Blacklisted

Hear ye, hear ye, Conrad Black, Lord of the Things, has met his Waterloo. From 60 to 0 papers in just over three years. Must be a record somewhere. And now His Blackness is gunning for a spot in the Corporate Hall of Shame. Yet the paper (pauper?) baron seems unruffled as he prepares to sell off his Hollinger assets to the Barclays. Quoth he: "They will be in good and caring hands and we will be able to focus exclusively on resolving current legal and public relations concerns." Yes, public relations is what this is all about. Certainly not ethics.

But then Black has never been particullary clued in. Sacked and sued by his own company. Bunted off the CanWest board for good measure. And still as arrogant as ever, caught just before the dénouement boasting to reporters: "All you fellows that are writing today that I'm finished may not have it right. I'm still the chairman of the parent company. I'm still the controlling shareholder. I'm co-director of the strategic process and I'm chairman of The Telegraph." (Uh, not for long.) "And I made 50 million bucks yesterday," he bragged. "That's a flameout I could get used to." Until the end, Black maintained his innocence. "It is quite clear I have not committed any improprieties," he told the CBC. "The tarnish will be temporary." And then, true to form, he blamed "underlings" for errors in handling "underdocumented payments that were commercially justified."

Lo and behold, there was considerable chortling amongst downsized ex-Post staffers when Hollinger International Inc. removed Black as its chairman and launched a $200-million lawsuit against him. Revenge, my friends, is sweet. Diane Brady of Business Week magazine said it best when she addressed the public's Black backlash. "You have a lot of irate shareholders" who feel he treated the entire company "a bit like an ATM."

Indeed, how better to withdraw $32.15 million in unauthorized pin money for you and your Hollinger cronies? That's $7.2 million for me, $7.2 million for my minion David Radler, $16.6 million for my company and $600,000 each for my yes men... Only the rest of the company saw it differently — more along the lines of "systematic breaches of fiduciary duties." Now aren't we glad Black renounced his Canadian citizenship when he did?

—PressGal, February 6, 2004

Information Wants to be Free

Oh look, the National Post is trying wring blood from a stone. The newspaper's sales may have flatlined, but surely there's money to be made on-line, mumbles the marketing department. Ergo, a snazzy new marketing strategy: "Enjoy full access to this nationalpost.com story during our trial period. After January 24th, 2004, complete access will be limited to registered 6-day National Post print subscribers," reads the paper's Web site.

Paying to read snippets of stories on-line is like paying to watch commercials. A print newspaper's Web site is a marketing tool, plain and simple, not a product. And newspapers are more than a business, they are a public service. Even if the Post were solely an Internet-based commodity like Salon.com, said marketing department should recoil from selling subscribers a product as badly designed as the canada.com Web abomination. (For a peek at what these whiz kids are thinking see this Marketing Magazine article.)

And yet, the idea persists. The Ottawa Citizen has taken to affixing nasty little blue "S's" to half of its Web site copy. (The Vancouver Sun, The Province and the Hamilton Spectator have too.) Now I understand newspapers want to bolster subscriptions, but please, let's not be so petty about it. It's a sad marketing department that thinks it's good business to slap people's hands when they try to access your product. In the past, the paper limited their content to top stories of the day and archived special series. The strategy was to upload less and direct interested parties to subscribe to read more. Much more civilized. What's puzzling is their refusal to leave archived material on-line, especially special marquee reports that serve to raise the paper's profile, long after the print edition has hit the recyle bin.

And what of readers four provinces away who would never be print copy consumers anyway but are interested in reading what the Citizen has to say? Sorry, we can't make any money off of you. So although the Citizen is one of the best newspapers in the CanWest chain for generating original, indepth, multi-part newserials both local and national in scope, will Press Gallery readers be directed to said stories to spread the word? Nope.

—PressGal, Jan. 27, 2004

Global Synergy

Is anyone else disturbed by the sight of Global's Susan Hay shilling fake Tiffany lamps on the network's new shopping-channel commercials? This is what happens when you let MBAs into the newsroom. Sir, passing Business English 100 does not make you a journalist. If you were, you would understand why a television reporter, even one on the fuzzy, human-interest beat, should never be allowed to appear as an infomercial huckster. Credibility, people. Say it with me. C-r-e-d-i-b-i-l-i-t-y. Who's running this place? Besides, the lamp's plain ugly. News as product indeed. Then again, who needs news when you can sell housewares? Ooh, I smell an MBA thesis.

Almost as heinous was Kevin Newman's performance on a TV news panel with the CBC's Ian Hanomansing the other night. Newman, who it must be said is rather hunky and credibly intelligent, squirmed ever-so-slightly while summoning multiple PC euphemisms for "dumbing down" as he explained Global's "unique" approach to news "packaging." Yes, yes, put a bow on it and then I won't notice you've misspelled yet another caption.

Better yet, try brainwashing. No, wait. I believe management calls this "synergy" or some such nonsense. At any rate, Global has a hand in this too. Seems no coincidence that recent flyers from The Brick advertising shiny new TVs are all tuned to Global fare like Train 48, Wild Card, Global National and Mike Bullard. Such obvious product placement is unbecoming, not to mention laughably fake. I mean, who actually tunes in to the Mike Bullard Show?

—PressGal, Jan. 3, 2004

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