San Francisco

Beyond the Reilly settlement

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> gwschulz@sfbg.com

Click here to read the Guardian editorial on the Reilly victory

Shortly before Clint Reilly began a press conference April 25 announcing that he’d settled his federal antitrust suit against the Bay Area’s two largest newspaper companies, Cheryl Hurd of NBC affiliate KNTV, channel 11, loudly complained to the pack of reporters that she just didn’t quite get the story.

"Why does anybody care about this?" she asked, sounding annoyed as she waved the press release listing the terms of the settlement in the air. "I don’t even understand any of this. What’s this mean?"

She wasn’t the only confused reporter. In the week since the settlement was announced, the local media have downplayed or mangled what is actually a huge story: Reilly, acting on his own, with no support from federal or state regulators, managed to scuttle a deal that would have ended all newspaper competition in the Bay Area.

"Would I have liked to see it go further? Yeah," said Bruce Cain, director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, who penned a declaration supporting Reilly’s case. "But at least he was able to stop more collaboration between those two companies, and he was able to establish the legal point that this has more than just economic consequences. It has consequences for the vitality of political news coverage in the Bay Area."

The settlement involved a lot of peripheral terms, but the essence was this: the Hearst Corp., which owns the San Francisco Chronicle, can no longer consider combining printing, distribution, and ad sales with MediaNews Group, which owns almost every other major local daily in the Bay Area.

Reilly announced that the deal prevents the supposed competitors from unfairly or illegally negotiating any major joint operating arrangement in the near future. The trial was scheduled to begin just days after the agreement was reached.

"Newspapers are the intellectual bridge between citizens and their government," Reilly told reporters. "To me, one Bay Area newspaper company owning every paid circulation daily newspaper would be a very bad thing for Bay Area newspaper readers and for public discourse."

The deal nixes a plan outlined in a letter unearthed during an early phase of the trial. The letter showed that Hearst and MediaNews wanted to consolidate distribution and advertising operations among their local papers to create additional revenue and save on expenses.

Hearst enabled MediaNews to complete the purchase of several major local dailies last year by investing $300 million in the company’s stock. To survive antitrust scrutiny, the deal was crafted to make the stock’s value hinge entirely on non-Bay Area assets. But documents revealed during the suit clearly show that Hearst had planned to convert the stock so that it included MediaNews papers here as well. The settlement also prevents that from happening.

According to the terms, Reilly will recommend private citizens for appointment to the editorial boards of every California Newspapers Partnership publication in the region, including the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, and the Oakland Tribune.

He will also get access to advertising space in the pages of the papers for a regular column.

Reilly had originally sought to force MediaNews to divest itself of the San Jose Mercury News and other papers, but that was a long shot at best. What’s remarkable is that he accomplished as much as he did when no government agency was willing to help.

"I see in a lot of places what’s happening is owners are trying to make as much money as possible," Cain told us. "I see this in local TV, I see this in print media. I’m sure there’s an element of survival sometimes, but I think a lot of it is just trying to get profit margins up."

The US Justice Department never made a serious effort to stop the deal. The Guardian recently confirmed that the state Attorney General’s Office under the newly elected Jerry Brown has dropped its probe into the transactions. Spokesperson David Kravets refused to explain why.

The state’s treasurer and former AG, Bill Lockyer, began the investigation, and when we asked for a comment on Brown’s decision, he declined, saying he had "moved on."

Gina Talamona, spokesperson for the federal Justice Department, said its examination of Hearst’s substantial investment in MediaNews continues. But MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton told us that he expects it will not only close soon but will also clear the companies to move ahead.

Singleton said his meetings with Reilly, a Bay Area native and former mayoral candidate, were civil and there were no terms of the settlement he was displeased with. But he still doesn’t believe Reilly had grounds to bring the suit.

"A lot of wild statements have been thrown out that are simply not true," Singleton said. "There’s no evidence whatsoever that we had any discussions with Hearst about doing anything with the Chronicle that would have been improper. In fact, we’ve had few discussions about anything with the Chronicle."

Perhaps there was nothing "improper" as far as justice officials were concerned. But a March 2006 letter from Hearst vice president James Asher to MediaNews president Joseph Lodovic that surfaced during the case shows Hearst required an agreement on consolidated distribution networks with MediaNews before the company would proceed with its side of the transaction.

So let’s go back to Hurd’s question: why should anyone care about newspaper mergers in an era when there are so many other sources of information?

John McManus is a part-time journalism professor at San Jose State University and director of GradeTheNews.org, a consumer Web site on Bay Area news quality. He was hired as a consultant by Clint Reilly’s legal team to provide analysis of how consolidated or noncompetitive media outlets might fail to provide the best, most valuable news stories possible to local consumers.

His answer is simple. "Everyone is affected by the quality of newspapers because they form the bottom of the food chain for news," McManus told us. "Probably about 85 percent of the original news reporting in the Bay Area comes from newspapers, because they have much larger staffs than television stations or radio stations or Web-only operations."

McManus did his Stanford PhD dissertation in 1987 on four television news stations scattered around California, spending a month at each of them. At one of the stations, he said, what appeared in the local newspaper was so important, a station producer would clip stories directly from it and attach them to the assignments reporters were expected to have prepared by that evening’s newscast.

"The situation has gotten worse since then," McManus told us, "because local TV news staffs have shrunk."

The settlement also did not include an agreement on what would happen to the mountain of records produced in the case leading up to the trial.

Hundreds of pages previously sealed by the newspaper companies were opened to the public after the Guardian and the East Bay nonprofit Media Alliance intervened in the case. Reilly’s lawyer, Joe Alioto, recently insisted that he would petition the judge to unveil more documents, such as full depositions of company executives and additional memos and e-mails.

The settlement comes with some caveats for critics of consolidation. McManus believes that Reilly ultimately "got a quarter of the loaf." Reilly, he said, may have protected the independence of the Chronicle, but MediaNews isn’t being forced to unload any of its Bay Area properties to balance the field.

"Without [Reilly] having liberated the Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times and the smaller papers from the grip of MediaNews," McManus said, "the Chronicle‘s fate may be sealed." *

Editors note: The daily papers in the Bay Area treated the news of the settlement as a one-day story, and not a terribly big one. The San Francisco Chronicle ran it below the fold in the business section with a one-column head. But over the next few days, there were a lot of development and arguments over the deal; the trade journal Editor and Publisher was all over it. But none of that made it into the supposedly competitive local daily press.

A lot of the back and forth appeared on chainlinks.org, a Web site run by the Newspaper Guild. A selection:

Hearst-MediaNews deal scuttled: Former Chronicle City Editor Alan Mutter on the Reilly settlement

Editor and Publisher on the disagreement over the settlement

Jerry Ceppos, former executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, whines about the deal

Romanseko links to some of the first-day stories

Reilly’s victory

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EDITORIAL In the days following the historic settlement of Clint Reilly’s lawsuit against the Bay Area’s newspaper barons, the local dailies, the media blogs, and the trade publications such as Editor and Publisher were buzzing with debate and speculation over a few of the agreement’s terms.

Would Reilly actually get space in the local papers to make his political points every month? Where would that space go? Would it be paid ad space, or would he get it free? Would he be able to appoint a citizen member to the editorial boards of Dean Singleton’s dailies (including the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times)? Or could the papers’ managers reject his nominations?

Back and forth, back and forth. And all of it entirely missed the point.

This was the fine print of the deal, the stuff that, a few months from now, nobody will remember or care about. You could get the real news from the headline in a blog post by former Chronicle city editor Alan Mutter: "Hearst-MediaNews deal scuttled."

That’s what happened here: Reilly, acting with his own money, with no support from the federal or state regulators, broke up a deal that would have put the owners of the Chronicle directly in business with Singleton’s MediaNews Group, the owner of almost every other major daily in the region. It would have been the end of daily newspaper competition in the Bay Area.

The Hearst Corp., documents that came out during the suit showed, wanted to combine some printing, distribution, and sales efforts with MediaNews Group. And Hearst wanted to convert an investment in MediaNews into direct stock in the company’s local papers. That would have, in effect, made one of the last non-MediaNews papers in the area part of the same business group.

As G.W. Schulz reports in "Beyond the Reilly Settlement," on page 11, if Reilly hadn’t intervened, nobody would have known about it until it was over and too late to stop. That’s the point here, and that’s what journalists, political scientists, and critics ought to be talking about.

Instead, we’ve heard outrage from some editors over the fact that Reilly might get some space in the papers. It’s really a nonissue; he could have bought ad space for his opinions anyway, and all that the settlement did was give him that space free. And a lot of papers ask citizens to serve on advisory boards; Reilly’s nominees are very unlikely to change anyone’s editorial policies.

Meanwhile, where is the outrage over the original Hearst-MediaNews deal, which would have ended editorial competition the same way the 1965 joint operating agreement between the Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner did? Where is the outrage, for that matter, over the fact that the Chronicle is now putting ads not from Clint Reilly but from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. – greenwashing ads that are demonstrable lies – on the front page of the paper, without even a tagline that says "paid advertisement"? Where is the outrage over the fact that Democrats Bill Lockyer (the former attorney general) and Jerry Brown (who now holds the job) were ready to stand back and let all this happen?

And where is the concern among all these civic-minded types about the fact that despite Reilly’s best efforts, it’s entirely possible Hearst will wind up trying to sell the Chron to Singleton anyway – and none of the federal or state authorities seem to care?

Remember, if Reilly hadn’t sued, one of the most dangerous, rotten tricks in newspaper history might have gone unchallenged.

As it is, the full information only came to light because the Guardian and Media Alliance went into court to force it open – and now Reilly and his attorney, Joe Alioto, have the right under the settlement to seek federal Judge Susan Illston’s permission to make the remainder of the key records – including the settlement agreement – public. They should do so, immediately, and Illston should grant their request. The public interest in the newspaper barons’ schemes couldn’t possibly be greater. *

The meltdown opportunity

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EDITORIAL A few hours after the explosion that melted part of the East Bay approach to the Bay Bridge, Mayor Gavin Newsom was meeting with reporters at the state Democratic convention in San Diego. Yes, he told them, there would be an economic impact from the freeway meltdown. Yes, it would be a hardship for thousands of commuters. "Yes, it’s a mess," he told us. "But it’s also an opportunity."

Newsom is right – and if he and other regional and state officials are willing to take advantage of that opportunity, it could be a rare chance to shift commute patterns in the Bay Area away from the automobile.

The evidence on the first post-meltdown travel day was encouraging: Extra BART trains were running. Extra ferries were in service. The Muni lines that connect to the ferry terminal (even the star-crossed T line) were more or less on time. And huge numbers of people who normally would have driven their cars to work took mass transit.

Part of that, of course, was due to the decision by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to offer free rides on trains, buses, and ferries. But part of it was because there simply wasn’t any other choice: the only option for a lot of East Bay residents who wanted to get into San Francisco without facing a real traffic nightmare was to leave their cars at home.

The new commute won’t be a perfect convenience for everyone – but if the state and the counties keep their end of the deal, it won’t have to be that bad. In fact, in 1989, when the Loma Prieta quake brought down the Bay Bridge, San Francisco survived just fine. For those few weeks without transbay driving, downtown was remarkably pleasant – the streets weren’t clogged with cars, the noise level was down, the air was cleaner, and pedestrians and bicyclists didn’t have to fear for their lives.

Meanwhile, the business of the city went on; people adapted; and when the bridge reopened, they got right back in their cars.

That’s what has to change this time around.

For starters, Newsom and Oakland mayor Ron Dellums ought to convene a summit on reducing car traffic and set a firm goal of, say, a permanent 25 percent reduction in auto traffic on the Bay Bridge. That would involve major, lasting improvements in regional transit: The number of ferries, now at double the normal capacity, would have to remain high, and fares would have to be kept low enough to be competitive with driving. BART would also have to increase capacity, and Muni would have to run more busses to take people quickly from BART terminals to other parts of town.

That’s going to cost some money, in part because the East Bay-to-San Francisco ferries are privately owned and won’t carry passengers free or at reduced fares unless the state is going to keep ponying up money – which is a good reason for the legislature to look at creating public ferries for the long term.

But compared to the costs of continued congestion and the impact on global climate change that come from all these cars, it’s too good a deal to pass up.

San Francisco city planners tend to look at ways to accommodate more cars as the city grows. Newsom and Dellums, along with other Bay Area officials, need to derail that assumption and use this opportunity to make permanent reductions in car use. *

Cleaning the sour lake

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>amanda@sfbg.com

Pablo Fajardo, Humberto Piaguaje, and Guillermo Grefa – three natives of Ecuador – recently made a visit to the Bay Area, but not as mere tourists.

"I’ve come here to inform you, San Francisco, so that you here might know what Chevron does outside the borders of the United States," Fajardo said at a press conference outside City Hall. "They are contributing to the destruction of humanity on a global level."

Fajardo is one of the lead litigators in a 14-year-old civil action lawsuit against Texaco (which was purchased by the Chevron Corp. in 2001) accusing the multinational oil company of business practices that soured the lakes, streams, soil, air, and lives of the residents of Lago Agrio ("sour lake" in Spanish). Texaco was based in this rainforest region for 28 years and operated 343 wells and processing plants that pumped 1.5 billion barrels of oil through a 300-mile exposed pipeline over the Andes. The plaintiffs allege that substandard storage and handling of the oil and its toxic byproducts during those productive years have poisoned an area three times the size of Manhattan.

Chevron contends that it has adequately cleaned up 45 sites and anything beyond that is the responsibility of PetroEcuador, a government-owned company with which Texaco had a partnership for use, ownership, and maintenance of the wells.

Chevron is the sixth largest oil company in the world and the richest corporation in the Bay Area. The San Francisco Chronicle recently dubbed Chevron its "corporation of the year" after the oil company posted $17 billion in profits in 2006.

But by the end of this year, Chevron may have a new distinction: loser of the largest environmental remediation case ever litigated. Even though legal scholars say it’s quite possible the Ecuador court will rule against Chevron, company executives still haven’t set aside any money or fully informed shareholders of this potential liability.

A resident of Lago Agrio since he was 14, Fajardo received his law degree through correspondence school coursework just three years ago, and this is the first case he’s argued. But he’s not alone. His legal team includes New York-based Steve Donziger and a bankroll from Philadelphia’s Kohn, Swift and Graf. The recent trip was also supported by the San Francisco organizations Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network.

"This was to put a message to the Bay Area. This is your homegrown oil company," Amazon Watch’s executive director, Atossa Soltani, said. "This is an opportunity to hold them accountable. We need to demand they uphold the values of this community."

While in town, Fajardo invited Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to tour one of the 600 unlined oil pits that are seeping sludge into the drinking water of 30,000 Lago Agrians.

"I know that you have close ties to this company," Fajardo wrote in a letter to Schwarzenegger. "I have read that Chevron has donated over $600,000 to your campaigns and inaugurations. I have also read that your former chief of staff was a lobbyist for Chevron. However, I have faith because I know you are a man of the environment. You are making California a leader in the United States on almost every environmental issue. You are what they call a ‘green’ governor."

The governor is still reviewing the letter, his spokesperson Aaron McLear said, and has not yet decided on taking a field trip to the country. According to an Associated Press article, at an April 24 press conference Schwarzenegger was asked why he turned down an offer to meet the Ecuadorans. He responded, "Everyone has their own ideas of what it is to be an environmentalist and to protect the environment."

To convey their idea of what it means to be a good corporate citizen, Piaguaje and Grefa busted into the April 25 annual shareholders meeting at Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon, as guests of Soltani and RAN executive director Michael Brune – who both happen to own a little stock in the company.

As three dozen protesters stood outside the meeting holding a banner that read, "Tell shareholders the toxic truth," the usual crowd of well-heeled investors dressed in prim suits and trim neckties mingled inside.

Two individuals looked a little different. Grefa wore a pale green shirt and a thick rope of multicolored beads around his neck. Beside him sat Piaguaje, in a long red tunic with a traditional headdress covering his black hair. During the question period of the meeting, they addressed Chevron board president David O’Reilly.

"Our fight is not for money," Piaguaje, the Secoya tribe leader, said through a translator. "We want you to give back our lives. We want to live in peace, harmoniously with nature. Above all, we want justice. We will continue to fight until we get justice or we will die in our struggle."

"The problems you have there," O’Reilly responded, "you need to take up with the government. There’s no credible evidence that Texaco did anything wrong."

The plaintiffs argue that Chevron’s $40 million remediation job during the ’90s is an implicit admission of some level of guilt.

Chevron says it’s being attacked for the size of its purse. At the shareholders meeting, company executives proudly reported the company made $17.1 billion last year, will be investing about $15 billion in oil exploration, and is kicking off 30 new capital projects at the cost of $1 billion apiece.

Should the Ecuadoran plaintiffs prevail, the cost of a real cleanup has been estimated at $6 billion – enough to hinder just half a dozen of Chevron’s new oil wells. Chevron contends the figure is grossly inflated. "This $6 billion assessment was made by a consultant hired by the attorneys [on the plaintiffs’ side] who only spent three days there," one of Chevron’s lawyers, Ricardo Veija, told the Guardian.

"He was there for a few weeks, actually," said the environmental scientist at his side, Sara McMillen, who’s consulting for Chevron on the case. She added that the consultants asked other experts to consider the figure. "They actually bust out laughing when they hear that number," she said. "It’s more than the cost of Exxon Valdez."

But Fajardo contends the spills in Lago Agrio are larger than the Valdez tanker spill – 30 times larger, in fact (18.5 billion gallons versus 11 million). He said Ecuadorans are more interested in drinking clean water and being treated like humans than squeezing money from Chevron.

Because of the trial, Fajardo was not allowed to attend the shareholders meeting, but we asked what he would say to O’Reilly if they were face-to-face.

"If I could speak with him," Fajardo said in clear, direct words, as if talking to a child who doesn’t want to listen, "I would tell him that I think human beings are the same. We have the same rights no matter what part of the world we live in. This company has caused great harm. Instead of spending millions of dollars in defense, they could be investing money in cleanup. It’s a question of justice."

Fajardo, his stern brow softening as he considered his words, added, "I’d also tell him I have nothing against him personally. I respect him like I respect every other person." *

Back to my Cribs

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By Molly Freedenberg

Sure, British threesome the Cribs are pure indie rock. The boys’ striped shirts and messy haircuts won’t let anyone forget. But the danceable melodies, interesting arrangements, and sing-a-long hooks appear to be catapulting them into pop scene stardom (not to mention backing from Franz Ferdinand and a spot on the Coachella Music Festival roster). At least, that’s what I would’ve assumed before I saw them play before a disappointing crowd at the Independent last Wednesday, April 25.

cribs3.jpg
Indie of all stripes. Photo by Molly Freedenberg.

Maybe the Cribs’ local fans were planning to see them in Indio a few days later. Maybe others missing the festival were drawn to see Coachella artists DJ Shadow or the Decemberists instead, who were both playing in the Bay Area on the same night as the Cribs. Or maybe I saw them in San Francisco before their time, like catching Amy Winehouse last year.

Whatever it was, the dance floor was noticeably empty – and its few occupants were noticeably unenthusiastic – as the band “oh, oh, oh, oh”-ed through “Martell” (from 2005’s The New Fellas) and their guitars noodled through “Men’s Needs” (from the Alex Kapranos-produced new album, Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever).

And so the concert that was meant to minimize my Coachella envy – as this was the first in four years I haven’t attended the beast in the desert – instead only heightened it. Because as I hungrily devoured concert coverage (particularly NME’s) on Monday, I could only imagine what it would’ve been like to see the normally cute and compelling (but here, a bit bored) Cribs with a crowd full of people who actually cared. Sigh. Maybe next year.

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/30/07)

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/30/07): At least 98 Iraqi civilians were killed today. 14 U.S. Soldiers were killed in Iraq in the past 72 hours.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

At least 98 Iraqi civilians were killed today in violence across the country, according to the Associated Press:
32 civilian mourners killed today in a bombing of a Shiite funeral in Diyala.
5 civilians killed today in a car bombing in Baghdad.
4 civilians killed today in checkpoint bombing in Baghdad
4 cilvilians killed today when a tanker truck exploded near a restaurant in Ramadi.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

62,570 – 68,593: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 29 April 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/42/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

U.S. military:
Fourteen U.S. soldiers and Marines were killed in Iraq during the past 72 hours, making April the sixth deadliest month of the Iraq war, according to CNN.

3,590: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.04.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source: http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

156: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

U.S. Military Wounded:

50,502: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/


The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/30/07): So far, $421 billion for the U.S., $53 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

Artists put down paint brushes and pin Lennar down

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By Sarah Phelan

IMG_0046.jpg
Shipyard artist Lynn Rubenzer in her studio

So, the artists at Hunters Point Shipyard succeeded in getting their concerns mentioned in the “Conceptual Framework” for the Bayview Hunters Point redevelopment project, which is more than they had a week ago.
States the new improved draft, “The Project shall provide at affordable rates new or renovated permanent space at the Shipyard sufficient to accommodate the existing artists. The construction of the Project must be phased to ensure that the existing artists have the right to move to the new or renovated permanent space, without being displaced from the Shipyard. To achieve these objectives, the City, the Agency and the Primary Developer will work in consultation with the artists to create the plan for the permanent affordable facilities, including any relocation plan.”
Now, objectives aren’t quite the same as the end product. Experience suggests that the artists are gonna have to focus on a whole bunch of meetings if they’re going to have a prayer of keeping Building 101 and getting a Shipyard Center for the Arts, as they apparently would like.
Especially, if the 49ers dump San Francisco for Santa Clara as planned.
sure, Lennar’s conceptual framework also aims to “ensure the revitalization of the Project Site, comprised of Candlestick Point and Phase 2 of the Shipyard, and the generation of public benefits to the community and the City from development, even if the 49ers do not build a new stadium at the site.” But that doesn’t mean anyone, least of the artists, should take their eyes of the ball just yet, especially as the debate about an early transfer of the shipyard’s Parcel B, C, D, E and F is far from over. Stay tuned.

The Upside of the Downside of the Meltdown

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By Sarah Phelan
ferry_under_baybridge.jpg
My morning commute from the East Bay was exactly the same as it was before the MacArthur Maze meltdown. But then, I was traveling to San Francisco on a ferry.
My friendly ferry crew predict that ridership will jump, once people experience the living hell of thousands of drivers trying to find an alternative to an overpass that now looks like a strip of toffee that’s been left out in the sun–a meltdown that has put the connector linking westbound I-80 and southbound I-880 out of commission, as well as the elevated roadway that carried eastbound traffic from the Bay Bridge onto I-580.
They also might get religious about riding the ferry, or the Transbay Express or BART, once they also realize that all public transit is free, at least for now.
The Loma Prieta earthquake and the collapse of the Bay Bridge was what got ferry service between the East Bay and San Francisco started in 1989. Maybe now, a tanker overturning and the melting of an overpass can get people to do what they outta be doing anyways, in the face of climate change: take public transit. Added bonus: if you’re lucky enough to take the ferry you can shout “Adios suckers!” as you glide to and fro beneath the Bay Bridge climate-changing commute.
Double added bonus: maybe this meltdown will get people talking about making public transit permanently free. Right now, commuting to SF by ferry costs $4.00 one way, if you buy 20 tickets, or $5.50 if you buy one.
Commuting by BART costs $2.75 one way, while driving the Bridge costs $4.00 (the toll from Oakland to SF) plus the cost of gas and wear and tear in car to the driver, plus the cost of air quality and wear and tear on the road (including the cost of a possible meltdown when a tanker explodes!) to the Bay Area, plus the cost of climate change to planet Earth.
Can we really “afford” to keep on driving and screw up conditions on the third rock from the Sun?

Dem Con 3 pm: Obama

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By Tim Redmond

During the Hillary Clinton press conferece this morning, one of the reporters asked Clinton to respond to the perception that she’s the old guard of the party and Barack Obama is the upstart. She sidestepped politely, but here on the convention floor, there’s some evidence that the reporter was right. There were a lot more Hillary signs and a more organized contingent this morning, but Obama’s people are distinctly younger.

Like Clinton, Obama has staged a surprise entrance — not even the rank and file of his supporters know exactly what door he will enter. I look for the custer of security folks, and get to a back entrance just as the candidate bursts through the door.

From a few feet away (as close as I can get) he looks even younger than he does on TV. He jogs forward toward the stage, then is mobbed by supporters. When he finally emerges on the podium, he’s joined by San Francisco DA Kamala Harris, an early supporter.

What we get is mostly a stump speech, revolving around his theme that “we must find a way to come together.” But he’s an inspiring speaker, and he does promise universal health care “before the end of my first term” and directly says the he will “stop the drug companies from price gouging.”

“The insurance and drug companies will have a seat at the table,” he says, “but they don’t get to buy every seat at the table.” That’s more direct than Clinton.

He’s also more direct — way more direct — on the war. “I’m proud to say I stood up in 2002, when it wasn’t popular to stand up, and say [the war] was a bad idea.” That gets a long ovation.

When he wraps up, it’s clear who thbe majority in this particular crowd favors right now — and it’s not Hillary Clinton.

Critical Mass

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For commentary and images from last night’s Critical Mass, check the Guardian’s San Francisco.

Perfect storm for Critical Mass

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By Steven T. Jones
It’s a beautiful day for a bike ride! And San Francisco’s daily newspapers are helping set the scene for the biggest Critical Mass ride in years. The latest promotion was the screamer headline on the cover of today’s Examiner, “Critical Mass veterans make push for civility.” The article was far better than the Chron coverage has been, although it did erroneously note that CM intends to stop at red lights, which has never been part of the deal. All that would do is slow the mass down and place cars in the center of it, which isn’t good for them or us (remember, the woman who got her car window broken last month freaked out over being “swarmed” by bikes, which would happen over and over again if a crowd of thousands of bikes kept getting broken up by stoplights). My only concern tonight is with the anger being expressed toward CM among online commenters in places like SFist. But I and others will be out there documenting what happens, so check back to this blog to see how it all went.

Arnold’s dishonest rail stand

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TGVtrain.web.jpg
By Steven T. Jones
Why can’t Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or his proxies explain their opposition to high-speed rail? They try, as they must. After all, this is a green project lauded across the ideological spectrum and around the world for its potential to prevent global warming, dirty air, and clogged freeways and airports.
But all the answers Arnold’s people give are illogical, unresponsive, or contradicted by the experts. In the end, it appears the Schwarzenegger administration is simply unwilling to support high-speed rail or to level with the public about why. Legislators and other Democrats say they’re solidly behind the project, something that will be tested this weekend in San Diego when the state party convention considers a resolution of support authored by longtime party activist Jane Morrison of San Francisco.
“It’s very timely because the governor is trying to cut the budget [for the California High Speed Rail Authority] back to $1 million and delay the bond measure,” Morrison told the Guardian. “I think this is a terribly important project.”

Disapproving Characterization

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by Amanda Witherell

We just got this letter from Matt Dorsey. He didn’t like the way we talked about the city attorney’s office and their love/hate relationship with metadata. Sorry Matt! You know we love your sunshiney attitude.

Press Secretary Dorsey writes:

For the record, I forcefully disagree with Amanda Witherell’s characterization that this office’s Sept. 19, 2006 memorandum represents a scenario in which “the city attorney’s office in San Francisco has strongly advised against releasing public documents that may contain metadata.”

A thorough perusal of this public memorandum should prove my point convincingly.

Matt convinces, after the jump…

Shows!

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Holy F**k at The Independent the next two nights, 27th & 28th, previewing material off of their sophomore full-length, due in September.  As well, thanks for the !!! preview.  Should you care to attend their performance at the Fillmore  Monday night.  Love to have you out.

In addition, sent you a copy of Land of Talk’s debut ep, Applause Cheer Boo Hiss, prior to its March 19th release here in the U.S.  Already critically acclaimed in their home nation of Canada, the Montreal trio have been building momentum here in the U.S. since early last year, performing regularly in New York, before hitting SXSW and taking to the road with Menomena and Field Music.  Paste Magazine was quick on the ball, already calling Applause, “The most perfect debut of 2006”, before running a feature in their current issue, and KEXP’s John Richards, put it quite simply, “Holy crap, this is great!”.   Land of Talk will take to the road with The Rosebuds in June, making their San Francisco debut, June 12th at the Great American.  

Pull it out of your stacks and give a listen.

Thanks,

Brendan
 
Tag Team Media – 45 Main St. – Ste. 604 – Brooklyn, NY 11201
ph. 718-797-4211 fx. 718-797-4524 e: brendan@tagteammedia.com
www.tagteammedia.com



Hit me up about:
!!! * Amandine * Apostle of Hustle * Born Ruffians * Clinic * Dappled Cities * Division Day * Earlimart * Feist * Gonzales * Holy F–K *

Tonight!
THE BLOOD BROTHERS 
Celebration, Triumph of Lethargy Skinned Alive To Death 
Wednesday, April 25 
$14 – Doors 7, Show 8
The Blood Brothers combine experimental, punk, hardcore, and post-hardcore, among many other styles… In small circle discussions, the band related that they have influences from the No Wave punk scene of the 1980’s. The band has cited Botch, Drive Like Jehu, Gang of Four, Angel Hair, Highway 61, True North, and Bootsy Collins as influences. 
More Info & Tickets

THE AVETT BROTHERS 
Kemo Sabe 
Thursday, April 26 
$15 – Doors 8, Show 9
The Avett’s brand new album to be released May 15 entitled “Emotionalism”. The album, like The Avett Brothers, is a mixture of old-time country, bluegrass, pop melodies, folk, rock n’ roll, honky-tonk and ragtime. The songs are honest: just chords with real voices singing real melodies. But, the heart and the energy with which they are sung, is really why people are talking, and why so many sing along. 
More Info & Tickets

KFJC Presents
MONO
World’s End Girlfriend, The Drift 
Friday, April 27
$13 adv/$15 door – Doors 8, Show 9
Despite their albums’ masterful subtleties and majestic walls of noise, the consensus has remained that their transcendent live show is simply incomparable. Tix moving fast, get them now!

Score one for fun

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By Steven T. Jones
For the last year, the Guardian has been trying to get mainstream San Francisco to pay attention to the mounting threats to this city’s nightlife and outdoor events. Last night, the issue finally started getting some traction when the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling on the city to value fun and enact policy changes to protect it (to read the resolution, click here and select “Nightlife and Festivals Resolution”). Kudos to all the representatives who supported it and to the Outdoor Events Coalition and Nightlife Coalition for their advocacy on the issue. There are signs that Mayor Gavin Newsom is coming around on the issue, but the real test will be whether he can rein in the bureaucracy’s hunger for bigger fees and make fun a priority in his next budget update. BTW, it would also be nice if the Chronicle, Examiner, and local TV stations would start paying attention to an issue that goes to the heart of whether San Francisco maintains its lively culture. We really can’t be the only ones that love a good party, can we?
uh-1.jpg
Photo from How Weird Street Faire, courtesy of Mv.gals.net

Important tenant alert — call Leland Yee!

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By Tim Redmond

A critical piece of tenant legislation is heading for the floor of the state Senate, and so far, San Francisco Senator Leland Yee hasn’t taken a position on it. The bill would dramatically reduce the number of Ellis Act evictions in the city and save the homes of thousands of low-income renters and seniors.

The bill number is SB 464, by Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-L.A). Contact Yee’s office today and demand that he support it.

You can email him directly from here. Or you can call his local office at 557-7857.

Barons back off newspaper trial

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See bottom of story for full Web package of Guardian newspaper-transaction coverage and documents related to the Reilly suit

Click here for the Reilly press conference documents.

Click here for the famous April 26, 2006 letter.

Well, it’s over before it ever truly began.

Clint Reilly’s federal civil suit against the Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group, filed last year in an attempt to block the would-be competitors from sharing monopoly control of the Bay Area’s daily newspaper establishment, ended today in a settlement that left Reilly claiming victory.

The deal blocks any future business deals between Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, and MediaNews, which now owns almost every other daily in the region.

The settlement saved some of the nation’s biggest newspaper barons from the prospect of a long and embarrassing trial that could have produced alarming revelations about the way the big publishers do business.

The case was set to go before a judge and jury April 30.

But in exchange, Reilly says he got most of what he was asking for – in particular, an end to the prospect of a Hearst-Media News business deal.

At a morning press conference April 25, Reilly announced that the settlement puts the Chronicle back into competition with local MediaNews properties.

“The purpose of my lawsuit,” Reilly told reporters, “was to ensure we will not have one company or one partnership owning every single paid subscription daily newspaper in the Bay Area … I strongly believe in newspaper competition. Newspapers create the record of our civic life.”

The local real-estate investor and former mayoral candidate forced the two companies, along with minority business partners the Stephens Group and Gannett Co., to promise they wouldn’t carry out the terms of a now-famous letter dated April 26, 2006 that outlined how Hearst and MediaNews could consolidate distribution and advertising operations among their local papers to create revenue.

That was just one of many proposed plans Reilly’s suit called a violation of federal antitrust laws. Also according to the settlement, Hearst’s $300 million stock investment in MediaNews, which CEO William Dean Singleton relied upon to complete his takeovers last spring of the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, the Monterey County Herald, and eventually, the Torrance Daily Breeze near Los Angeles, would rise and fall in value based only on the performance of MediaNews assets outside of the Bay Area.

The “tracking stock” scheme, as it’s known, was initially conceived this way to clear Hearst and MediaNews of immediate antitrust scrutiny by justice-department officials, but Hearst hoped it would later be converted into general MediaNews stock that included its Bay Area papers, a fact confirmed by records unearthed in an earlier phase of Reilly’s suit. Hearst, it turned out, much preferred that its huge investment include the totality of MediaNews.

But today’s settlement would keep that from happening, according to terms laid out between the parties, some of which they’ve agreed not to disclose.

Any talk of conjoined operations during the next three years between the companies would have to first be divulged to Reilly and his legal team.

Singleton has also agreed to turn over all executive meeting minutes of the California Newspapers Partnership, formed originally with Gannett and Stephens in 1999, that detail any negotiations with the Chronicle or other major media companies looking to do business with MediaNews in the Bay Area for the next three years.

In addition, Reilly will be permitted to recommend a citizen for appointment to the editorial boards of CNP’s Bay Area newspapers and will himself serve on the editorial board of at least one of them.

“The ten-month-long legal battle gave us a chance to see confidential documents between Hearst and MediaNews, Stephens and Gannett,” Reilly said. “Numerous documents show these newspaper companies and their executives are capable of the very cover-ups they so vigorously prosecute in politicians, executives and celebrities. I believe that their primary motivation for settling this case was their fear of exposing questionable competitive practices to public scrutiny.

“This is the second time Reilly has done this,” his attorney, Joe Alioto, told the reporters, referring to a 2000 suit Reilly filed to stop Hearst from shutting down the San Francisco Examiner. “And he does it because the government won’t do it. He does it all at his own cost and risk.”

—————————–

Reilly’s first antitrust assault on Hearst produced some sensational revelations – including the fact that the Examiner publisher sought to trade favorable editorial coverage of then-Mayor Willie Brown in exchange for Brown’s support of Hearst’s business deals.

With the settlement in place, Reilly’s second suit won’t produce that sort of high drama. But he has forced the release of records showing that Hearst and MediaNews wanted to develop close business ties – and there are more potentially explosive documents that may become public.

After the Guardian and Media Alliance intervened to have records previously sealed by the newspaper companies opened to public access, we learned for the first time that Hearst had considered selling the San Francisco Chronicle to Singleton in 2005. But the latter’s offer was chump change, coming just a few short years after Hearst had plowed through three quarters-of-a-billion dollars in its bid to take over the Chronicle and dump the San Francisco Examiner, which it had owned for more than a century. The terms were “totally unacceptable,” Hearst executive James Asher would tell the justice department in a September deposition that turned out to be among the most interesting and candid documents to surface from the intervention.

We learned that Hearst had spent more than 10 years gnashing at the bit for an opportunity to invest in the MediaNews business model, best described as a series of “clusters,” in which Singleton consolidates the operations of several regional newspapers, hacks madly at the payroll with a broadsword, and sends ill-fated staffers packing, from veteran editors with Pulitzers on their résumés to longtime press operators.

We learned that Hearst’s inspiration for its major stock investment in MediaNews began after the two became fast friends in Texas, Singleton’s home state. MediaNews in 1995 sold the assets of the Houston Post for $120 million to Hearst, which owned the Houston Chronicle, enabling Hearst to rid itself of a major-market competitor.

We learned that from day one, Hearst wanted its $300 million investment to directly hinge on Bay Area MediaNews properties as well, presumably meaning they believed it would make the investment more valuable, and also meaning Hearst would then have less of an incentive to compete directly with MediaNews. Would you if your competitor was holding $300 million of your money?

We also learned that an anticompetitive agreement to join advertising and distribution networks with MediaNews was required by Hearst “in order to proceed with the transaction,” according to a memo Hearst exec Asher sent to MediaNews president Joseph J. Lodovic IV in early 2006. In other words, a quid pro quo by its very definition.

We learned that contradictory legal strategies are far from off limits. The Hearst Corp. argued first in Reilly’s 2000 suit that the Bay Area is brimming with aggressive newspaper competition, and for that reason, he had no grounds to denounce the closure of the Examiner planned at the time. The papers argued in 2006, however, that newspaper competition in the Bay Area is actually all but non-existent because the markets are subdivided, so Clint Reilly doesn’t have anything to complain about.

Some of the most interesting material is still under court seal, including the depositions of senior publishing executives. But the settlement specifically allows Reilly to go back into court seeking an order to open those records, and he and Alioto vowed to do that very shortly.

—————————

Overall, it’s been a monumental year for newspapers, replete with massive waves of unfortunate irony. Banner headlines at dailies across the country have prophesied the death of newspapers, a trend story that Hearst and MediaNews tried to use in court to convince judge Illston that the industry was wilting under a consolidate-or-die atmosphere. A better analysis, of course, might conclude simply that shareholders aren’t getting the enormous returns they once did, with the exception of the Chronicle, which, we learned from Reilly’s suit, has been losing $1 million a week for Hearst — if not more.

A shareholder revolt broke to pieces one of the nation’s largest newspaper chains, Knight-Ridder, respected by many in the industry for its commitment to investigations, bold enterprise reporting and funding for national and international bureaus. The company was forced to sell after investors grew restless, and Singleton swept in to takeover the chain’s gem, the Merc, as well as the Times in Contra Costa County.

Layoffs ensued and MediaNews immediately began consolidating business-side functions in a single San Ramon office where operations for several papers could be managed at once. And MediaNews recently spiced up the company’s Web site, an emblem of its new dominant position. But like the old site, there’s very little information about the company’s journalism awards, and no bios of its editors, profiles of its reporters or portraits of anyone driving the company’s papers from the bottom up. Like the old site, there’s information for investors and photos of the company’s top executives, including one of Singleton smiling alongside company president Lodovic, who earned a $1 million bonus just as MediaNews consummated its marriage with Hearst last year.

At MediaNews papers in the Bay Area, single stories began appearing in several papers under one byline during Reilly’s suit meaning fewer perspectives for major Bay Area issues. Again with a touch of irony, one of the regular bylines on stories covering Reilly’s suit has been from veteran Merc reporter Pete Carey, who under the paper’s old owners helped win two Pulitzers, first for its joint 1985 coverage of the downfall of Filipino despot Ferdinand Marcos and second for stories explaining how red tape blocked needed retrofits at some California highways leading to greater infrastructure damage during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

In Minnesota, a Ridder family heir hung on as publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press after Singleton took it over last year with Hearst’s help before he left just recently for a job at the competing Minneapolis Star Tribune. The move has devolved into a bitter court dispute with Singleton, according to the Twin Cities alt weekly, City Pages. The Ridder family’s involvement with the Pi Press lasted more than 70 years.

Even Singleton’s beloved flagship paper, the Denver Post, couldn’t escape “industry changes” – that is, layoffs. The paper reported buyout offers to more than a third of its staff April 24.

But we have received a recent ominous sign of what’s to come just as Reilly inked his settlement with Hearst and MediaNews.

In an election for board directors at the April 24 annual meeting of the New York Times Co., 42 percent of the shareholders withheld their votes to protest the company’s stock structure, which keeps a controlling ownership stake in the hands of the Sulzberger family, the members of which have owned the Times for generations.

The Times – like the Washington Post – has staved off shareholder raids like the one that tanked Knight-Ridder by maintaining their own separate class of stock. The Sulzbergers have reiterated that the strategy enabled them to keep quality reporting at the paper’s forefront and short-term obsessions with profit at bay.

“Mr. Sulzberger dismissed the calls to separate his two titles,” a Times story on the meeting noted, “saying that holding both roles [of publisher and chairman] allows him to ‘balance the financial and journalistic needs of this institution.'”

But Wall Street’s war on newspapers, in the meantime, is likely not over.

“At the beginning of my case, I said that 25 years involvement in politics and government had taught me how important newspapers are to our democratic society,” Reilly said at the press conference. “I hope this lawsuit in 2007 will guarantee competition among newspapers for another generation in our city and the Bay Area.”

THE PAPER TRAIL
Several of the documents stemming from Clint Reilly’s antitrust claim against Hearst, MediaNews and other business collaborators in the California Newspapers Partnership

THE UNFOLDING STORY
Major Guardian stories and editorials published since last spring following the recent major Bay Area newspaper transactions and Clint Reilly’s resulting lawsuit

THE NEW-MEDIA SCOOP
Posts to the Politics Blog about the Clint Reilly suit

THE BRUCE BLOG ON MONOPOLY MEDIA
Keeping tabs on the Galloping Conglomerati via blog reports and impertinent questions

The Bruce Blog on monopoly media

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Still censored: the story and debate on the impacts of media consolidation in the Bay Area
Posted in Bruce (B3) on April 16, 2007 05:03 PM

Shocked! Shocked! And shocked again!
Posted in Bruce (B3) on April 13, 2007 05:44 PM

Stop the presses! Here come the documents of secrecy, stonewalling, and collaboration from the nation’s biggest chains (Hearst, Singleton, Gannett, Stephens) Why people get mad at the media (l4)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on April 11, 2007 03:53 PM

Singleton buys another daily paper and further locks up the Bay Area market .Where’s the U.S. Attorney General and the California Attorney General?
Posted in Bruce (B3) on February 5, 2007 05:11 PM

Why people get mad at the media (part 9). the Chronicle and Associated Press blow the big media story and refuse to make corrections
Posted in Bruce (B3) on January 30, 2007 01:48 PM

Eureka! More on how monopoly papers cover monopoly news
Posted in Bruce (B3) on December 20, 2006 04:35 PM

Clint Reilly wins a big one against Hearst and Singleton. Fighting to keep one newspaper towns from becoming a one newspaper region.
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 28, 2006 03:04 PM

Memo to the city desks of the Chronicle/Hearst and Media News Group/Singleton papers and the Associated Press: the Hearst/Reilly antitrust suit is scheduled for a hearing tomorrow (Wednesday) morning before Federal Judge Susan Illston. Will you cover it?
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 21, 2006 05:57 PM

SF Chronicle to Outsource All of Its Printing, reports Editor and Publisher Magazine. Will those “competitive” Hearst and Singleton papers cover the monopoly story and its impact on San Francisco and the Bay Area?
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 17, 2006 12:29 PM

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times “censors” the annual Project Censored story. Why? Some impertinent questions for the Press Democrat
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 13, 2006 01:55 PM

More Impertinent Questions on Hearst shenanigans on the drug pricing scandal (part 5) Why did Hearst censor an AP story on McKesson profits?
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 2, 2006 02:33 PM

Let us lift a Potrero Hill martini for Thomas Peele of the Contra Costa Times/Singleton papers. He criticized Singleton by name for sealing court records in the Hearst/Singleton antitrust case.
Posted in Bruce (B3) on October 30, 2006 03:37 PM

Dear Jerry Brown: more impertinent questions on the Hearst shenanigans (part 4)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on October 20, 2006 04:55 PM

Impertinent questions on the new Hearst shenanigans (part 2, see previous blog)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on October 18, 2006 03:52 PM

The Guardian turns 40: some things never change
Posted in Bruce (B3) on October 17, 2006 04:01 PM

Judge seals file in MediaNews trial
Posted in Bruce (B3) on September 15, 2006 02:51 PM

Eureka! Finally, Hearst covers the censored story and admits it is partnering with Singleton
Posted in Bruce (B3) on September 14, 2006 01:48 PM

Finally, the Conglomerati do a bit of reporting (actually only a little bit)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on September 8, 2006 04:22 PM

Eureka! Here comes even more Eurekaism! (part 3)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on September 5, 2006 05:35 PM

Eureka! There’s more Eurekaism!
Posted in Bruce (B3) on August 25, 2006 04:39 PM

Where are Hearst and the Chronicle? The conglomerate cometh
Posted in Bruce (B3) on August 11, 2006 05:00 PM

More on the Case of the Uncovered Bay Area Newspaper Monopoly
Posted in Bruce (B3) on August 2, 2006 12:03 PM

The press censors the press
Posted in Bruce (B3) on August 1, 2006 04:53 PM

Stop the presses
Posted in Bruce (B3) on July 31, 2006 05:40 PM

Monopolies are forever
Posted in Bruce (B3) on July 28, 2006 04:24 PM

Meta-wha…?

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by Amanda Witherell

The city attorney’s office in San Francisco has strongly advised against releasing public documents that may contain metadata, (except when it serves their own purposes, like getting to the bottom of how the 49ers move to Santa Clara slipped right by them.)

The House of Representatives doesn’t seem to have a problem with it though, as Rep. John Conyers, Jr. has asked for “all e-mail communications and all meta-data underlying them, stored on Republican National Committee (“RNC”) servers or otherwise in the possession, custody, or control of the RNC, that are related in any way to the recent firings by the Department of Justice of United States Attorneys, or to communications to the Congress about those terminations and related matters as set forth in this letter.”

Read the full text of his letter to RNC Chairman Robert M. Duncan, after the jump…

Ponder or ignore? Enjoy

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> johnny@sfbg.com

The oldest film festival in the United States and Canada, the San Francisco International Film Festival reaches its golden anniversary this year. That’s half a century of bringing movies from all over the world to one area of America that doesn’t assume America is the world.

At this moment a solo videomaker has to kill at least a few dozen people to storm the multinational media palace. Yeah, this thought crashes the SFIFF’s party. But it adds context to the fest’s contents. One Guardian contributor recently forwarded me a news story that drew specious links between the Virginia Tech tragedy and Park Chan-wook’s 2003 movie Old Boy. The presence of The Bridge (a documentary that uses images of death in a problematic manner) at last year’s SFIFF proves that film festivals also face ethical dilemmas about what they present. Does increasingly pervasive digital imagery correspond with a decrease, rather than an increase, in imagination? Does it prompt a lazy way of seeing and corrupt the meaning of an image?

The SFIFF offers a chance to enjoy – not just ponder or ignore – such questions. As a major progenitor of the festival model that has come to dominate cinema outside of Hollywood, this event often celebrates and represents the establishment, as Sam Green and Christian Bruno’s 2000 short film Pie Fight ’69 makes clear. But unlike many younger festivals, the SFIFF’s programming favors substance over sensation.

George Lucas, Robin Williams, and Spike Lee will be feted this year, but the Guardian‘s SFIFF 50 coverage has an eye for diamonds in the rough: great, quiet films such as Heddy Honigmann’s Forever; a definitely maddening but possibly classic work of art, Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth; and digital animator Kelly Sears’s hilarious short works – in step with hallucinatory digital mind-blowers and eye-blinders such as Paper Rad – which feature in the type of one-time-only SFIFF collaborative event that can yield a memorable night.

I’d like to draw attention to the SFIFF’s two entries from the New Crowned Hope series recently curated by Peter Sellars (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Daratt and Garin Nugroho’s dazzling Opera Jawa) and to close by freestyling the praises of Veronica Chen’s gorgeous Agua. In its regard of two generations of men, of male physicality and psychology, it is a pleasurable, less-austere improvement on Claire Denis’s highly acclaimed Beau Travail and part of a possible new wave of cinema – led by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s Zidane – that trailblazes the cinematic potential of contemporary sports performance and its portraiture. Dive into it and SFIFF 50. *

Cinema brut

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> a&eletters@sfbg.com

Early on in A Parting Shot, Isild Le Besco’s character curls up at a bar, crowded by two leering men ordering her the hard liquor with which she courts abnegation. A couple cuts later, she’s teasing one of her throwaway lovers for asking her to be tender, warning the next in line that she’s "pas douce," or "not soft." Pas Douce is the original title of Jeanne Waltz’s finely calibrated debut, though it could pass for several French offerings with similarly bruising and bruised heroines at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival.

French art cinema has been rife with sex of the pas douce sort for years now: a diverse group of filmmakers (Gaspar Noe, Catherine Breillat, Francois Ozon, and more recently, Jean-Claude Brisseau, of Exterminating Angels infamy) has coalesced, marked by the provocative blend of hyperrealism and hardcore. The French have never shied away from showing a little skin – it would be silly to think the original new wave didn’t owe some of its cachet to it – but these latter-day sexual misadventures represent something pointedly unpleasant in form and content. Critic James Quandt dubbed it new French extremism, though cinema brut works just as well.

In SFIFF films such as On Fire, 7 Years, and Flanders, this tendency is toned down but still embedded in narrative and character. Being French, all three feature some manner of love triangle: in Claire Simon’s On Fire, teenage Livia (Camille Varenne) plays like Lolita, teasing a boy her age while imagining herself the object of a swarthy fireman’s desire (hello metaphor!); in 7 Years, Jean (Valerie Donzelli) has sex with her prisoner husband’s warden on tape, nominally for hubby’s benefit; and in Flanders, sad-eyed Barbe (Adelaide Leroux) opens her legs to two neighbors going off to fight an unnamed war in the Middle East.

They are all Mouchette’s daughters, these women. Mouchette, the title character of Robert Bresson’s stark 1967 film, is perhaps French cinema’s gold standard of female suffering (with all due respect to Maria Falconetti in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc). She’s there in the shots of Barbe on her back, staring skyward in full surrender to a man’s grunting weight; in the way Livia sighs while putting a cup of coffee on for her father; and certainly when Le Besco’s Frederique rides her bike into a lake in a fit of ecstatic despair (Mouchette ends her own life rolling into a bog).

Bresson’s content was indivisible from his unadorned film style, and here too these new directors toe the line, shooting in long takes, often on location, with a handheld camera and a resourceful approach to sound. As far as formulas go, this one’s a pretty safe bet in film festival circles (see: the Dardenne brothers and Abbas Kiarostami). Flanders director Bruno Dumont (The Life of Jesus, Humanite) is already well established in this regard, and while On Fire, 7 Years, and A Parting Shot all have their good points, his latest film is the clear standout among the SFIFF’s cinema brut. It strikes me as Dumont’s version of (and perhaps, improvement on) Michael Cimino’s 1978 The Deer Hunter in the way it mediates battleground and home front as two complementary parts of one continuous, damaged landscape. The Flanders segments work better than the ones in the desert, both for Leroux’s unnerving performance and for Dumont’s painterly compositions (the director grew up in this part of northern France). Flanders occasionally breaks down in its long silences, but it’s a beautifully wrought film, full of carefully plotted mirroring and harrowing disruptions. It’s also unremittingly physical – the sound design of boots squashing and sucking the Flanders mud is all the exposition we could ever need.

Flanders possesses a formidable style indeed, but the closing lines of Quandt’s essay still demand satisfaction: "The authentic, liberating outrage – political, social, sexual – that fueled such apocalyptic visions as Salo and Weekend now seems impossible, replaced by aggressiveness that is really a grandiose form of passivity." Or maybe there are simply too many of these films and scenes piling up, diluting the resonance of any one effort. An uncomfortable question: how would we respond to Mouchette if it were released in this deluge?

It’s impossible to say, but I have little doubt that burnout had something to do with the pleasure I took in Christophe Honore’s new wave-meets-J.D. Salinger yarn, Dans Paris. Honore’s film is steeped in Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and Eric Rohmer, and while individual bits feel too cutesy (e.g., Louis Garrel skipping down a Paris street in fast-motion), most of this nervy technique has retained its bite, thanks to the staid but lurid minimalism of new French extremism. Honore’s characterizations are tenderly muted rather than brutishly absent; he’s more concerned, in proper new wave fashion, with the talk before and after sex than the act itself. Rather than aiming for extremism (and let it be said that 2001’s Amelie represents, in its own way, as extreme a vision as that year’s Fat Girl), Honore charges Dans Paris with eclecticism: of tone and thought and most likely meaning too. *

DANS PARIS (Christophe Honore, France, 2006). May 4, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 7, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki

FLANDERS (Bruno Dumont, France, 2006). May 6, 5:15 p.m., PFA. Also May 8, 9 p.m., Kabuki; May 9, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki

ON FIRE (Claire Simon, France/Switzerland, 2006). May 5, 1:45 p.m., Clay. Also May 7, 7 p.m., PFA

A PARTING SHOT (Jeanne Waltz, France, 2006). May 5, 7 p.m., Clay. Also May 7, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 8, 6:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 10, 4:30 p.m., Kabuki

7 YEARS (Jean-Pascal Hattu, France, 2006). May 5, 9:30 p.m., Clay. Also May 7, 7 p.m., Kabuki; May 9, 1 p.m., Kabuki

Otar, Otar, how does your “Garden” grow?

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The San Francisco International Film Festival is offering a rare treat this year with its presentation of Otar Iosseliani’s latest film, Gardens in Autumn, and Julie Bertuccelli’s documentary about Iosseliani, Otar Iosseliani, The Whistling Blackbird. The director of 2003’s Since Otar Left, Bertuccelli has worked as Iosseliani’s assistant director, so her portrait goes well beyond a primer on his body of work, which began in Soviet Georgia in the late ’50s and continued through his relocation to France in 1982.

After a shaky beginning that has Iosseliani quoting Aleksandr Pushkin at length without translation, the doc moves quickly into the meat and potatoes of Gardens in Autumn‘s construction, such as a poetic demonstration of the transition from storyboarding to shooting. The sisterly abuse Iosseliani endures from his producer, though, is probably the best stuff in the film ("You took that idea from another screenplay"; "You’re not Rivette! Cut it down!"; "This ending is stupid"). Bertuccelli’s document of the bumpy road to a final product is a fascinating counterpoint to the sensuous languor of Iosseliani’s film.

Gardens in Autumn starts as unpromisingly as the doc, as a broadly Bunuelian satire of the bourgeoisie (a comic wife buys expensive junk, a bureaucrat quietly smokes a cigarette as a labor demonstration swells), but the story almost immediately makes a welcome 180-degree turn. As if our hero Vincent (Severin Blanchet) can sense the satire in progress, he abruptly resigns his post as a government minister and returns to the town of his youth, where his mother (Michel Piccoli, a fixture in Luis Bunuel’s French work, in convincing drag) holds court in an extravagant mansion and drunken clergymen with frat boy temperaments roam the streets. The film fans out into a thinly plotted waltz through the good life, where even the occasional bursts of violence look like they might be fun. It’s the type of film in which a man can shrug off the squatter inundation of his apartment and move into the secret back room behind the bookcase.

The critic J. Hoberman described one of Iosseliani’s recent ensemble films somewhat dismissively as a "genteel circus," but the tag can also serve as an affectionate characterization of his best work. His latest exercise in modulated hedonism may not have much to say on the politics of happiness, but sometimes that can be a blessing. (Jason Shamai)

GARDENS IN AUTUMN (Otar Iosseliani, France/Russia/Italy, 2006). Sun/29, 6:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 6, 8 p.m., Kabuki; May 8, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki

OTAR IOSSELIANI, THE WHISTLING BLACKBIRD (Julie Bertuccelli, France, 2006). Fri/27, 4 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 3, 8:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 9, 6:30 p.m., Kabuki

The four men in “The Iron Mask”

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When The Iron Mask screens at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, four disparate cinematic personalities will merge – three in spirit and one in the flesh.

Now 68, Kevin Brownlow made his first feature film, 1966’s It Happened Here, while in his 20s and subsequently published two books, one (How It Happened Here) on the making of that movie and another (The Parade’s Gone By) featuring interviews with silent-era filmmakers and stars. At that time, the silent era was almost like a technical glitch to be overcome and forgotten. But Brownlow would soon help immortalize great early works through his interviews and his pioneering skills as a restorer.

At the Castro Theatre, Brownlow (the recipient of the SF Film Society’s Mel Novikoff Award, whose latest movie, Cecil B. DeMille: American Epic, also screens at this year’s festival) will present 1929’s The Iron Mask. That movie’s star, Douglas Fairbanks, had an effortlessly cheery, energetic onscreen persona, performing his own, Jackie Chan-like stunts. He also ran a tight ship offscreen, controlling nearly every aspect of his business empire. When Fairbanks began planning his extravagant 1922 film Robin Hood, with its record million-dollar budget, director Allan Dwan landed in the driver’s seat. A crackerjack action man, Dwan could keep up with Fairbanks and move things at a brisk pace; Dwan would go on to direct about 400 films, most of them considerably cheaper.

Fairbanks hired Dwan once again for The Iron Mask, a follow-up to 1921’s The Three Musketeers in which Fairbanks would reprise his role as D’Artagnan. The film is not without its breezy, exciting moments, but by this time Fairbanks was 46 and beginning to slow down. He seemed to understand that his antics no longer coincided with the times; his D’Artagnan is a bit long in the tooth and meets a less heroic ending than does the typical Fairbanks hero. Concurrently, talkies had begun to draw the curtain on silent pictures. Fairbanks recorded two talking interludes for the film, which only add to its heartbreaking, elegiac nature. When The Iron Mask was restored, the great modern composer Carl Davis, whose work currently graces a number of silent movies on DVD, recorded a 42-piece orchestral score worthy of the film’s energy and its melancholy. Fortunately, as Brownlow will no doubt demonstrate, it’s possible to see the film with new eyes. In that, there’s no reason to be sad. (Jeffrey M. Anderson)

CECIL B. DEMILLE: AMERICAN EPIC Sat/28, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki

THE IRON MASK: AN AFTERNOON WITH KEVIN BROWNLOW Sat/28, 2 p.m., Castro. $9-$12

KEVIN BROWNLOW: AN INTRODUCTION TO SILENTS Sun/29, 5:30 p.m., PFA

Do you remember your first time?

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Of the hundreds of thousands of feature movies made in the past century, how many were spectacular debuts? Maybe 30? Reason decrees that we can’t expect the 11 first features that make up this year’s SKYY Prize nominees to be brilliant; frankly, they’re not. Yet it was little more than a handful of years ago that the San Francisco International Film Festival’s SKYY jury awarded its prize to Jia Zhang-ke’s Xiao Wu, a debut that marked the beginning of one of the most masterful filmmaking careers in the world today.

Two of this year’s nominees, Kim Rossi Stuart’s Along the Ridge, from Italy, and Pavel Giroud’s The Silly Age, from Cuba, owe a debt to one of the great debut films, Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. Truffaut’s look at boyhood gone awry has secured the template for a half century of coming-of-age films, but like the biopics that overtake screens and vie for awards at the end of each year, such efforts have become too familiar. Aren’t personal stories supposed to be one of a kind, like snowflakes? Perhaps if you’ve seen one snowflake, you’ve seen ’em all.

Nominating Horace Ahmad Shansab’s Zolykha’s Secret, from Afghanistan, was probably some big-hearted gesture of goodwill, but by Western standards, it’s a painfully clumsy affair. Similarly, Xiaolu Guo’s How Is Your Fish Today?, from China, and John Barker’s Bunny Chow, from South Africa, go nowhere fast.

Bay Area native and Golden Horse Award winner Daniel Wu has turned from acting to a comedic directing debut, The Heavenly Kings. Though he treads on sacred Spinal Tap territory with his phony rockumentary idea, he and his friends Conroy Chan Chi-Chung, Andrew Lin, and Terence Yin actually went through with the indignity of being in a boy band called Alive, recording and performing to conjure up material for this film. Only one of them can sing, and none of them can dance, but that doesn’t matter in today’s music industry, which relies on stylists, choreographers, and hired fans – not to mention Internet scandals – for success. The Heavenly Kings is certainly scathing, even if it’s only sporadically funny. (The best line involves African rainforests.)

I suspect that Marwan Hamed’s The Yacoubian Building, from Egypt, is also trying to be funny, but it tries to be too many other things as well. Based on a beloved novel by Alaa’ al-Aswany and sprawling to almost three hours, it’s stuck between pleasing the novel’s fans and appealing to new audiences, an impasse that results in heavy exposition and a kind of middling pace that makes time crawl. But it’s also full of sweeping crane and dolly shots, and as with films such as The English Patient, its gargantuan scale will impress some viewers. Jean-Pascal Hattu’s 7 Years, from France, is a bit more daring in its depiction of a woman who falls in love with her incarcerated husband’s prison warden. But it dabbles in Bressonian artificiality without achieving a Bressonian sense of grace.

In surveying this year’s SKYY Prize nominees, perhaps it’s best to search for glimpses of genius or inspiration that could possibly lead to more interesting follow-ups. Joachim Trier’s Reprise, from Norway, has many such glimpses, thanks to frenetic flashbacks that recall everything from Run Lola Run to Snatch and Human Traffic and also due to its discriminating taste in vintage punk music. But when the film’s narrative returns to the present, it begins to wallow in a kind of maudlin, navel-gazing dopiness that kills the initial buzz. Tariq Teguia’s Rome Rather Than You, shot in Algeria, couples startling cinematic brilliance with highly irritating patches of indulgence. Its tale of an Algerian pizza chef who applies for a visa to move to Italy is like a tantalizing mystery house with long, winding passages that lead nowhere. Unfortunately, even Teguia appears to get confused from time to time.

Finally, on the very crest of the much-discussed Mexican new wave, Francisco Vargas outplays all first-time peers with his magnificent The Violin, set in the 1970s. Violinist Don Plutarco (Don Angel Tavira) can only play by strapping his bow to his handless stump. As his guerrilla son fights a secret battle against the ruling military regime, Plutarco winds up serenading a sensitive (but still sinister) captain. Vargas shoots in luscious black-and-white, switching between handheld camera for tense moments and static shots during rest periods that still manage to be breathtaking. In one amazing sequence, Plutarco sits by a campfire and explains the origin of war to his grandson while Vargas slowly, slowly tracks over smoldering coals. But it’s Tavira’s gaping, withered face that gives the movie its mileage. He’s 81, and it’s his first acting job. How’s that for a debut? (Jeffrey M. Anderson)

ALONG THE RIDGE (Kim Rossi Stuart, Italy, 2006). May 5, 4:15 p.m., Clay. Also May 7, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 9, 9 p.m., Kabuki

BUNNY CHOW (John Barker, South Africa, 2006). Sat/28, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/29, 6:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 4, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki

THE HEAVENLY KINGS (Daniel Wu, Hong Kong, 2006). Fri/27, 9:45 p.m., Castro. Also Sun/29, 6 p.m., Kabuki; May 4, 5 p.m., Kabuki

HOW IS YOUR FISH TODAY? (Xiaolu Guo, China/UK, 2007). Sun/29, 8:15 p.m., PFA. Also May 5, 12:30 p.m., SFMOMA; May 7, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki

REPRISE (Joachim Trier, Norway, 2006). Fri/27, 5 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 6, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 4, 9 p.m., Clay; May 8, 9:30 p.m., Aquarius

ROME RATHER THAN YOU (Tariq Teguia, Algeria/France/Germany, 2006). Fri/27, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 5, 2 p.m., Kabuki; May 6, 8:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 8, 6:30 p.m., Aquarius

7 YEARS (Jean-Pascal Hattu, France, 2006). May 5, 9:30 p.m., Clay. Also May 7, 7 p.m., Kabuki; May 9, 1 p.m., Kabuki

THE SILLY AGE (Pavel Giroud, Cuba/Spain/Venezuela, 2006). Sun/29, 8:15 p.m., SFMOMA. Also May 2, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 3, 1 p.m., Kabuki; May 5, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki

THE VIOLIN (Francisco Vargas, Mexico, 2006). May 4, 3:15 p.m., Clay. Also May 6, 6 p.m., Kabuki; May 8, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki

THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING (Marwan Hamed, Egypt, 2006). May 6, 2 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 9, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 10, 7 p.m., Kabuki

ZOLYKHA’S SECRET (Horace Ahmad Shansab, Afghanistan, 2006). May 5, 5:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 8, 4:15 p.m., Kabuki; May 6, 5 p.m., SFMOMA

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