Media: Vulgarians at the gate
This news is enough to make me sick for the future of the wire service:
Rupert Murdoch and Sam Zell, two media figures who led major newspaper acquisitions in recent months, are among four new members joining the board of directors of The Associated Press, it was announced Monday at the news cooperative’s annual meeting.In other results, four incumbent directors were re-elected to three-year terms. They are William Dean Singleton, who is vice chairman and chief executive officer of MediaNews Group and chairman of the AP board; Jon K. Rust, publisher of the Southeast Missourian and co-president of Rust Communications; Michael E. Reed, chief executive officer of GateHouse Media Inc., and Victor F. Ganzi, president and chief executive officer of Hearst Corp.
Murdoch is, of course, noted for buying media properties with promises he will take a hand-off approach, then within months firing all the people and replacing them with his lackeys. Zell is nothing more than a greedy vulgarian and slum landlord who has convinced corrupt Illinois politicians to buy Wrigley Field from him because he can’t make money running the Cubs and wants to sell off one of the most popular sports franchises ever.
I know these are just two votes on the board of directors, but from a quality journalism standpoint, what Murdoch touches turns to crap, and I can’t believe Zell gives a flying rats ass beyond what puts gold in his pockets.
And it gets worse.
Re-appointed to the board are William Dean Singleton, who is often criticized as a money-grabbing lout who believes the newsroom needs to write stories specifically designed to sell the most ads, and not because of reasons related to the public’s right to know. And he can’t figure out a way to make a profit other than firing workers, but GateHouse Media boss Michael Reed was re-appointed to the board of the Associated Press.
I also have to make note of Jon K. Rust. Heh. Back in the day, I worked for a newspaper called the Cape Girardeau (Mo.) News Guardian, a twice weekly that sought to compete with Rust’s Southeast Missourian. The NG was owned by a group of businessmen who didn’t like the Rust family’s business policies and coziness with the powers-that-be. But at least the the Southeast Missourian is owned by a family, like them and their editorial policies or not.
Is it any wonder that the AP bosses have been whining and moaning about how the Google and other search engines are unfairly allowed to steal their content. It’s a bullshit complaint of course, because all search engines do is deep link and provide original humans with the ability to pick and chose where they can get their news. Murdoch, Zell, Reed, Singleton and even Rust are all top-down thinkers. They think the news is and should be something corporations provide to consumers.
That these now people run the AP is just another sign of print’s inevitible decline.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
I became increasingly frustrated with AP my last four or five years at the Journal Star. Every change they made seemed to be a slap in the face of newspapers, but they still expected newspapers to pay most of their dues and provide most of the content. They made a lot of changes to their news digests and the way they organized stories that made wire editors’ lives more difficult.
The thing I found personally most un-useful was the change from AM/PM news cycles to a 24-hour cycle. Yes, I know news happens all the time, not just to conform to newspaper deadlines. But the changes were made in a half-baked way that really made doing wire hell. You couldn’t tell what stories were new. It totally sucked. The only people who liked it were AP execs.