Freedumb Freedumb, Read All About It!

Imposing grip on American news media (new term: Politically Correct - do as I say or you do not work, i.e., eat/live - throughout history, many oppressive regimes have used this standard )

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization."

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down, while their taxes, gas and energy costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms, as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.



NYT April 23, 2008
Imposing grip on American news media
Murdoch Moving to Buy Newsday for $580 Million
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and TIM ARANGO
Rupert Murdoch is moving to tighten his already-imposing grip on American news media, striking a tentative deal to buy his third New York-based paper, Newsday, and getting his first chance to appoint the top editor of The Wall Street Journal, after the resignation of the editor on Tuesday.
His $580 million bid for Newsday and his urgency in remaking The Journal worry his competitors and cause angst in many newsrooms, including his own. And both moves are vintage Rupert Murdoch, a man who operates his sprawling News Corporation like an old-style media mogul, making big bets on old and new media — bankrolling the new Fox Business Network, aggressively pursuing a deal for Yahoo, and buying Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Journal, for far more than analysts thought it was worth. And that was just in the last year.
His first love, however, remains newspapers. The purchase of Newsday from the Tribune Company would put Mr. Murdoch in control of 3 of the nation’s 10 largest-circulation papers (the others being The Journal and The New York Post). Owning Newsday, which is based on Long Island, would also open an eastern front in the long-running battle for New York tabloid supremacy and, by combining some operations, could allow News Corporation to end decades of heavy losses by The Post.
But the agreement is far from final as competing bidders consider their positions. Mortimer B. Zuckerman, owner of The Daily News, the archrival of The Post, will make a counteroffer next week, according to people involved in the bidding who would not be identified because of the confidentiality of the talks. Representatives of another bidder, the Observer Media Group, publisher of The New York Observer, plan to meet in a few days with Cablevision — which had dropped out of the bidding — to discuss a joint offer.
People in both the News and Observer camps say they were shocked to learn of the handshake deal with Mr. Murdoch, first reported by The Chicago Tribune and The Journal, because they had been assured by Tribune’s bankers that they had until next week to submit offers. In addition, a takeover of Newsday by News Corporation, which also owns two New York City television stations, could face trouble with regulators.
Like other newspaper companies, Tribune has suffered heavy losses in advertising revenue and faces nearly $1 billion a year in debt service costs, forcing it to make plans to sell the Chicago Cubs and assets like Newsday. The company took on most of its debt load last year when it went private in a deal that put Samuel Zell, who made billions in real estate, in control.
News Corporation and Tribune Company declined to comment on any of the moves.
The resignation of Marcus W. Brauchli from The Journal was less shocking, if only because Mr. Brauchli was appointed by the previous owners of the paper. Since he bought Dow Jones in December for $5.2 billion, Mr. Murdoch has moved swiftly to remake the stately paper, calling for shorter articles and more coverage of politics, culture and even sports — and fewer business articles on the front page.
Mr. Brauchli’s colleagues and friends say he championed some of the changes and acted as a brake on others. But they say it was increasingly clear that much of the direction was being set by Mr. Murdoch and the publisher he installed, Robert J. Thomson, who oversees news operations and has none of the usual business duties of a publisher. Editors and reporters say Mr. Brauchli’s authority was being undercut, a message reinforced by plans to give Mr. Thomson an office in The Journal’s main newsroom.
There was particular tension lately over calls by the News Corporation team to thin the ranks of The Journal’s editors, and to put short articles on the front page or the fronts of sections that would not continue on inside pages.
Events leading to Mr. Brauchli’s departure appear to have begun a few weeks ago, according to other editors and reporters, around the time he went to China. They said that Mr. Thomson and others indicated they were unhappy with the pace of change.
At some point, “They told him, ‘We don’t think this is working,’ ” one of them said, and Mr. Brauchli replied that in that case, he should consider leaving.
Even so, the news caught most people at The Journal off guard when it broke Monday night on Time magazine’s Web site, as Mr. Brauchli and Mr. Murdoch were in Washington at a dinner of the Atlantic Council of the United States. Several current and former top editors of The Journal were there, too, and learned of the resignation when their BlackBerrys began buzzing.
The news cast a pall over the newsroom, where Mr. Brauchli is liked and respected, and his exit reinforces fears that The Journal is retreating from its focus on business and sophisticated, in-depth reporting.
“Even those of us who saw this coming were surprised it came so fast, and the people who didn’t see it coming are totally floored,” a reporter said. “Marcus kept pushing back, saying he would protect the culture, and now that he’s gone, what’s going to happen?”
In a message he sent to his staff on Tuesday, Mr. Brauchli wrote, “Now that the ownership transition has taken place, I have come to believe the new owners should have a managing editor of their choosing.” Dow Jones said that the resignation was effective immediately, and that Mr. Brauchli would become a consultant to News Corporation.
To quell major shareholders during the negotiations for Dow Jones last year, Mr. Murdoch agreed to restrictions on his ability to fire the managing editor, who would have complete control of the news operation, and an oversight committee was formed to police the agreement.
Mr. Murdoch called each of the five committee members on Monday to tell them of Mr. Brauchli’s impending departure, according to people at News Corporation. The committee met by conference call on Tuesday for 90 minutes, and at the outset Mr. Brauchli joined the call and stressed that the resignation was his own decision and was not a reaction to editorial interference.
The committee members, who are paid $100,000 a year, are Susan M. Phillips, the dean of the business school at George Washington University; Thomas Bray, former editorial page editor of The Detroit News; Louis Boccardi, former chief executive of The Associated Press; Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the nonprofit association One Laptop Per Child; and Jack Fuller, a former president of the Tribune Publishing Company.
Despite the attention on The Journal, Mr. Murdoch already has his sights set on the next conquest. News Corporation officials stressed he is vying for Newsday to support The Post, which loses about $50 million a year.
Each bidder could save millions of dollars a year on back-office operations through a merger with Newsday. And people familiar with all three bidders’ plans say part of the appeal is the ability to merge some or all of their printing operations.
Ad buyers said they were not sure how a union of Newsday and The Post would affect them.
Roberta Garfinkle, senior vice president and director for print strategy at TargetCast TCM in New York, was skeptical about joint sales attracting advertisers to The Post. “I either want to buy The Post or I don’t,” she said. “Selling it in combination with Newsday is not going to change my mind.” Tom Stolfi, corporate media director at KSL Media, said he feared that so much concentration of available ad space could lead to higher prices. “Advertisers that want to dominate Nassau and Suffolk absolutely need Newsday,” he said, referring to the Long Island counties.
Newsday, a tabloid with weekday circulation of 387,000, is the sole newspaper based in its market. Despite falling revenue, it generates a healthy profit, with earnings (before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) last year of $80 million on $500 million in revenue, according to people briefed on its finances.
But the paper’s prominence has faded since the days when its Long Island circulation topped 500,000 and it published a popular New York City edition. Since its former parent company, Times Mirror, was bought by Tribune in 2000, the paper has registered sharp losses in circulation, deep staff cuts and a scandal over falsified circulation figures.
“We’d appreciate anybody coming in here that has a newspaper background, that knows New York, whether it’s Zuckerman or Murdoch or anybody, to put this paper back on track,” said Dennis Grabhorn, president of Local 406 of the Graphic Communications Conference, the union that represents more than half of Newsday’s employees.