Lip Service” by Ken Lipshez doesn’t have the moderation requirement. Why are there different rules for these blogs?

And why just sports blogs? What’s up with that? Isn't anyone interested in blogging about local politics, land use, schools?

This inability of readers to comment on stories tells a lot about the JRC. If the executive management of this company was really interested in turning this company around, it would be moving aggressively to build an online community. But it is not even trying.

If the JRC's executive management doesn't have the drive to produce first-rate newspaper Web sites, then the future of this chain is not good.

Downtown is New Britain's new neighborhood

Downtown New Britain is no longer a "downtown," if that word means anything. But if it's no longer the city's commercial or business center, then what is it?

A little political history

Former Mayor Bill McNamara was a big booster of downtown so much so that it eventually became a political liability for him. When Don DeFronzo was running in 1989 for mayor he argued that city neighborhoods had been neglected at the expense of downtown.

McNamara had to focus on downtown. When he became mayor in the 1970s downtown was a dismal landscape of empty factory buildings, incomplete highways and a growing number of vacant storefronts. It was at its absolute worse.

But DeFronzo’s election wasn’t really about neighborhoods vs. downtown. It was about the thing the drives most elections in New Britain and that’s the fight for power among city Democrats. Nonetheless, the neighborhood theme probably helped DeFronzo. In 1989, as today, there was much anxiety about the city’s housing price decline.

1987 and 2007 real estate trends

In 1987 stock prices plunged, economic growth had slowed, and by 1989 residential property values were in steep decline. People were becoming anxious. (I can write from personal experience. I bought three-family that I lived at and owned jointly with some friends for $150,000 in 1987, probably the height of that housing bubble. By 1989 the price had declined below the mortgage amount to about $115,000 we estimated).

Fast forward to the present day, 2007. Housing prices have long zoomed past the 1980s highs but the country is skirting a recession, housing prices have stalled or are in decline and local foreclosures are probably on the rise. The city is going through a revaluation, which almost always shifts the tax burden to residential housing.

New Britain residents (and just about everywhere else) will be anxious, once again, about real estate prices, mortgage interest rates and taxes. But one issue unlikely to return is the idea that downtown is distinct from any other neighborhood.

Downtown New Britain is a neighborhood in a way it wasn't 20 years ago.

Downtown's most telling business

Have you noticed C-Town? C-Town may be the most important downtown business. It’s an urban grocery store. It serves, primarily, people living south of Main Street, down Glen Street and Arch. C-Town would not have opened this store – a pedestrian oriented store -- unless market studies had convinced it that there is a sufficient number of people living in that area to support it. That is very telling.

Grocery stores make urban areas livable, improve property values, and draw in other businesses. Urban neighborhoods are appealing because they allow people to easily walk to stores, entertainment and public transit. Downtown New Britain has all those things and there are signs of more to come.

The Rao Building redevelopment, which is also injecting new retail life into the adjacent Andrews building, is helping drive home the message that downtown New Britain is also a place to live.

The bus hub looks like a dangerous hangout

Downtown housing is likely to be occupied by single adults or couples who want to be in walking distance to essential services and stores. I also believe that, more and more, people will be interested in living without a car. (I just paid about $25 for 8 gallons of gas at the Sunoco near West Farms. What happens when gas hits $4 a gallon?)

Can you live without a car in downtown New Britain? It’s a question worth looking at because it could be a strong selling point for developing downtown. (Living without a car is not a radical idea. Many people choose to live without cars in metropolitan areas because of the cost of mass transit, including cab use, is less than the cost of car ownership and insurance. And then there are new services emerging, such as Zipcar and Flexcar, that leave cars parked on city streets for use by members on an hourly or daily rate.)

But state transportation officials don’t do enough to market mass transit as an alternative. The best I can say about Connecticut’s mass transit is that it exists to fill the need of people who truly depend on it but is not interested in encouraging people to use it as alternative to driving.

One thing New Britain should try to get the state to do is improve the downtown bus hub. The bus pick-up location at West Main and Main Streets is dismal and unattractive. It actually looks dangerous. It needs an extreme makeover to encourage new riders. One thing I would love to see are electronic signs forecasting bus arrival times.

Hartford's downtown disappeared as well

If people can be convinced that mass transit is an alternative to cars – or at least a strong supplement – it might encourage more downtown development and gentrification.

Downtown will be affordable. Single family home prices remain out of reach of many young adults. CCSU grads, in particular, may welcome the chance to buy an efficiency or one bedroom condo in downtown New Britain. Young adults will also bring some energy into the downtown neighborhood.

New Britain’s downtown will never be a commercial center again. Just look at Hartford's ongoing effort to create a new downtown. While the state spends millions to create a convention center, the most exciting development is happening in West Hartford. Hartford’s new downtown is West Hartford center.

But I can easily see New Britain’s downtown turning into a very attractive neighborhood catering to young people, singles, empty nesters and couples without children. Downtown New Britain isn't so much the place to be (the old city slogan), as it is a place to live. It has the potential to become an interesting and lively neighborhood.

The man who would have invented the Internet

There is a report in The Herald about CCSU students painting a mural of Elihu Burritt. I was surprised. Burritt is such an obscure figure today, and the students deserve credit for reminding others of his importance.

If there was ever a person born ahead of his time, it was Burritt.

Burritt was born in 1810 and taught himself some 30 languages. He was a genius who believed very strongly in the ability communicate -- the universal translator before Star Trek. He authored books, started newspapers, but what I especially admired was his Ocean Penny Postage campaign.

In 1865, when Burritt began his campaign for cheap postage, it cost 25 cents to mail a letter to Europe. That was a big sum of money. He believed that communication fostered understanding and ultimately peace.

If Burritt were around today, he would have understood immediately the implications of the Internet and would have, I have no doubt, been a big blogger.

The Recorder's Google heritage and CCSU

Type in "student newspaper, outrage," into the Google news search engine and up pops the Rocky Mountain Collegian, for colorful advice it recently offered the president. USA Today reports:

The paper acknowledges that the editorial was "immature, unnecessary and offensive," but says this piece "accomplished more than any other staff editorial we've written this year

The Collegian, reports the Coloradoan, is self-supporting and has lost $30,000 in advertising revenue since this editorial appeared. Its editor is under pressure to resign.

The other newspaper that pops up in the Google search is The Recorder, the CCSU student newspaper, for its recent news making cartoon. The higher education journal Diverse has a history of college newspaper cartoons of similar character, but pointedly says that The Recorder "set a new level for campus racism and sexism."

It's been a more than two decades since I was an editor of The Recorder. Some of the people I worked with at that newspaper became lifelong friends. The newspaper was hard work but we loved it. It was wonderful learning experience that helped me set a career direction.

A longtime friend as well as fellow editor at The Recorder alerted me to the recent controversy and I think our shared feeling was sadness.

The university president, Jack Miller, is understandably worried about university's image and is recommending steps for improving journalism at CCSU.

Miller is calling for a "full-time faculty member to serve in both a mentorship capacity with student publications and a teaching capacity." That's a great recommendation.

I could have used the help Miller is suggesting. The Recorder certainly needs this help today -- and not just because of the cartoon.

There is a lot to like about The Recorder. Remove some of its bad editorial decisions from the picture, and you can find professional and earnest news reporting. The print design, in the PDF copy I looked at, was very good. The Recorder's staff has some solid talent on it and you can tell that they are working hard.

But The Recorder is too married to print and isn't keeping up with the online shift. The Recorder’s Web site is several years behind the times and the newspaper's focus is on the weekly print product. To really provide training opportunities for its staff, The Recorder will have to offer online delivery with frequent updates, multimedia and tools for audience engagement.

Miller wants to see journalism offered as a major, which is another solid recommendation. Even though print newspaper jobs are in decline, new media jobs appear to be growing. (See this piece by Mark Glaser at MediaShift for insight) A journalist today needs content management skills, which includes an ability to work with html, Adobe Photoshop, film and sound editing tools, among other things. People with journalistic and technical skills are in demand.

Another good reason for journalism/new media training at CCSU is the rise of citizen media. Today, anyone can create a media outlet and more and more people are doing so. Sending graduates out into the world with new media communication skills is a noble goal for this university.

Miller outlined a number of actions related to cultural and diversity awareness raised by the cartoon and addressed by other writers, (Google news search, "CCSU, cartoon"). I want to focus here on issues related to the operation of The Recorder.

Miller is taking some actions that may hurt The Recorder. He wrote that the university won't advertise in The Recorder. But that move just illustrates another reason why The Recorder needs professional help: There's no advertising or very little in the printed publication or Web version.

Miller defends free speech but not The Recorder. He is urging "the Media Board and other existing oversight boards look further into making substantive, constructive changes in ameliorating the situation at the Recorder.” He doesn’t outline the range of possible actions. But Miller wants something done.

The Media Board has real power: It controls the money. And since The Recorder isn't making much effort to sell advertising, it's at this board's mercy.

Cutting off The Recorder from its funds doesn't kill free speech at CCSU. Perhaps I am wrong to even explore this, but I can see arguments that question the need for a student publication supported by the college. The first step, to stop advertising, has been taken. Critics can argue that anyone can set up a blog about CCSU at almost no cost. The Recorder’s opponents may argue that a print publication is no longer needed, and the best course for the university is to transition the campus to independent media outlets and remove a liability.

But cutting the newspaper's funding is a drastic step that punishes everyone at The Recorder. It will garner much opposition, change the character of the debate, and hurt Miller’s plans for a journalism program on many levels. The Recorder is a vital part of the campus. If its flaws, as its critics seem to suggest, represent larger problems on the campus, then all that is accomplished by hurting The Recorder is upending what can and should be a vehicle for fostering debate and free exchange for addressing campus problems. The question should be: How to improve The Recorder?

Many of The Recorder’s writers are doing good work and there is genuine effort to cover matters of interest on the campus. But The Recorder doesn’t have an effective editorial decision making process and it dearly needs one. It has already apologized, last spring, for one column and has followed it with a similarly grave mistake. The cartoon was offensive to the extreme.

It's going to take some time, many months, to hire a full-time faculty member who can also serve a mentor, as recommended by Miller. As an interim solution, CCSU can hire a consultant, one or two editors at local publications or some other person with professional experience to serve in a mentoring role and provide feedback and story critiques, and meet in person with the editors. An added benefit of this for the staff may be real insight into local journalism job market.

The Rocky Mountain Collegian's argument for its four-letter message to Bush is that it "accomplished more than any other staff editorial we've written this year." In other words, what the Collegian received was an awful lof of attention, especially because of its placement in the Google news search engine.

But the Collegian's editorial gets its velocity from the newspaper’s credibility and role in that college community, and not because its editorial contains fresh nuggets of wisdom. That is true for The Recorder as well. Had the editor published that cartoon on his personal blog nobody would have noticed. The blog world is full of this type of content and most of it is ignored.

I don't think the staff of The Recorder really realizes what it has or why the stakes have become so high. Everything it publishes appears in news search engines. There are many, many independent blogs and Web sites that would love that exposure but aren't included in news search engines. This also means that The Recorder is watched by news outlets. If it breaks a story, that report may get picked-up by other news organizations. Its reporters are making an impression on editors statewide and nationally.

The Recorder has an audience reach it didn’t have five years ago, so quickly has the world changed. But, consequently, The Recorder today is a student publication in name only. It is a news outlet with enormous power to shape perception about CCSU globally.

The university campus is no longer the sheltering place it once was. My mistakes at The Recorder didn’t follow me after graduation. Everything these students do is now part of their indelible Google heritage and Central's as well.

Will The Herald sell its building, too?

The news: The Herald's printing operations are being closed and moved by its parent, the Journal Register Co., to New Haven. The JRC owns the New Haven Register. The JRC, in its press release announcing this change, said The Herald will gain from improved printing facilities in New Haven. The company said it expects to save about $500,000. [Wikipedia background on the JRC and JRC financials on Google]

The speculation: Printing operations account for a big part of the The Herald's downtown building. Once the JRC moves its printing equipment the company may be tempted to sell the building and relocate advertising and news offices to a smaller space. The Herald may only need square footage half the size of what it now owns. But the JRC could reuse that space. The Herald is centrally located to other JRC properties, including the Bristol Press and Middletown Press, which also makes it an ideal consolidation site.

A little history: The Herald's printing operations were first rate for their day. By the late 1970s, The Herald had moved to electronic publishing. It had excess printing capacity as well. When it was not printing The Herald, its presses serviced other accounts. One of The Herald's biggest outside jobs was printing New York's Village Voice.