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The Chronicle’s David Lazarus: the consumer reporter who wasn’t allowed to cover the biggest consumer story in San Francisco history

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

David Lazarus wrote his farewell consumer column for the July 27th Chronicle under the headline, “Where is the media watchdog?”

Indeed. Lazarus answers his question by quoting Ralph Nader as saying that there will never be another Nader because “the media have lost interest in consumer advocacy as both a story and a calling.”

Lazarus says that the “Chron’s editors have stood behind this column” and says that “a tip of the hat is due here to Editor Phil Bronstein, Deputy Managing Editor Steve Proctor and, most of all, Business Editor Ken Howe. They took enough heat on my behalf to boil soup.”

And yet, despite the fact that Lazarus is a damn good reporter and a strong consumer advocate and claims support from his paper, he was still unable to cover the biggest consumer story in San Francisco history.

Which is, as attentive Guardian readers know, the PG&E/City Hall/Raker Act scandal and how PG&E has cheated the city’s businesses and residents for decades out of the city’s own cheap, clean, and green Hetch Hetchy electrical power. (See past Bruce blogs and Guardian stories and editorials going back to 1969).

Today’s Ammianoliner

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Ed Jew runs in San Francisco to Burlingame marathon. (On the answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Monday, July 30.) B3

The ugly news we’ve been waiting to hear

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Alas. Alas. As predicted by the Guardian, the Bruce blog, and most everybody in and around the Dean Singleton news operations, the bad news was flashed this morning by my reliable source in Contra Costa County in his note and Singleton story below.

This was a major story on yet more news consolidation in the Bay Area, but it only rated a three paragraph burial story on page 2 of the daily digest page of the business section of Singleton’s only Bay Area daily “competitor,” the San Francisco Chronicle.

Its lively head says, “Chain consolidates newsroom operations,” which means in effect “please don’t read this story, it is damn boring.” Its boiler plate press release coverage says without blushing: “The consolidation of the papers, all owned by MediaNews Group (B3: Singleton) will result in job cuts as part of an effort to eliminate redundant positions, beef up online coverage and save money…The company said that it hopes attribution will cover the staff reductions, but added that layoffs may be necessary…Local news reporting will continue to be supervised by editors at each of the newspapers…” Wow, now that is real enterprise business reporting!

My source wrote by email:

“The following appears today in the business pages of at least the CCTimes and Oakland Trib. Times ran it below fold on pg. 1 of business section; Trib ran on an inside business page.

“I still have the image of Singleton standing in the city room of the Times at the time of the sale, saying staff and editorial direction for the various papers would remain in place. Hah. It won’t be long before there is but one newspaper to serve the East Bay, perhaps with zoned editions that are community specific.” (B3: my source, a veteran newsman who has lived in the county for years, has yet to be wrong on any of his predictions.)

East Bay newspapers plan to consolidate news operations
Owner of Times says move will improve coverage, efficiency
By George Avalos
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Article Launched: 07/27/2007 03:05:35 AM PDT

The company that owns the Times said it will consolidate the news operations of several East Bay newspapers as a way to improve coverage of the region and create a more efficient organization.
Starting Aug. 13, all employees of the East Bay papers affected will work under the umbrella of Bay Area News Group-East Bay, said John Armstrong, vice president of California Newspapers Partnership, which owns the publications.
“We are making this change, which integrates three entities into a single operation, to allow us to maximize our East Bay news-gathering capabilities,” said Armstrong, publisher of the Times.
The daily newspapers affected by the consolidation are the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, Tri-Valley Herald, Valley Times, San Ramon Valley Times, East County Times, West County Times, Hayward Daily Review, San Joaquin Herald, Fremont Argus and San Mateo County Times. A number of nondaily papers are also included.
The reorganization will “eliminate wasteful redundancies, streamline management and redirect staff and resources to our interactive services and other priorities, such as watchdog journalism,” Armstrong said in a memo he sent to employees of the newspapers.
Job cuts could materialize as a result of the consolidation.
“As we eliminate duplication of effort in our newsrooms, we will reduce the size of the editorial staff,” Armstrong stated. “It is our hope attrition will cover this reduction, but there is no guarantee that layoffs can be avoided.”
The combined newsrooms now have about 360 employees, said Kevin Keane, executive editor of the Times and vice president for news of the regional news group. Keane will become executive editor of Bay Area News Group-East Bay. Pete Wevurski, who had been editor of ANG Newspapers, will become managing editor of the new editorial organization, reporting to Keane.
The changes come as newspapers nationwide must wrestle with defections of advertisers and readers to the Internet.
“We need to start thinking of ourselves as information companies and not just as newspaper companies,” Keane said.
He said he believes the emerging news organization in the East Bay can deploy reporters and other news employees in a way to help the newspapers embrace a fast-changing digital world.
“We can put content online virtually 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Keane said. “We can break news online around the clock.”
Although the restructuring of the news industry has brought about painful changes and may continue to do so, Keane suggested the changes also can bring plenty of upside.
“There are a lot of challenges in the newspaper business with advertising drifting away to the Internet,” Keane said. “There is also a lot of opportunity to do things in new ways. The challenge for us is to find a balance between our reader demands for online content with our core print business.”

Watchdog journalism? C’mon. For starters, the Singleton papers will be covering even fewer night meetings of the local city councils, planning commissions, school and community college boards, and other government agencies in the East Bay and Singletonland. And they sure as hell won’t be covering the news or selling ads in a competitive newspaper environment. Alas. Alas. B3, ever more annoyed to find that newspapers, even as monopolies, continue to do such a lousy job of covering the biggest local story on their turf (themselves)

Extra! Extra! Chronicle runs front page story critical of PG&E!

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Coming back from a special meeting of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) in Santa Domingo,
I was pleasantly surprised to find a solid story on the front page of the Chronicle (Thursday, July 26th) laying out PG&E’s sorry record on blackouts.

The head was good: “The Blackout Blues.” The subhead was apt: “PG&E leaves customers in the dark more often than the other big utilities in California.” The lead was a real lead: “”Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers encore more frequent and longer-lasting blackouts than other Californians, state data show.”
The second graph provided telling detail: “Tuesday’s power outage in San Francisco and the Peninsula was no isolated incident. In 2006, the average PG&E customer lost power for more than 4 1/2 hours, according to statistics compiled by the utility and submitted to state energy regulators.”

It was prominently displayed with a nice graphic and lots of dramatic white type on a black background.

The reporter, David Baker, with help from Marisa Lagos and Cecilia Vega, did a lot of work to get the story in shape so quickly after yet another PG&E service fiasco.

Some impertinent questions for Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein says the hope to save the Chronicle from its staggering weekly losses is more local news.

So, after the Chronicle once again blacked out coverage of the “Free Carolyn Knee” ethics case,
I sent over some impertinent questions to him (with copies to the Chronicle reporters and editors who ought to be allowed the cover the story).

Why did the Chronicle not cover the Carolyn Knee/Ethics Commission story and why does the Chronicle not cover the regular doings of the
Sunshine Task Force and the Ethics Commission? I am also curious why the Chronicle still does not cover the PG&E/City Hall/Raker Act scandal story and all of its ramifications, including the Carolyn Knee story as to what happened to the treasurer of the public power campaign against PG&E. Why hasn’t the Chronicle followed up the excellent stories that Susan Sward and Chuck Finnie did on the PG&E scandal only a few years ago.

No answer at blogtime. The point for Phil and the Chronicle: you can’t trumpet local news when you can’t cover the angles of the biggest urban scandal in U.S. history. Much more to come, B3

CNN Vs. ‘Sicko’: Fact-checking Michael Moore is not a healthy thing to do on the air

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

CNN, whose correspondents have been lobbying softball questions to Bush administration spokespeople since the Iraq War began, decided to do a “fact check” of Moore’s film ‘Sicko’ and then ask him some pointed questions when he appeared on CNN’s Situation Room on July 9.

Moore was up to the test, and then turned the tables on Wolf Blitzer and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s senior medical correspondent, who did the “reality check” on “Sicko.” Moore confronted Blitzer about the inaccuracies in Gupta’s report and the result was a most animated discussion, according to the media watchdog FAIR.

FAIR, which stands for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, laid out the errors in Gupta’s piece and called for viewers to contact CNN’s Situation Room and demand that they correct the mistakes.

The Moore vs. CNN exchange prompts two rhetorical questions: Wouldn’t it be nice to have Michael Moore in the Washington and White House press corps? Wouldn’t it be nice to see CNN ask some tough “fact-checking” and do some “reality checks” of the Bush administration and its generals before and during the Iraq War–and now? B3

Click on the continued reading link for the July 11 FAIR report:

Carolyn Knee is free! Finally, after five years, the poster girl for ethics reform has been freed by the Unethical Commission

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Rick Knee flashed the word from City Hall about 6:35 p.m. Monday (July 9): Carolyn Knee is free!.

In a follow up email that was uncharacteristically short, Carolyn’s husband wrote, “The Ethics Commission voted unanimously Monday evening to accept the $267 settlement that staff members and Carolyn’s attorney reached.
This concludes the case.”

Well, this case may be closed and the long nightmare and high drama may be over for the Knees, who took the brunt of the commission’s wrath for the 2002 grassroots public power campaign that damn near kicked PG&E out of City Hall, but their fight was well worth it and the battle for ethics reform goes on. Carolyn’s rousing defense even made nice folks out of the commission and staff, at least for one hearing.

Ammiano tosses out an Ammianoliner for the All-Star game

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“San Francisco welcomes five day All-Star wank fest. Who’s your Daddy? (On Ammiano’s answering machine on Monday, July 9.) B3

SOS: The Unethical Commission goes into session Monday night on the Case of the Grassroots Treasurer who went up against PG&E in a tight public power campaign. Come and support Carolyn Knee at the Ethics meeting at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall room 408

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Carolyn Knee, the poster girl for how the Ethics Commission is unethically treating treasurers of grassroots campaigns, goes once more before the Ethics Commission at a hearing starting at 5:30 p.m. Monday (July 9) in Room 408 in City Hall.

Carolyn and her attorney have reached a settlement of $267 with the commission’s enforcement division, which is one per cent of the amount the staff originally recommended.
But public power supporters fear that the reason her case is on the agenda once again is because at least two commissioners intend to raise questions about the recommended amount.

Carolyn, a retiree on a fixed income, found herself threatened with $26,700 in fines by the Ethics Commission for several alleged violations of campaign finance laws during a random audit of San Franciscans for Affordable Clean Energy, the grassroots group that forced PG&E to the ballot in the 2002 public power campaign.
The point: SFACE raised peanuts during the campaign (a little more than $l00,000) while PG&E spent more than $2 million to defeat the initiative, $800,000 in the final days of the campaign (and PG&E didn’t report this critical amount until nearly a month after the election.) Knee was fined l4 times what James Sutton, treasurer of PG&E’s front group, was fined. And the commission hassled and hounded her for the past five years or so. (See Amanda Witherell’s excellent story, “The ethics of Ethics,” in the Guardian and on our website and an earlier Bruce blog headed “Free Carolyn Knee! Free Carolyn Knee from the Clutches of the Unethical Commission.”)

The Good Old Days in Rock Rapids, Iowa, The Fourth of July, l940-1953

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

(Note: In July of l972, when the Guardian was short a Fourth of July story, I sat down and cranked out this one for the front page on my trusty Royal Typewriter.)

Back where I come from, a small town beneath a tall standpipe in northwestern Iowa, the Fourth of July was the best day of a long, hot summer.
The Fourth came after YMCA camp and Scout camp and church camp, but before the older boys had to worry about getting into shape for football. It was welcome relief from the scalding, 100-degree heat in a town without a swimming pool and whose swimming holes at Scout Island were usually dried up by early July. But best of all, it had the kind of excitement that began building weeks in advance.
The calm of the summer dawn and the cooing of the mourning doves on the telephone wires would be broken early on July Fourth: The Creglow boys would be up by 7 a.m. and out on the lawn shooting off their arsenal of firecrackers. They were older and had somehow sent their agents by car across the state line and into South Dakota where, not far above the highway curves of Larchwood, you could legally buy fireworks at roadside stands.
Ted Fisch, Jim Ramsey, Wiener Winters, the Cook boys, Hermie Casjens, Jerry Prahl, and the rest of the neighborhood would race of their houses to catch the action. Some of them had cajoled firecrackers from their parents or bartered from the older boys in the neighborhood: some torpedoes (the kind you smashed against the sidewalk); lots of 2 and 3-inchers, occasionally the granddaddy of them all, the cherry bomb (the really explosive firecracker, stubby, cherry red, with a wick sticking up menacingly from its middle; the kind of firecracker you’d gladly trade away your best set of Submariner comics for).
Ah, the cherry bomb. It was a microcosm of excitement and mischief and good fun. Bob Creglow, the most resourceful of the Creglow boys, would take a cherry bomb, set it beneath a tin can on a porch, light the fuse, then head for the lilac bushes behind the barn.
“The trick,” he would say, imparting wisdom of the highest order, “is to place the can on a wood porch with a wood roof. Then it will hit the top of the porch, bang, then the bottom of the porch, bang. That’s how you get the biggest clatter.”
So I trudged off to the Linkenheil house, the nearest front porch suitable for cherry bombing, to try my hand at small-town demolition. Bang went the firecracker. Bang went the can on the roof. Bang went the can on the floor. Bang went the screen door as Karl Linkenheil roared out in a sweat, and I lit out for the lilacs behind the barn with my dog, Oscar.

{Empty title}

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Why isn’t Frank Rich doing a Sunday morning talk show or working in the White House press corps?

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

I ask this question week after week when I read Rich’s splendid column in the Sunday NewYork Times.
Perhaps, if he were on the Sunday talk shows or in the White House press corps, he would be asking the tough questions that are so painfully needed nowadays as the surge doesn’t surge and the Iraq war escalates. .

For example, he writes in his lead, “By this late date, we should know the fix is in when the White House’s top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam’s aluminum tubes. ‘We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,’ said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq–the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America–had officially begun.

Ammiano sends out an Ammianoliner for the Pride Parade on Sunday

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“Vatican warns against driving under the influence of gay. Oh, my God. That hat. Those shoes.” B3

Ammiano sends out an Ammianoliner for the Pride Parade on Sunday

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“Vatican warns against driving under the influence of gay. Oh, my God. That hat. Those shoes.” B3

The Ammianoliner of the day…

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Ooops. We missed an Ammianoliner earlier this week.

“49ers reject Ed Jew’s bid for stadium in Burlingame.” (The message on Tom Ammiano’s home telephone.)

What is the new new “low” in city politics? It sure isn’t Daly, Newsom, and the cocaine use charges. Public Power SOS: scroll down for the news and the action alert

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

On the front page of today’s San Francisco Chronicle, June 2l, Mayor Gavin Newsom is pictured, grim, scowling, arms clenched, over this caption:

“Mayor Gavin Newsom denies Supervisor Chris Daly’s suggestion that he has used cocaine. “That’s how low politics now has gotten in this city, and I seriously thought it couldn’t get much worse.”
The story by City Hall Reporter Cecilia M. Vega had this head: “CITY HALL UPROAR AT COCAINE CLAIM,” with this subhead, “Angry Newsom blasts Daly for bringing politics to a new low.”

This jolly back and forth, I submit, is far from a new low. (See City Editor Steve Jones’s blog in our politics blog.)
For starters, I would submit there is a new new low and a most timely new new low at that. This new new low is the fact that Newsom, despite the public power mandates of the federal Raker Act, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the crucial Ammiano/Mirkarimi CCA legislation approved by the Supervisors only last Tuesday, reversed his public pledges supporting CCA and public power and clambered into bed in hot embrace on Tuesday with PG&E. (See my previous blog.) He allowed PG&E to call the shots in a PG&E-arranged and PG&E- promoted press conference at the Presidio announcing that the city in effect was turning over its public study of tidal power to the private utility that has perpetuated the PG&E/Raker Act scandal for decades.

This is the new new low: the scandal of how the mayor of the City and County of San Francisco, after PG&E has privatized and stolen the city’s cheap, green Hetch Hetchy power, and after PG&E helped privatize and steal the Presidio, was in effect turning over the choppy waters of the bay and the ocean to PG&E to privatize and steal. Incredible. Newsom was doing his damndest to put PG&E in the catbird seat on the next giant step on power generation and to further entrench the illegal private utility in City Hall. No wonder Newsom gets so “agitated” over the handy dandy issue of whether he did or did not use cocaine.

Tidal power

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Click here for Chronicle coverage of tidal power study.

Click here for Examiner coverage of tidal power study.

Ammiano says today…

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“In honor of gay pride, Supervisor Daly and Mayor Newsom will have makeup sex.” B3

The PG&E/Raker Act Scandal: the biggest urban scandal in U.S. history just got a lot bigger!

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, the veteran public power advocate, flashed the word from City Hall by email at ll:42 a.m. Tuesday, June l9.

“I just learned,” Mirkarimi wrote, “that the mayor is announcing a deal on tidal power today. I view this as a direct launch to derail or at least distract from community choice power. (PG@E has another poll in the filed on cca as of Sunday.) I’m going to try to blunt his move with the introduction of a tidal power ordinance so that we can hopefully
control the design protocol.”

Then, at ll:35 a.m. Tuesday, PG@E sent out a press release even before the press conference ended. It went out via the PR Newswire for Journalists and was titled “PG@E, San Francisco and Golden Gate Energy Combine efforts to explore Tidal Power Options in SF Bay.”

The head, lead, and text made the key point loud and clear: San Francisco, despite the public power mandates of the federal Raker Act, had once again caved in to PG&E and was allowing PG&E to fund and control a crucial study of tidal power for the city. PG&E was also calling the shots on the press announcement and doing it as a timely and telling part of its campaign to undermine the passage of community choice aggregation. The city, as Guardian readers know, is in violation of the Raker Act because it allows PG&E to control the city’s supply of cheap clean public power from its Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite National Park.

Ammiano: the deadline comedian

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Yesterday June 12, there was no joke and no message on Ammiano’s voice mail. Just a blackout. (See my early blog on his Tony Soprano joke.)

Today June 12,
Ammiano quipped on deadline. “ED Jew busted for a TUI. Tapioca under the influence.” B3

Free Carolyn Knee! Free Carolyn Knee from the unethical clutches of the Ethics Commission!

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

There is a phrase I like to use to describe the power that PG&E has exercised in City Hall since the beginning of time, or at least since the federal Raker Act was passed in l9l3 mandating that San Francisco get public power from its Hetch Hetchy dam.

When PG&E spits, City Hall swims.

That is the phrase I used when I testified Monday night June ll at the Ethics Commission hearing in the infamous Carolyn Knee case. “You’re all swimming in it,” I told the commission.

I was trying to illustrate my key point: that the Commission, which had been created to expose and penalize the campaign and financial muscling of PG&E and the big guys in town, was now picking on the little guy, in this case Carolyn Knee, the woman who volunteered for the thankless job of being the treasurer of two citizens’ groups that put initiatives on the ballot in 200l and 2002 to do what the city had never done. And that was to kick PG&E out of City Hall, enforce the public power mandates of the Raker Act, and bring our own cheap green Hetch Hetchy public power to the residents and businesses of San Francisco. PG&E, the groups maintained, had an illegal private power monopoly and the citizens were forced to take this law and order issue into their own hands and go to war with PG&E.

Ammiano reviews the end of the Sopranos

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

On Monday June ll, I called the home phone of Tom Ammiano, supervisor and comedian.

His daily recording summed up the end of the Sopranos in l2 words:

“Tony Soprano can’t come to the phone right now. He’s blacked out.” B3

Cllint Reilly debuts a new form of newspaper column–the antitrust special

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Last Tuesday June 5, a mysterious column popped up in the ll Singleton/Media News dailies that ring the bay. It was the debut of Clint Reilly and the first of l56 weekly columns that he will write for the Singleton papers, according to the terms of the Reilly/Hearst/Singleton antitrust settlement.

A “paid advertising” line adorns the top of the column, but Reilly says he will get no bills and won’t pay them if he does. At the bottom of the column is an identification that Reilly wrote himself: “Clint Reilly is a San Francisco businessman and commentator on public affairs. The views expressed in this column are Clint’s alone and do not represent the views of MediaNews or any MediaNews paper.”

Riley writes about how Bill Honig 25 years ago this June won election as state superintendent of public instruction, against incumbent Wilson Riles, a popular superintendent, because of the power of newspaper endorsements.
Riley managed Honig’s campaign. He writes that “newspaper endorsements cut through the confusing array of promises and attacks and offer a seemingly objective evaluation based on the public interest.”

Why didn’t he point out that the newspaper landscape has changed, as his suit charged, and that voters today would be faced with a conservative Singleton dailies and the Chronicle/Hearst? Why didn’t he write about his suit? Or explain why his picture and column were mysteriously appearing simultaneously on Tuesday in ll regional dailies?

“I have l55 columns to go,” Riley told me. B3

Click here to read Reilly’s editorial.

Revealed: Sup. Ammiano’s joke of the day

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Tom Ammiano is a supervisor who happens to be a standup comedian on occasion. Or, depending on your point of view, he is a standup comedian who happens to be a supervisor. As people know who call his private home phone, he puts up a political joke almost every day on his answering machine.

Monday: “Mayor Newsom says he is a progressive. I guess rehab really works.”

Friday: “Ed Jew under house arrest? What house?”

Alas, for understandable reasons, Ammiano doesn’t give out his home phone number, so people just can’t call in and get their daily dose of Ammianoism. But I will make the call for you on occasion and try to put the best of Ammiano on my blog. Hear any good political jokes lately? Pass them along. B3

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