Newsday's Hard Sell

I am a 3 day weekend subscriber to Newsday, Long Island's tabloid confection of daily news, alas we have no choice. I subscribe for the bare minimum - the 3 day weekend - so I can get local news and the advertising flyers; I like my coupons. Newsday has been calling me for weeks without leaving a message. Today I finally picked up the phone because I was getting tired of them calling. What could they possibly want? My annual subscription is paid in full. In a nutshell, they want to give me an additional 2 days of the paper, Wednesday and Thursday for free. That's right. Free! Through the end of my current paid subscription, I would receive 2 extra days of the paper for free. 5 whole days of Newsday.

So I asked, "how much will it cost when it is time to renew?"
"There is no cost," he said. "Newsday is simply encouraging all of its current weekend subscribers to take the additional 2 days."
"I have nothing to lose," said my handler. "it was free."
I said that was fine, well, and good but how much will it cost? I got the same answer. So, I gave up that angle and proceeded to explain that the 3 days I already get are practically more than I can bare and I couldn't possibly take on another 2 days.
"But, its free," he said, "we just want you to try it, that's all."
"But I don't want to try it," I said. "I barely read what I pay for, nevermind you giving me more."

Certainly, Newsday has the most to gain by this arrangement - by improving circulation on Wednesdays and Thursdays, they could increase advertising costs for those days. More exposure, better value. How easy it is to give current subscribers more newspaper as an instant boost to circulation figures? Well they met their match. I flatly refused to accept my 2 extra free copies of Newsday; the solicitor was stunned, I could hear it in his voice. I had to be honest with myself, I just couldn't stand the thought of having any more newspaper to read, sort and recycle. As stated in a previous post, I am still deeply considering giving up my beloved New York Times weekend subscription, so Newsday called on the wrong customer.

Labor Day Surprises

Hurricane Gustav narrowly misses New Orleans but still packs a wallop to the gulf coast. The Republican National Convention is cancelled for today due to fear of mishandling another hurricane disaster. It will officially begin tomorrow but with more curiosity than ever. The big news of the day is that McCain’s apparently squeaky clean conservative choice for VP is not so squeaky after all. It figures. No one is squeaky clean; I don’t know why Americans always keep expecting it of people running for office.

Gov. Sarah Palin was greeted like a breath of fresh air for the Republican party even though she is under investigation for possible ethics violations. However the big twist on her platform was revealed today; her 17 yr old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. Thankfully, she will be forced into marriage so it will all be made whole and the stigma of an being an unwed mother, not to mention daughter of the most conservative woman to hit the Republican stage will be averted so it seems. However, it will make it difficult for Palin to continue her support for abstinence-only training when she cannot get her own daughter to abide.

Fox News was already down-playing the pregnancy as a private family matter. Since it is being handled “correctly,” Palin’s daughter will marry her guy; no conservative rules have really been broken. What price political ambition? No matter the spin, this revelation will definitely undermine the conservative party platform that she was chosen to uphold.

Will the Real Numbers Please Stand Up?

Falling housing prices, reduced credit availability, higher food and fuel costs have middle class people feeling squeezed to the limit even to the point where they are turning to credit cards to survive. Credit card companies are lowering limits because they fear the borrower’s ability to pay. Lower credit limits means higher debt ratios leading to lower FICO scores, the gold standard of creditworthiness. Lower FICO scores means higher interest rates on future money borrowed. If you want to restructure your budget by reducing your housing costs, you can’t sell your house even if you wanted to. If you try to get a better job, employers are now checking your credit score rather than personal references, the same score that you just ruined by struggling to survive. Even if you want to get help, debt counselors and consumer credit counselors cannot help you until you fall behind on your debt. You have to ruin your credit score before you can get help. It seems like everything is a vicious cycle feeding on itself. And don’t even check your retirement account because the teetering stock market is eating it alive.

Enter the economists who claim that based on the numbers, things are not as bleak as they were in the 1980s or during the Great Depression. Many claim that the media is responsible for the pervasive “negativity propaganda.” They state that the reality is that while most people will have to cut back, the consumer is absorbing all of the costs and hikes remarkably well. How is this possible? I always return to this question. We have way more debt and costs in this new age - home equity lines and credit cards, larger houses and associated costs, more vehicles and stuff, new technology payments; cell phones, television programming, internet, satellite radio, exurbs requiring increased transportation costs – that we did not have in 1970s and 1980s when I was growing up. Even the post office says it is losing money and keeps raising its rates when I know that I have never received so much mail in my life. I spend hours each week sorting and dealing with the mail and yet I still can’t keep up.

When the government releases numbers for unemployment and inflation, GDP and income growth, they don’t sound that bad. The experts say that we still have not dipped into a recession because the economic stimulus package gave the economy a boost and exports are still doing well. I want to know how the economy was saved by $150 billion dollars in rebate checks when we have a nearly $10 trillion dollar deficit. Month after month, I hear about layoffs, lack of job creation, net jobs loss yet according to the numbers we are still holding up. Maybe it really is true that things aren’t as bad as they seem if you eschew common sense and stick to the numbers.

Cablevision Control of Newsday and News 12: Sanctioned by the Feds

A reluctant reality is upon is. The Justice Department and the FTC have approved Cablevision Systems bid to purchase Newsday, Long Island's only major newspaper, from Tribune Company. While I was certainly relieved that Cablevision’s bid beat out the alternative, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the repercussions are very unsettling. Cablevision, a cable television operator turned media conglomerate, is a privately held company controlled by the Dolan family. Its assets include Channel 12, Long Island’s only news station ("available only on Cablevision.") When the deal is consummated the Dolan family will have a virtual news empire on Long Island controlling both the major print news and the television news.

Based on the Long Island Power Authority’s (LIPA) 2008 survey, the population on Long Island is 2.85 million. For comparison purposes, the city of Chicago has a population of 3 million people. Can you imagine Chicago having one television news station and one newspaper owned by the same company controlled by one family?

This is certainly not the time for our news sources to be converging. However, that is what we have to look forward to. There are many small publications but all have limited circulation, maybe one of them will become a larger presence in response to “Cablevision media.” Maybe we have nothing to fear and Newsday will become a better newspaper…maybe.

The Day Journalism lost an Original: Tim Russert dead at 58

Today I have very little to say because I am stunned by the sudden death of Tim Russert. Tim Russert is one of my favorite journalists; intelligent, unbiased, unrelenting but fair. My husband and I grew up with Ted Koppel, Peter Jennings, and Bill Moyers to name a few. We like our journalism the old fashioned way; doing your own homework, asking the tough questions and never taking sides. It is hard to see that these days. My Sundays with Meet the Press will never be the same and I absolutely cannot imagine the presidential election season without him.

Farewell Tim. We will miss you!