SF Chron to outsource work to HOUSTON?

The Houston Chronicle is having problems, like most big-city dailies, but it might get a whole lot worse.

One of the latest rumors sweeping the San Francisco Chronicle would have the deskies in Houston handling headline writing, copy editing and layout for their ailing sister paper by The Bay.

The other option is India.

This is bound to raise the grumbling in the Houston Chronicle newsroom a few decibels as Chronistas await the next layoff wave of layoffs of 10 percent or more.

The situation in SF is decidedly more grim, but being lumped with India as a cost-saving option may not do much for the self esteem of Hearst's Houston-based serfs.

Alan D. Mutter, who writes the authoritative Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, enumerated all the options on the table to keep the San Francisco Chronicle afloat (massive layoffs, major union concessions, etc.) before floating the Houston bombshell.

One possibility would be to send copyediting, headline writing and page layout to India.

Alternatively, according to one rumor making the rounds today, those duties could be handled at the Chronicle’s sister paper in Houston. Not only would labor costs be lower in Houston than San Francisco, but the difference in time zones would keep the Texas editors busy in the slack time between editions of their own publication.

It's all rumor at this point, mind you, but anything's possible, we suppose.

But, gosh, if the copy desk jockeys in Houston who manage to hang on to their jobs during the upcoming layoffs are tasked with putting out the SF paper, some may be pushed to the brink and seek solace in strong drink or maybe -- gasp -- forming a union of their own.

Would you be willing to pay a reasonable fee for online access to your local paper?

The chief operating officer at Newsday, the daily paper that serves mostly Long Island up in New York, says the paper is going to start charging a fee for access to its Website. [AP]

I've been wondering lately why all the big metro dailies around the country don't get together and agree to do the same thing, since many of them are teetering on the brink of financial disaster. (Everyone pretty much agrees it was dumb for daily newspapers to give away their content for free via the Web, in case you didn't know.)

So here's the question I'd like you to answer in our New Poll:

Would you be willing to pay a reasonable monthly fee to read your local paper?

By "local paper" we mean whatever nearby paper you prefer to read, ie., just cause you don't live in, say, Houston, you can still consider the Houston Chronicle your local paper if you wish. Likewise, if you live in Brazosport and only read the Clute paper, that can be considered your local paper. We realize "reasonable monthly fee" is vague, but don't let that stop you from voting; for discussion purposes, let's say the monthly fee would be around $8 -- around $2 per week, less than you spend on Cokes, coffee or whatever in a day, most likely.

Look to the sidebar on the right to vote in the poll. ------>

(Of course, it doesn't matter where you live to vote in our poll. We have readers all over the the place.)

quote/unquote ... Slumdog, Madea, Christopher Nolan and The Scots

(Another in a series by Wilson from The Gateway To The West [St. Louis, MO])

“If they can spend all this money on movie, why can’t they take can’t they take care of the children? No one taught us how to speak English like those guys in the movie.”

--- Kiran Jaiswal, 21, of Dharavi, the Mumbai slum where “Slumdog Millionaire” was based, commenting on how Dharavi needs schools and jobs, not “rags-to-riches” dreams

"And there I sat, silently ranting: There is nothing funny about this black man in pantyhose. And where is all of this cross-dressing-black-man stuff coming from, anyway? First, comedians Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence star in high-grossing movies as the fattest, ugliest black women that Hollywood makeup artists can conjure up, and now here's Perry with his gussied-up version of the same butt of the joke."
--- Courtland Milloy, Washington Post, Feb. 25, about tyler perry's Madea movies

"My mind is like a spin-dryer at full speed, my thoughts fly around my skull while millions of beautiful words cascade down in my lap. Images gunfire across my consciousness and while trying to discipline them I jump in awe at the soul-filled bounty of my mind’s expanse."
--- Christopher Nolan, Irish author who was quadraplegic and mute. He died at age 46 by choking on something caught in his airway. He typed his books by using a "unicorn" stick strapped to his head.

"Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal."
---- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) talking about the Scots

Sheila Jackson Lee doesn't disappoint

We know this is getting old.

For years now we've tuned in to the annual State of the Union address to make sure that U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Tx, of the Fightin' 18th Congressional District in Houston, gets up next to the President, be he Democrat of Republican.

We depend on this. When it stops happenin', we're fairly sure it's time to gather up all the firearms, round up all the ammo, batteries, gold bullion and freeze-dried food, and descend into the underground bunker.

But that's not necessary after tonight, for Sheila again made her annual appearance alongside the president. She caught him comin' in and goin' out (see photos.)

Nevermind that she didn't support Mr. Obama til he won their party's nomination.

Nevermind that the economy's splitting at the seams or that we're still mired overseas in two wars.

At least one thing remains the same, unchanged. Praise Sheila.

Holy mackerel! Signs warning about eating fish caught along Texas Gulf Coast go up 12 years late!! Thanks Texas Legislature

The people who supposedly look out for our health advised us against eating king mackerel fish caught along the Texas coast way back in 1997.

The warning signs to let fishermen (and fisherwomen like the happy lass pictured above) about the advisory just got posted a month ago, reports John Tompkins in the Clute paper.

The delay in putting up the signs is because money never was allocated for them, said Kirk Wiles, manager of the seafood and aquatic life group for the Texas Department of State Health Services, which issued the warning...

Jim Cramer of CNBC follows our lead in the train wreck that is Dow Chemical

Regular readers of The Brazosport News will remember a while back that we called for the head of Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris.

Now comes Jim Cramer, the wild man/stock picker on CNBC, taking up the call.

We realize that some stock market experts advise investors to listen carefully to what Cramer says, and then do the opposite.

Be that as it may, Cramer isn't always wrong.

So we pass along Cramer's view of Dow/Liveris:

When another viewer asked Cramer about Dow Chemical, Cramer pointed to Dow CEO Andrew Liveris on his Wall of Shame; “He told us repeatedly the dividend wasn’t in doubt – and then he got rid of the dividend. So my take is, until they get rid of Liveris, we’re not recommending Dow Chemical.”

The new look in men's restrooms

quote/unquote: Warren Beatty, Marv Albert, Joan Didion, Don Meyer

(editor's note: another in a series from Wilson of St. Louis.)

"I was offered 'The Godfather' before Marlon (Brando) was in it. I was offered 'The Godfather' when Danny Thomas was the leading candidate for the Godfather. And I passed. Jack (Nicholson) passed, also. And I remember something else. I was offered 'The Godfather' to produce and direct. Charlie Bluhdorn was a fan of 'Bonnie and Clyde' and sent me the book...I read it. Sort of. And I said 'Charlie, not another gangster movie.' "
-- Warren Beatty, in "The Godfather Wars," Vanity Fair, March 2009

"The thing about Charles is that, universally, he's been so nice to everyone around him, the people who work in the building, he joshes around with them, people out on the street, the fans, everyone, a lot of people don't like that kind of contact, but Charles always has. And I think that will serve him well when he comes back. Charles, he'll find a way to embrace this. A lot of guys hide and might not want to deal with it all, but Charles will. Fans are very forgiving and understanding."
-- Marv Albert, commenting on Charles Barkley's return to "Inside the NBA" on TNT Thursday after his DUI. Since he was off the show, ratings have dropped 38 percent

"No one who ever passed through an American public high school could have watched William Jefferson Clinton running for office in 1992 and failed to recognize the familiar predatory sexuality of the provincial adolescent. The man was, Jesse Jackson said that year to another point, "nothing but an appetite." No one who followed his appearances on 'The Road to the White House' on C-SPAN could have missed the reservoir of self-pity, the quickness to blame, the narrowing of the eyes, as in a wildlife documentary, when things did not go his way: a response so reliable that aides on Jerry Brown's 1992 campaign looked for situations in which it could be provoked."
------- "Clinton Agonistes" by Joan Didion, New York Review of Books Sept. 22, 1998

"It's a game at a time. . . just like it's a day at a time. When you've come through the thing that I've come through, it's a day at a time. Every morning I wake up I check to make sure to see if I'm alive and I start thanking God and I hope I can do something good with that day because I don't know how many days I have left. None of us does."
------NPR, Feb. 18, '09, Don Meyer, the winningest coach in college basketball, at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He lost a leg in a car wreck last year, and now has inoperable cancer and coaches from a wheelchair.

Sheila! Jackson!! Lee!!! In freakin' INDIA!!!!

So we were watching CNN this morning, catching up on world events.

There's a story about the son of Martin Luther King Jr. laying a wreath at the memorial of Mahatma Ghandi, the progenitor of social change through nonviolent means.

The camera pans the King delegation, standing solemnly, hands clasped before them.

There's a cutaway shot of the Ghandi memorial.

Then there's a closer shot, from a slightly different vantage point, of the King delegation and ... BAM ... there she is -- Sheila Jackson Lee, US representative from the Fightin' 18th Congressional District of Texas ... in INDIA!!

Sheila Jackson Lee. Hot Damn. She's a force of nature, blessed with an uncanny ability to detect the presence of news cameras, no matter where they are, no matter what the news event, come hell or high water, and then suddenly appear right in their viewfinders.

For her dogged tenacity and her irrefutable gift of self promotion, we salute her.

She is, we dare say, one of a kind.

Next stop: the Queen's Twitter account?

Her Majesty the Queen (of England) has revamped her Website.

"It's very disappointing," said a guy who didn't get the Web redesign job.

Dow Chemical to start shedding assets?

The situation at Dow Chemical Co. seems to get worse everyday.

Word comes from Indianapolis that Dow may sell Dow AgroSciences, its ag-chemicals-biotech firm.

The Indianapolis Business Journal reports Dow needs to raise cash and that Aussie-born CEO Andrew Liveris has a dozen or so assets on the table.

“We are very proud of the [AgroSciences] business. It’s a high earner. In the last five years, we’ve invested in it. It generated a great R&D pipeline … a lot of great niches and, in fact, good positions around the world in various crops and in various chemical markets,” he said.

“But having said that, I would tell you that all options are on the table.”

Houston Chronicle to cut at least 10% of work force

The Houston Chronicle will cut at least another 10 percent of its employees, the publisher said in a memo distributed late Friday.

The Chronicle has been reducing its payroll the last four years. In 2004 it cut 240, in 2005 it cut 100 and last year it cut 70.

Here's the memo from publisher Jack Sweeney:

February 13, 2009



Dear Chronicle Colleagues:



As our newspaper continues to report the condition of the economy, we read about companies in all business categories adjusting their size to match current and projected revenues. The Houston Chronicle must do the same in spite of your diligent efforts.



Consequently, over the next 60 days, we will be reorganizing our employee base in all divisions around a reduction in force of at least 10 percent. As we restructure the Chronicle, rest assured that we are planning and researching many other cost saving initiatives so we can keep job eliminations as low as possible. I ask for your help, in that regard, so please keep submitting your cost savings ideas through our new program.



I hope you understand that difficult decisions must be made in challenging times and I ask for your patience as we work through this period of unprecedented change.



Sincerely,





Jack Sweeney

Anyone who's been following the newspaper business the past year can't be surprised by this. It's happening at every big-city paper in the country.

It's pretty weird, though, that they'd pick Friday The 13th to lay the wood to the serfs.

Even though it's privately owned and therefore can keep its financial data to itself, we venture to guess the Chron is still profitable, given its monopoly status and its location in a city that hasn't felt the brunt of the current recession.

Still, it isn't probitable enough in the eyes of the Hearst Corp.

The company's San Francisco paper is losing money at an astonishing rate and it can't find a buyer for its Seattle newspaper, which probably will close altogether.

Normally, we'd express condolences at the developments to our friends at The Chron, Houston's only daily and one of the nation's Top 10 in circulation, but most of them have taken early retirement buyouts or been fired or have quit in disgust. Oh hell, good luck anyway to all the layoffees.

More on Michael Precker, the newsman-turned-titty-bar-manager

We posted an item a few days about the Dallas newsman who took an early retirement buyout and ended up managing a "high end" strip club.

It got the attention of at least three of you rednecks, who took the trouble to post comments.

It got the attention, too, of some editor at The Wall St. Journal, who decided maybe the first piece it published about people gettin laid off or bought out (which included a mention of the Dallas newsman-turned-titty-bar-manager down way low in the story) might not be as interesting as a full-blown story on the Dallas newsman-turned-titty-bar-manager.

So they had the same reporter write a full-blown piece on the ex-newsman-turned ....

Good call.

Rupert Murdoch ain't runnin the WSJ for nothing.

Here's a taste of how the ex-newsman-turned-yadda-yadda got his new job at the Lodge in Big D:

"It seemed pretty clear that people of my vintage weren't going to get through retirement," says Mr. Precker, now 53 years old.

Around that time he found himself seated at a charity dinner near the owner of a Dallas strip club, Dawn Rizos. Hearing him mention the newspaper industry's travails, she offered him a job. "I like smart people. You could do communications," she told him.

He laughed it off. "I thought, 'I couldn't stoop to something like that,'" he recalls.

Soon afterwards, he was visiting Israel when the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon broke out, and to his surprise he found himself disinterested in covering it. "As much as I loved my job and was proud of what I'd done, I didn't have the urge anymore to run up to the border and explain it all to the American people and then come back and brag about how I'd been shot at," he says.

Mr. Precker's career change was mentioned earlier this week in a column written by Mr. Helliker.

For him, that experience made it all the harder to ignore the industry's deepening financial travails. In his mind, he says, "the lines on the graph crossed. It got to be more ridiculous to hang on at a newspaper and less ridiculous to take this leap."

Upon returning to Dallas, he called Ms. Rizo, who made the offer contingent on the approval of Mr. Precker's wife of more than two decades. "I talked to her myself and made sure it was okay with her," says Ms. Rizos. [WSJ]

Paul Burka of Tx Monthly says he's surprised Dennis Bonnen got a chairmanship

We were too, sort of, but we don't follow state lawmakin' like Burka, who's the go-to guy when the National TVs want something about Texas explained.

Burka wrote this about how Our Man in Austin and other solons fared in the new committee assignments doled out by the new speaker:

"Bonnen. Frankly, I’m surprised that he got a chairmanship (Land and Resource Management). He was a very controversial chair of Environmental Reg with little patience for the other side. But he is a good legislator and a shrewd observer of the process. He may go from the frying pan into the fire if his committee gets Eminent Domain."

Karl Rove is a twitterer

Karl Rove, who looks likes he's lost some weight, has been tweeting on his hunting trip.

Dennis Bonnen: winner or loser? Beats the hell outta us

The new Texas House committee assignments were announced today in Austin.

We've been wondering how our favorite whippin' boy, State Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, might fare in the reshuffled committees now that there's a new House speaker who apparently is not as right-wingy as the last guy.

Anyhow, Bonnen is OUT as head of the House Committee on Environmental Regulation. This is good. He was way too unpleasant a fellow for the job and handled the concerns of environmentalists with a heavy hand. We respect the right to disagree and, yeah, some enviros are a little loopy, but Bonnen didn't have to be such an a-hole toward them. It reflected poorly on Brazoria County, which we love.

But now he's IN as chair of the Land & Resouce Management Committee. Does this mean he can still browbeat conservationists during committee hearings? Kinda sounds like it. But we really have no idea what this committe does exactly.

We are now faced with the vexing question of whether these changes enhance Bonnen's vow to have the Texas Toad named as the official state amphibian (after his failed effort last session to have the Texas Blind Salamander named as such.)

If anyone knows, let us know.

=====================
[pdf file of new committee assignments, via Tx Monthly]

There is no joy in Dowville for mighty Liveris has struck out

The other shoe finally fell for the Dow Chemical Co.

It cut its dividend for the first time in the company's history -- dropping it from 42 cents to 15 cents.

Cutting the dividend was hardly surprised, as Dow Chief Executive Andrew Liveris had cooled his defense on the subject in recent weeks. Top priority in times of economic uncertainty has to be the company's investment-grade rating, he said. [marketwatch]

The stock price is headed toward $9 today.

And Dow laid off 350 the other day in Freeport, says the Clute paper.
======================
breakingnewsupdate--
Meanwhile, a Dow shareholder has filed a lawsuit against Dow's board of directors, saying CEO Andrew Liveris should be fired for mismanaging a failed $15.4-billion takeover of Rohm & Haas Co., reports the Detroit Free Press.

The so-called derivative lawsuit, made public Tuesday in Wilmington, Del., also seeks damages from some board members on behalf of Midland-based Dow.
The Rohm & Haas takeover plan, and a foundering joint venture with Petrochemicals Industries Co. of Kuwait, put Dow "on the precipice of an unmitigated financial disaster," because officials failed "to bring rational business judgment to bear," stockholder Michael D. Blum said in the complaint...

...Dow "now perches on the horns of a dilemma," Blum contends. If it completes the Rohm & Haas merger, it will "careen into almost immediate insolvency," and if it doesn't, "it will be liable for astronomical damages," he said.

Besides removal of Liveris, the lawsuit calls for "corporate reforms at Dow" to allow more input by shareholders and "safeguards for the conduct of mergers and acquisitions."

"Dow believes that this litigation is defective" and will seek to have it dismissed, said Patti Temple Rocks, a spokeswoman for the company.

The annals of Joaquin Phoenix

I watch Letterman practically every night. Sometimes it disappoints and I'll end up reading with Dave in the background. Sometimes there'll be a great musical guest; a few months ago Kanye West performed and I was surprised how much I liked the number he did. And sometimes, like last night, there will be a classic guest appearance by an actor hawking his or her newest movie.

Check out Joaquin Phoenix here via The Huffington Post.

(Or, treat yourself to the full 10 minute 49 second clip on YouTube here.)

It was funny and uncomfortable all at the same time. I think maybe Joaquin is under the influence of something. What I don't know. I hope he'll be OK.

Life after work not necessarily traumatic

The Wall Street Journal today published a story about successful people who have a hard time coping with getting laid off or taking early retirement.

Loss of self esteem and so forth ...

But It Doesn't Have To Be Traumatic, various experts opined.

One fellow doing fine is a former prize-winning reporter/editor for the Dallas Morning News.

Michael Precker took a buyout from the paper in 2006. He was real worried, too, about what would happen to him.

"But it has been easier than I thought. I feel lucky," Precker told the paper.

He now manages a "high-end strip club," reported The Journal, apparently straight-faced.

Andrew Liveris has become a punch line

The joke about the head of Dow Chemical Co. goes like this:

“What is Liveris spelled backwards? Sir Evil.”

So writes Joe Nocera in the NY Times.

Nocera is sympathetic to Dow's plight, though there's not much sympathy on Wall Street and in legal circles.

Timing is everything in most things and the timing of Liveris has been lousy.

Electronic journalism 1981: the beginning of the end of newspapers as we knew them

The most ominous quote in the YouTube viddy below is some newspaper editor telling a TV reporter that making the newspaper accessible via computer is, apparently, completely altruistic.

"We're not in it to make money," he said.

Yup, guess not.

quote/unquote: Slumdog, W, Denny's & Thomas Hart Benton

(Another in a series, capturing the zeitgeist, so to speak, as compiled by Wilson in St. Louis.)

"Somebody sent me a quote from Plato: 'Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.' That kind of approach helps you deal with everything, really, and that's how we tried to behave in Mumbai. Hopefully in the long run people will appreciate that."
------- Danny Boyle, director of "Slumdog Millionaire" in Newsweek, fw, 9, 09

"If money isn't loosened up, this sucker could go down."
-- G.W. Bush, #43, on Sept. 24, 2008

"My feet hurt, my back hurt and I'm extremely tired."
-- Morgan Collins, worker at Denny's on Hampton, where 750 free "Grand Slam" breakfasts were served during her 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift.

"I know of no cause for this conspiracy against me, except that I am the natural enemy of all rotten politicians...I am for the Union as it is; and for that Mr. Calhoun denounced me as a traitor to the South...and signaled to all his followers in Missouri to go to work upon me..."

--Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri Senator in the 1840s, quoted in Profiles in Courage by John Kennedy.

One reason to sorta like Mike Huckabee

The politics of Mike Huckabee may not be your politics, but here we give you at least one reason to cut the guy a little slack. Check out this 55-second clip from the award-winning Fox News Channel program Redeye.