Early Edition

Media are changing politics-again

By Ed Bishop

The majority of political scientists and media scholars agrees that during the 40 years between the presidential elections of 1956 and 1996 the big television networks-CBS, NBC and ABC-had an inordinate influence on the political process in America. Newspaper readership was dropping and most people were getting most of their political news from television. And that news, along with the way politicians campaigned, was shaped by the needs of TV producers rather than the needs of the public.

Those needs didn't have much to do with legislative programs. Details weren't appreciated. Network news wanted what they called "red meat." And they had ways of getting what they wanted.

If you were running for president and you gave a policy speech that day, you could be pretty sure you wouldn't make the evening news. If, on the other hand, you questioned your opponent's patriotism or his morality or his willingness to execute people even though the federal government hadn't put anyone to death in decades, it would be all over the three networks that night.

Of course, all this wasn't simply the fault of shallow TV journalists. American elections had often been vacuous since George Washington ran unopposed. Still, modern pundits liked to put the blame on TV news. They also blamed politicians, their handlers, pollsters and even the American public. But, for the most part, network news was singled out as the cause of our "sound bite" elections.

Only a handful of scholars focused on the physical structure of what we're beginning to understand was a fairly primitive electronic media.

Now comes the 2000 election. And, so far, there has been very little red meat. Voters have been exposed to dozens of legislative programs and mountains of details.

Have the politicians changed? Has the public changed? Sure. But so has the structure of information gathering and delivery.

In the last five years, the number of cable news programs that concentrate on politics has mushroomed. "Hardball," "Capital Gang," "The Beltway Boys," "Inside Politics," "The O'Reilly Factor," "The Mitchell Report," and others have virtually taken over cable television. These programs have literally hours to fill and they can't do it with red meat alone.

Also, in the last five years, the Internet has become a major player in the nation's political dialogue. An incredible amount of political information is out there on thousands of sites. Even people running for dogcatcher have to have a website these days. Earlier this year, Senator John McCain raised more than $1 million in 48 hours over the Internet.

All of this raises important questions. Have political campaigns changed fundamentally in their effort to maximize cable news and the Internet? Can citizens who do not have cable or the Internet still participate fully in American democracy? Are there credible filters for Internet information? How have traditional news outlets, like newspapers, been affected by these new media? And, perhaps most important, have we really broadened the political discussion in this country, or are we just reshaping a very narrow political spectrum?

On, Monday, Oct. 16, SJR will convene a panel of distinguished journalists, scholars and public officials to discuss these questions. The discussion will be held at the Sheldon Concert Hall and it will be televised live on C-SPAN and simulcast on KWMU radio. The event is open to the public. In fact, we hope a lot of you will attend.

Tickets are $45 or $75 if you wish to attend the reception before the program. They're available at MetroTix (534-1111.)

When we first started thinking about this program last winter, the SJR Board of Advisers wanted it to be a celebration of the 30th anniversary of our publication. We wanted it to bring attention to SJR. We wanted it to maybe raise some money for us. And, most of all, we wanted it to render a service to the St. Louis region-a reflection of the cutting-edge information the publication had given St. Louis for three decades. We wanted to do something that was meaningful and timely. We thought big, even grandiose. And, surprising even ourselves I think, we seem to have pulled it off.

It was extremely gratifying to know so many national journalists knew about SJR, admired SJR and wanted to participate.

So the night before the presidential debate here in St. Louis at Washington University, SJR will be celebrating its lonely position as the last surviving local journalism review in the country. We hope the community comes out to celebrate with us, and maybe to learn some things about the new media as well.

See you there.

Media on Media

One size fits all

With massive media consolidation, you knew it had to happen. Construction has begun in Miami on a huge television complex that will feed local news broadcasts to three competing television stations. The 3,000 square foot studio in Miami will feed newscasts to NBC's WTVJ, Paxson's WPXM and WB's WBLZ. (Electronic Media 9/11)

All for me

ABC thinks it's time to profit from synergy. The company has built a cross-platform sales and marketing unit to guide advertisers to all of the potential buys in Disney-owned media. (Broadcasting & Cable 9/11)

Surprising numbers

Which age group spends more time online? Media Metrix and Jupiter Communications released a survey showing teens average 303 minutes per month online; adults 18-34 are online 656 minutes per month; and adults 35-49 total 804 minutes. (Broadcasting & Cable 9/18)

War vs. Twinkies

Christiane Amanpour, whose reports are seen on CNN, wonders if the news business is going soft. In a speech to the Radio/TV News Directors' Association, she confessed to worrying whether her reports from international war zones would be killed at the network in favor of stories about "killer Twinkies or Fergie getting fat." Her conclusion: "I have always thought it morally unacceptable to kill stories that people have risked their lives to get." (Broadcasting & Cable 9/18)

Greedy TV

Ever wonder how much money local TV stations rake in during political campaigns? Now a "public interest" web site wants to enlighten you. The Alliance For Better Campaigns has established greedytv.org, giving you a chance to see how the locals stack up. (Broadcasting & Cable 9/18)

Stressed out

You never know about the personal tastes world leaders may have for TV shows. Take Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian, who has won the Nobel Peace Prize, once told a CNN reporter, "When I get stressed out, I like to watch 'Tom & Jerry.'" His source for the entertainment: The Cartoon Network satellite feed. (Broadcasting & Cable 9/18)

Media power

You've probably never heard of Martha Flores, but she has a huge following in Miami, where she hosts a Spanish-language radio talk show. Two of her guests took their disagreement to the station parking lot, where it escalated into fisticuffs. Flores saw what was happening and screamed for help on the air. So many of her listeners called 9-1-1 that the city's emergency phone system broke down. (Broadcasting & Cable 9/11)

Location! Location! Location!

Location. Location. Location! Two employees of WAGA-TV got into a disagreement while sitting in the station's satellite truck. Things escalated and the fight spilled out into the parking lot where the truck was stationed. One man pulled a pocketknife and slashed the other. But police were quick to arrive. The scene was the parking lot of the Rockland [GA] County Sheriff's Department. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution 9/13)

Behind the scenes

ABC News veteran Av Westin will raise some eyebrows with his new book, "Best Practices for Television Journalists." He cites blatant examples of racism in newsrooms with unattributed quotes, such as: "My bosses have essentially made it clear. We do not feature black people as on-camera experts, period. I mean, it's said. They actually whisper it, 'Is she white?'" (Broadcasting & Cable 9/11)

Get 'em young

They call them the Golden Marble Awards, but some folks don't think the awards should exist. The citations are given out for creativity in ads aimed at children. Psychologists and educators don't think the cause is so noble. One says up to "40 percent of sales of jeans, burgers and other products occur because children asked for (the product)." The statement was included in a study called "The Fine Art of Whining." (Ad Age 9/11)

Cross over

Hillbilly TV R.I.P. That seems to be the sentiment of Viacom, which is renaming and reformatting TNN, once known as The Nashville Network. It will now be known as T.N.N., The National Network, featuring shows steeped in pop culture of a more mainstream variety. (Broadcasting & Cable 9/25)

Local cable news

Time Warner has seen the cable future, and it appears to be in local news. The mega media conglomerate is planning to launch at least four 24-hour local news channels by the end of next year, focusing on major markets where the company has a dominant market position. (Electronic Media 9/25)

Last walk

It's a tradition in TV news, but it may be coming to an end. The perp walk, in which police parade a perpetrator in front of television cameras, has been found in court to be unconstitutional. In the words of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District, "such a staged perp walk exacerbates the seizure of the arrestee unreasonably and therefore violates the Fourth Amendment." (Broadcasting & Cable 8/28)

Off the Record

Eric mink returns

Eric Mink, whose TV criticism was once a popular stopping off point in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Everyday section, returned to those pages in a special commentary in August. Mink, who now writes about the media for the New York Daily News, took aim at Sen. Joseph Liebermann, Al Gore's choice for the VP spot on the 2000 Democratic ticket.

Mink expressed concern over Liebermann's repeated efforts to give the Feds the power to control, directly or indirectly, the content of pop culture. So far in the 2000 campaign, Liebermann has gone a long way in neutralizing GOP efforts to portray the Democrats as the allies of porn, sitcom sex and filthy lyrics.

"Passionate advocacy, moral persuasion and a bully pulpit are one thing," Mink declared in his commentary. "But Liebermann seems to forget that the First Amendment he so frequently invokes when he speaks out is the same First Amendment that prohibits the government from trying to control anyone else's free expression-no matter how offensive or immoral."

-Don Corrigan

Closing time?

If the actions of the big guys are followed, eventually, by the little guys, the future of the Suburban Journals under Pulitzer ownership is not as bright today as it was when the purchase was announced.

Before the Tribune bought Times-Mirror, owner of the Los Angeles Times, that newspaper had gone into the suburban markets, featuring community news, prep sports and other items of interest to a family or two, but not far beyond neighborhood lines. Mark H. Willes, the former cereal executive whose reign at the helm of the Times was about as successful as his role model at the Titanic, was a leader in this strategy.

But now, the Tribune has closed 14 small-town newspapers that were part of a division known as Times Community Newspapers and called "Our Times." The move also cost the jobs of 125 employees. It remains to be seen, of course, how Pulitzer will deal with the Suburban Journals, the Ladue News and the various other smaller publications that now are under its wing.

In announcing the move, and acknowledging that the original strategy had not worked, Times editor John S. Carroll told The New York Times that the decision was "difficult in terms of the human consequences, and also difficult in terms of community relations, but journalistically and financially it was an easy decision." John Puerner, Times publisher, noted that "all of them were losing money, and the financial performance was deteriorating."

The L.A. Times will continue its regional editions in San Fernando Valley, Ventura County and Orange County. Times-owned local newspapers in Glendale, Newport Beach and some other communities also survived, along with one based in Ontario.

Carroll also told The New York Times that the action was a step in rethinking local coverage, and that news coverage would benefit from the savings. "I don't want to say anything that suggests we're not as committed as we've ever been to national and foreign news," he said, "but I do think there's more work that needs to be done in figuring out how you cover this region. In some ways, it's a much more complicated question."

-Joe Pollack

Picketing the debates

The exclusion of third party candidates from the three scheduled presidential debates is generating plans for protests which could include non-violent direct action. Organizers in St. Louis call their planning group the "O-17." The organization is made up mostly, but not exclusively, of Nader supporters.

Organizers tell SJR that the Washington University administration at first resisted granting any permit for a demonstration on campus near the university fieldhouse where the event will take place. This has now been resolved. Some of the organizers were not interested in negotiating in the first place and reject the idea that a permit should be necessary for a public event on a university campus.

Speakers at the rally outside the debate venue will include Jeff Cohen of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and Elaine Bernard, Howard Trade Union Center. Other speakers representing groups opposed to U.S. intervention in Colombia and in favor of universal health care are also on the program, whose theme is "Where is the debate?"

-Daniel Hellinger

Schools fail access test

A Liberty (Mo.) Junior High School freshman has learned that school administrators need some extra homework on state open record laws. Lindsay Rhodes, 15, sent letters to 22 school districts asking for coaches' salaries and athletic program budgets, information available to the public under state laws.

As the Fall 2000 issue of the Student Press Law Center Report notes, only 8 schools attempted to comply with Rhodes' request. Only six of the 22 school districts responded within the required three-day time limit. Rhodes' own district-whose school board shelled out $22,075 in a settlement over a 1998 Sunshine Law lawsuit-did not reply to her request at all.

"My test showed that many school districts either don't know about their obligations under Sunshine Law, or don't care," Rhodes told the Student Press Law Center quarterly. "I feel that as a student, our schools should be practicing what they are teaching and abiding by the laws of Missouri."

- Don Corrigan

Dear diary

The Olympic Games often act as a display case for new athletic tools and equipment, like the bathing suits and running gear used in Sydney last month. Pictures from the winners' stand look good in next season's advertisements.

But this set of games is pushing journalistic freedom and access into new areas, and while the problem today still is relatively minor, the ever-expanding Internet and improvements in its ability to disseminate stories and pictures may be the site of a major battleground four or eight or 12 years down the road.

The International Olympic Committee has long had a rule against athletes providing diaries and such for their hometown newspapers, but the rule has largely been ignored and no one from the IOC got into the act.

Not this year.

Christie Ambrosi, an outfielder on the gold-medal-winning women's softball team, agreed to keep a diary and send it to her hometown paper, the Kansas City Star, for use on its web site. But, according to a survey story in The New York Times, the IOC told her she could not do it and cited the little-used rule. An archer from Connecticut and a soccer goalie from North Carolina received the same instructions, killing off their gigs with the sites of the Hartford Courant and the Greensboro News & Record, respectively.

Mike Fannin, sports editor of the Star, said, "I would assume that it is their ball, and, if you want to play, you play by their rules. But the readers miss that connection with their local athlete. Christie Ambrosi's a softball player in the Kansas City suburbs. When she walks into a bar, people know who she is. The Olympics-it's all about representing your hometown, your city, your country."

(Author's note: A softball player in a bar? Unheard of! Unthinkable!)

As usual, IOC officials talked around the subject. Franklin Servan-Schreiber, director of communications and new media for the IOC, described the enforcement of the rule as meant to ensure that "the association between the athlete, the sport, the values and the symbol that represents all this is clear."

Huh?

Servan-Schreiber pointed out that some 20,000 media, about twice the number of athletes, are accredited, which is comparing apples and oranges, in the kindest possible comparison.

But back in June, the IOC filed a suit in Federal Court against 1,800 people who had registered domain names using IOC-owned terms. The names of the defendants covered more than 40 pages. At the same time, some 20 monitors on three continents are using a variety of search engines and techniques to look for possible violations of the IOC's property rights.

The problem with the Internet and individual intellectual property is growing, and growing rapidly. Sports officials, always looking for more revenue sources and more control, the two things they love most, are battling the almost unlimited number of web sources and the expanding desire to cover news. One newspaper, the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger, ran an article by an athlete, 800-meter competitor Joetta Clark Diggs, and an editor there told The Times no one had complained.

Internet companies haven't donated any money to the IOC as yet, but as streaming video becomes more available and of better quality, the IOC may begin looking. All the web sites, by the way, show a major increase in traffic to their sports sites since the games began in Sydney, but the time difference explains some of it.

And the IOC is not alone among sports groups working diligently to control media access, what they do and how they do it. Earlier in the year, the sports car racing group known as NASCAR attempted to have reporters (and their editors, presumably) agree that NASCAR was the owner of "images, sounds and data arising from and during any NASCAR event." Racing times and scores apparently fell among these images, sounds and data. NASCAR backed off when editors complained.

As Michael Persinger, sports editor of the Charlotte Observer, told The Times, "They were saying, 'If it happens during the event, we own the intellectual property rights do it.'

"You can't own the news," he added.

-Joe Pollack

Politics and greedy TV

The 2000 Alliance for Better Campaigns has issued its Greedy TV Report, ranking TV stations in a national listing of income received from political ads in the period covering Jan. 1 to July 31.

In St. Louis, KMOV (Channel 4) (CBS) leads the pack with $1,727,913 in political ad dollars covering 2,252 ads. Channel 4's National Greedy Rank comes in at 24th.

KSDK (Channel 5) (NBC) comes in a close second to Channel 4 with $1,708,088 in political ad dollars covering 1,899 ads. Channel 5's National Greedy Rank comes in just behind KMOV at 25th.

KTVI (Channel 2)(FOX) trails locally with $878,774 in political ad dollars covering a sizeable number of ads, some 2,017. Ad rates are a key factor in the larger number of ads run by Channel 2 as compared to Channel 4-and the smaller revenue to show for all those ads. Channel 2's National Greedy Rank comes in at 56th.

KDNL (Channel 30) (ABC) scraped by with $416,713 in political ad dollars covering 1,124 ads. Channel 30's National Greedy Rank comes in at 129.

The 2000 Alliance for Better Campaigns hopes to fuel public outrage over big money in elections in an effort to bring about campaign reform. The Alliance's work has received scant converage on national and local television news. Perhaps the thinking in TV Land is that the Alliance folks should simply take out some ads if they have an important message for voters.

-Don Corrigan

KMOV stands up to management

By Dawn Grodsky

Reporters and editors often have to live with management decisions they disagree with, decisions that sometimes make news. How they deal with these situations can give insight into their character.

One editor at a Florida daily-unhappy about being told by the publisher that he would write two weekly columns instead of one-said in his inaugural extra column, "It must be nice to be king." He then proceeded to explain how his publisher was demanding this additional workload. While that may not be the most admirable example, it is a courageous one.

A more balanced effort was recently launched by KMOV (Channel 4), which took its management to task by reporting on a controversy involving the station's decision not to air a political ad that criticized GOP presidential hopeful George W. Bush's position on concealed weapons.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch first reported on the issue Sept. 7. The paper learned of the station's refusal from Handgun Control Inc., the anti-handgun lobbying group that produced the ad. Handgun Control's Joseph Sudbay told the Post that Channel 4 and its owner, the Belo Corp. of Dallas, said the ad was misleading and refused to run it.

Channel 4 was the only station that rejected the ad, which aired on 25 stations across the country, including other St. Louis TV stations.

On Sept. 11, the Post criticized Channel 4's decision in an editorial. "KMOV also happens to be owned by Dallas-based Belo Corp. Belo's chief executive officer (Robert Decherd) says he counts Mr. Bush as a friend. ... Friendship is not a crime. But Mr. Decherd, a well-known figure in local Dallas politics, should reverse this decision and err on the side of propriety."

Belo and Channel 4 have not changed their position.

Laurie Waters, the Channel 4 reporter who covered the story on the controversy and whose report aired Sept. 12, said she first learned of her station's refusal to run the Handgun Control ad when reading the Post article. At the Sept. 11 morning editorial meeting, she said the news staff decided to do the story and that it was assigned to her. "I didn't see much gnashing of teeth" over the decision, Waters said. Though she added she didn't know if the news director or producers had to clear the story idea through management before assigning it. Waters said the newsroom did the story because, "We cover controversy all the time and we shouldn't avoid our own."

Waters was given the freedom to handle the story as she saw fit. "There was no pressure before the story and no backlash afterward," she said. She also added there has been little or no response-from anyone-to the story.

"I do think people probably appreciate the fact that we didn't shy away from the issue," she said. "I also have the utmost respect for the way management handled it (the story's airing)."

The report Waters filed started by showing the rejected ad-in its entirety. Anchors Myriam Wright and Julius Hunter introduced it. Hunter said: "Now the ad is not airing on Channel 4 because station ownership has decided not to accept it."

The ad in question has a woman's voice saying, "As governor of Texas, Bush signed the law that allows carrying concealed handguns for the first time in 125 years." That's undisputed.

But then a man's voice says, "And he signed the law that allows carrying those concealed handguns in churches, nursing homes, even amusement parks." That's where the contention lies with Belo. The provision allowing concealed weapons in churches and the like was approved with an amendment. It was banned in the original. Bush signed the amendment that allows concealed weapons unless the church or nursing home posts signs disallowing them.

The Handgun Control ad passed a New York Times accuracy check in May and there were strong inferences by critics including the Post that Channel 4 rejected the ad because of the friendship between Bush and Belo's Decherd.

The station was legally within its right because it was a "soft money" ad, not paid for by a political party.

Robert Baker, the Federal Communications Commission's chief of the office of political programming, said there are no federal rules regarding soft money ads. "These are ads that are not authorized by the candidates. The station has the right to air or not to air these ads. ... If it's a hard money ad, federal candidates must be sold reasonable amounts of time."

The Channel 4 story included a statement by the station's president and general manager Allan Cohen: "KMOV-TV is not currently telecasting either paid pro or anti-handgun advertising. The federal government allows us to cover controversial issues in many different ways. Since there is confusion regarding the message of this particular commercial from Handgun Control, Inc., KMOV currently chooses to address the issue through its news and public affairs programming."

Others, including SJR Editor Ed Bishop and Webster University media professor Art Silverblatt, criticized the ownership in Waters' story. Bishop said the Handgun Control ad "might be a little bit misleading" but said if political ads were barred for inaccuracies, there would be no political ads. Silverblatt said checking an ad's accuracy is fine, if it's done fairly, across the board.

The Post editorial concurred, and took the issue beyond political ads. "But if television stations perused every ad with a microscope as powerful as the one that found the gun ad 'misleading,' Bow-Flex, Viagra and 'Lucky Town' would be barred for life," the editorial said.

Eileen Solomon, a former executive producer at Channel 4 and current broadcast journalism professor at Webster, said of the Channel 4 story, "I think it's an impressive effort to get the word out."

Radio History

KMOX once lived on Hampton

By Frank Absher

In 1959, KMOX made a big splash by moving its studios to smaller quarters that were nowhere near downtown St. Louis.

The radio station had spent the past few years in "temporary quarters" at 906 Sidney in Soulard. That move was made necessary because the government needed to take over its spacious studio space in the Mart Building downtown. When it became known that the CBS-owned station was looking for a new home, real estate agents came out of the woodwork with suggestions.

The dust soon settled once the CBS-owned television station decided to stay put rather than to share a large building with KMOX. A site was chosen for construction at 1144 Hampton and plans were drawn up for a two-story, 15,500 square foot headquarters to house the 84-person staff. It was to be the first radio-only facility built for CBS in 20 years.

It was a time when the grip of network radio programs was loosening and local stations were being forced to originate more programming. Shows like "Ma Perkins," "The Romance of Helen Trent," "Gunsmoke," and "Bob and Ray" were still on the program logs. It would be less than a year later that KMOX would broadcast its first "At Your Service" program.

Local personalities included Grant Williams (later known as Grant Horton), John McCormick, Jack Buck, Jim Butler, Bruce Hayward, Ollie Raymand, Steve Rowan, Rex Davis, Bob Burnes, Doug Newman, Bob Anthony, Bob Holt, Laurent Torno, Paul Wills and Ted Mangner. Cardinal broadcasts featured Harry Caray, Jack Buck and Joe Garagiola, and Don Cunningham debuted as the voice of the St. Louis Hawks, with assistance from color man Jim Butler.

A review of memos and correspondence between St. Louis and New York at the time shows the beginning of a pattern that would last as long as Robert Hyland was at the helm of the station. The vice presidents at CBS corporate headquarters had very emphatic ideas about how things at the St. Louis facility would be designed. Hyland had different ideas, so he simply ignored all their demands and threats and did things his way, from the size of the interior doors to the colors of all the building furnishings and offices. Of course, after the dedication of the building, executives like Frank Stanton were lavish in their praises of the fine facility in St. Louis.

Designers of the building segregated the broadcast studios from the operations offices by placing them in a center core on the second floor. Immediate support services surrounded the three studios. Offices and reception were located on the street level. There was a staff recreation room in the basement.

Even though the studios were built and equipped with the latest audio equipment available, using layouts customized to the needs of KMOX, the station would occupy the Hampton Avenue building for only eight years. In the summer of 1968, KMOX relocated to its present address at the corner of Market Street and Memorial Drive, sharing the property with KMOX-TV, which was also owned at that time by CBS. The building at 1144 Hampton is now part of the Salvation Army headquarters complex.

Correction

In the last issue, Terry Egger, publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was identified as a former reporter. That is incorrect. Egger says he always wanted to be a reporter but never was. SJR regrets the error.

AM/FM

Wendy Wiese throws in the towel

By Larry Hoffman

The cylinder has turned again on the KTRS morning show, and this time the spent shell casing bears the name of charter morning personality Wendy Wiese. Sources familiar with the circumstances surrounding her departure told SJR that Wiese, through her attorney Mark Goldenberg, sent station manager Tim Dorsey a letter on Sept. 29 asking him to immediately pay out the remainder of her contract, which expires at the end of February 2001. The same sources also advised that Goldenberg is an investor in KTRS. As always, once a matter requires a legal remedy, an information embargo ensues and this case is no exception.

Contacted the day after the letter was received, Dorsey told SJR, "I knew Wendy was not pleased with her role in the morning for a while." This could be regarded as an understatement since Wiese has felt the cold draft of a rapidly spinning revolving door since shortly after that fateful day in March 1996, when she and several other KMOX employees were hired away to work for Dorsey. Somehow, she has managed to hold forth as the underpinning of the show, witnessing the exodus of several KTRS staffers and co-hosts, including Kevin Horrigan, Bill Wilkerson, DonnJohnson, J. C. Corcoran, Dan Dierdorf, Jim Bafaro and, most recently, Kevin Slaten.

With the arrival of new morning host Darryl Ankarlo from Nashville in mid-September, Wiese, who was unavailable for comment as SJR went to press, was not heard very much and seemed more like a holdover than a new broadcast partner. Assuming Wiese wishes to remain in local radio, her marketability and professionalism should allow her to land well, and put the weirdness that was the KTRS morning show safely in the past.

• • •

Complaints about adverse working conditions and lack of pay parity apparently contributed to the dismissal of highly regarded Metro traffic reporter Eileen Zimmermann last month. Zimmermann, who provided traffic reports to four Clear Channel stations and worked for Metro for the past five years, was notified by company market manager Tori Lyons that her services would no longer be needed, following attempts to secure a pay increase, additional flight insurance and upgraded on-board equipment.

Zimmermann had been delivering her reports from a fixed-wing aircraft housed at Parks Airport, until a key piece of communications equipment failed, causing the reports to originate from a ground-based Metro studio in Clayton.

In addition to using her first name for both "The Beat" and "Majic 105,", Zimmermann also appeared as Randi Rhoades on KSLZ-FM (107.7 FM) and U-Turn Laverne on KLOU-FM (103.3). Sources close to the four stations told SJR her lively reports would be greatly missed, especially in the morning on KLOU with J. C. Corcoran, and in the afternoon with Boomer on Z-107.7.

Besides juggling traffic information, she interacted well with show hosts during her drive time cut-ins.

Zimmermann told SJR, "I have been miserable at Metro for the last year and a half. I love my job, but this isn't my whole life. I recently got married and I was seeking additional protection in the form of flight insurance. Also, I haven't had a pay increase in three years." She went on to say, "I simply felt unsafe in that aircraft-there were some close calls."

Zimmermann complained that she was working for four stations which are rated in the top 10 and making around a third of what Metro employee Rodger Brand earns supplying just KMOX.

Meanwhile, Metro is in the process of being bought by national network and program supplier Westwood One, which may explain the company's reticence to replace the Marti two-way communications system and get the reporter back in the air. Zimmermann's former reports are now being handled by Tori Lyons. Metro executive Bob Fullstone told SJR, "We don't discuss personnel issues."

Speaking of Lyons, a listener told SJR that on the afternoon of Sept. 13, while subbing for Megan Lynch and doing traffic reports on KMOX, she landed in a pitfall common to reporters who have to assume different names depending on which station is airing their reports. Lyons signed off with "...this is Tori-Julie James."

• • •

A "spin of the format wheel" is how Joel Denver's AllAccess.com site described the jumbling of stations and programming as the Sinclair/Emmis/Bonneville deal has reached the point of visible changes. With the finalized arrangement, another set of historic St. Louis call letters disappears. Since 1938, when KXOK-AM first hit the airwaves, those call letters have been around in one form or another, mostly on AM but also on FM in two different eras. For whatever reason, the new owners of 97.1 FM, formerly known as "The Rock," decided to rename the signal KMLL-FM or "The Mall."

It also appears that as speculated last month, 104.1 may become a Talk FM format, most likely with Steve and D.C. anchoring mornings with their syndicated show, though one source suggested the duo may be headed to 96.3. Mid-mornings on the new talk station will feature Dr. Laura Schlesinger in real time clearance, with other unnamed syndicated or local programming filling out the remainder of the clock.

• • •

As CHR format owner KSLZ-FM (107.7) approaches its third birthday on Oct. 20, "Z" Program Director Jeff Kapugi posted an appeal for a commercial production director on the Missouri Radio Message Board. The notice calls for "someone who can pump out hot sounding production with high energy" hoping to target "anyone who thinks they might be left out in the cold from the Emmis/Sinclair deal." Meanwhile, "Z" staffers have been joking lately at the expense of Emmis as they bask in the success of 107.7, recalling that it was Emmis who said Top 40/CHR would never work in the St. Louis radio market.

• • •

No details accompanied word that longtime KMOX production director Casey Van Allen gave notice and left the station at the end of last month. Van Allen was known for creating novelty songs, cheers and montages to commemorate sports milestones such as Mark McGwire's unforgettable 1998 season.

• • •

Smash teen pop hit "Gotta Tell You" by UK based Polydor artist Samantha Mumba may have set a record for the number of spins on Top 40 radio. KSLZ's playlist shows the song at 89 plays per day, higher than any hit in the recent memory of this chart-watcher. Available as a CD single and released on June 29, "Gotta Tell You" holds forth as number one in most markets nationwide and in the UK.

Music website dotmusic.com says Mumba has "a depth and power to her singing that might be expected from someone twice her age." Mumba is reportedly 17. The site's review says, "Samantha seems keen to stress her agency as co-writer and her cultural heritage as a black, Irish under 21-year-old. As she says herself, 'There are a lot of female artists my age around at the moment, but they're all American and blonde and blue-eyed and smiley. I'm totally the opposite of that. I want to show a bit more attitude and I have an opinion... .'"

Finally, at the opposite end of the music spectrum is Detroit rapper Eminem, who has fascinated me since I heard "The Real Slim Shady" while driving my son and his friend home after the final day of school in June. The song disappeared from the Z107.7 playlist by mid-August, but will likely be heard as a "recurrent" due to both the popularity of the CD, "The Marshall Mathers LP," and the fact that the rap song won both Best Video of the Year and Best Male Video at the MTV Video Music Awards last month. Mathers uses "Eminem" as his alter-ego, as well as another nickname which was also the title of his debut CD, "Slim Shady."

As testimony to the success of this album of violent fantasies, misogyny and homophobia, several widely varying reviews appeared in such renowned sources as New Yorker magazine, National Public Radio, and Rolling Stone. In the July 10 New Yorker, "Pop Notes" columnist Ben Greenman says despite the above subject matter, "Eminem's raps retain a certain charm, in part because his horrific imagination seems so patently fictional." He goes on to say, "While his white-rapper status raises questions about his authenticity, it also increases the chance that his material will be interpreted as satire. Satire or not, the album is infectious... ."

NPR's critic-at-large, Ken Tucker, heard (July 13) on "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," calls Eminem an overrated novelty act who uses sales and hype to obscure the "stench of his assiduously obscene and tiresomely garrulous music."

But the most concise and well-stated summation was found in a letter to Rolling Stone, which appeared in the magazine's annual "Hot" issue (Sept. 14). Reader Loreto Urrutia states: "CONTROVERSY = RECORD sales. Eminem is neither a bigot or a homophobe-he's just a good salesman."

Sports/Media

Olympics can't win for losing

By Joe Pollack

Unless the locals undergo major injuries, nothing in an NFL uniform is going to stop the Rams in 2000, or so it seems after a fourth of the season. The Cardinals, on the other hand, face a major fight getting out of the first round of playoffs. Their relief pitching and defense are not strong enough, and while Walt Jocketty pulled off major miracles in acquiring Jim Edmonds and Will Clark, that's not enough, either.

Meanwhile, the Olympics can't win for losing.

Not only are television ratings down, but the use of drugs and the ability of testing equipment to find them are up, and dishonesty and secrecy are way up, mainly in the higher levels of the Olympic hierarchy, whether the IOC or the committees of nations.

You'd think that Olympic rules were the same for everyone, but no. . .

The United States-the country that preens over its constitutional protection and its openness-sets its own rules, thank you. If an Englishman or an Angolan or a Turk or a Thai is un-medaled, or sent home, the world learns about it as soon as it happens, the way results are announced, except on the NBC coverage.

The U.S., however, releases information as it pleases, except for bad news, which it sits on as if the news didn't exist and the nation remains the all-powerful arbiter and ruler. You'd think, after all the scandals and all the years, American leaders would realize that sooner or later, the word gets out, and someone prints it, and a large collection of ignoramuses then try to smile through the egg on their faces. Remember Watergate? The curious case of Wen Ho Lee? The Chicago Black Sox?

Now, while a Romanian gymnast was stripped of a gold medal and some Eastern European weight lifters were sent home before they were allowed to compete, we learn, three months after the fact, that the world champion shot putter, C. J. Hunter, failed not one, but three or four drug tests during the summer. He won the U. S. Olympic trials in June, then suddenly withdrew, claiming a knee injury, though he gained credentials, and undoubtedly an all-expenses covered trip to Sydney, as the "coach" of his wife, sprinter Marion Jones. They, by the way, he did not stay in the Olympic Village, but in a private, high-priced hotel, like the American basketball players, all apparently people too important to come in contact with athletes and reporters, but just right to consort with bodyguards and agents and other more desirable types.

I'm sure that Hunter never will be convicted of drug use, and I'm also sure that the American Olympic officials will continue to cover up any incident that might tarnish-much less disqualify- an American athlete.

The banned steroid, nandrolone, is quite similar to the stuff Mark McGwire took, but which was not against baseball rules at the time. And have you noticed how the St. Louis media have ignored the issue this year?

• • •

I feel sorry this autumn for both Dennis Miller and Bobby Costas, the former because he is so obviously out of his depth, the latter because he has been forced into being a traffic cop, introducing nearly five dozen announcers, including former Cardinal pitcher Joe Magrane, who cannot carry his microphone, and therefore being unable to show the joy and talent with which he reports on real, competitive athletic events.

The NBC action has paid dearly, will continue to pay dearly, before, during and after the Olympics and especially when it has to listen to those who have paid zillions of dollars for ads attracting an audience far smaller than four years ago. And, as an aside, I think some of the commercials during the Olympics have been imaginative, charming, winsome and wonderful. I hope those who preen over their Super Bowl ads are paying attention and making some imaginative plans for January, or July, or whenever the game is.

The NBC attempt to make news that is 18 hours old-and known to almost all-seem current to those who are watching Costas & Co. is absurd and ludicrous. And NBC makes things worse with its ridiculous approach to Dick Ebersol's decision. On the "Today" show, for example, Matt Lauer, in Sydney with the terminally cute, tragedy-loving Katie Couric, gets ready to talk about results that are only two or three hours old, and tells us to leave the room or cover our ears so that we will not be bored when we watch Costas some 12-14 hours later.

If the events were televised as the athletes competed in them, and just held for a while, the races still would maintain their integrity, their inherent drama, the passion of the competitors. But that's not the NBC style. We get cute little features about athletes being teased as children, or falling off their bikes, or all sorts of other smarmy anecdotes (minus John Tesch, thank goodness), and then an event which has been edited to provide the most tension, and the least reality.

I would have enjoyed watching more equestrian events, and maybe fencing, and beach volleyball, and water polo, and other sports, rather than always more girls' gymnastics, as the little girls tried to be so many Lolitas.

Knowing we were watching edited, delayed, packaged and repackaged events took a lot of the fun away from the games, and the vast array of so-called talent at the microphones made it even worse. I actually thought the Mexican soccer announcer Andres Cantor was being attacked by a feral pig the first time I heard him scream-think of the WWF announcers, and the Blues' announcers, and ratchet the volume up many notches and string the "o" sound out to interminable length.

The other thing that interested me was a question that has been thus far unanswered. Were the NBC announcers providing what amounted to play-by-play actually at the event, describing it and feeling the drama or were they in a quiet room, several hours later, providing a sound track to an edited tape and, in effect, acting rather than broadcasting?

Media/Politics

Newspapers often misunderstand their own polls

By Terry Jones

Warning! This column contains statistical reasoning. Reader discretion is advised.

Anybody still reading? Probably not many since the journalistic ranks contain more than a few self-described statistically challenged souls. It's words and images, not numbers and formulas, which attract people to the trade.

If there were a j-school class on statistical reasoning for reporters, here is a possible question for the final exam:

Your newspaper has commissioned a poll on an upcoming election. The results show that Candidate A has 44.6 percent and Candidate B has 39.7 percent. The completed sample size is 601 and the margin of error, at the 95 percent confidence level, is plus or minus 4.1 percent. Which headline best describes the results?

1. A, B tied in poll

2. A leads in poll

This was precisely the scenario in the Zogby International Poll commissioned by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Conducted Sept. 5 to 7 and published in the following Sunday, Sept.10 edition, the front page headline read "Bush, Gore are tied in Missouri poll."

That's the wrong answer. So the Post flunks the test. Given this fact pattern, the odds that the race is tied or that Bush is slightly ahead are about one in 50. The chances that Gore indeed has the lead are approximately 49 in 50. In short, the Post's headline version has about a 2 percent chance of being right and a 98 percent probability of being incorrect.

Why did the Post get it wrong? Let's first go to the article's own analysis: "...when the margin of error is factored in, Gore could be leading by as much as 13.1 percentage points or Bush could be ahead by 3.3 percentage points."

This statement and its interpretation suggest that the Post fundamentally misunderstands the margin of error. If the estimate for a candidate is, say, 45 percent and the margin of error is 4 percent, then the Post seems to think that any outcome between 45 percent and plus or minus 4 percent, that is, 49 percent to 41 percent, is equally likely.

Not so. The sampling error distribution around any survey estimate is normal (bell-shaped for you non-statisticians), not flat. The most likely outcome is the survey's estimate (45 percent in the example), the next most likely is 44 percent or 46 percent, the next after that 43 percent and 47 percent, and so forth sloping downward so that 95 percent of the possible estimates are between the survey's finding (45 percent) and the sampling error (plus or minus 4 percent).

Applying this probability logic to the Zogby findings in the presidential race in Missouri, there are separate bell-shaped curves around Gore's (44.6 percent) and Bush's (39.7 percent) estimates. The area where the two distributions overlap is relatively small and its precise size can be calculated under the laws of probability. That's the source of the 2 percent odds that Bush could be tied with or ahead of Gore and the 98 percent chancethat Gore leads.

Lest all this seem like professorial nit-picking, let me point out that saying a race is tied when your own poll's results do not come anywhere close to supporting the conclusion, and indeed provide much greater credence to stating that one candidate is ahead, is just plain getting the story wrong, an error compounded by making it the front-page headline on the week's most widely read edition. You can report that Bush is not far behind and that he still has a good chance of winning but the best evidence available, data the paper itself paid for, indicate that it is not tied.

To Jo Mannies' credit, she quotes John Zogby, the pollster, as saying essentially that ("the fact that Bush is close...indicates that his support could swing back if he regains his footing"), but this closer-to-the-mark interpretation occurs after the jump from Page A1 to Page A12.

It was also left to Zogby to note that "other news outlets" had obtained similar findings for the presidential race. "Other" was the Kansas City Star, whose poll conducted Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 by Mason-Dixon, another national polling firm, and reported in its Sept. 6 edition, had Gore leading Bush by 45 percent to 41 percent. Explicitly mentioning these independently generated numbers would have further buttressed the conclusion that Gore was ahead, with two separate polls done at about the same time arriving at nearly identical results. But the Post ignored the Star's findings, both in analyzing the presidential contest as well as the U.S. Senate race where, again, both polls had essentially the same numbers.

In recent years, scholars have labored to write non-technical explanations of how polls work so that journalists and voters can better understand them. Two recent works are Herb Asher's "Polling and the Public: What Every Citizen Should Know"and Michael Traugott and Paul Lavrakas' "The Voter's Guide to Election Polls." The Post's coverage indicates that the job of making polling techniques clear is not yet over.

He's back-Horrigan rejoins Post

By Roy Malone

Kevin Horrigan is back at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and his fluff machine appears as good as ever.

As a reporter in the 1980s, he would sometimes be asked by Post editors to liven up the copy of other reporters. The others, of course, hated the suggestion their writing lacked sparkle.

But they had to admit, when their stories went through Horrigan's keyboard, they came out singing. Few could compete with Kevin's writing talent and they came to call his computer terminal the "fluff machine."

He's now an editorial writer and Sunday columnist after a less-than epic odyssey of 11 years. He had jumped ship in 1989 to join the newborn St. Louis Sun tabloid, then went to KMOX radio, jumped to KTRS radio, then wrote two unpublished novels and did a stint as a writing consultant.

In his first column at the Post he told of his journey, how he had to dress different for his various roles, and concluded: "So now I'm a Newspaper Slob again. The clothes are comfortable. So am I."

Not everyone was thrilled to see him back. Some recalled The Memo.

In fact, some on the staff kept-through several computer system changeovers during the last decade-copies of the electronic rocket Horrigan fired to colleagues at the Post when he left for the Sun.

It was three pages of Ego Horrigan, who got so full of himself after being wined and dined by publishing magnate Ralph Ingersoll, he thought for sure that everyone wanted to hear about it. Ingersoll, after hiring Horrigan, compared him with Mark Twain. It got pretty deep.

(Ingersoll was a buddy and acolyte of junk bond hypester Michael Milken. Milken went to prison for his stock market cheating and when the junk bonds lived up to their name, Ingersoll had to sell off half his properties, and snuff out the Sun after only seven months.)

"I was seduced and I went willingly," Horrigan recalls. As for The Memo, he says: "I wish I had gone without being snotty about it. I shouldn't have done it...it was written like I was better than anyone."

The Sun startup was heady stuff, as The Memo attested. Horrigan said he was promised a desk with a window view of Busch Stadium. He was flown to New Jersey to talk to Ingersoll and have dinner with his executives. "The chances of the Sun not succeeding financially are virtually nil," Horrigan quoted Ingersoll.

Horrigan wrote: "I know bullshit when I hear it. These people are not bullshitting. They have a vision, they have money, they have a plan and they have the brains to make it work.."

Horrigan wrote that the Post, his employer for 12 years, offered him a general news column and more money to stay that "was in the same ball park as Ingersoll's"offer. He said he joined the Sun because it "offered excitement and challenge"and "could help define the future of the American newspaper business."

He recalled that another factor was that he was still smarting over a torrent of criticism he got after writing a sports column minimizing the accomplishment of St. Louis U's basketball team's going to the NIT tournament.

"I took so much shit over that. I had to write a weasel column in apology," he said.

He had his lawyer secure a contract with the Sun. When Ingersoll pulled the plug Horrigan got bought out on his five-year contract, fulfilling his end of it by dashing off columns for the Suburban Journals, which Ingersoll also had owned but were taken over by creditors. (The Post recently bought the Journals.)

Looking for work, Horrigan did some guest spots on KMOX radio and it turned into a full-time gig as a morning talk show host.

"I became a personality. I felt like a fish out of water." He also took on a more sardonic approach, unleashing biting quips with little sufferance of fools. "Sometimes I let a good line overrule my instinct to be a compassionate person," he said.

Horrigan's humor had impressed some political reporters in Jefferson City when he was still a student journalist at Mizzou, assigned to cover the legislature. "Where are the little people?" he would ask the veteran reporters. "I keep hearing the bills are supposed to help the little people."

When CBS sold KMOX to Westinghouse, the staff was gutted to increase the profit margin, Horrigan said. He and about a dozen others jumped ship to join Tim Dorsey at his newly established KTRS. Horrigan was part of the talk format but said he didn't do well when it came to selling stuff.

"Radio is all about selling stuff," he said. "I was wanting to talk about campaign finance reform and the listeners wanted to hear fart jokes. The station was dumbing down and I couldn't keep up. I figured I would get fired sooner or later." He said he "got into a pissing match with Dorsey" and was fired the day after Christmas 1998.

He had written books about former Cardinals Manager Whitey Herzog and Bob Shannon, the respected former East St. Louis High School coach. He always wanted to write novels so he gave it a shot, with the support of his wife, Kate. They lived on savings for a year and a half. The books-a comic tale about a bad pro-football team that wanted to move ("Wonder where I got that idea?"), and the other about an alligator wrestler who falls for an animal rights activist-are still for sale. He thought he could make some money as a consultant to help companies improve their writing, but found this market was tied up by PR firms. His only client stiffed him.

Last year Dick Weil, former managing editor at the Post, floated a balloon to see how the staff felt about Horrigan's possibly coming back. Some cited The Memo. Editor Cole Campbell and his managing editor, Arnie Robbins, couldn't think of a place where Horrigan might fit in. After Campbell was fired earlier this year and four people shared the editor's job, Horrigan again came around, asking writer Harry Levins where "the point of entry" might be. Write to Terry Egger, the publisher, Levins suggested. Horrigan did and soon was being interviewed at a lunch. Egger read The Memo and said he thought it was no big deal. Time to delete it.

In his first column, Horrigan took the side of Kimmswick residents who don't want a casino, which they say would ruin their bucolic little town. He criticized the Missouri Gaming Commission for approving it as a way of propping up the President Casino on the Admiral, rather than choose a site closer to the Admiral. He wrote:

"The best way to prop up the Admiral would be to declare war on Illinois, buy a used submarine from the Russians and put a torpedo into the Casino Queen."

The old fluff machine can still spit it out.

Rather than Mark Twain, Horrigan, 51, compares himself with the Cardinals' Willie McGee, saying: "I just want to hit the ball hard a few times and contribute something."

Local media refuse to accept the liberal label

By Kathy Bratkowski

Every four years when a presidential election rolls around, media bashing becomes a sport as popular as the Olympics' track-and-field finals. Politicians (at least those leaning toward conservative) claim the media are liberal, while those on the left say corporate ownership (if one assumes corporations are conservative) influences decisions ranging from what to cover to whom to interview.

Maybe what's unique in this year's coverage of the presidential campaign is that the media are bashing the media. In a recent article in the Washington Post, staff writer Howard Kurtz describes talk of media bias as "the elephant in the room . . . the shadow that some believe is hovering over the presidential race." Kurtz says that Vice-President Al Gore's increasing popularity since The Kiss "has fueled suspicions that Gore has the fourth estate not-so-subtly on his side."

The public apparently agrees that a bias exists. An Editor & Publisher poll conducted in September found that four out of 10 readers think their regular newspaper has favored one candidate over the other. And most believe that the bias is in favor of Democrat Al Gore. Watchdog groups such as the Center for Media and Public Affairs may have hard evidence to back that up, finding that network news coverage of Gore is 55 percent positive, with comments about George W. Bush only 35 percent positive.

In the Washington Post article, Kurtz finds some journalists incensed by what they say is a bias toward this year's Democratic (and presumably more liberal) candidate. Brit Hume of the Fox News Channel called the "rats" story (about a Republican ad that included the word "rats" for one video frame or 1/30th of a second) "ridiculously overplayed," and Mike Rosen, a conservative radio host at KOA in Denver, calls this year's campaign "the most egregariously spun campaign" he has ever seen. Even political nonpartisans such as Charlie Cook detect a bias in this year's coverage. In an article in the National Journal, Cook says that reporters are "larding their stories with their own ideological biases" in favor of Gore.

On the flip side of the coin, media watchdog groups such as Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting make the case that corporate ownership of media outlets results in a conservative slant, with the generalization being that corporations are heavily conservative.

So the question becomes-what about the media in St. Louis? Media outlets here have had more than their share of corporate owners and the resulting changes that come with takeovers and mergers. It's safe to say that St. Louis is considered a fairly conservative town in the fairly conservative Midwest. Yet our only daily newspaper has an editorial-page position considered liberal by most people's standards, including those of the current St. Louis Post-Dispatch management.

Terry Egger, the publisher of the Post, says it's important to make the distinction between the editorial page and news coverage. "Perceptions seep in, but unequivocally there is no bias in news coverage," said Egger. He insists news coverage is not affected by the paper's editorial position, which has long been left-leaning. "If you track endorsements of political candidates, there have been more Democrats endorsed than Republican candidates [at the Post]. If you were to infer that Democrats had a more liberal platform than the Republican party, then that would have been the case on the editorial page."

However, others in the newsroom see a liberal bias creeping into the paper in recent months. A Post staffer who didn't want to be identified cited the coverage of the Rodney Woidtke case and the local coverage of parents' reactions to the banning of gay leaders by the Boy Scouts as two examples of stories with a "subtle bias" toward the left. This source blames poor editing for the perceived liberal slant, rather than placing blame on the reporters.

Television journalists agree with Egger that reporters keep personal opinions at bay in their news coverage. "I'm most proud of the way journalistic ethics rule over personal beliefs [among KSDK (Channel 5) staffers]," said Karen Foss, anchor at Channel 5. "The people here take a balanced view when pursuing a story. If one does not, there are checks and balances in the newsroom. No one writes a story and it goes directly on the air. It's passed through the hands of several people," said Foss.

In her career, Foss has worked under many different corporate entities, yet she says management viewpoints have never had an impact on news decisions. "I have never had anyone try to influence news coverage because of a corporate stance or a political stance," said Foss. "I've never seen a story killed or directed not to be done."

Dick Ford, anchor at KTVI (Channel 2), says that a corporate owner's political leanings are irrelevant in local television news, since editorials and commentaries are not broadcast by any of the St. Louis stations. He says management doesn't interfere in news decisions at Channel 2 and that the station's parent corporation has recently held seminars on fairness and balanced reporting. "I'm not aware of any trickle-down effect, despite Rupert Murdoch's opinions. I've never seen any indication that Rupert Murdoch cares about what we do," said Ford. "We cover a lot of dissonant news and people. We don't restrict whom we cover or make decisions based on a liberal or conservative stance."

In fact, KMOV (Channel 4) anchor Larry Conners calls the perception of liberal bias "a suburban myth," comparing it with the belief that television news only leads with "blood and guts." Nevertheless, he says that the perception of bias exists. "After I cover a Democratic National Convention, people will say, 'I can tell you were at home with the Democrats.' I'll hear the same thing after covering a Republican convention," said Conners.

Conners says that some people will claim the news is slanted if a viewpoint is presented that differs from their own. "Some issues are so volatile that unless you preach what a set of people believe, they will claim you're biased," said Conners. "We strive for balance, but there are times there is no real balance to be achieved." Conners uses coverage of an abortion rally as an example. "If you interview people getting on a bus to go to Washington, are you then going to interview all the people who didn't get on the bus?" said Conners. He says the question is one of overall balance in reporting.

While Conners believes that "people with strong enough opinions will twist [news coverage] to see it in their point of view," Foss says that it is conservatives who speak up loudest about a media bias. "I think one reason for the perception is that some conservatives think opposing views should be muzzled," said Foss.

One journalist among the group interviewed said that media people as a group are liberal, but that doesn't mean that reporting isn't balanced. Harry Levins, a senior writer at the Post, says that reporters tend to be liberal because the profession, like teaching or social work, is seen as one that can change the world. Levins generalizes that to be a liberal stance. "But like military people who tend to be conservative, you still do your job. You don't overthrow Bill Clinton because you don't agree with him. Journalists are professionals who do their jobs," said Levins.

Susan Hegger, former editorial writer and current interim Arts and Entertainment editor at the Post, says that tagging the media as liberal is simplistic. Such a designation does not take into account that journalists are diverse. She says that the question of what gets covered is "complicated," but among the staff in the Post newsroom are Democrats, Republicans and independents. "I think the general public might be surprised at the diversity of opinion," said Hegger.

In fact, Bill Freivogel, deputy editorial page editor at the Post, believes that St. Louis media in general are more conservative than liberal. "The loudest voices you hear in St. Louis, I'd classify none of them as liberal," said Freivogel, naming Bill McClellan, Martin Duggan and Charles Brennan as examples. "When you factor in the whole run of media in St. Louis, including largely conservative KMOX radio with three hours of Rush Limbaugh every day, it's a different picture. You don't see anyone balancing that 1,000 pound gorilla."

While the Post has a predominantly liberal editorial page, Freivogel says editorial page writers can't be easily classified as liberal, citing the recent hiring of Kevin Horrigan as evidence that more conservative voices are being encouraged to air their views. And even with the Post's most recent editors-Cole Campbell and William Woo-being classified by most as liberal, Freivogel says that doesn't mean that liberal reporters are hired more often. "There's not a predominance of liberals among reporters. It's pretty well divided between liberals and conservatives," said Freivogel.

Journalists in St. Louis agree that tagging a group as diverse as the local media as liberal is a blanket indictment and that coverage needs to be examined in total to gauge fair and balanced reporting. Most agree that the editorial position of the Post is liberal, but all are adamant that news coverage remains objective. Whether the perception of the media is based on myth or reality is a complex question-and like most complex questions, it's a tough one to answer. Maybe it depends on whom you ask.

Conservatives constructed myth about liberal media

By Daniel Hellinger

The myth of a liberal media is based mostly upon survey evidence suggesting that reporters fall to the left of the American public. And no one has done more to cloak that myth with respectability than S. Robert Lichter.

Lichter was initially recruited by Stanley Rothman to serve as assistant director of a team assembled to complete a research project, launched in 1977, to gauge the role of "new elites" in shaping social and cultural change. Lichter, Rothman and Linda Lichter, whose specialization is content-analysis of entertainment programs, purported that since the 1960s a new elite has emerged to challenge traditional American values.

In 1980, Lichter became director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), a well funded conservative think tank. While reactionary media critics like Reed Irvine and his Accuracy in Media (AIM) fanned the flames of mass resentment against media elites, it fell to Lichter and his colleagues to "document" the liberal biases of the news media in a form more palatable to the better educated corporate elite and sympathetic academics.

Lichter summarized his argument in his 1986 book, "The Media Elite, America's New Powerbrokers." The preface asserts that there had emerged a new elite based on "the public interest movement, a vastly expanded federal bureaucracy, and a national media network that serves as watchdog over other social institutions." These were just the institutions that the Reagan Revolution intended to roll back.

Lichter carried out a random survey of journalists in the U.S. He submitted his data to a social psychologist who determined that the media elite was indeed infected with the zeal of social reform and idealistically ambitious to instigate social change. These social and psychological pre-dispositions "structure journalists' interpretations and descriptions of reality in ways that are powerful, if subtle." The Lichters and Rothman attempted to show via content analysis how these attitudes have biased the liberal media against nuclear power and the oil industry, and for school busing and the environment.

Lichter also claimed that his data demonstrated that journalists are more liberal than the general public. Lichter's results and other studies making similar claims were published by the CMPA's house organ, Public Opinion, founded by David Gergen, who had supported George Bush for president in 1980 but subsequently enlisted in the Reagan Revolution. In his co-authored textbook on American government, Lichter claimed that only 23 percent of the public classified themselves as liberal, in contrast to 55 percent of news and editorial staff members at 621 daily newspapers. The survey purported that the public was more conservative than journalists on three of four economic issues and all six of social issues they were asked about. Lichter concluded, in language from the "power elite" school of thought, "A small group of media outlets, largely centered in New York and Washington, increasingly determined how the world was presented to Americans."

Lichter's findings were quickly contested, most notably by the distinguished Columbia sociologist Herbert Gans, who contended the authors selectively reported only results favorable to their hypothesis and misrepresented responses to make reporters seem much more radical than the public. Gans also charged that Lichter had failed to show that the mass of data he had collected on the backgrounds, opinions and values of journalists actually affected how they reported the news.

Critics of the liberal bias theory have tended to emphasize the organizational and professional factors that prevent a liberal bias from appearing in news. Given the financial leverage of advertisers and the predilections of ownership, on what foundation could a cadre of reporters present a world view much at odds with corporate elites? How could news raise any fundamental critique of a capitalist society-the profit motive, defense of American hegemony abroad, privatization as reform, globalization?

Muffled liberalism

Research comparing American reporters to counterparts overseas shows Americans rate themselves the most free in the world, yet they made the most narrow range of choices in how to cover a hypothetical event. As one moves up the organizational table of media, attitudes become more conservative. Editors and reporters generally work together in a consensual manner, but the hierarchical nature of corporate media ensures reporters adhere to what Edward Jay Epstein in his study of wire services called "news from nowhere." Editors, according to a study by Frederick Schiff perceive their readers largely in terms of their own business and upper class interests. Reporters are trained to avoid injecting personal viewpoints into their work. "Under the conventions of journalism prevailing today," New York Times columnist Tom Wicker once declared, "it is impossible for a reporter to step in and refute a false statement in his own voice."

Those reporters who would break out of the ideological straightjacket encounter not a glass ceiling but a steel curtain blocking their careers. Research shows non-conformists have difficulty retaining jobs. Edwin Diamond showed that reporters feel the greatest need to conform to editorial standards when they break away from the pack.

Consider, for example, how editors and journalists passed along, without question or later apology, the contentions of Republicans in 1994 that the GOP "Contract with America" was supported by 60 percent of the American public. Michael Traugott and Elizabeth Powers found that reporters never checked the claim against readily available national opinion data. The American Association for Public Opinion Research later censured the GOP pollster for violating its standards, but the 1994 election was over and the Republicans had seized control of Congress. Traugott and Powers concluded, "The contract was a construct of political elites cast in terms of mass support-to appeal to the public and to the journalists who would cover the campaign."

Consider by contrast the treatment meted out to Gary Webb, who broke the story in the San Jose Mercury News alleging the CIA had deliberately instigated the crack epidemic in central Los Angeles as part of its efforts to fund the Nicaraguan contras with drug money. Although the series, "Dark Alliance," was flawed, its central contention that CIA operatives were actively engaged in drug trafficking has never been shaken. Yet media attention focused almost exclusively on the journalistic shortcomings of the piece, notably Webb's reliance on sources compromised in the criminal activity. For his indiscretions, Webb was forced out of his job.

The lesson is clear. When the pack follows the lead of mainstream elites and fails to check their facts independently, reporters need not fear sanctions. When they break a story with scandalous implications for the ruling class as a whole, their research will be examined minutely and their careers will be in jeopardy. The effect is hardly "liberal."

More liberal or neoliberal?

In reality, the working media are much less liberal than generally portrayed. While the results of the Lichter studies, despite methodological shortcomings, are widely known and regularly amplified by Public Opinion, the careful research of Virginia Commonwealth Professor David Croteau has received little attention. Croteau's "Examining the Liberal Media" claim is published on the web site of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). FAIR certainly is a liberal think tank, but Croteau's studies have enjoyed the support of respected foundations, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

For his 1998 study of the "liberal media" Croteau sent questionnaires to more than 400 national reporters and bureau chiefs in Washington and received 141 back. This is a respectable return. Measured against known characteristics of the entire pool (type of media, race and gender, job category, etc.), those who returned Croteau's questionnaire seemed representative of the Washington media establishment.

Croteau found that these "liberal" reporters most often rated "business oriented news outlets" of highest reliability, more than any other kind of news media. A substantial majority rated themselves centrist on both social issues and economic issues. These results show less sentiment for the right than found in the general population, but they are consistent with the pattern for those in the highest income brackets. On the whole, the Washington press corps is more liberal than the general public on social issues, notably abortion, and more conservative on economic issues

Crouteau asked his sample a series of questions about policy preferences, closely modeled on those used in surveys of the general public. It is difficult to sustain the myth of a "liberal" reporter in the face of data indicating that 56 percent of Washington-based journalists felt the need to slow the rate of increase in spending for Medicare and Social Security. Only 35 percent of the public felt similarly in a poll by Greenberg Research Inc. While 77 percent of the pubic thinks "too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few large corporations," only 57 percent of the journalists agreed.

Nearly half of the journalists thought Clinton's 1993 plan to raise tax rates on the wealthy was about right, but 72 percent of the public thought it didn't go far enough. Only 43 percent of journalists felt government should force employers to provide medical care, and even fewer (35 percent) thought it was government's responsibility to guarantee access to health care. A February 1996 New York Times survey found that almost two-thirds of the public support federal guaranteed health care. The only issue for which reporters showed a more decidedly liberal slant was on the environment.

In a separate study, Croteau took on the myth that the Public Broadcasting Network is disproportionately liberal. That proposition holds only because conservative critics focused on PBS documentaries. Guests and sources utilized on PBS news programs are disproportionately from white, male elite circles. Furthermore, the myth of liberal dominance can be sustained only by ignoring the presence of highly conservative panel programs like Firing Line and The McLaughlin Group.

As far as their view of the world, reporters might also best be called "liberal internationalists." That is, they have assimilated more thoroughly than the general population a worldview that embraces the supposed virtues of economic globalization. This orientation cuts across partisan lines. Certainly former President George Bush and President Clinton are virtually indistinguishable from one another in this regard. Journalists seem to echo this consensus. For example Croteau reports that nearly a quarter of reporters in his sample rated expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement to other Latin American countries as a top priority, a sentiment shared by only seven percent of the general public.

In St. Louis, KMOX's Charles Jaco may be perceived to be "liberal" in the eyes of many. But he operates by the rules of "objective" journalism that at least ensure access for conservative points of view to his program. By contrast, the preceding three hours of the area's most highly rated radio station is given over to the reactionary politics of Rush Limbaugh, who makes no pretense to objectivity.

In short, what the public has been led to believe-that there exists a wide ideological gap between reporters and the American public-is best understood as successful myth-building by conservatives. It is part of their strategy to tar liberalism and tame the independence of journalists whose reporting conservatives saw as the reason for the political defeats of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, not to mention the defeat in Vietnam and the granting of civil rights to African Americans.

Media/Law

Long-distance lawsuits

By Ken Jones

The only thing worse than getting sued is getting sued 1,000 miles away from home.

That's what a number of companies, including publishers, have found out after launching their websites.

They're discovering that the Internet has broadened the legal notion of personal jurisdiction-that is, where a defendant can be hauled into court.

Traditionally, a defendant has to have "minimum contacts" with a particular state before it can be sued there. It's a complicated test, but usually comes down to whether a defendant purposely transacted business in the state. So if XYZ Inc., a St. Louis company, sends a salesperson into Texas to sell vacuum cleaners, a buyer would probably be permitted to sue XYZ Inc. in Dallas if the vacuum malfunctions.

The unique aspect of the Internet is that XYZ Inc. can now reach the whole world-and sell its vacuum cleaners-without leaving its office in St. Louis. But does that mean a Texan who buys a vacuum cleaner online can sue XYZ Inc. in Dallas?

It's a legal question with real life consequences. Out-of-state defendants are petrified of getting "homered" in a local court. In addition, trying a lawsuit in a distant state can be a logistical nightmare since most witnesses, documents and other evidence will be back at headquarters. This makes defending a case more expensive than it already is.

Courts are still fleshing out the answer, with case law going back only two or three years. But a consensus seems to be forming that makes a distinction between "passive" and "interactive" sites.

For example, one recent case involved a New York bank that sued a West Virginia bank in New York for trademark infringement. The West Virginia bank's website provided information about its products and services and allowed customers to apply online for loans and "chat" with a bank representative.

The defendant claimed this was not enough for jurisdiction in New York, but the court disagreed, finding that the site "involves more than the passive posting of information about [its] products and services....[T]he interaction is both significant and unqualifiedly commercial in nature and thus rises to the level of transacting business required."

On the other hand, a New Hampshire court dismissed a personal injury lawsuit filed by a resident who was hurt at a Marriott Hotel in Aruba. It concluded that the mere ability to access Marriott's website in New Hampshire and read general information about its hotels did not subject Marriott to jurisdiction there.

Only one Missouri case has addressed the issue. It arose when the Attorney General's office sued a North Carolina company for selling beer over the Internet to a minor in Missouri, claiming this was a violation of the state's Merchandising Practices Act. The company said it could not be sued in Missouri because the sale took place in North Carolina, and so there were no minimum contacts.

In March, the Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled that there was jurisdiction, finding that the company "regularly solicited customers in and from Missouri and this activity constitutes the transaction of business within the state." Furthermore, the company "delivered thousands of bottles of beer into the state pursuant to commercial relationships that [it] had with hundreds of Missouri residents" and therefore "purposely availed itself of the privilege of conducting activities" in Missouri.

When SJR talked to the chair of the Missouri Bar's technology law committee about the case, he pointed out that "when you put things on the Internet, you're contacting the entire world and inviting them to buy your product, and intend to do business with them."

Attorney General Jay Nixon told SJR that Missouri "has jurisdiction to enforce its laws concerning sales of this highly regulated product to minors. If a product is delivered here, the seller can't escape Missouri law."

And Nixon raised another interesting issue-that jurisdiction was not limited to the sale of products over the Internet. He said the state "has power over other types of licensure and regulatory matters," such as gambling, taxation, physician-patient relationships and drug and pharmacy products.

Jurisdiction is similarly broad when dealing with private parties. Courts have asserted jurisdiction-based on interactive web sites-over suits for defamation, breach of contract, fraud and many other claims.

A few of these cases have involved publishers. In one a court concluded that a Delaware publisher could be sued for copyright infringement in Virginia because its website went beyond mere advertising and allowed online purchases. In another more famous case, a federal court in Washington, D.C., said that Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge, who is based in California, could be sued in D.C. for defamation because his site was accessible there and he had non-Internet contacts in D.C. such as soliciting readers and promoting his website during a television interview.

What does all this mean for St. Louis media companies? For example, could the St. Louis Post-Dispatch or KMOX be sued in other states based merely on their web sites?

Of course that depends on a number of facts, but looking only at their web sites, the answer revolves around whether the site simply posts information or whether the site invites-or really enables-visitors to conduct business with the company.

Take a look at the Post site, postnet.com. It allows online subscribing and classified advertising, has all manner of chat capabilities and other features that are highly interactive. It would not be surprising for a court to find jurisdiction in another state based on these features.

On the other hand, KMOX.com is for the most part a passive site-program schedules, current traffic and weather reports (and just as on the radio, the two reports are "together" on the same webpage), stock quotes and other general information-without any means to allow a user to conduct any business. Thus it would be unlikely for a non-Missouri court to find jurisdiction based solely on the web site.

So the lesson for media companies is the same as for other organizations. If you do business or gain some concrete financial advantage via your web site, you would probably have to schlepp up to Maine if some plaintiff wants to sue you up there. Otherwise, an information-only site could enable you to avoid suit outside Missouri.

Keeping up with radio ownership

By Frank Absher

Radio ownership across the country, and especially here in St. Louis, has been changing at a dizzing pace in the last few years. The trend seemed to reach its high point in the last month. So, in order for SJR readers to finally catch up with their favorite station's new corporate bosses, we have compiled a chart listing call letters, ownership, general managers and addresses. Think of it as only a snapshot, though-things could change next month.

Along with these switches in ownership has also come format changes. We haven't listed those. They literally change from week to week. But we have looked into another important aspect of all the ownership change-salaries.

In the midst of all the ownership and format changes in local radio this month, the main casualties appear to be a select group of announcers who were on the outside of the format switches. While pointing out just how tentative the deejay business is, this development also gives reason to highlight the annual salary survey done by Radio & Records magazine.

R&R found that, in radio markets the size of St. Louis, the average morning drive disc jockey is paid almost $81,000. If a jock works the midday slot, the compensation is $42,677. Afternoon drivers make an average of $54,643. These figures reflect all earnings from the station, including personal appearance fees, incentives and bonuses.

The biggest money in radio is still in sales and management. Local sales managers average over $121,000, and general managers, who often oversee more than one radio property in a market, average $223,800. Among the office staff, the business manager takes home the largest check ($56,500) followed by the IT manager ($54,800).

In addition to those figures listed above, the other averages for a market the size of St. Louis include:

Evening DJ $35,000

Overnight DJ $25,200

News Director $50,000

News Reporter $33,500

General Sales Mgr. $158,900

Program Director $95,000

Highest sales person (avg)

$124,000

Chief engineer $65,000

Promotion Director $95,000

Receptionist $21,900

AM

KTRS 550 5kw CH Holdings

Tim Dorsey

638 West Port Plaza

St. Louis, MO 63146

453-5500

KFNS 590 1kw Missouri Sports Radio LLC Greg Maracek

8045 Big Bend

St. Louis, MO 63119

962-0590

KJSL 630 5kw Crawford Broadcasting

Rick Sewell

1215 Fern Ridge Pkwy. Ste. 220

St. Louis, MO 63141

878-3600

KSTL 690 1kw/17w Crawford Broadcasting

Taft Harris

1215 Fern Ridge Pkwy. Ste. 200

St. Louis, MO 63141

878-3600

WEW 770 1kw Metropolitan Radio Group, Inc. Rich Vannoy

2740 Hampton

St. Louis, MO 63139

781-9397

KFUO 850 5kw

Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod Chuck Rathert

85 Founders Lane

St. Louis, MO 63105

725-3030

WGNU 920 450/500

Norman Broadcasting Company Esther Wright

265 N. Union Ste. 1315

St. Louis, MO 63108

454-6660

KXEN 1010 50kw/500 Mid-America Gospel Radio Dirk Hallemeier

Box 8085

Mitchell, IL 62040

436-6550

WRYT 1080 500/250

Covenant Network Tony Holman

3515 Hampton Ave.

St. Louis, MO 63139

752-7000

KMOX 1120 50kw

Infinity Broadcasting Corp. Karen Carroll

1 Memorial Drive

St. Louis, MO 63102

621-2345

WSDZ 1260 5kw

Radio Disney

Ken Gioia

638 West Port Plaza

St. Louis, MO 63146

682-1260

KSIV 1320 5kw

Bott Radio Network

Michael McHardy

1750 S. Brentwood

St. Louis, MO 63144

961-1320

KSLG 1380 5kw

Unity Broadcasting

Lee Platke

5261 Delmar

St. Louis, MO 63108

367-0013

WRTH 1430 5kw Bonneville

8081 Manchester

St. Louis, MO 63144

781-9600

KIRL 1460 5kw/500 Bronco Broadcast Co.

Bill White

3713 Highway 94 North

St. Charles, MO 63301

636-946-6600

WESL 1490 1kw

M&R Enterprises, Inc.

Bob Riggins

149 S. Eighth

E. St. Louis, IL 62201

618-271-7687

WBGZ 1570 1kw/74

Metroplex Communications Sam Stemm

227 Market

Alton, IL 62002

618-465-3535

KATZ 1600 5kw Clear Channel Communications Lee Clear

10155 Corporate Square

St. Louis, MO 63132

692-5100

FM

KDHX 88.1

Double Helix

Beverly Hacker

3504 Magnolia

St. Louis, MO 63110

664-3955

WSIE 88.7

Southern Illinois University Frank Akers

SIU

Edwardsville, IL 62026

618-650-2228

KCLC 89.1

KCFV 89.5

KYMC 89.7

WCBW 89.7 not on air

KGNA 89.9

KRHS 90.1

KWUR 90.3

KWMU 90.7

University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Patricia Bennett

8001 Natural Bridge

St. Louis, MO 63121

516-5968

KSIV 91.5

Bott Radio Network

Michael McHardy

1750 S. Brentwood

St. Louis, MO 63144

961-1320

WIL 92.3

Bonneville

8081 Manchester

St. Louis, MO 63144

781-9600

KSD 93.7

Clear Channel Communications Rick Weinkauf

1910 Pine

St. Louis, MO 63103

436-9370

KSHE 94.7

Emmis Communications David Kelley

700 Union Station

St. Louis, MO 63103

621-0095

WFUN 95.5

Radio One

KIHT 96.3

Bonneville

KMLL 97.1

Emmis Communications

KYKY 98.1

Infinity Broadcasting Corp. Beth Davis

3100 Market

St. Louis, MO 63103

531-0000

KFUO 99.1

Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod Chuck Rathert

85 Founders Lane

St. Louis, MO 63105

725-0099

KATZ 100.3

Clear Channel Communications Lee Clear

10155 Corporate Square

St. Louis, MO 63132

692-5100

WVRV 100.1

Bonneville

KEZK 102.5

Infinity Broadcasting Beth Davis

3100 Market

St. Louis, MO 63103

531-0000

KLOU 103.3

Clear Channel Communications Rick Weinkauf

1910 Pine

St. Louis, MO 63103

533-1033

WSSL 104.1

Emmis Communications John Beck

800 St. Louis Union Station

St. Louis, MO 63103

621-0400

KMJM 104.9

Clear Channel Communications Lee Clear

10155 Corporate Square

St. Louis, MO 63132

692-5100

KPNT 105.7

Emmis Communications

800 St. Louis Union Station

St. Louis, MO 63103

WKKX 106.5

Bonneville

KSLZ 107.7

Clear Channel Communications Lee Clear

10155 Corporate Square

St. Louis, MO 63132

692-5100

Commentary

At least one Missouri legislator is 'bent'

By Joe Pollack

The world may have taken many strong steps forward toward peace, liberty and other worthy goals in the past 18 years, but Missouri has taken several in the opposite direction, toward repression and darkness and a refusal to allow a variety of points of view.

Judith Newmark, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch theater critic, threw a bright, valuable light into that dark corner recently with a strong, sensible column about the Missouri Arts Council and its action in denying funding to the tiny HotHouse Theatre Company, based in downtown St. Louis, for its planned spring production of Martin Sherman's brilliant drama, "Bent," which looks at the Nazi persecution-and elimination-of homosexuals during the 1930s.

Through the long arm of coincidence, I reviewed the Theatre Project Company's 1982 production for the Post, and also was a volunteer member of the theatre panel of the Missouri Arts Council last spring when we recommended $2,250 in funding for HotHouse, a raise from the $1,500 it received for its 1999-2000 season. It wasn't a lot of money, but except for the Symphony, the Rep, and a couple of other major players, no Missouri performing arts organization gets much money from MAC.

I thought that was the end of it, but in the last month or so, when I received a postcard announcing the HotHouse season, it included the same lines that Newmark mentioned, "Due to the controversial subject matter of 'Bent,' Missouri Arts Council funding is not available for this production."

I promptly called Autry Jackson, an MAC program specialist and head of the committee on which I served. She talked around the subject a lot, blamed the problem on an unnamed legislator in Jefferson City who had questioned using state funds to help sponsor a play whose lead character was a homosexual. The man's life ended in a Nazi concentration camp, and the play is a powerful statement about the strength and dignity of the human spirit. That made no difference. But "homosexual," like "abortion," is a word that sets off major alarms for Missouri legislators.

I don't know what Jackson did next, but she apparently told Marty Stanberry, artistic director, and Donna Parrone, managing director, that they could not use state funds for the HotHouse production. Apparently, neither Karen Holland, MAC chair, nor Beverly Strohmeyer, acting executive director, knew about the action, or so they told Newmark. At the moment, MAC is between executive directors, and has been for about six months, though one may be hired about the first of the new year, or so I am told.

Then Jackson dropped a big blanket over the subject, perhaps not realizing, as Newton taught, that every action has an equal and positive reaction. I don't know if the decision meant that HotHouse had to return a fourth of its MAC funding, or if the money could be used for other things that the company needed, as long as it wasn't used, say, to pay some of the light bill or to buy a costume for the play.

HotHouse wasn't the only theatre company to face questioning from this apparently homophobic legislator. I'm told that the Rep was questioned about its production of "Six Degrees of Six Degrees of Separation," and asked to send a script of the John Guare play it produced a few years ago, and which also involved some homosexuality. Both plays also had brief scenes with nude men. Maybe that, rather than homosexuality, is what excited the legislator.

"Bent" is a powerful play, for mature audiences, as I wrote in 1982, but it's a gripping, moving drama. Richard Gere and George Hall led the way in the New York production of 1980, and R. W. (Bobby) Miller and John Grassilli were startlingly good in the Theatre Project Company version, directed by Fontaine Syer. Theatre Project Company, certainly a theatre group that played on the cutting edge, got some heat for daring to provide a sympathetic homosexual, but not nearly as much as it received for "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You." That's another story, except for the fact that Elizabeth Franz, who originated the role in New York, will be on the Fox Theatre stage next month as the wife of Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman," for which she won a Tony in 1999.

I'm not sure exactly what I will do. My "term" on the advisory panel for MAC has another year to run. Part of me thinks I should resign because of this display of cowardice before a question from a state legislator. Another part of me thinks I should stick around for the fun.

Reporters' Resource Guide

Economy

Patrick Rishe, Ph.D

Assistant professor

Webster University

Business Dept.,

School of Business and Technology

Specialty: Economics, labor economics, sports marketing, urban sports, regional sports, gender equity in sports.

For an interview or additional information, call Polly Harbaugh (314) 968-6954.

Education

Judith Walker de Felix, Ph.D

Dean and professor Webster University School of Education

Specialty: multicultural education, urban education.

For an interview or additional information, call Polly Harbaugh (314) 968-6954.

Government/Health Policy

James M. Brasfield, Ph.D

Chairperson and professor Webster University Management Dept., School of Business and Technology

Specialty: Local government, health policy issues, Medicare, Medicaid.

For an interview or additional information, call Polly Harbaugh (314) 968-6954.

Gay and Lesbian Rights

Jeff Wunrow

Privacy Rights Education Project (PREP)

P.O. Box 24106

St. Louis, MO, 63130

(314) 862-4900

Specialty: PREP works for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in Missouri through lobbying, electoral politics, education and organizing. PREP publishes a journalist's guide to the St. Louis LGBT Community. Call for a copy.

Health Care

Carol Rosse

SSM St. Mary's Health Center

6420 Clayton Rd.

Richmond Heights, MO 63117

(314) 768-8085

Specialty: Major tertiary hospital affiliated with St. Louis University School of Medicine. Comprehensive and specialized services in all major medical specialties, including high-risk obstetrics, heart surgery and orthopedics.

Lois Kendall/

Mary Jo Wich

St. Anthony's Medical Center

10010 Kennerly Road

St. Louis, MO 63128

(314) 525-4005

Specialty: Sources on wide range of health topics, including obstetrics, cancer care, cardiac surgery, orthopedics, rehabilitation care, wellness and behavioral health.

Health Issues

Greg Jinkerson

American Heartland Hospice

7555 S. Lindbergh

St. Louis, MO 63125

(314) 894-8189

Specialty: Issues of death and dying, respecting advance directives and patient choice, family dynamics and closure, role of narcotics and proper symptom relief, alternatives to Kevorkian, physician fears of over-medicating.

Information Age

Bruce Umbaugh, Ph.D

Assistant professor Webster University Philosophy Dept., College of Arts and Sciences

Specialty: The information age, cyberspace, computers and censorship, telecommunications, computers in education, computers in society, the Internet, computers and privacy.

For an interview or additional information, call Polly Harbaugh (314) 968-6954.

Politics and Society

Gwyneth I. Williams, Ph.D

Associate professor Webster University History, Politics and Law Dept., College of Arts and Sciences

Specialty: American politics and elections, women and politics, women and society, men's movement.

For an interview or additional information, call Polly Harbaugh (314) 968-6954.

Social Sciences and Human Rights

Linda Woolf, Ph.D

Associate professor Webster University Behavioral and Social Sciences

Specialty: Elder abuse, ageism, gerontology, holocaust and genocide studies.

For an interview or additional information, call Polly Harbaugh (314) 968-6954.

Even Fleishman-Hillard couldn't help Firestone

By Dawn Grodsky

More than 100 deaths are blamed on Bridgestone/Firestone tires, and counting. Local tire stores virtually banish the tires from sales floors. In fact, a manager at a Dobbs Tire and Auto Center in Shrewsbury boasts to a customer he no longer offers the brand. "Not a Firestone in the place," he says. And the beleaguered company's public relations firm-St. Louis-based Fleishman-Hillard-gave Bridgestone/Firestone the proverbial death sentence by dropping it eight weeks after landing the account.

The scenario is enough to give Bridgestone/Firestone executives soaring blood pressure, insomnia, ulcers and other stress-related illnesses, while most PR experts agree the Firestone brand name needs a quick death. Forget the Exxon Valdez. The situation Firestone now finds itself in is shaping up to be the classic case study of what not to do in a crisis.

Perhaps the most surprising revelation in all the bad news about the company is that it was dumped by its PR agency. A client firing a large and lucrative account? It's practically unheard of.

Gary Ford, a crisis communications professor at Webster University, says he wasn't surprised by the early September announcement that Fleishman-Hillard-the world's largest public relations agency-resigned from the Bridgestone/Firestone account. Dropping a client, he said, is not common but it does happen.

"Crisis is give and take," Ford said. "There are tough decisions to be made about what's acceptable, what isn't. And if they won't take the advice of the PR counsel ... after time ... you decide there's no real benefit to continuing."

Fleishman-Hillard made that decision Sept. 3. When it landed the account July 7, Fleishman didn't know what was in store. It didn't know about the pending tire recall or that Bridgestone/Firestone knew there were problems with its tires. Dave Senay, Fleishman's general manager, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "... (W)e resigned because it became evident that we could no longer be of service to Bridgestone/Firestone." He declined to elaborate.

Most experts agree that Fleishman-Hillard had no choice but to drop Bridgestone/Firestone if it wanted to protect its own reputation and credibility. But they also note that it's uncommon for anything a PR firm does, in relation to a client, to make news.

Quick, what PR firm represented Tylenol during the cyanide crisis in 1982? Exxon during the Valdez oil spill in 1989? Don't know? That's good, the experts say.

Yet Fleishman-Hillard's firing of Bridgestone/Firestone not only made the local news, it was featured in papers across the country including in USA Today.

Dan Harrison, St. Louis managing director for Shandwick International-another large PR firm that handles crises-said, "The situation was widely publicized because the crisis was widely publicized. The role of a communications firm is to provide the best advice as to how to best protect the company's reputation to put the crisis behind them. ... Most of the time the PR firm is clearly in the background. Whether the firm stays or elects to leave is not news. This one was news because of the high publicity of the crisis and also because we're in St. Louis."

Webster University's Ford thinks Bridgestone/Firestone has a slim chance at a rebound. "Their reputation and credibility with the public is severely damaged. There is precedent for companies to return from such negativity but they have to be honest, open, fully forthright in their efforts. They have to be willing to step up to the plate and admit fault and heartfelt regret. I don't see that happening with Bridgestone/Firestone. ...

"It looked like it took almost an act of Congress ... to get them to admit they're sorry. America expects more of corporations."

Crisis communications experts stress that companies need to have a crisis plan, drafted in advance, that establishes a hierarchy and makes it clear what steps the company will take to end a crisis. First and foremost on this list is to be truthful. Second is to be accessible. Bridgestone/Firestone has been neither.

Harrison said companies need to communicate how they are handling the crisis and stick to the facts. They should avoid speculation about cause or effect, and shouldn't answer hypothetical questions, he said. "Don't bluff your way through."

There's also a debate as to whether companies should apologize, and if so, if that means they are accepting blame.

Ford said Bridgestone/Firestone needed to admit fault a long time ago, and not just to Congress. Executives, he said, should have been open about the steps they were taking and immediately issued a sincere apology. "So much time has passed now, many opportunities are gone," he noted. "The company has become entirely reactive. When they first learned about it internally, that would have been the time to correct it."

The differences between Bridgestone/Firestone's and the Ford Motor Co.'s response in the same crisis are striking, though there are still questions about the extent of Ford's involvement in the scandal. Ford CEO Jacques Nasser immediately apologized to the public in commercials that aired in prime time nationwide.

The Ford web site (ford.com) also better addresses the public's concerns. The page dealing with the tire recalls features a large-type quote by Nasser: "Our goal is your safety and your trust." In contrast, Bridgestone/Firestone's web site (firestone.com) is neither particularly user-friendly nor is there any message of concern about safety from a company official.

Bridgestone/Firestone is reported to be looking for a new PR firm, assisted by Fleishman-Hillard. While experts have their doubts that the company, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, has much of a future, they do have some tips that may help.

Some of these, according to a Sept. 11 USA Today article, include phasing out the name Firestone in favor of Bridgestone, or changing the company's name entirely; starting to air ads that feature workers, along with an apology from the people who make the product, and a commitment that this will never happen again; and implementing a "full-disclosure" policy as far as what happened and what the company is doing about it through press conferences and advertisements.

Experts also say that public perception is formed by a company's immediate response to a crisis. They point to the Johnson & Johnson Co.'s Tylenol crisis as a stark contrast.

In 1982, after seven people in Chicago died after taking cyanide-laced Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules, many people figured the nation's most popular non-prescription pain reliever was a goner as well. Who would take Tylenol for a headache? It could kill.

But the company's-and in particular CEO James E. Burke's-response is now hailed as exactly what corporations should do in the midst of a crisis.

Burke appeared on nightly news programs and apologized to the American public. Johnson & Johnson immediately pulled all Tylenol capsules off the market and advised consumers who had bottles at home to dispose of them. It switched from capsules to tamper-proof caplets and added safety seals that are now common on everything from mayonnaise jars to boxes of tampons. It also offered mass coupons when the caplets hit store shelves.

As a result, Tylenol is once again the No. 1-selling pain reliever. Americans' trust was restored by honesty. That might be a lesson for Bridgestone/Firestone. But then again, it's likely too late.

In SJR

10 Years Ago:

• Larry Fiquette was appointed readers' advocate at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

• KMOX news staffers Kent Martin and Mary Phelan left for different jobs. Martin went to a public relations position with MCI and Phelan joined KMOV-TV.

• KDHX, the community radio station, was advertising for a general manager, offering a salary of up to $23,000.

5 Years Ago:

• Mike McCann, who had been with KLOU since its switch to an oldies format, left for a morning drive position in Stanford, CT.

• A $25-million-dollar lawsuit was filed against "The Jenny Jones Show" after a guest on the show was shot and killed by another guest. The murder occurred after the taping of the program in which Jonathan Schmitz learned Scott Amadure was interested in an intimate relationship with him.

• Rob Peterson was hired as program director for KWMU, the NPR station in St. Louis.

Of Note

By Don Corrigan

Like Rodney Dangerfield, free weekly community newspapers have never received much respect among the brahmins and high priests of American journalism.

They have been dissed by a protective daily newspaper industry as "shoppers" and "throwaways." University journalism departments, heavily endowed by newspaper chains and owners of dailies in one-newspaper towns, often refuse to acknowledge them or dismiss them as the "litter" of an otherwise noble profession.

Victor Jose, who has been the force behind The Graphic in Richmond, Ind., for 40 years, hopes to turn that state of disrespect around with a new book, "The Free Paper In America: Struggle for Survival." Community newspapers can no longer be ignored by the U.S. journalism establishment, declares Jose, as they now reach an estimated 88 million readers.

Jose calls upon a close boyhood friend, author Kurt Vonnegut, to write a foreword to what constitutes groundbreaking work on free newspapers. Vonnegut offers the usual jeremiad tinged with humor for the book. His jeremiad is aimed at the paid daily newspaper industry.

As Vonnegut notes, and as Jose argues forcefully later in the book, community newspapers are the last vestige of the independent news voices that characterized the Colonial period in America; they also are lone examples in the news media of how free enterprise is supposed to work; and they are now the most responsive medium left for the local readers and advertisers whom they serve.

Free independent weeklies also are targeted for extinction-either through buyouts or predatory practices-because of their very success. As Vonnegut notes: "Why are paid dailies, as often as not parts of enormous chains, doing this, doing what the First Amendment of our Constitution says our government institutions themselves must never do to any publication? They are doing it in order to perfect their monopoly on ink-on-paper advertising in their areas of circulation."

Jose chronicles some of that dirty work in violation of the spirit of the First Amendment later in his book. But first he examines the evolution of free newspapers into respectable products as a post-World War II phenomenon.

Among the flags Jose unfurls to illustrate the thriving free weekly news business in America are: the Bensonhurst Paper of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Coffee County News of Douglas, Ga.; California's Rancho Santa Fe Review; Beach & Bay Press in San Diego; Community Ad-visor of Marshall, Mich. and Webster-Kirkwood Times in suburban St. Louis.

Jose breaks the stereotype that all free papers are shoppers. He surveys figures of the Independent Free Papers of America (IFPA) that show 65 percent of the "freebies" carry news. Of those, 48 percent have a newshole that is at least 25 percent or more. Jose notes that these papers have become respectable news products comparing favorably with paid circulation papers.

In an increasing number of one-daily newspaper markets, where the dominant media are often chain-owned, the free community weekly is often the only print option left for local advertisers and readers. This has led to some Armageddon-like clashes and encounters.

Legal precedents lost

Jose details two very important examples of legal encounters between daily newspapers and independent free weeklies from the 1980s-one case occurring in Salem, Ore., and the other, in Orlando, Fla.

The author laments that both cases were settled out of court. If they had been allowed to proceed to trial, Jose argues, they could have provided precedents and clarified both issues of fair competition and attempts to monopolize.

In 1974 the Gannett Co. bought a family-owned news business that published the two daily papers in Salem, the morning Oregon Statesman and the evening Capital Journal. With strongarm tactics, Gannett tripled the profitability of the acquired company in two years by shrinking news, eliminating ad discounts, hiking rates and charging "make ready" ad fees.

Advertisers rebelled, according to Jose, and contacted a Portland-based company of community weeklies. Advertisers pledged full support if the weekly company would launch a free circulation paper in Salem. The new weekly Community Press was established, and it was welcomed by advertisers. The paper was profitable from the first issue.

Gannett did not wait long to react and strike back against the weekly. "Operation Demolition" was set in motion by Gannett to fatally cripple the Community Press. Gannett offered hefty rebates for advertisers to abandon the Press; it generated rumors that the weekly was about to fold; it threatened ill treatment of local advertisers if they refused to switch to the Gannett publications.

The big squeeze by Gannett choked and finally strangled the Community Press. However, owners of the Press retaliated with a lawsuit accusing Gannett of unreasonable restraint of trade, conspiracy to monopolize and illegal trade practices.

Gannett settled the case for about $4 million in 1981 before it could go to trial and yield an adverse verdict. An antitrust investigation by the U.S. Justice Department also was ended. "Thus, an incomparable opportunity to bring this affair fully into the light of public awareness and to strengthen antitrust standards in the industry had been lost, never to be regained," author Jose observes.

The Orlando case

The Orlando case involved an attempt by the Chicago Tribune Co. to monopolize the Florida newspaper market area of Orlando. While the Salem case involved predatory practices to kill competition, the case in Orlando focused on the issue of whether a daily paper can be allowed to buy out its direct print competitor.

In the Orlando case, the Chicago Tribune-owned daily, the Orlando Sentinel, wiped out its smaller competition under the now well-known credo, "if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em out."

The early 1980s Orlando case may seem quaint and aberrant today, especially to St. Louisans who are witnessing the buyout of the giant Suburban Journal weekly group by Pulitzer-without so much as a peep from the Justice Department. But in 1984, attorneys with the anti-trust division of the U.S. Justice Department got what they wanted in the Orlando situation-a judgment to stop monopoly- a complete and unconditional divestiture.

Rather than contest that decision, the Tribune Co. complied with the judgment. In divesting its Florida newspaper purchase, the Tribune Co. lost about $3 million of the original purchase price. But the company avoided the possibility of a court verdict that would have set a dangerous precedent for the Tribune Co. and other news chains intent on swallowing up the competition.

In retrospect, the Orlando case seems to be the last gasp of Justice Department enforcement of the Clayton Antitrust Act in the area of newspaper monopoly. The Reagan Administration Justice Department came to take a dim view of antitrust enforcement and any meddling with "business growth." That view has largely carried over to succeeding administrations.

In "The Free Paper in America: Struggle for Survival," Jose laments the lost opportunity of the 1980s with the Salem and Orlando cases. Those two situations could have established precedents against buyouts and predatory practices that result in news monopolies.

As a past publisher and ally of free community newspapers, author Jose is wary about the future of his profession. The chains have all but completed their destruction of multi-newspaper towns and their rush to monopolize the daily industry. Now, the weekly chains are being targeted and gobbled by the same daily giants. The only news morsels left on the plate as competitors to the giant chains are the free, independent, weekly newspapers.

If there is any hope for the survival of the free, independent, community weeklies, according to Jose, that hope must rest in "the entrepreneurial spirit of independent free paper publishers who are motivated by a natural desire and consumed by an unnatural obstinacy."

Sewer salaries

By Don Corrigan

The St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) is on the defensive over news reports that Executive Director Willie Horton got a nice raise that puts his salary far ahead of the likes of the Missouri Governor.

Horton's $183,750 puts him more than $65,000 ahead of what Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan is paid; it's twice as much as the annual salary of County Executive Buzz Westfall.

MSD retorts that Horton is paid much less than the heads of such tax-supported agencies as the Botanical Garden and the Art Museum. MSD probably has a point. But, then again, what the MSD exec has to shovel is much more in line with the work of political officeholders, than with the tasks of botanists and art curators.

MSD may have much more to be defensive about by the time its propositions come to a vote on the Nov. 7 ballot. A complaint filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission notes that MSD officials are spending $500,000 of ratepayers' money for ads in the media hailing themselves as "Your Clean Water People."

State law prohibits spending public funds to promote a ballot issue measure. MSD argues that the ads are purely informational and it's a coincidence that they are running at the same time as the election.

Yeah, right. And if they shovel that one past you, perhaps you'd be interested in buying a used sanitation treatment facility in West County. (Of course, you might be able to sell it back to MSD in a couple of years at a handsome profit, as was recently proposed in a deal for Dart Associates II, Inc.)