More from Lean Dean

Indeed.

Perhaps starting with dudes who post on Internet message boards with links to their work e-mails, complaining loudly and venomously about their owner, sometimes providing inside information.

Reckless, mutant. Reckless.

 

Reckless of his own choosing. More grapes than most of us, including moi, have.

 

I fear no one!

 

Here is the problem with the man and his plan.
He preaches local. Local government. Local entertainment. Local sports. He, traditionally, makes his first wave of cutbacks on the national and foreign scale. Editors go. Reporters in Washington and abroad are gone under the leadership bellows of local, local, local.
When his papers begin to lose readership and advertising the next phase follows. Having lopped off any presence outside the immediate circulation area of the paper, there is only one place to turn. Local. He reduces the number of boots on the ground.
Now, he's left with a diminished daily product. His papers then share with other local holdings. The reader is left with zero enterprise, no national or foreign coverage, and a local staff spread extremely thin. Employee burnout high. Employee morale low.
I've seen the man in operation for 30 years. I worked for him for nearly six years. It's the same dance.
I've posted before how upsetting it is for me to watch him as he becomes some sort of media dignitary. He's not. He's not even close. He's spent three decades robbing and pillaging an industry that serves the public. Name me one paper that is a stronger institution after his assumption of control.
He is a leech. A brigand. A man that has risen to power on the backs of underpaid employees and at the sacrifice of thousands of careers.
His ways will continue. They will continue until the day his lenders come calling. Then, after that last reduction has been made, he will sell. Piece by piece. Piece by piece.
He showed up to Otis Chandler's funeral. I could just see Otis flipping him off from the casket. He's no Otis. He's no Graham. No Bancroft. No Sulzberger. Not even Ridder or McClatchy. He's a contemptable schmuck. Dignitary my ass.

 

HAving been a refugee from a Hurricane Dean closure, well said Fish...

 

This is well-said, Fish. Very well-said.

Let me add to this from earlier in this thread. He is taking SoCal papers like San Bernardino, Torrance and Long Beach that may not have been journalistic icons, but were once vibrant contributors to their communities and is in the process of turning them into little more than bureaus to another paper that used to be a damn good read -- the LA Daily News.

Dean Singleton is a one-man Mongol Horde of the newspaper industry: everything he touches journalistically turns to crap. Not surprisingly, so does circulation. The Long Beach Press-Telegram used to boast the fourth-highest circulation in the LA market. Then, Singleton bought it and it's been in free-fall since.

In the process, careers of good, talented people are derailed or destroyed.

 

You're exactly right.

In NorCal, you're going to wind up with one East Bay paper with a bunch of zones and a vastly weakened Mercury News in the South Bay. Unless he combines the Merc and East Bay operations, too.

If he did that, he could then bust the Mercury News union. Come to think of it, that would make a lot of sense from his perspective.

 

My hero.

 

Concur both with this and with fishwrapper's post.

Well done.

 

Let me thank the couple dozen of you for you kind words in your personal messages. I noticed a few of you signed up and with zero posts sent me a PM. Again, thank you.
I appreciate your candor and sympathize with your heightened anxiety.
I've heard from "refugees" and those still in the "clutches" of MediaNews and Dean Singleton.
I'm not one to criticize someone anonymously in a post. But with an empty house (I have small children), a Crown and Coke and a history I let one fly. Fact is, I would read it to his face. And relish it.
Answers? I have few. But, I'm willing to listen.

 

One of the most well-thought out, nuanced posts seen around here in a while.

No need to even hint at your reasoning. You're not some lame-ass hack like most of us; you speak from experience.

 

Ol' Lean speaks about SoCal consolidation and the future.
Oh, happy day.

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2007/10/singleton_speaks.php