Media Curmudgeon

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October 31, 2008

Too Few "Thank Yous" on Holloween

My wife Julia and I are extraordinarily lucky people. We have a wonderfully happy marriage, the economic crisis has not been too painful for us, and we live in a lovely town house on 95th Street between Park and Lexington in New York's tony Upper East Side.

The block we live on is landmarked, and well preserved brownstones built in the late 1880s line both sides of the street. Many of the homes have children in them, so on Halloween almost all of the homes are decorated with pumpkins, goblins, witches, and scary spider webs, and have been for several years. And virtually every home is generous in passing out candy and treats -- not to avoid tricks, but because of a nice sense of community and generosity.

Therefore, it's known as a great street on which to go trick-or-treating. On Halloween evening, 95th Street, starting at 4:30, is packed with parents and kids in costumes holding bags and plastic pumpkins heavy with candy. By 7:00 p.m. the sidewalk traffic is so heavy it overflows onto the street.

Costumed kids and parents come down from East Harlem and over from super-rich Carnegie Hill. Julia and I stand at the door and pass out handfuls of candy -- Mars bars, Butterfinger bars, Skittles, Bazooka bubble gum, Twizzlers, and Snickers -- by the tubfulls.

This is the second year I have paid careful attention to the behavior of the children and their parents and to what they say when they come to the door, and whether they say "thank you" or not.

This year, 95th Street was more crowded than usual (the word obviously gets around), but the behavior was similar to last year. There were roughly three groups:

1. Parents who sent their kids down the steps alone, kids who held out their bags and greeted us with "trick or treat" or "Happy Halloween," took their candy, and said "thank you." Group #1 consisted of the well-behaved kids.

2. Kids that came down the steps, said nothing or muttered something like "trickortreat," held out their bags, and turned and left without saying "thank you." Group #2 consisted of the entitled kids.

3. Kids that came down the steps with their parents and the parents would say, "Say 'Trick or treat,'" would help the kids hold out their bags, and then would quickly tell the kids, "Say 'thank you.'" Group #3 consisted of the learned-helplessness kids.

What was fascinating to me as a rank amateur behavioral economist was that the majority of the Group #1 well-behaved children were kids of color who almost certainly came down from East Harlem. The kids were polite. The parents would send them down alone, thus urging them to be independent, and after the kids had returned with candy the parents would say "thank you" to us as their children had done. They were grateful.

The majority of the Group #2 entitled kids were boys over ten practicing being sullen teenagers and neighborhood kids who walked over from Fifth and Park Avenue. Many of them with mothers who didn't pay attention to their kids as they talked with other mothers or on their cell phones. They didn't prompt their kids and I rarely heard a "thank you" from them or from their kids.

After one group of especially snotty, entitled kids came and went without a "thank you," I went up to the sidewalk and said to a group of parents (mostly mothers), "It's interesting how few kids say 'thank you.'" I got dirty looks that would have withered Henry Paulson. One mother said indignantly, "Not my daughter!" (She was wrong; her daughter hadn't uttered a word of thanks.) And I head another mother in the group mumble, "How rude." That's Park Avenue for you. The kids probably went to Dalton.

I felt sorry for the Group #3 learned-helplessness kids. Almost all of them did not come from East Harlem. Most of them had fancy, store-bought costumes. (I'm sure to elicit an "How adorable" comment so the parent would feel successful.) I can understand accompanying one-year olds and prompting them, but some mothers were doing it with three- and four-year-olds. The parents were absolutely clueless that they were teaching their kids to be helpless and not to be independent.

Not all one-year-olds came with their parents. I saw several struggling down the steps, some with bags as big as they were, tripping on their costumes, coming to the door wide-eyed looking for candy, and then determinedly, seriously crawling back up after accomplishing their all-important mission -- candy. Those kids are going to be OK; they'll be the bosses of and will eventually have to fire the learned-helplessess kids.

I estimate that the majority of the kids were nice, well-mannered, and said "thank you." But the percentage of entitled kids who didn't say "thank you" was disturbingly high this year, which is probably a function of living in one of the richest neighborhoods in the world where kids are spoiled, where parents hire tutors to do their kids' homework, and where many of the parents work on Wall Street.

I'm pretty sure none of those parents read this blog, but if they did I would tell them to teach their children to say "thank you," and that they would be better off if they lived in East Harlem where their kids would learn to get their own candy and be grateful when they finally got it. The kids would learn that their candy tastes sweeter when they have to work for it.

Posted by Charles Warner at 8:57 PM | Comments (3) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at November 1, 2008 1:04 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at November 1, 2008 12:43 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at November 1, 2008 11:48 AM writes:

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October 28, 2008

Credit Default Swaps

Steve Silberberg asked me to post a link to the "60 Minutes" segment on credit default swaps. Read it and weep -- or get angry like Steve did. He wrote:

"This '60 Minutes' story adds another interesting prospective regarding the current financial crisis. After viewing it, I was quite upset with our political leaders. They gave the 'MBAs' you rail about the the weapons of mass destruction they needed to bring down the financial system."

CBS "60 Minutes" Credit Default Swaps video.

Posted by Charles Warner at 9:46 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at October 29, 2008 10:21 AM writes:

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Posted by Charles Warner at 8:13 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at November 1, 2008 11:53 AM writes:

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October 26, 2008

Blame the Business Schools

I didn’t watch CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Brian Williams, Charles Gibson, or Katie Couric for the last two weeks during the bailout/rescue/recovery crisis, but I was glued to CNBC and watched Fox Business for a few hours on two days for the purpose of comparing and contrasting its coverage to CNBC’s.

There was one issue that I did not see covered, the role that graduate business schools might have played in America’s financial and credit markets meltdown. The media missed the story.

Who do you suppose came up with the concept of complex derivatives and credit swaps to manage risk? Who do you think conceived of the complex formulas and algorithms for risk management based on the mathematics of game theory – investment bankers or graduate business school professors?

The answers to these questions can be found in two recently published books: From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: the Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession by Harvard Business School Professor Rakesh Khurana and Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look a the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development by Professor of Management Studies at McGill University Henry Mintzberg. Both books are intelligent, scholarly indictments of current educational practices in graduate business schools, especially the top ones such as Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, and Dartmouth.

Khurana traces the history of management education that began in the late 1800s. Business educators’ goal was to improve the reputation of management so it would be seen as a profession like law, medicine, and the clergy, with a strong public service commitment. However, after over a century of existence to think that graduates with business degree or and MBA today are committed to public service is a laughable.

Here’s a prescient passage from Khurana’s From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, written in 2007:

The market logic that has taken over business schools and American business has prevented us from even seeing that there might be an alternative to either markets or regulation as a way of preserving the integrity of our capitalist system.

This self-inflicted blindness is symptomatic of an even deeper malady. Lacking either the religious framework invoked by the founders of the modern university and the university-based business schools, or shared agreement about basic social values, we have no meaningful language for civic discourse about the ultimate purpose of our secular institutions. Thus, we have been left only with empty rhetoric about “excellence” or “leadership” with which to discuss the educational mission of the university. As a result, our universities are now apt to turn out what the late Robert Nisbet calls “loose individuals.” The loose individual Nisbet described is someone who does not feel constrained by norms arising from social values such as fairness, or equity, or by allegiance to social institutions such as nations, firms, or even jobs. Such individuals lack any sense of “moral responsibility,” often playing “fast and loose with the other individuals in relationships of trust and responsibility.” Their relationships with those who are not their intimates are anchored in utilitarian self-interest.

So is it any wonder where the Wall Street greed that was at the core of the current market meltdown was nurtured? Congress has spanked former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, and under questioning he admitted his errors in judgment. The Senate and the House Banking Committees should ask the deans of the five top business schools to testify under oath, and ask these academics what they have done to contribute to the crisis and how they might change their ways.

If congress decides to summon a group of graduate business school deans, the deans will certainly be more concerned about whether or not they are asked to appear and are, thus, in the top five than they will be in taking any blame.

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:41 PM | Comments (4) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at October 28, 2008 7:17 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at October 28, 2008 5:53 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at October 28, 2008 5:46 PM writes:

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somalley at October 27, 2008 11:20 AM writes:

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October 6, 2008

CNBC Served the Public

On Thursday morning, after the Senate passed the bailout/rescue/recovery legislation, I got up and began watching CNBC. Then, in an act of self-flagellation, I turned to the Fox Business Network. In a previous blog entry I had referred to Fox Business as “Fox Bimbo News,” and I wanted to see if it had miraculously improved its coverage of the biggest business story in the history of America.

I should have known better, because I don’t believe in astrology or miracles. Fox Business was still bimbo news in spite of the outrageously misleading advertising and promotion that you would expect from a news network under the leadership of Fox’s Roger Ailes, the Karl Rove of the media. It was under Ailes that Fox News promoted itself with the Brave-New-World, Huxlian, totally untrue slogans “fair and balanced” and “we report, you decide.”

One of the reasons I had decided to watch Fox Business’s coverage of the financial crisis was because the day before I watched CNBC as it covered the markets and the Senate consideration and passage of the originally called bailout bill, which by Wednesday was being called a rescue bill. By Friday when the House passed it, the bill was called the recovery bill. But on Wednesday, while I was watching CNBC, I was upset by a Fox Business commercial that ran in a local break that claimed, falsely that “we own the story.” Fox Business also claimed in the commercial that it had more live shots and was covering the story while CNBC was airing infomercials. All of these claims, I later learned from a story in The New York Times, were based on the previous weekend – totally out of context, and a completely unfair, deceptive claim.

But what should anyone expect from a Fox property lead by Ailes, formerly a political consultant for Richard Nixon and the Republicans. Who do you think Karl Rove learned his dirty tricks from? I asked myself, should time Warner cable have accepted the ad to run while viewers were watching CNBC? Was that fair? I decided that while it probably was not fair, Time Warner didn’t have a strong enough reason to turn it down during tough economic times when it wanted all of the ad revenue it could get. Nevertheless, the Fox Business ad turned me off with its false, misleading, nasty claims. It was clearly gorilla marketing and attack advertising down in the gutter with current Republican attack advertising.

The rule in advertising is that when you are way behind and have no chance of catching up by talking about your own brand’s benefits, you go negative and attack your competitors. Ad guru David Ogilvy warned about this tactic and recommended never even mentioning a competitor in an ad because he knew that up to 33 percent of the people who see that ad think it’s for the wrong brand. The one thing you know when a brand mentions a competitor in an ad is that that brand is not number one – it’s usually way behind, as Fox Business is. Ever see an ad for a Rolex that claims it’s “better than a Timex?” Of course not.

According to The New York Times Fox Business has “…never drawn an audience large enough to be considered statistically reliable by Nielsen for an extended time period.” But according to that same article, Fox Business had its best day ever, with an average of 81,000 homes between 1 p.m. and 10 p.m. watching on Monday when the House turned down the then-called bailout bill. CNBC’s audience was over 900,000 for the same time period of time.

So I was one viewer of a miniscule Fox Business audience on that Thursday, but I stuck it out as long as I could bear – through Degan McDowell and Brian Sullivan, who co-anchor between 10 a.m. and 12 noon. Brian didn’t really understand what was going on and Degan was the most obnoxious lock-jaw anchor I’ve ever seen on national or local television.

During that painful time watching Fox Business that was like hearing fingernails scratched on a chalkboard for me, I did see several promotion spots for Fox Business that were virtually the same as the commercials I had seen the day before on the local break within CNBC programming. I suppose they were making the same claims on the theory that if you tell a lie often enough some people will believe it. But with the teeny weensy Fox Business audience, even if the lies stick, it won’t make any difference. Fox Business was running promos because it couldn’t sell enough ads to fill the empty slots. Any smart advertiser would be on CNBC, which had the biggest audience in its history, and deservedly so.

During those agonizing hours, I noticed that the lead story on Fox Business was about GE and how two days before Warren Buffett had invested $3 billion in GE. A surprisingly bright reporter did a fairly thorough job of explaining what a difficult position GE was in because over 40 percent of its profits came from GE Capital, which because of the crisis was in deep, deep financial doo doo.

When I had watched CNBC earlier, from around 9 to 10:30 a.m., its lead story had been how the Senate had loaded the now-called rescue bill with pork. Knowledgeable CNBC anchors and reporters detailed the pork earmarks and explained the political reasons for them. I felt strongly that the pork story was clearly the lead. So why had Fox Business lead with GE and try to make GE look bad?
I’m shocked, shocked that Fox Business would corrupt its business journalism judgment and bury the obvious lead in order to try to put a bad light on GE, the owner of their avowed enemy, CNBC. That’s Ailes for you.

I called my good friend Neil Derrough, who is the former V.P. and general manager of WBBM-TV when Bill Kurtis was the highest-rated anchor in Chicago, of WCBS-TV when Jim Jensen was a top-rated anchor, was president of the CBS-owned television stations division, and President of highly rated KNSD-TV in San Diego. I mention these gigs because Neil is one of the most astute television executives I know and is a keen and knowledgeable critic of television news. He’s also fairly conservative and a sometimes (though not often) fan of Fox News on cable. I thought he’d give me an objective opinion of how CNBC did covering the bailout/rescue/recovery story of last week.

Neil said that he thought the CNBC’s coverage was “insightful and evenhanded – much better than any other cable news network such as CNN, Fox, or MSNBC.” He praised CNBC’s production values, and we discussed how much we both liked the way CNBC did split screens during Paulson and Bernanke’s testimony showing them testifying on one screen and the second-by-second effect it was having on the stock markets and the dollar versus other currencies.
I asked Neil if he liked the multi-guest screens – six of them at once some times – and he said, “yes, I like a cross-section of views, especially when the guests are as good as CNBC’s are.” Finally, Neil said that in the time of financial crisis that CNBC stepped up to the plate and provided an important and much needed public service in the best journalistic tradition.

The jazz great Jack Teagarden and the incomparable Louis Armstrong sang a duet in a song in which Armstrong sings, “I like what you like,” and Teagarden responds with, “and that’s what I like about you.” Neil Derrough and I could sing the same duet. CNBC did a magnificent public service last week. Thanks, CNBC.

Posted by Charles Warner at 3:21 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

October 5, 2008

Race and the Race

Guest blogger, Justin Frank, a noted psychiatrist and author of Bush on the Couch, writes:

People are afraid and don't know it - they are afraid of having a black man in the White House, a black family as the first family. It is hard to estimate the level and degree of discomfort, but many voters choose based on identification with the candidate and/or his family.

When people voted for Bush they were seduced into thinking he's the guy that they'd rather have a beer with - a Joe Sixpack kind of guy - rather than one of his uptight East Coast opponents. And they voted for Bush because he was an effective liar: he called him a compassionate conservative when he was neither - though he was compassionate for some conservatives. People voted for him because Rove was expert at tearing down opponents, whether McCain or Kerry.

There are many reasons people are afraid, and most have to do with the economic crisis resulting from the Bush Administration's attitude toward regulation and Wall Street. But I think they have inner fears which they may not recognize until they stand inside the polling booth. These fears are about otherness and blackness - despite feeling that they want change and that they like Obama. They feel positive about what he stands for and the changes he wants to make. And they may be embarrassed by their hidden worries about having a black president. The New Yorker cover only served to send those fears further underground - thoughtful but frightened voters were so mocked by already feel mocked by insensitive Eastern elitists. I think those fears undecideds may have are not to be ridiculed, but need to be addressed directly.

Obama can say and must acknowledge that people have such fears - and must do it on national TV. He can respond to some question like what he's learned or thought about while running. And he can say it in the way only he can - but something like this:

"I think that many people are still not comfortable with having a black president or a black first family. I understand that, and know that those feelings are NOT racist, but are driven by our culture and are somehow natural to us all. The fear makes us reach back for the familiar even though we know in our hearts that in this case - the case of McCain-Palin who don't have America's interests at heart - the familiar will not help America stand up again the way it can and should. I know that I AM the race card - and it's not something I'm playing because the stakes for our future are too great. They are too great to be seen as any kind of game, whether cards or hockey. And in any event, I am bi-racial - so I'm really the bi-racial race card. And I hope you cast your vote for me, even though it may feel risky or uncomfortable to do so. And, if you do vote for me, I guarantee to do everything in my power to justify both your risk and confidence as together we move America into a new and exciting future."

Obama should also be prepared to answer McCain's attacks by explaining that he knows people want a president who is strong and who makes them feel they are in safe hands. He must clarify that strength is about responsibility and regulation. It is about respecting people who hold views different from his, rather than ridiculing them for not understanding. Such ridicule has nothing to do with genuine strength.

He needs to close with his vision for America's hopes and how we can all work together. That would be the reassurance needed after having confronted our culture-based fears.

Posted by Charles Warner at 9:29 AM | Comments (1) | Print |

Bruce Braun at October 5, 2008 7:36 PM writes:

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October 4, 2008

Nick Kotz Wades In

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Nick Kotz wades into the discussion:

Bill Grimes's response to your blog on the demise of the New York Sun is an excellent analysis, premised optimistically on the notion that--just as the horse and buggy was replaced by the automobile--that bright and imaginative news people will figure out how to maintain or reinvent sound journalism and news on the internet once there is sufficient demand for a straight and intelligent news product, rather than acceptance of the demagoguery, propaganda, and pap that now fill the tube and radio as Gresham's Law drives the news product deeper into a mire that more and more fails to serve the need for an informed public to maintain a healthy democracy.

I wish I shared Grimes's optimism, just as I wished that the rigorous demands of the market place and of supply and demand could somehow have prevented the colossal fraud, abuse, and too-clever chicanery on Wall Street that threatens the world economy.

Grimes should turn his very good mind to exploring alternative models of ownership and operation that still provide reliable news content in the electronic media. During this election season, three news outlets provided an oasis of rational, intelligent, unbiased reporting of public affairs. These were: National Public Radio, the Lehrer News Hour on PBS, and C-SPAN. Each news operation operates with public support, and strong incentives to produce a serious news product. In the case of C-Span, which prov ides the most reliable news nationally on cable television, the operation is anchored by its mission of showing what is going on in Congress through a relatively unfiltered lens. Public television and public radio, despite flurries of criticism mostly from the political right, perform as well as they do because they realize that the Congress observes how they operate. This provides a framework in which they are kept aware that they were created to serve a public interest and trust. And that standard and restraint hold true even though both public radio and television receive a declining percentage of their income from government funds, and now carry advertising, which hasn't yet noticeably harmed the news product.

In print journalism, whether newspapers or magazines, new ownership forms also are needed and hold promise. Ownership by foundations, e.g. the St. Petersburg Times, doesn't guarantee a superior news product, but helps by reducing the pressure for returns on investment.

I am not proposing government oversight as the solution. It carries as many dangers as a totally free market dominated by the need for large profits. And the wide open accessibility and variety of the internet isn't the answer either because it contributes as well to a tower of Babel with huge problems of accuracy, and maintenance of basic standards of news. Even the informed citizen cannot spend all day scanning the internet trying to figure out what is going on in the nation and the world. Yes, the last strong bastions of print journalism must figure out how to stay solvent and to flourish by figuring out how to produce significant earnings from the Internet.

But we need imaginative answers to this pressing problem of how to maintain an informed democracy as a totally unfettered marketplace takes us further down a path of irrelevancy and ignorance.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:30 AM | Comments (0) | Print |

October 3, 2008

Bill Grimes Responds

Guest blogger Bill Grimes responds to my "The Sun Sets" recent post.

People have cried continually since the industrial revolution as they have seen products become obsolete. Think the demise of the horse and buggy, the near disappearance of river boats carrying America's products, men's hats, neckties, Royal Crown Cola, Yankee Stadium, and copying machines -- the list is endless. Such change is inevitable and should be welcomed or ignored at one's own peril.

I shed no tear, not only because we will not see disappearance of the last newspaper incur in our lifetime and maybe even in our kids’. We won’t see them all go away; however, there is so much news and information available today makes it harder for them to hang on. I agree that most online information and news is biased, subjective, and inflammatory, like the Huffington Post, for example. But some is not biased and is worthwhile. When newspaper owners realize that their Web sites should have more news and information that what they publish at unsustainable expense in current newsprint products, we will see a flourishing abundance of new, original, quality journalism.

Newspaper owners who ignore this opportunity will be like the horse and buggy boys lamenting belatedly that it was shortsighted to believe that they cut cost and return to profitability. In years to come they will then realize that they should have had the courage to attempt the only path to survival left to them way back a few years ago in 2008 and that was, and is, to charge for their quality -- charge a subscription fee for it. Anyone who thinks that there will be sufficient ad revenue to support more than a small handful of news content online publishers simply does not understand the economics of an advertiser’s business and ignores the tremendous increase in the supply of advertising that has occurred online.

So while I am very sad to click My Bookmarks on my browser and then click on “New York Sun” and see a blank page appear. But the Sun’s demise will be remembered by those of us who share the view that content can not be free for but for a scant few news producers and we will see its disappearance yesterday as the harbinger of this no-free-content-lunch world. Those who ignore the clear message the Sun sent ignore it with great peril. And I will add here that the New York Times Company will soon, within a year -- two at he very most – will be forced to run to Warren Buffet or some new investor to recapitalize the company and the current management will be gone. This is not only because its revenue and circulation numbers are in a downward spiral but also because its operating costs associated with newsprint, production, and distribution represent 65 percent of all operating costs. That business model is not sustainable without a fundamental change in the way its content is distributed.

But that’s hardly all, NYT interest payments now consuming a frightening per cent of the company’s operating cash flow. Its pension fund is under-funded by $300 million and it will have to soon discontinue its dividend payments. And that, as any first year finance student knows, means that its share price, now $14 vs. $52 in 2002, will fall even further. And that means, as third -year students know, that the company’s cost of capital will increase, which, in turn, means borrowing money will have an interest coupon similar to what the Fed is getting from AIG -- 11.3 percent.

Back to the beginning: the Sun is gone and cable trash news has killed journalism. That should not mean that we can not be optimistic that a revival of great journalism is not possible. I believe that thousands of journalism students worldwide who grew up with computers and the Internet will be capable of producing great news content and there is no reason for me to believe that their counterparts from the business schools will lack the courage to charge readers/users a subscription fee that will be viewed as fair value for reflecting the content’s uniqueness, quality and utility.

And why would Murdoch buy the Sun? He has two US papers -- one that is operating on the right economic track despite these tough times and the other that has increasing losses. It is not just a coincidence that the former – the WSJ – is the one that has one million people paying a subscription fee of $70 a year. The Sun for a great business man would be a long walk for a short drink.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:16 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

October 1, 2008

The Sun Sets

On Tuesday, September 30, New York Sun Editor Seth Lipsky told his staff that the paper was ceasing publication. Here in part is what he said:

They [the investors] invested in the ideal of the scoop, the notion that news is the spirit of democracy, and in the principles for which we have stood in our editorial pages — limited and honest government, equality under our Constitution and the law, free markets, sound money, and a strong foreign policy in support of freedom and democracy. They liked the way the Sun reflected the dynamism of our city and spoke for its interests in the national debate.

They invested, too, in the joy with which you illuminated the cultural life of New York, in our willingness to spring to the defense of so many who are not always defended, in the thrill of our sports coverage, the verve and warmth of our society coverage, and in our efforts to bring together a community and give it voice.

I did not agree with much of what the Sun wrote in its editorial pages, but I did agree with the energetic, rational, journalistic manner in which its reporters pursued a good old fashioned journalistic scoop. Seth Lipsky’s last editorial, in fact, was titled “The Ideal of the Scoop.”

Compare what Lipsky said above that the Sun stood for (and had to close down) to what the flourishing cable news networks stand for: Solid reporting versus bloviating opinionators. Clearly labeled editorial opinions versus disguised, often racist and sexist, smears. Commitment to a community versus commitment to profit via lowest-common-denominator programming. Wisdom versus stupidity. Honor versus dishonor.

Newspapers are dying, and it’s heartbreakingly sad. Think about how you would feel if you were alive (like Sarah Palin thinks humans were) and you had to watch the magnificent dinosaurs die from lack of sunshine and enough to eat to keep them alive. You would have cried then and you should be crying now as newspapers die. But that’s evolution.

What’s really sad is that the Sun would be alive if it could have found a few more investors who were willing to see it lose a couple of million dollars a year, while Rupert Murdoch keeps the trashy New York Post alive with infusions of over $40 million a year to cover its losses.

Murdoch could have afforded to keep the Sun alive if had wanted to, and I’m curious to know why he chose not to. Anti-Semitic? Wanted to be the only conservative voice in NY? Who knows, except we do know that it’s too bad someone didn’t step up. Yes, whoever invested would have been a little poorer, but New York is now a lot poorer intellectually.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:02 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

arcdoc at October 2, 2008 11:27 PM writes:

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