› cheryl@sfbg.com
Still several entries short of being its own disaster-movie subgenre, the miniwave of Sept. 11 cinema continues with Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center. Scrubbed of any JFK-style theorizing, Stone’s respectful take on the tragedy focuses on a pair of Port Authority Police Department officers who were pulled alive from the Twin Towers rubble 12 hours after the buildings collapsed.
The film’s tagline promises “a true story of courage and survival,” and indeed World Trade Center goes for the uplift-amid-tragedy jugular. The 9/11 movies may be here, but it’s clearly still too early to dramatize the events without offering catharsis. Even United 93, Paul Greengrass’s take on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, spun its obviously devastating final moments into a tribute to its hijacker-defeating passengers. World Trade Center stacks the sentimental deck even higher by plopping movie stars (Nicolas Cage, Maria Bello, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Crash’s Michael Peña) into the disaster. While United 93 had a nearly documentary feel, with nonactors in key roles and gritty handheld camerawork, World Trade Center is classically cinematic, foregoing a sprawling retelling of the 9/11 story in favor of a tightly compacted exploration of human determination.
The day starts like any other, as PAPD cops John McLoughlin (Cage) and Will Jimeno (Peña) settle into their routine, tracking runaways and giving directions to tourists. Suddenly there’s a shadow overhead, a terrible sound, and the men are hustling several blocks to aid the evacuation of the first World Trade Center tower to be hit — accidentally, they think — by an airplane. Stone never shows the planes’ impact; within the film’s world, context (and explicit mention of terrorists) feeds in via televisions blaring in the background of nearly every scene that takes place beyond ground zero. Even when the towers collapse, trapping McLoughlin and Jimeno deep within a perilous pile of stone and metal, neither realizes what Stone assumes every viewer will already know about Sept. 11 chronology.
At a certain point, World Trade Center splinters. McLoughlin and Jimeno cling to life, chatting back and forth about pop culture (since the film is drawn from the men’s own recollections, it’s entirely likely the Starsky and Hutch conversation really took place), their intense pain, and their families. Meanwhile, Donna McLoughlin (Bello) and Allison Jimeno (Gyllenhaal) anxiously await news of their missing husbands, with golden-hued flashbacks reminding all partners of happy domestic moments they’ve been taking for granted. There’s a brief the-whole-world-is-watching montage that illustrates grief on an international level. And, of course, there’s President Bush on the news spewing rhetoric, inspiring ex-Marine Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon) to don his military gear and head to New York City to help out.
The problem here isn’t in the way Stone and first-time scripter Andrea Berloff characterize these real-life people as almost supernaturally brave under extraordinary circumstances (Jimeno’s personal encounter with Jesus is World Trade Center’s “ride the snake” moment, but it kinda works amid the ongoing theme of faith as a survival tool). And it’s not that the film disregards the people who died that day. The tone here is very, very reverent. But it’s telling that World Trade Center focuses on a success story; unlike the characters in United 93, which built off a few cell phone calls to reconstruct the flight’s last frantic moments, World Trade Center’s heroes lived to share their memories, sickly sweet what-should-we-name-the-baby arguments included.
By focusing so intently on just the McLoughlins and the Jimenos (and to a lesser extent Karnes, a rather one-note concession to Stone’s military fixation) the film leaves the door open for countless Sept. 11–related movies to come. It’s just a question of whether future filmmakers will hew to Greengrass’s example and go raw or create movies like Stone’s World Trade Center: a bit overcooked. SFBG
WORLD TRADE CENTER
Opens Wed/9
See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com for theaters and showtimes
www.wtcmovie.com
News
Stone’s throw
Blog menace
› annalee@techsploitation.com
TECHSPLOITATION Last week at the infamous computer security conference Black Hat in Las Vegas, Bob Auger announced what should have already been obvious: reading blogs isn’t safe. A security engineer with SPI Labs, Auger quietly revealed (www.spidynamics.com/assets/documents/HackingFeeds.pdf) that the mere act of checking out somebody’s RSS feed could allow bad guys to steal money from your bank account, post Web spam from your computer, and snoop on everything you’ve written anonymously in that online porn community you secretly visit. This is the new dark side of all that nice free speech that’s been enabled by bloggish technologies.
Generally, free expression advocates worry about how businesses and governments censor the confessional, unedited style of bloggers. And they’re right to be concerned. People posting personal rants have gotten fired for writing mean things about their bosses and been sued for criticizing litigious maniacs. But these bloggers are receiving traditional retributions for speaking openly. They say bad things about someone or some corporate entity, and that person or entity smacks them down.
As Auger and other researchers demonstrated at Black Hat, we’re about to see a new threat to free expression. Massive groups of people will be punished not for what they say online but for using particular tools to say it. Auger researched several popular RSS readers — programs used to pull blog content onto your computer — including Bloglines, RSS Reader, Feed Demon, and Sharp Reader, and discovered that many of them could be turned into delivery systems for malicious code designed to force computers to, for example, post spam on other people’s blogs.
Known generally as “cross-site scripting” and “cross-site request forgery,” the attacks work by covertly moving data from one location to another. And it could get worse than spamming. As Auger pointed out, everything you type into your banking Web site could get reposted elsewhere, thus allowing the bad guys to read your passwords and have fun with your money.
And blogs can spread their malicious code as quickly as they spread news. If I were a bad guy and wanted to steal a bunch of passwords, I would hide some malicious code inside a comment on a popular blog. As soon as your reader downloaded that comment, you’d be infected. Or I would start a blog that sounded particularly interesting (or pornographic), tempt a bunch of people into subscribing to my feed, and inject naughty code into their computers that way. When you consider how many people automatically repost other people’s feeds onto their own blogs in a “what I’m reading” section or something like that, it’s clear how bad things could get.
But even worse, in the process of using the Web’s fastest free-speech engine to wreak havoc, the people injecting nasty code into blog feeds could undermine free speech itself.
Feed injection poses a whole new set of problems for people who want to promote free expression. We’re dealing with a mechanism of censorship that isn’t even aware of itself as such. People who do these hacks may not have our best interests in mind — they’re trying to lie, cheat, and steal — but as an unintended consequence, they may also choke off a powerful avenue of open communication. If people begin to associate using blogs and feeds with being ripped off and spied on, many may stop reading them. Government and business couldn’t have asked for a better self-censorship catalyst. Speaking out, no matter what you say, will turn you into a victim.
Luckily, there are fixes for the speech-stopping problems that Auger found — just as there are legal and social remedies for traditional forms of censorship. After talking with Auger, developers at Bloglines fixed many of the bugs he pointed out. Other vendors are working on fixing them too. And fixes for a lot of cross-site scripting and cross-site request forgery attacks can be borrowed from more protected programs. So people making feed readers simply need to start thinking about security issues and using these fixes when they release the next version of their software.
As ever, what the geeks at Black Hat remind us is that free speech isn’t just a matter of political freedom — it’s also about technical freedom. Getting your message out means being prepared to defend yourself ideologically — and digitally too. SFBG
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who has tragically been forced to stop using different silly e-mail addresses each week to defend herself against insane volumes of spam.
Farewell, Sue Bierman
By Sarah Phelan
News that former San Francisco Sup. Sue Bierman died Monday afternoon after her car crashed into a dumpster in the Cole Valley, got the current supervisors sharing memories of her at the August 8 Board of Supes meeting.
Sup. Gerardo Sandoval said “volumes could be written about the accomplishments” of this woman, who was “probably a grandmother/sister figure to many of us.”
Sup. Aaron Peskin called her “an incredible person, an FDR-type Democrat,” who was behind the demolition of the old Embarcadero freeway.”Said Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, “she was a hero in so many battles in San Francisco..most recently, when we were trying to bring attention to excessive, disproportionate closure of schools, Sue Bierman and her daughter were on the front line. She was very disarming, but very strong. I will miss her dearly.”
Sup. Sean Elsbernd acknowledged that “should she and I have served on the board together, we would have had a few disagreements. I’ll miss her look.”
Sup. Tom Ammiano recalled how,”When Carole Migden put on lipstick, Sue would follow, You knew something was going to happen, as if a secret handhske was involved…I don’t know if there’s a highway to heaven, but thanks to Sue it ain’t a freeway.”
Sup. Dufty remembered how she had a lot of influence over Mayor Willie Brown. “If you heard him cussing at Sue, you knew she’d won one over him.”
Sup. Alioto-Pier, noting how she and Bierman often did not agree when they were both on the Port Commission said, “She very eloquently told you, she was very forceful, she was always the first person to call, it was dismaying to hear her voice on the machine, saying, “michela,” in a shaky voice.
Sup. Daly said she was the champion of young adults–and renters.
‘She understood what made San Francisco great.”
And Gloria Young, clerk of the board, recalled trying to get Bierman, who served on the board from 1992-2000, to vacate her office at noon on the day she was termed out, so to tidy up before the new supe [Peskin] arrived.
“Absolutely not,” bierman is said to have said. “I’ll be working until the end of the day, It’s immportant to acknowledge thew constituents who put us in office.”
“And she left me with a big stack of books,” added Peskin. “They’re still on the shelf.”
Farewell, Sue Bierman
I never had the honor of meeting Sue Bierman, but news that the former San Francisco supervisor died Monday afternoon after her car crashed into a dumpster in the Cole Valley, got the current supes sharing memories of her at the August 8 Board meeting. leaving me with the impression of a much loved, sometimes feared, outspoken and universally respected 82-year old.
Here’s just a sampling of some of the many tributes made:
“Volumes could be written about the accomplishments of this woman,” said Sup. Gerardo Sandoval said. “She was probably a grandmother/sister figure to many of us.”
Sup. Aaron Peskin called her “an incredible person, an FDR-type Democrat,” and the woman responsible for stopping the expansion of the freeway into the panhandle.
Said Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, “she was a hero in so many battles in San Francisco..most recently, when we were trying to bring attention to excessive, disproportionate closure of schools, Sue Bierman and her daughter were on the front line. She was very disarming, but very strong. I will miss her dearly.”
Sup. Sean Elsbernd acknowledged that “should she and I have served on the board together, we would have had a few disagreements. I’ll miss her look.”
Sup. Tom Ammiano recalled how,”When Carole Migden put on lipstick, Sue would follow. You knew something was going to happen, as if a secret handshake was involved…I don’t know if there’s a highway to heaven, but thanks to Sue it ain’t a freeway.”
Sup. Bevan Dufty remembered how Bierman had a lot of influence over Mayor Willie Brown. “If you heard him cussing at Sue, you knew she’d won one over him.”
Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier noted how she and Bierman often did not agree when they were both on the Port Commission.
“She very eloquently told you, she was very forceful, she was always the first person to call, it was dismaying to hear her voice on the machine, saying, ‘Michela,’ in a shaky voice,” Alioto-Pier recalled.
Sup. Chris Daly said bBerman was the champion of young adults–and renters.
‘She understood what made San Francisco great.”
And Gloria Young, clerk of the board, recalled trying to get Bierman, who served on the Board from 1992 until she was termed out in 2000, vacate her office at noon on the last day , so to tidy up before the new supe [Peskin] arrived.
“Absolutely not,” Bierman is said to have said. “I’ll be working until the end of the day, It’s important to acknowledge the constituents who put us in office.”
“And she left me with a big stack of books,” added Peskin. “They’re still on the shelf.”
Dishonoring Merita
By G.W. Schulz
As jaded as it sounds, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to be surprised when news accounts surface yet again of U.S. soldiers terrorizing civilians in Iraq, or anywhere else for that matter. We’re told they’re isolated incidents. We’re told they were initiated by twisted individuals.
That’s what we heard after My Lai. That’s what we heard after Abu Ghraib. And that’s what we’ll hear if four soldiers from the B Company, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment are found guilty of raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl in Iraq.
Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places
By G.W. Schulz
I cracked open the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday genuinely excited to read it. I like going to the local section first, even if local sections across the country are seeing fewer and fewer available column inches; the Bay Area, and indeed, California, happen to be places that produce interesting local news.
What I found was hardly fulfilling.
NOISE: News flash – the Best of the Bay party was a stone-cold corker
All photos by Kimberly Chun
Oh, yeah, we were suffering in the days following the Guardian‘s Best of the Bay blow-out at Club Six on Aug. 2. But oh was it worth it… The soju madras rocked hard, and the Ethiopian chow was the bomb. Much raucous insanity and quality music-making came courtesy of Zion I, Erase Errata, Numbers, T-Kash, and, above, Yikes.
Excellent noisy garage-rocking fun from vets of the Coachwhips, Curse of the Birthmark, and Big Techno Werewolf. Someone had the bright idea to throw every flier in the joint at the band – where are those huge sacks of confetti when you need ’em?
The band to beat was Extra Action Marching Band, who brought the fleshy, sweaty, savory goods in two sets.
Brassy, sassy, totally loud. In a good way.
A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence gets some non-sisterly extra action.
Flag team, not flaggin’.
NOISE: I see dead people Pt. III – We LOVE you, Arthur Lee, RIP
Guardian intern K. Tighe remembers the great Love leader Arthur Lee:
After his struggle with acute myeloid leukemia, psych-rock pioneer and Love frontman Arthur Lee died peacefully at Methodist Hospital in Memphis, a little after 4 in the afternoon on August 3, 2006, with his wife Diane by his side. He was 61.
Lee’s manager and friend, Mark Linn released the following statement:
“His death comes as a shock to me because Arthur had the uncanny ability to bounce back from everything, and leukemia was no exception. He was confident that he would be back on stage by the fall.”
Arthur Taylor Porter, a Memphis native, relocated to Los Angeles in the early 1960s. Sinking his feet into the recording industry, he hired a young Jimi Hendrix to play as a studio musician on what was likely the guitarist’s first-ever studio session.
In 1965, Lee formed the band Love, first called the Grass Roots. He changed the moniker after realizing another band had beaten them to the punch. The name Love was decided on after polling an audience. Soon after its rechristening, Love became the talk of the strip, becoming the first rock band to sign to the folk label Elektra.
Though their most famous song was certainly “7 and 7 Is” from 1967’s De Capo, it was the following album, 1968’s Forever Changes, that would seal Love’s place in musical history. The latter was named no. 41 on Rolling Stone’s list of the top 500 albums of all time.
Several fundraising events were put together to help raise money for Lee’s treatment following his diagnosis. His friend Robert Plant headlined the Beacon Theatre in New York on June 23, supported by Ryan Adams, Yo La Tengo, and Flashy Python and the Body Snatchers (a side-project of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah frontperson Alec Ounsworth). A few days later Love co-founder, Johnny Echols played LA’s Whisky-a-Go-Go with Baby Lemonade in another benefit for Lee.
According to Linn, the ailing Lee was appreciative of the support. “When I visited with him recently, he was visibly moved by the stories and pictures from the NYC benefit concert,” Linn said in his statement. “He was truly grateful for the outpouring of love from friends and fans all over the world since news of his illness became public.”
The infamously eccentric songwriter has been named as a key influence to dozens of musicians, notably Plant, Jim Morrison, and the recently deceased Syd Barrett.
“Arthur always lived in the moment and said what he thought when he thought it. I’ll miss his phone calls, and his long voice messages, but most of all I’ll miss Arthur playing Arthur’s music,” said Linn.
So will we.
Sunshine magnified
By Steven T. Jones
It was good to see the Sentinel today amplifying our story about how the mayor’s office gave us seven contested e-mails that Sup. Chris Daly has been trying to get for months. But Pat Murphy is a bit off mark to imply that Daly got snubbed or that our obtaining the documents was anything more than solid reporting work by reporter Amanda Witherell (who confronted the mayor on a Saturday with facts that supported the release of the documents, an action that he then ordered). The mayor’s office told us Daly would also be receiving the e-mails. For his part, Daly was happy about our successful efforts to pry loose the docs, calling it “a great victory for sunshine in San Francisco.” He also told me, “It was always unclear to me, unless the administration was trying to cover something up, why they were unwilling to release the e-mail, whether or not they were compelled to do so under the Sunshine Ordinance.” And it turns out the e-mails do show an effort by the Mayor’s Office of Communications to bury news of Newsom’s veto of an eviction notification measure, who was so popular that voters approved it as Prop. B in June.
Whew! What a Best of Party last night!
What a splendid Best of Party last night at Club Six down in the inner Mission in San Francisco. Almost all of this year’s Best of winners were there, more than 300 of them, to pick up their Best of certificate, and to pose in a group photo that will stand as one of the year’s most eclectic gatherings in San Francisco and certainly the Best San Francisco photograph of 2006. (We will publish the photo in next week’s Guardian).
There was Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White, Kathi Kamen Goldmark and Sam Barry from the Rock Bottom Remainders, Chris Middlestadt of the Fruit Guys, the best beer-soaked bingo brigade, local heroes Tony Kelly of thick Description Theater, Barry Hermanson and the Greenaction Gang of closing-down-the-Hunters-Point-power-plant fame, (Marie Harrison and Bradley Angel), the best drag queen who plays the accordion, Breda Courtney of the Best Bloomin’ Thespians, Robin and Joe Talmadge and Cinder Ernst from World Gym, the Primitive Screwheads (best goofy gore), Press Secretary Peter Ragone and other reps from the mayor’s office (yes, Mayor Gavin Newsom did win an award, the best mayor we love to hate), best neighborhood newspaper publisher (Ruth Passen of the Potrero View), and scores more of the city’s best and brightest and most diverse.
The Keeping it Real with Will and Willie gang were there from the Quake (Comedian Will Durst, Ex-Mayor Willie Brown, producer Paul Wells) to accept their award as the “Best Herb Caen column on the radio.”
They exemplified the spirit of Caen by being “visible” at the party (a key Caen quality in his man about town role at the old Chronicle) and by talking genially to everyone who came in range in the massed crowd, including some who have tilted politically with Willie through the years. Caen had to do that, whether he liked it or not, because he was a target and a celebrity wherever he went. One key difference is that Will and Willie, out on the town regularly, can comment and do their reviews the next morning. Caen’s nocturnal adventures were always in his column a day later in the morning Chronicle. Caen also had l,000 word columns. Will and Willie have three hours every week day morning, from 7 to l0 a.m. in prime time, and can handle lots of live interviews in the studio or on the phone. Most important, Caen could only hint at his political proclivities, but Will and Willie announce they are Democrats and go after Bush and the war and local sacred cows with great glee.
This morning, Will and Willie led off their show on 960 the Quake with a report on the event, which they obviously enjoyed. My journalistic point: There will most likely never be another Herb Caen in San Francisco, or probably on any other daily paper, because he was a creature of another era, the hell-for-leather competitive newspaper wars in San Francisco, which were some of the most colorful in the country. Once the old Hearst Examiner and the old Chronicle formed a JOA in l965, they had no more real use for Caen but the Chronicle kept him on because of his ability and reputation. The Chronicle family owners were always nervous and often agitated about Caen and his enormous influence but they really couldn’t do much about him. Now, with the new Hearst Chronicle as the dominant daily here, with the coming of Singletonland in the Bay Area, no publisher has any use for a powerful independent talent such as Caen, particularly a strong union voice. Al’as.
The Caen formula lives
Will and Willie demonstrated the point again in this morning’s show with a snapshot of Caen’s San Francisco with a nostalgic interview of Mort Sahl, who Caen helped make a celebrated fixture at Enrique Banducci’s Hungry I. They were making the most of the fact that Sahl was reemerging in San Francisco and opening tonight at the Empire Plush Room (Willie said he would in the front row). And Sahl responded with some good political jokes: The Democrats are proving they can defeat Democats, he said of the Lieberman race. But can they defeat Republicans? Jerry Brown is putting Oakland “up for adoption.” On the Mel Gibson incident, Sahl said there was talk in Hollywood that he would now be boycotted. But Sahl quoted Jack Warner of Warner Brothers about an earlier star: “He’ll never work in this town again– until we need him.” And Sahl mused at one point, “Just how many wars are we fighting today.”
Sahl also had some news. Banducci was alive and well in Hayward, sharp as ever. Sahl lived in San Francisco and Sausalito for many years and is now living in LA and working regularly. The I in Hungri I stood for Intellectual. ON and on, making the point on the show that Sahl is back. Hurray!
Back on the monopoly journalism front
Just in: story from the Mercury News by Pete Carey with the arresting head: “Area’s new media king is having fun, industry leader started with one small paper at age 20.”
He quoted Singleton as telling a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Seattle in April, on a podium he shared with McClatchy’s Gary Pruitt,
“We do a lot of things because they’re fun.” Impertinent questions: who else is having fun as Singletonland comes to town? Is there no way that any of the reporters covering Singleton on any of his papers can utter a discouraging or realistic word about his form of discount journalism, or find someone who can do? (Carey, incidentally, a veteran reporter, has done the best job of covering the sale of Knight-Ridder and subsequent developments).
The newspaper unions have been quiet and have not even commented on what happened to their offer to buy the Merc and the other McClatchy castoffs. And the few statements they have issued took the line of the Hearst unions in San Francisco in dealing with its monopolizing issues: lay low and wait till negotiations on the next contract (when, from my point of view, it may be too late.) The Merc employees are working without union contracts. The crunch will come when Singleton starts “consolidating” and making the deep cuts in production and newsrooms and quality that he must do, sooner or later, probably sooner, with his mountains of debt, his unmanageable forest of papers and presses, and his “lean Dean” cost-cutting modus operandi. Stay tuned. B3
More on the Case of the Uncovered Bay Area Newspaper Monopoly
1. It was good to see today’s Chronicle run a big front page, above the fold story on a 24-year-old freelance cameraman (Josh Wolfe) upholding journalistic principle and going to jail rather than disclosing unaired tapes of a 2005 anarchist demonstrations in which protestors clashed with police. This once again shows the power a daily paper can wield in punching up a serious Freedom of Information/First Amendment issue. Wolfe’s courageous decision as an individual contrasts nicely with the institutional moves by the nation’s biggest newspaper chains to impose quietly on the Bay Area a Singleton/Hearst regional monopoly conglomerate, with McClatchy, Gannett and Stephens aiding and abetting, no competition allowed, for the duration. (See Bay Guardian editorials and my previous blogs).
Since these publishers have mangled and blacked out the coverage of this story, let me lay out the documents below in the Clint Reilly court filings for you to judge for yourself. Pay particular attention to the Alioto filings, which detail the real monopolizing strategy of the publishers:
Read the Alioto Legal Documents:
Complaint.pdf
Gannett-Stephens_Opp_to_ TRO.pdf
MediaNews-Calif_Newspaper_Partnership_Opp_to_TRO.pdf
Plaintiff’s_Reply_to_Mtn_for_TRO.pdf
2. Just in: A breathless editorial in today’s Contra Costa Times (“Times’ bright future”), welcoming Dean Singleton and his brand of journalism, by some folks who want to keep their jobs. Click here. Their line is presented without blushing: “…the joining of these suburban newspapers under the Media/News flag creates a Bay Area publishing constellation that makes each paper stronger by giving it access to the best that the others have to offer. This is another chapter in a classic American success story: how MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton grew his enterprise from a single, small daily newspaper in New Jersey to the fourth largest publishing company in the country.” The rousing conclusion: “As we said, it has been a difficult eight months for everyone at the Times, but all of that is about to be behind us which allows us to turn our attention fully to the job at hand. Creating informative, entertaining and compelling content for the Times dailies, our weeklies and Contra Costa Times.”
Impertinent question: we always thought the CCT was a damn good community newspaper, so recognized by the California Newspaper Publishers Association with its 2002 and 2003 General Excellence awards. Does anyone over there really think the paper will get better under Singleton? Which Bay Area paper has Singleton made better after he took it over? Let me say for the record: I like Dean Singleton personally and have had some dealings with him and I would like to hope for the best but…Keep me posted on developments in Singletonland.
3. The nation’s journalism and mass communications professors are communing this week at the Marriott Hotel under the banner of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). Will any of the professors or panels take up the issue of accelerating media concentration, perhaps the most serious problem in the newspaper business, and in particular the issue of the emerging Hearst/Singleton conglomerate right here in San Francisco? This is a tough one for journalism/mass com departments who depend on newspaper and broadcast companies for money and jobs. B3
The judge misses the point
EDITORIAL The federal judge who allowed the largest media merger in Northern California history to go forward unimpeded did what far too many judges do in cases like this: she ruled narrowly on the tightest definition of the law and missed the overall point entirely. Judge Susan Illston rejected a bid by San Francisco real estate investor Clint Reilly to block Denver billionaire Dean Singleton’s effort to buy virtually every daily newspaper in the Bay Area and set up an unprecedented media monopoly. Reilly had sought an injunction against the deal, arguing that once it’s approved there will be no way to halt the obvious damage. Illston noted that Reilly had raised “serious questions” and agreed that there’s “a need to examine the proposed sale to ensure that no long-term harm will come to Bay Area residents.” But she insisted in a 16-page opinion that the deal posed no “pressing and imminent danger.” Wait: no imminent danger? One person could soon control every single significant news media outlet in the entire Bay Area save for the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle — which also has a financial partnership with Singleton. What does Illston expect? That a year or two down the road, when residents of the region find themselves without any credible local newspapers and advertisers find nothing but high monopoly rates, someone can reexamine this and find that it was a bad idea? That’s silly. The time to put the deal on hold and address Illston’s “serious questions” is now, before it’s too late. Nobody will be able to unscramble this egg. But Illston didn’t get that at all. Instead, she ruled that the real threat of great harm was to the defendants — the billionaire publisher and his business associates. Actually, they face no risk of harm at all — except for the threat to their ability to make obscene profits by gutting newsrooms, combining operations, and tearing the heart out of Bay Area journalism. This is how Singleton, known (for good reason) as “Lean Dean,” operates. He likes what he calls “clusters” of papers — groups of newspapers in adjoining geographic areas. He centralizes as many functions as possible, reduces staff to the minimum necessary, then sits back and watches the cash roll in. In the Bay Area, that will probably mean that the big, expensive newsrooms of papers like the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times will be pared down, perhaps merged into a single operating center. The various papers will share stories, so there won’t be much difference (or competition) between them. Old-fashioned concepts like investigative and enterprise reporting, which require time and resources, will disappear. None of this requires a law degree and a judicial robe to comprehend. It’s been happening all over the country; Singleton’s record is clear. Of course, it didn’t help that Reilly was all alone on this, a single local businessperson trying to block a massive media merger that the state and federal governments are apparently ready to approve with only cursory examination. The outcome might have been very different if Attorney General Bill Lockyer had appeared before Illston representing the state of California. But Lockyer is sitting on his hands — and the US Justice Department just announced that it won’t pursue the matter and is going to allow the merger to proceed (see www.sfbg.com). This doesn’t have to be the end of the case, by any means. Reilly can and should go forward with his suit as aggressively as possible. And Lockyer, who is running for state controller, and Jerry Brown, who is running for attorney general, need to stop ducking this issue and take a firm stand against the merger. SFBG PS All of the papers involved in the merger covered the ruling, but none of them quoted outside experts critical of Illston’s decision or critical of the merger itself. Bruce B. Brugmann, Guardian editor and publisher, posted some key questions for the publishers on his Bruce Blog at www.sfbg.com; here are some of them: Why, if Hearst and the publisher participants feel they can’t cover themselves, don’t they get quotes from journalism or law professors at nearby UC Berkeley, Cal State Hayward, Stanford, San Jose State, SF State, USF? Why don’t they check with other independent experts such as Ben Bagdikian of The Media Monopoly fame, who is living in Berkeley? Why don’t they quote union representatives at the Chronicle and Merc? Why don’t they quote the congressional delegation that called on the Department of Justice and the attorney general to carefully scrutinize the sale? Why don’t they call on Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who introduced a local resolution opposing the sale, or any of the other supervisors who approved it unanimously? Why is it left to the handful of remaining independent voices to raise these critical questions? PPS Now that the investigation is closed, we’ve asked the Justice Department to release its full investigative file. We hope all the local daily publishers, who love to talk about open government, will support our request. Read the Alioto Legal Documents: Complaint.pdf Gannett-Stephens_Opp_to_ TRO.pdf Hearst_Opp_to_TRO.pdf McClatchy_opp_to_TRO.pdf MediaNews-Calif_Newspaper_Partnership_Opp_to_TRO.pdf Memo-Supp_of_Mtn_for_TRO.pdf Order_denying_TRO.pdf Plaintiff’s_Reply_to_Mtn_for_TRO.pdf
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› tredmond@sfbg.com
I had lunch with a friend near South Park the other day, and we got to chatting about the condo boom in the area — building after building after ugly high rise after boxy dorm. This stuff doesn’t look like luxury housing; it looks like modern urban junk.
Anyway, my friend is a smart, thoughtful person, and her first instinct was to say that more downtown housing is a good thing. Me, I get a headache whenever I try to be thoughtful about San Francisco housing policy these days, so I wasn’t thoughtful at all. I hate it all, I told her.
She asked why and I answered honestly. “There are already too many goddamn rich people in this city,” I said. “What we need is more poor people.”
Actually, that’s wrong: what we need are more middle-class people.
My friend is one of the few people in the world who make a decent living as a freelance writer. But she can’t buy a house here. If she didn’t have a rent-controlled apartment where she’s lived for about 20 years now, she couldn’t afford to live in San Francisco at all.
This is nothing new. What’s interesting is that it’s getting (some) national attention. The New York Times weighed in July 23 with an article citing San Francisco as an example of how US cities are becoming places for the rich and the poor with nobody in between. Again, no big news — but the Times had a twist on it. The writer, Janny Scott, asked: is that such a bad thing?
After all, cities like San Francisco are thriving. Property values are soaring. Everyone wants to live here. Some economists, Scott wrote, now refer to places like San Francisco, New York, and Boston as “superstar cities.”
From a strictly economic point of view, some of Scott’s sources argued that there’s nothing wrong with rich people driving the middle class out of cities. “There’s a whole lot of America that does a very good job of taking care of the middle class,” Harvard economist Edward L. Glaeser insisted.
Now here’s the quote I love:
“But sociologists and many economists believe there can be non-economic consequences for cities that lose a lot of middle-income residents.”
Uh, yeah.
Here’s the point: if you measure everything the way a lot of economists (and a lot of San Francisco business leaders) do, the city’s cooking along just fine. People who want to live here will pay the price; the free market will eventually make it all work out.
And maybe so — after a while San Francisco will be such a hellhole of a precious bedroom community for Silicon Valley workers and a faux city for tourists that nobody like me or my friends will want to be here anymore. The free market will do its job — by ruining one of the world’s great cities. By destroying a community.
And what I want to leave you with is this: the only way to stop that from happening — the only way — is with active, strong public-sector (yes, that’s government) intervention. Some people (developers, speculators, and landlords) will have to make less money so the rest of us can keep San Francisco alive. The supervisors are doing that on many levels; the mayor still doesn’t seem to get it.
But we’re running out of time. SFBG
The press censors the press
Well, well. Today’s Chronicle/Hearst had some big stories on its front page, including a story by its City Hall reporter headed “SF Residents asked to volunteer for a day.” The lead: “Mayor Gavin Newsom today will call on all San Francisco residents to take time out and give a day to their city.” And there were at the top of the page some teaser heads, “After 25 years-still want your MTV? C. W. Nevius on Mel Gibson’s tirade. Bruce Jenkins on baseball’s busy day.” And a big across- the- front – page story, framed in yellow with a white sun, saying, “If you thought last week was hot…More heat, rising ocean, loss of snowpack forecast by the state for 2l00.” Nifty. All legitimate stories.
But way inside on the business page was the hottest local story for San Francisco, the region, and the newspaper business. It was Hearst’s joyful policy announcement story headlined “Bay Area papers cleared for sale to MediaNews, Federal agency’s antitrust review ends with approval.” Our earlier two blogs pointing out the lousy Hearst coverage (and lousy coverage by the other papers involved in the deal) must have done a bit of good. I emailed the obvious questions in my blog to Hearst, but Hearst didn’t reply and Hearst and the other participating papers didn’t answer the questions in their stories, but they did do a bit better with the DOJ story. At least, after I chided them for leaving out a key point in their minimalist stories reporting how a federal judge refused to grant a temporary restraining order in the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto suit, they asked Alioto if he and Reilly were going to press on with their suit. They are, as I reported exclusively on my blogs. Finally, Hearst et al did publish this fact in their stories. The Mercury-News put it as the last paragraph to its story.
However, the stories by Hearst and the other participant papers read as if nobody ever bothered to check the court documents in the case or at least the Alioto reply memorandum in support of his motion for a temporary restraining order.
What Alioto argued is that Hearst and MediaNews (Singleton), and the other billionaire partners (Gannett and Stephens), have no use for facts nor principles in their move to regional monopoly. Case in point: Back in 2000, when Reilly tried to block Hearst from buying the family-owned Chronicle and shutting down its own Examiner and establish a morning monopoly, Hearst argued that there was no reason to fear a newspaper monopoly in San Francisco because competitors from other Bay Area cities, such as the San Jose Mercury-News and Contra Costa Times, would provide serious competition.
“Specifically,” Alioto stated, “Hearst argued that all of the Bay Area newspapers compete with each other in the Greater Bay Area, and that this competition, both actual and potential, has a tempering effect on the behavior of the competing papers.”
Now, of course, Hearst is arguing the opposite-that these outlying papers are not competitors with the Chronicle and never will be. Alioto pointed out that Federal Judge Vaughn Walker, in ruling against Reilly and for Hearst in that case, agreed with Hearst’s argument and quoted extensively from Walker’s decision. Alioto continued that, “at the very least, this court ought to hold a hearing on a motion for a preliminary injunction, if not a trial, to find out why Hearst and the other defendants are now ignoring and running away from the position taken by Hearst in the prior lawsuit.”
Alioto also pointed out why the contention of Hearst et al that there will be no allocation of markets and anti-competitive behavior is “ludicrous on its face.” Let me give you the precise quote that ought to have been in every honest story on this case:
“Although defendants disclaim the existence of their agreement to allocate markets, and Hearst professes that it will have no role in the combination’s subsequent stewardship of Bay Area newspapers, the claim is ludicrous on it face. Hearst cannot expect this court or anyone else to believe that it is shelling out $263,200,000 simply to buy and deliver the Monterey Herald to its Bay Area competitors to gain an interest in its competitors’ markets outside the Bay Area, without receiving any assurance or reaching any understanding that it will be protected against future competition in the Bay Area from its new partners. Such a claim strains credibility to say the least. Indeed, the role of Hearst in this combination, coming to the aid of its competitor MediaNews, can be explained most logically and cogently only by Hearst’s participation in the combination alleged in the complaint. Otherwise, Hearst’s motivation is truly mystyifying and Byzantine. If ever Occam’s razor ought to be applied, it is here.”
Let’s have a show of hands. Has anyone seen this quote and point, or a summary thereof, in any Chronicle, Contra Costa Times, San Jose Mercury News, Monterey Herald or Associated Press story, or any other Hearst/Singleton/Gannett/Stephens/McClatchy paper anywhere in the country? The larger question: will you ever see this quote as the suit plays out and the messy facts begin to emerge about one of the sorriest chapters in American journalism?
Today, John Simerman of the Contra Costa Times reported breathlessly, in a story headlined “MediaNews looks to set standard for papers online,” that Media News “hopes to harness its newfound Bay Area newspaper dominance on the internet into a regional website that aims to be a model for how old guard newspapers can work and make money online.” He also reported that MediaNews was in “very preliminary” talks with Hearst “about a joint Internet venture that could be run under the BayArea.com name.”
I suggest they first learn to cover local news.
Repeating: one city monopoly is now becoming regional monopoly and the monopolizing powers are now censoring the news toward that end. Alas, that is a terrible harbinger for Bay Area communities, for journalism, and for the free press provisions of the First Amendment. Let us all hoist a Potrero Hill martini for Clint Reilly and Attorneys Joe Alioto and Daniel Shulman.
Check the story yourself and in particular the Alioto/Shulman filings. Click here. B3
Don’t move the mayoral elections
The Board of Supervisors is slated to vote July 25th on a plan that’s attracted little press attention, but could have a profound impact on San Francisco politics. Sup. Jake McGoldrick has proposed a charter amendment that would move mayoral elections to coincide with presidential elections. The idea, McGoldrick says, is to increase turnout: In 2004, when John Kerry was running against George W. Bush, more than 70 percent of San Franciscans voted. When Matt Gonzalez ran against Gavin Newsom for mayor in 2003, only 55 percent showed up at the polls.
It sounds good, and generally, we’re for anything that increases voter turnout. But there are some real tricky questions about this proposal, and there hasn’t been enough public discussion around it. So the supervisors should vote against placing it on this fall’s ballot.
Our main concern with the plan is that it might diminish local interest in the mayoral contest. When the presidential race is at the top of the ticket, and likely a U.S. Senate race at the same time, the news media tends to focus on those campaigns, and the public’s attention is focused on them, too. The advantage of having a San Francisco mayor’s race in what is otherwise an off-year for elections is that all the energy in local politics centers on a high-stakes local campaign (The district attorney’s race is also on the ballot, and that might totally get lost in the presidential-year madness).
Some critics oppose the plan because, in practice, it would give the next mayor – at this point, probably Gavin Newsom – an additional year in office. That shouldn’t be an issue, really: This is about more than one mayor, and more than one year. It’s about the future of politics in the city.
It shouldn’t be about the Democratic Party, either. Some people worry that party money – always big in a presidential year – will flow to the anointed Democratic mayoral candidate, drowning out the voices of (say) a Green candidate, or a democrat who didn’t get the party’s nod. Maybe – but maybe all the money will go to the top of the ticket, and there will be less local cash spent on the San Francisco mayor’s race. And the power of the Democratic Party in a presidential year didn’t stop Ross Mirkarimi – a green – from getting elected supervisor from District Five in 2004.
Both supporters and opponents of the plan are trying to calculate how it would help or hurt progressive candidates, but there’s another factor here. Mayoral races are about more than just winning. The 1999 campaign, in which Tom Ammiano lost to Willie Brown, was a turning point in progressive politics in San Francisco. The runoff between Gavin Newsom and Matt Gonzalez in 2003 created an immense outpouring of community activism and brought thousands of new people into local politics. In a presidential year, some of that excitement – which is, in the end, crucial to any progressive movement – might have been diffused.
We don’t see any clear mandate or case for making the change right now, and we see some serious downsides. After extensive hearings and public debate, we might be convinced that this is a good idea, but that hasn’t happened yet. So for now, we urge the supervisors not to place it on the November ballot.