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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSyndicated columnist censored for writing about risks of hedge funds, billionaires buying newspapers
This is where we are now, America.
Syndicated columnist censored for writing about the risks of hedge funds and billionaires buying newspapers
https://boingboing.net/2018/12/10/money-talks-and-silences.html?fbclid=IwAR2sLfLMZ0RNyo8LJ9BD4Kb-tCRQdzYgYLYAm76b4gef0z5y0bqfh3QTJTY
"Jim Hightower is a longstanding, respected columnist distributed by Creators Syndicate -- but Creators refused to distribute his latest column, "Free the Free Press from Wall Street Plunderers," which warns about Wall Street vultures like Digital First Media and GateHouse Media buying up newspapers, including the Austin Statesman.
The Austin Chronicle reports that Creators wouldn't distribute the column because it feared retribution from the Wall Street firms; Creators managing editor Simone Slykhous told the Chronicle that "We have more than 200 columnists and cartoonists, and our job is to make sure that our actions do not negatively impact them."
Thankfully, the Texas Observer has run Hightower's column, the story of which is perhaps more persuasive on the risks that Hightower warns against than his column itself.
The buyers are hedge-fund scavengers with names like Digital First and GateHouse. They know nothing about journalism and care less, for theyre ruthless Wall Street profiteers out to grab big bucks fast by slashing the journalistic and production staffs of each paper, voiding all employee benefits (from pensions to free coffee in the breakroom), shriveling the papers size and news content, selling the presses and other assets, tripling the price of their inferior product then declaring bankruptcy, shutting down the paper, and auctioning off the bones before moving on to plunder another towns paper.
...more at link"
The Jim Hightower Column They Dont Want You to Read
https://www.texasobserver.org/the-jim-hightower-column-they-dont-want-you-to-read/
"A two-panel cartoon I recently saw showed a character with a sign saying: First they came for the reporters. In the next panel, his sign says: We dont know what happened after that.
It was, of course, a retort to Donald Trumps ignorant campaign to demonize the news media as the enemy of the people. But when it comes to Americas once-proud newspapers, their worst enemy is not Trump nor is it the rising cost of newsprint or the free digital news on websites. Rather, the demise of the real news reporting by our city and regional papers is a product of their profiteering owners. Not the families and companies that built and nurtured true journalism, but the new breed of fast-buck hucksters whove scooped up hundreds of Americas newspapers from the bargain bins of media sell-offs.
The buyers are hedge-fund scavengers with names like Digital First and GateHouse. They know nothing about journalism and care less, for theyre ruthless Wall Street profiteers out to grab big bucks fast by slashing the journalistic and production staffs of each paper, voiding all employee benefits (from pensions to free coffee in the breakroom), shriveling the papers size and news content, selling the presses and other assets, tripling the price of their inferior product then declaring bankruptcy, shutting down the paper, and auctioning off the bones before moving on to plunder another towns paper.
By 2014, Americas two largest media chains were not venerable publishers who believe that a newspapers mission includes a commitment to truth and a civic responsibility, but GateHouse and Digital First, whose managers believe that good journalism is measured by the personal profit they can squeeze from it. As revealed last year in anAmerican Prospect article, GateHouse executives had demanded that its papers cut $27 million from their operating expenses. Thousands of newspaper employees suffered that $27 million cut in large part because one employee the hedge funds CEO had extracted $54 million in personal pay from the conglomerate, including an $11 million bonus.""
more at link..."
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)Those who would censor him have many exchange-traded skeletons in their closets.
k&r,
-app
mountain grammy
(26,622 posts)malaise
(269,022 posts)The fascists have to be stopped
TeamPooka
(24,228 posts)Hermit-The-Prog
(33,348 posts)Buy the lawmakers, the interpreters of law, the executors of law, and the means by which citizens may learn what's going on -- drones owned.
BTW, net neutrality gets in the way of controlling communications by money. Elections get in the way of controlling lawmakers by money, hence Citizens United.
We've sold too much for too little.
littlemissmartypants
(22,680 posts)Thanks so much for sharing this.
TeamPooka
(24,228 posts)littlemissmartypants
(22,680 posts)Sadly, I am beyond shocked anymore. I'm just in permanent SMDH mode.
TeamPooka
(24,228 posts)lunasun
(21,646 posts)The big, hedge-fund owned newspaper chains that Hightower calls out in his column are big customers of theirs, and as such, they dont want to risk offending them, she said. But while Creators reluctance to anger these powerful interests is somewhat understandable, the implications are frightening: Its one more example of this dangerous time for Americas decreasingly free press that, ironically, Jim lays out in this very column