More On R-J Carnage: Severence, Silence & Sherm

[UPDATE: Oskar Garcia of the Associated Press is out with a report on these layoffs that pretends none of the reporting you've seen here exists. He did, however, speak to Bob Brown, the publisher who declined my requests as well as those of KNPR. Evidently, Mr. Brown does not believe in speaking about this within his own community. Not terribly good modeling for potential sources for the newspaper itself, is it? See what he had to say to Garcia here.]

I continue to add names and details to the prior post on the firings at the R-J, and it doesn't seem like a second round is occurring today as was rumored. But here's some news from today:

* Severance: The employees who lost their jobs yesterday were handed a white envelope, told to get their things and escorted out of the building. Here is how one now-ex-RJer described their parting gifts via email to me:

Terminated employees were given their checks paid through the week with any leftover vacation/sick time hours included. The severance offered is 12 weeks of pay if you sign on the line not to sue the Stephens Media Group if it is found that they had terminated you for other reasons, such as age or some other protected class. Sign that and you get your money. Also, we get three months of medical benefits, including family coverage. If we have a lot of stuff in our desks, we must make appointments to collect the items before 8 a.m. so our presence is not be disruptive. HR Benefits Manager Cindy Meyers or corporate attorney Mark Hinueber went over the package with us and explained how to file for unemployment and what to say. Those with 401(k)s can leave our money where it's at or cash it out to roll into an IRA (not recommended). Editor Mike Hengel was seen standing by a photographer as he cleared out his locker to ensure he didn't leave with company equipment.

Wow. That's just heartbreaking. Just because the corporate bastards act like greedy asses who don't take any pride in the quality of their product doesn't mean the former employees will, even in the darkest moments of their professional lives. Such demeaning treatment at the conclusion of long and honorable service is depressing and, sadly, quite normal today.

* Silence: Bob Brown, the new publisher who was the ad director, has told KNPR that there will be no press release about the careers he just wrecked. He hasn't responded to e-mail or phone calls from me, either. But KNPR is undeterred and recognizes the importance of this news, so I'll be on State of Nevada on Monday at 9 am PT discussing the firings and what it means for Las Vegas journalism. This will be my second appearance since my farewell interview, which is kind of funny but also a bit of an honor. Also, while I do appreciate the traffic and attention, I think it's sad that the Las Vegas Sun's only coverage of this matter was to provide a link here.

* Sherm: In the wake of such emotional news, I yesterday laid into Sherm Frederick, the disgraced former publisher of the Review-Journal. I do believe he made several terrible decisions and is owed some of the blame. But I also have heard -- and I remember from my own time there in the 1990s -- that he was always a staunch defender of his journalists having once been one and probably kept some people on longer than he should have because he had a personal connection with and empathy for them. That all can be true and honorable at the same time as he coasted along during the Vegas boom years and took credit for profits that were inevitable in that economy. What he never did was prepare for the next generation of journalism in any meaningful way and he just allowed a moldy old system to roll along unabated. But mostly, if Sherm is unwilling to take any responsibility for the economic condition of the newspaper -- and he won't because he's too vain and proud -- then someone needs to sit up and acknowledge that he deserves to be held accountable, too.

Massive Layoffs Strike The R-J Today

Last Updated at 2:05 p.m. PT, 8/19/2011 with new names and other details.

I'm working hard to gather up all of the names of those journalists who are being ushered out of the Review-Journal's headquarters right now. As I did when Greenspun Media Group canned nearly 40 people in 2009, I will continue to update this post as more names and details are confirmed.

Right now, I count 22 people on the list, almost all of them newsroom folk. I've also noticed that the RJ appears to have stripped the website of RJTV, the ill-executed daily news capsule that might have actually worked if it had decent production value and if there was some way to download or embed it.

On Facebook earlier today, former R-J Editor Thomas Mitchell wrote in response to talk show host Heidi Harris asking if the fired included anyone she knows: "Probably not ... photogs, sports, artists, pressmen, ad folks. But there is one you know, but I've not got confirmation of departure." More recently, he commented on the Facebook site of one of the fired, Dennis Rudner, "Hope you got a decent severance package."

Here's hoping that the "one you know" referenced by Mitchell is not the legendary John L. Smith, whose column last weekend certainly struck me as tentatively valedictory. That would be devastating. I also hear a press release is being worked up which, if true, would be substantially more transparency than occurred during the Greenspun massacre. (Update: No answer -- not even voicemail -- in Publisher Bob Brown's office.)

So here's the growing list. I'll add new names and the length-of-service as the information comes in. Most of these folks were fired today, but a handful lost their jobs in the past couple of weeks. In addition to this, I understand 15 employees in the press room -- a full shift -- were let go earlier this week. And, of course, there was another, smaller layoff spree at the RJ earlier in March.

I keep this list so the public knows how their newspaper is being diminished and also so these men and women do not become anonymous casualties after their many years of hard work:

* Edmund Meinhardt, editor, LV Health/View on Health, 4 years
* Steve Guiremand, sports copy editor and @UNLVRebelNation tweeter
* Dennis Rudner, assistant sports editor, 12 years
* Jim Decker, photographer, 24 years
* Jean Thorne, graphics
* Rowena Sioson Castillejos, graphics
* Jason Whited, CityLife staff writer
* Alan Choate, general assignment reporter
* Jim Haug, education reporter
* Joyce Lupiani, content editor, 16 years
* Gary Thompson, photographer, 35 years
* Craig Moran, photographer, 17 years
* Mike Johnson, news-graphic artist, 26 years
* Valerie Miller, Las Vegas Business Press reporter
* Scott Wyland, county government reporter
* Duane Prokop, 5+years
* John Gurzinski, photographer, 20 years
* Nate Tannenbaum, RJTV anchor
* Erik Huey, online advertising
* Jeff Wolf, sports reporter
* Dean White, assistant to circulation director
* John Edwards, business reporter

Rudner, on his Facebook wall, wrote: "The worst part about being laid off after 12 years on the job is the effect it has on your children, even if they are teens." Heartbreaking.

That impact to the photo department is severe. And it's made even worse to those shooters by the fact that they don't own their own equipment anymore. That is, when the cameras went high-tech digital and cost $5,000+ each, the photogs began simply using the company's. So these folks are hamstrung in terms of freelancing, from what one shooter told me. Also in the photo department, former photo editor Jeff Scheid was demoted to staff photog and Kevin Cannon is the interim photo editor.

This paints a picture of a newspaper in dire economic conditions that can only be the result of the long, incompetent tenure of disgraced former publisher Sherman Frederick. Yes, the new publisher, Bob Brown, is a former ad guy and may not have the journalistic sensitivities that Frederick did have most of the time, but it was Frederick who made a long list of terrible decisions.

Frederick constantly calls me "bitter" on his blog and on Twitter, but mostly I've just been strident that the newspaper wasn't pivoting into the new media environment with any creativity, investment or ingenuity. I have warned for many years now that that failure would endanger the entire enterprise and I said repeatedly that it would ultimately cost jobs. Sure, the economy bites and newsrooms are challenged everywhere, but this is a newspaper that actually LOST circulation even as this city's population exploded. That takes a special brand of incompetence.

It just didn't matter then because the fat margins cushioned that failure for a long time. Now we see the results, and they're horrifying for the people involved. Sherm, meanwhile, still enjoys his blog and column and his Podunk newspapers. Awesome.

Media Muddle: Sad Shermy Righthaven Edition!

For reasons nobody can explain, the disgraced former publisher of Nevada's largest newspaper continues to write columns and to blog for the R-J, the newspaper whose circulation and reputation he trashed and that faces years of litigation ahead on account of how he and his minions botched their efforts to protect their copyrights.

Still, that he continues to have a voice is worthwhile for delicious moments like this. Today, he wrote about some cheating scandal eight states away that he believes indicts public school education.

This is fun stuff. Sad Shermy, he of the creative but self-sabotaged copyright-enforcing jihad, reprinted three long paragraphs of his Sunday column's source material, an article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in providing the background of the cheating scandal. Didn't Righthaven, aka the R-J, sue others for that? Why yes, they did!

Sad Shermy may argue Fair Use, except that he's not commenting on the quality of the piece or the writing as, say, I just do down below. He could have just as easily, were he not lazy as hell, paraphrased the facts of the case himself. He found it more convenient to rip off another writer's reporting and work. What's more, check this out:


That's a screenshot from his column online. What's missing above? Oh! That's right! A link to the original report. You know, something almost every Righthaven defendant did provide.

But wait, there's more! On the R-J's site right now under this very piece, a commenter has left this:


See that? Righthaven, aka the Review-Journal, has also sued websites for allowing commenters to post lengthy passages of R-J stories. Here the R-J allowed "Jack Webb" to post 228 words of a 539-word blog item by Alex Pareene of Salon.Com with no commentary, nothing to reflect fair use. And remember, there are editors at the ReviewJournal.com who approve or reject comments. They have made a legal case that website purveyors are responsible for everything, including the copyright violations committed by their readers.

Where, oh where, is Steve Gibson of Righthaven when he's needed? Oh, that's right. Preparing for depositions about whether he and Sad Shermy misled the courts about who owns the rights to the material Righthaven sued over. Natch.

* * *

On a vaguely related but terrifically entertaining note, that same column was Shermy's chance to cackle over the education system today. And yet, try to spot the not-so-tiny mistake:


Remember, folks, this is a piece about education. Someone -- probably not Sad Shermy! -- corrected that rather egregious misspelling online, which is why the dead-tree version still has its merits. Web readers must have left comments mocking the error, but editors chose not to approve them on account of that it makes Sherm Frederick look foolish and undercuts his moral authority as an expert on the results of that old-school education system he graduated from back in the '50s or whenever. If this hadn't been in print, I'm quite sure Sad Shermy would deny he had made such a fundamental spelling error in the first place.

But here's the best part. Look way up at the first screenshot there. Oh, OK, look at it here:


I doublechecked and, yes, in print Sad Shermy also spelled "principal" correctly in the portion where he cut-and-pasted passages to save himself the bother of paraphrasing the very premise of his column. In other words, he didn't even re-read what he put in his own piece or he at least would have noticed his own spelling error or, worse, ignorantly changed it in the AJC version. He just hit CTL-V and then went on from there, bloviating and doing what his good friend, ex-RJ editor Thomas Mitchell, once called "chew[ing] up the intellectual property of others and spit[ting] out their cuds."

Media Muddle Extra: A Week In Righthaven

This deserved separate treatment from the prior post, so here we go.

On Wednesday, Jon Ralston faux-hammered Steve Gibson, the CEO of Righthaven, the company that has been suing hundreds of websites for alleged copyright theft for the R-J and the Denver Post. It was entertaining, especially watching Ralston nearly and literally fall out of his seat trying to shove questions upon Gibson, who evidently believes bad posture and donning sweater vests in 105 degree heat are ways to appear smart and knowledgeable on TV. Watch it:


Jon did pull off a few stunt questions designed to amuse viewers more than get serious answers, stuff like "You really screwed this thing up, didn’t you?" and "This is just a shakedown, that’s all this was." (Dream responses: "Yeah, that's why I'm an alcoholic now" and "Of course, how do you think I pay for these bitchin' designer specs?" Real responses: "No" and "No".)

Ultimately, despite Ralston's efforts to appear tough, Gibson got away with spouting off some pretty awesome rhetorical lies. The problem Righthaven faces is that a Nevada judge spanked him for possibly deceiving the courts as to who actually owns the rights to the material over which Righthaven has been suing possible infringers. Gibson disagrees, naturally, with the judge's suggestion that only the true and full owner can do so. Righthaven believed that getting the R-J to sign over some but not all of the ownership rights would cut it, but they didn't tell the court they didn't have all rights to the material.

This matters because the whole purpose of Righthaven taking over the copyright was essentially to protect Stephens Media from being liable should something go cockeyed in this litigation. Like, say, if someone on their side does something wrong like, I dunno, committing perjury. The person liable is whomever actually owns the copyright, and since Stephens didn't give it all up, the judge says there's no reason why the court should listen to Righthaven.

But here's how Gibson put it to Ralston:

An analogy here is, you can own a house and have title to that house. And then you can lease, allow someone to use that house. Allowing someone to use the house doesn’t mean you lose your title with respect to that house and being able to do certain things with that house. The debate that we’re having is whether or not the documentation with the clear intent of Stephens Media and Righthaven, is to have Righthaven own the house, whether or not that documentation at this point supports it.

OK, so this makes no sense whatsoever, even if Ralston didn't notice. If I lease my house, my renters can't go into court and sue, say, my HOA if they're mad about something. They would be committing fraud if they told a judge they were the owner just because they paid me some money to use my house. No matter what they say, unless I sign over the whole title to the renter, I still own the house. I suppose the renters could appear in court on my behalf if I let them, but I'm still the central figure in the litigation. Everybody who is in court is representing me, not themselves. And they must, legally, say so.

Righthaven told the court they owned the house so the court would recognize they have a stake in the lawsuit. But it turns out, they did not own the house and don't have a stake. Heck, they weren't even renters. Gibson's house renter isn't analogous to Righthaven, it's analogous to the people who pay to reprint R-J content. They get to use the material without actually owning it, just as a renter gets to live in the house without owning it.

Oh! Here's another pile o' baloney from Gibson that sailed on by Ralston:

If you Google a search, Google doesn’t say, "Oh we’re only going to show you the content if it’s at a megasite," they’re going to show you the content if it’s topically relevant. You understand that?

Holy crap! Gibson just defied comprehension of precisely why anyone uses Google, which is specifically to sort material in a useful way. That means that if the Drudge Report and GibsonsAMoron.Com post the same article, the Drudge Report's version is going to show up at the top of the Google chain and the GibsonsAMoron.com version will probably appear several pages down where nobody ever looks.

So, Steve, yes, Google will show you the content that is topically relevant, starting with the MOST POPULAR venues where that material appears. That means that being ripped off by HuffPo is more significant than being ripped off by RunninFromThePoPo. You understand that?

No, I suspect he doesn't because the brilliant, proprietary secret sauce of Righthaven is obviously to set up customized Google news and blog alerts that ping them every time someone uses something with a catch phrase or term. Yes, in that case, you get every last thing regardless of if it's from a major outlet or some site nobody's ever heard of. In that configuration, all that comes up is what is "topically relevant." But that's not functionally how most people use the Internet or Google.

(Aside: I don't have the time to do this research, but it would be enlightening to take all the R-J material over which Righthaven has sued and analyze them to see what phrases they all have in common. Then we'd know what the search was. Why do I have this feeling the term will be "Las Vegas Review-Journal", meaning they only found these infringers because they were stupid enough to, uh, cite the source? Just a hunch.)

The thing I'm most bummed about, though, is that Ralston didn't say to Gibson: "What did Sherm Frederick know and when did he know it?" That's the good stuff, the human stuff, the non-legalese scandal of it all. This whole debacle was green-lit by the already-disgraced former publisher, who surely knew the court filings misrepresented the true identity of the ownership of the material. Now Frederick is gone and his former company is staring down the barrel at possible court sanctions. He's a guy who has been advocating personal responsibility for decades, as many conservatives do, but thus far he doesn't seem too willing to own up to any errors he may have made in all of this.

Sad Shermy published a column on Righthaven today and he almost snookered me into agreeing with him yet again! He chose to address a different ruling against Righthaven, one in which a judge seemed to have a bizarre view of what constitutes a column worthy of copyright protections. Certainly, what the judge wrote in weighing whether the posting of a Sad Shermy column was Fair Use was questionable and weird.

Alas, Sad Shermy left out some fairly significant and relevant details, as usual. Leave it to Steve Green from the VegasInc.Com fill them in in his assessment of Sad Shermy's piece. In a brutal piece that explains how the mishandling of the Righthaven campaign has actually systematically made intellectual property on the Internet less protected rather than more, he noted:

Here’s something else Frederick didn’t point out in today’s column: Pro’s finding that the Frederick column at issue in the Hoehn case “contains a significant informational element” as opposed to being purely creative, is a factor that “is not terribly relevant in the overall fair use balancing.”

The key factors were that Hoehn “did not and could not profit from posting” the column, that he posted it for informational purposes to foster discussion on a public policy issue and that Righthaven failed to show any harm to the market for the column.

What?!? Sad Shermy wrote an entire column on a straw man argument? The judge said that how he defines Fair Use isn't where he rests his case? It was that the poster could not actually profit from posting the thing? I wonder if he thinks the courts are as stupid as he thinks his readers are, that maybe appeals judges will dwell on the irrelevant part of the ruling just as he did.

Sad Shermy also forgot to explain what he knew and when he knew it regarding Righthaven's telling the court that they owned copyrights that they did not own. I suspect that will have to wait for a deposition. Bring popcorn.

Judge Sticks Fork In Righthaven-RJ Model Thanks To Stupid Shermy

I really should have known.

Last year, I took the unusual step here and in the Las Vegas Weekly of supporting something that now-disgraced former Stephens Media publisher Sherman Frederick was up to. It surprised many colleagues, but I thought it showed a certain imagination that was both surprising and admirable.

But I should have known. If Frederick was involved -- and especially if he related to the Internet -- then it couldn't possibly be executed properly. And because it wasn't, what could have been an innovative and valuable method of contending with rampant copyright theft on the Internet is probably dead. It is extremely unlikely others will try it now.

The general idea had been that R-J owner Stephens Media assigns over the copyright to R-J work and then this Vegas-based firm called Righthaven, run by public relations moron Stephen Gibson (left via CalvinAyre.Com), would file lawsuits seeking to punish folks all over the Web who believed that they could steal it and post it on their own sites without paying for it. Many whined that it was cruel, that the thieves deserved a warning to pull down the material before they needed a lawyer, and in many cases the lawsuits were filed against very small entities whose readerships were hardly any bigger than what mine would be if I cut something out of the paper and hung it on my fridge.

Still, as a freelancer whose work has been dramatically devalued by a Web culture that believes that anything anywhere is free, I admired the creativity here. The problem is just too extensive to be cost-effective to address internally, so Stephens Media created a profit motive for someone else to behave as their enforcer. Several lawsuits were ham-handed and Gibson never quite understood that a newspaper has certain unusual elements; you don't go suing people who give you terrific scoops just because they posted a copy of the scoop's story, for instance, and you lose the battle in the court of public opinion when you sue cat bloggers or people with mental disabilities.

But when other major news organizations or other journalists who should know better rip off your content, it seemed to be fair game. And it was because of me that we got some of the most entertaining wrinkles in this story, the wonderfully timed lawsuit against Sharon Angle and the efforts to go after several massive sites because of use of the awesome but utterly inaccurate Vdara Death Ray graphic.

Ahh, but I overestimated Sherman Frederick by a factor of many. He wanted to have his cake and eat it, too, and, as usual, everything he touches turns to sand. Good luck, Hawthorne, Eureka and Ely!

Yesterday, a Nevada judge pretty much pulled the plug, declaring that the whole arrangement had been unlawful and announcing he's considering fining Righthaven and Stephens for taking the courts and more than 200 defendants on a bit of a ride. The problem?

Well, Stephens never actually, truly and fully gave up the copyrights. They wanted to give Righthaven the ability to pursue these lawsuits but not real ownership over the material. And then Righthaven opted not to disclose in court that there was a profit-sharing element to these suits and that the R-J was a third, interested party. Here's David Kravets of Wired.Com with the explanation:

[The judge] suggested Righthaven likely duped other judges to allow lawsuits on behalf of Stephens Media copyrights to go forward.

“Making this failure more egregious, not only did Righthaven fail to identify Stephens Media as an interested party in this suit, the court believes that Righthaven failed to disclose Stephens Media as an interested party in any of its approximately 200 cases filed in this district,” Hunt ruled. “Accordingly, the court orders Righthaven to show cause, in writing, no later than two weeks from the date of this order, why it should not be sanctioned for this flagrant misrepresentation to the court.”

An internal agreement between Righthaven and Stephens Media gives the Review-Journal’s owner and Righthaven each a 50 percent stake in any settlements or verdicts. The accord said Stephens Media shall retain “an exclusive license to exploit the Stephens Media assigned copyrights for any lawful purpose whatsoever and Righthaven shall have no right or license to exploit or participate in the receipt of royalties from the exploitation of the Stephens Media assigned copyrights other than the right to proceeds in association with a recovery.”

So here's the thing: Holy shiz. What possible reason did Righthaven withhold that the R-J was interested party or what the business arrangement was? If I recall correctly, Gibson always claimed that such information was "proprietary," that it was the secret sauce of his business model. Except that EVERYBODY ALREADY KNEW that this was the arrangement, everybody except, officially, the court. And the financial deal turned out to be ... a 50/50 split. What's so secret about that? That's what everyone would have assumed, right?

So now, as a parting gift to Stephens Media, the disgraced former publisher Sherman Frederick has left a legal morass that may haunt the company for years and cost it considerably more in legal fees and potential judgments than this arrangement would ever have brought in. If I were allowed, I would honest-to-God consider flying in from my Michigan fellowship to see an inept Frederick fondle a coffee cup while being vivisected on a witness stand over this, so stupid a screw-up was this error.

And the saddest part is that copyright theft on the Internet is killing the media. It's very dangerous. The actual complaints being made by Righthaven, in many instances, were perfectly valid and I was glad someone was making them. This judge is NOT saying that they weren't meritorious.

No, he's saying something worse, that Sherm and his partners were sloppy idiots who failed on a major technicality. And I guess I should've known they would.

There is one promising post-script, however. The Review-Journal, which had really only covered their own unique copyright lawsuit campaign when they sued Angle, did cover this decision. You know, like a newspaper should. And, as of this writing, it's the second-top story on their website, so they're not burying it. Carri Geer Thevenot even got sniveling comments from Gibson such as:

"It's important to recognize that Righthaven respects the judiciary and respects judicial decisions."

Also:

"We certainly hope that we will be given that opportunity with respect to the other cases that have standing at issue. But that is with absolutely no disrespect to Judge Hunt and his decision."

It's quite unlikely that Thevenot would've been able to cover this quite so properly if Sherm were still in charge. So there's that.

Why Sherm Frederick Is No Longer The Publisher of The R-J

I just made that groovy chart. Click on it to enlarge and look closer if you wish. It shows, in raw numbers, why former R-J publisher Sherman Frederick has been reduced to innocuous columnist and discredited political analyst.

The latest newspaper circulation data, produced by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, came out this past week, reporting the R-J's average circulation for the six-month period ending March 31.

The story here is in the Big Dipper segment of the graph:


See that ski-slope decline and sudden bounce-back? That represents what happened in the circulation snapshots taken in September 2009, March 2010, September 2010 and March 2011. The blue line is Sunday circulation and the red is average Monday-Friday circulation.

For some reason -- and, of course, I'll speculate in a moment -- the R-J shed a whopping 18 percent of its Sunday circulation between September 2009 and September 2010, the last full year of Sherm Frederick's reign. Of that, the paper lost a shocking 15 percent of its circulation in just six months!

The paper's Sunday number fell so low -- to 166,797 as of Sept 30, 2010 -- that I had to double and triple check it because I couldn't believe it. That's less than the weekday circulation from just six months earlier. It's a number that dropped the R-J's Sunday circulation to levels not seen since the early 1990s when, of course, this county had about half its current population.

Holy crap! Now, perhaps Sherman Frederick will blame his paper's bad skid on the freefalling economy, but the economy actually began its tailspin in 2008. Just look at what happened to the R-J's circulation between September 2007 and Sept 2009:


Now what was it that happened during that span? Why, oh, why would the circulation suddenly surge from its March 2009 to its September 2009 reporting periods? What was it? Gosh...I can't remember...


OH! That's right! Great, expensive journalism, which Sherman Frederick viewed throughout his tenure as unnecessary, led to a sudden spike in subscriptions and interest. The only way to read the Pulitzer-winning Las Vegas Sun in print is to buy it folded inside the Review-Journal. In the depths of the recession, the Sun handed the R-J a lovely bump that actually buffered it from the worst of the storm. It's hard to fathom any other explanation.

So what the hell happened to the R-J to see its circulation disastrously collapse between March and September last year? It's very, very hard to say. That really should have been a period of increased circulation and interest given that the state was engrossed in its most important and fascinating U.S. Senate battle, the Harry Reid-Sharron Angle clash. What, oh what, might have turned off readers?


Is that too simplistic an explanation? Sure. But there was some anecdotal evidence that Democrats at least were canceling subscriptions and were being encouraged to do so, to boot. I even took one to task because she also was supposed to be critiquing the paper for a liberal blog.

It may not be a coincidence that this dramatic decline took place over a summer when Sherm Frederick was going through a series of very significant health crises. But, really, he's not out there personally selling the papers to people, so what could have so, so wrong?

My recent interview with the R-J's editor, Michael Hengel, might shed some light. I had heard that there was a circulation gain coming in the latest reporting period, and Hengel confirmed that without giving specific numbers. He explained it thus:

We’ve been aggressively selling [the newspaper] and I think there wasn’t as much or as strong of an effort to sell it. You’ve got to market yourself, you’ve got to ask people to buy it.

In other words, for whatever reason, Frederick, uh, stopped marketing the newspaper. Could he have been distracted by his health? Sure. Could he have been so consumed in his political obsession that that also led him to neglect the fundamentals of his business? Sure.

Any which way, numbers are cold and unbiased. Sherm Frederick was canned in mid-November. Between Oct. 1 and March 31, Sunday circulation rebounded 14 percent and weekday circulation shot up 10.5 percent. That's gigantic, but there's no way to drill in and see if Sherm started some new initiative that bore this fruit. From what it sounds like, Hengel is saying the sales efforts began when he and new publisher Bob Brown took charge.

Frederick recently attacked me out of pretty much nowhere for having been prepared to cover the Las Vegas Sun's possible second Pulitzer in three years. (They were finalists which, had they not won in 2009, would have been the farthest any Vegas publication had ever gone.) After I non-responded, he took another stab at bolstering his devastating legacy with this malarkey:

First, I did not leave the Review-Journal in "grave jeopardy".

When I left the R-J after open heart surgery and prostate cancer surgery, the newspaper had financially survived the greatest recession (or was it a depression?) in our lifetimes. I don't take full credit for that. I had a stellar team with me. We were in as solid as a financial position as any newspaper in the country. Probably better.

Now, the fundamentals of the company may be sound, although you don't usually unceremoniously dump your top guys after decades when things are on the upswing. Either way, though, when you preside over tanking circulation of this magnitude, it's a big disingenuous to suggest you walked away with the ship sailing smoothly.

Sherm had played fast and loose with circulation figures before, as I pointed out a few years back. This, you see, is when and why he actually began despising me. He had told his Sunday readers at the time that the R-J had enjoyed a circulation increase when, in fact, the Sunday circulation for that period had fallen. It was his daily circulation that had posted a modest rise.

But let's look at the big picture again to see just how badly Frederick's tenure failed. I compiled this with the ABC data available going back to Sept. 2001, so we get a full decade to review:


The newspaper's Sunday circulation peaked, it seems, at 229,000 in March 2003. (At that time, the Sun was a full-service newspaper that was delivered in tandem with the R-J on the weekends but on weekdays was delivered in the afternoon.) After that, despite a massive economic, tourist and population boom, Sherm's R-J stagnated or steadily trickled down. There were two moments of upswing, when the Sun ceased to be a separate weekday daily in 2006, pushing a whole load of subscribers over to the R-J column, and then when the Sun got its Pulitzer. On each occasion, Sherman Frederick's R-J failed to hold on to these externally-gotten gains.

In his recent diatribe against me, Frederick suggested that my media criticism is predictable: R-J bad, Sun good. Of course, that's blatantly untrue. I believe the R-J had several tremendous reporters and writers who deserve a bigger audience, more resources and stability that comes from leadership that embraces change and new media.

So the good news is, they're on their way. The bad news, for Sad Shermy, is that the numbers don't lie and his tenure was a bust.

Review-Journal Plans To Charge For App

A couple weeks ago, I chatted with the new Review-Journal editor, Michael Hengel, who in December took over following the ousters of both the paper's longtime editor and publisher. I just posted a slightly trimmed, 18-minute version of that discussion in the podcast feed, and you can hear it by clicking here. Also, you can right-click here to download it and listen whenever you wish.

The headline from the interview, however, was that sometime in the next few weeks, the R-J will unveil a smart-phone app that, Hengel said, they expect to charge for in some manner.

Here's that exchange, which started after I noted to Hengel that my reporting showed that one of the things he was known for at the Pine Bluff newspaper was instituting a paywall, meaning readers had to pay for access to some or all of the news content:

Friess: Are you looking at a paywall for the Review-Journal?
Hengel: Not on the website.
Friess: Ok…
Hengel: First of all, you’ve got to understand, and I think you do, it’s not just my decision on something like that. It’s primarily not my decision. But some of the things being considered are everything mobile, everything other than what you see on the website may at some point have some pay element to that. Right now it’s all fluid.
Friess: When you say everything other than the website, what are you referring to?
Hengel: Like mobile, an app, an iPad, an Android, a Kindle, phones…
Friess: You don’t see anywhere where the R-J will have a paywall similar to what The New York Times just started?
Hengel: I wouldn’t go so far as to say never, but I don’t see that in the immediate future, no. We’re not talking about that right now.
Friess: The Las Vegas Sun already has a mobile version of their website. If you look up their site on an iPhone, you get their mobile site. You don’t do that with the R-J site. Will that be coming?
Hengel: Yes.
Friess: When?
Hengel: Real soon. Within weeks.
Friess: What about an app?
Hengel: Yes.
Friess: Is it already in development?
Hengel: Yes.
Friess: And when will we see that?
Hengel: That’s also the same time. We don’t have a date, but it will be within weeks.
Friess: What will the app be? What will we get on it? And if you’re a home subscriber, do you get it for free? Is there any deal for that?
Hengel: Well, I can’t answer that right now. I’m sure there’s going to be some cost, I don’t know whether the cost will be for the app itself or for the app and some kind of subscription. That hasn’t been decided. But under consideration, Steve, is the fact that we’ll charge for some of those.
Friess: Will you charge for the mobile version of the website or just the app? They’re two different things.
Hengel: I know. They’re similar. They’ll look a lot the same, but… I’m not trying to dodge you, I just don’t know.
Friess: Are there newspaper applications you’ve looked at that are models for what they R-J’s one would be?
Hengel: Yeah.
Friess: Which one?
Hengel: The Associated Press.
Friess: They have an app people pay for?
Hengel: No. But that’s the look and the feel. Made by the same company.

So, obviously, the next thing I did was download the AP's free app and it's actually pretty awesome. But I do wonder how practical it is for the R-J to charge for a mobile app that does much the same thing when the AP's also has a "LOCAL" tab that then lists all of the R-J's stories, too. See?


Can they tell the AP to kill the Vegas section of their app? That would kind of ruin some of the charm and convenience of the AP's app, which I've grown to love since Hengel pointed me to it.

Clearly, they're still figuring this out, as the entire news industry is. It's just so great that they're finally on the case, anyhow. At a luncheon speech I attended two days before our interview, Hengel spoke smartly about the importance of being mobile, citing data that indicated half of all news consumed online came from referral via social media. He gets it.

While we're on this topic, though, I have to say that the crack Web staff at the Sun is bafflingly absent on this. Yeah, there's already a mobile version of the website, but where's the Sun app?!? So far as I can see, the only app Greenspun Media Group has put out there is the Las Vegas Weekly's, and it contains absolutely no news content from the magazine or site. Really, it should just be called the Vegas.Com app, since it's a city guide, not anything relevant to the Weekly as a publication. My editor, Sarah Feldberg, is awful cute in this explainer video, though it's ironically only available in iPhone-hated Flash:




See what I just did there? I took their video and presented it to you here. But I can't do that with any of the video on the R-J's website, and Hengel unfortunately doesn't think that's a problem. I noted to him that I can't download it or subscribe to it or embed it or any of the other means we are all accustomed to consuming and sharing such material. "We don’t have any changes planned for video," he answered.

Then there was this:

Friess: How much longer are you going to have Nate Tannenbaum doing that daily thing that he does?
Hengel: I have no plans to change anything.
Friess: Is it popular? Do people look at it?
Hengel: Yeah.


So I went back to take a look and, you know, it's a much-improved product. It's certainly a smoother, more sophisticated production and there's a lot less of staring a Nate and his see-through dress shirts. (Sorry! Nothing happens when you click above. See the problem?)

But I still don't get it. These videos are teasers to what's coming in the newspaper the next day, right? Wouldn't it make sense to allow people to get it as a podcast or to find it in places other than the R-J website? If you're watching it on the site, you're already, umm, on the site and you've already seen the headlines. It's not like they're putting links to the stories discussed within some vicinity of the video. The entire enterprise is mystifying.

There's much more in my Hengel interview, which you can hear for yourself as I mentioned. We talked about the albatross he bears trying to convince the community that the paper's news coverage is not tainted by right-wing bias, his perspective on the odd Sun-RJ relationship, how he reacts to all of the Pulitzer talk surrounding the competition. (This interview was done three days before the Sun was a Pulitzer finalist, so I was asking in order to have some comments in my back pocket in case the Sun won.)

Just one last nugget, though. I noted to Hengel that since he and Brown took over, there's been a notable and welcome absence of petty personal attacks going back and forth between the R-J and the Sun and others. I also noted that neither he nor Brown had taken a column, as Frederick and Mitchell had. His response:

If you’re going to write, you’ve got to do some reporting. If you’re going to be a columnist, you’ve got to do some reporting. There aren't very many columnists who can just offer opinions and be really compelling. So if you’re not going to do any reporting, that’s what you’re left with.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

* * *

One final amusing and tangentially related note. This is the info on iTunes for the AP's news app.

I love that! "Rated 9+ for "Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence." This is an app that presents news, photos and videos about wars, disasters, the most horrific crimes. Something tells me the violence is somewhat more than "infrequent" and "mild." As for being "realistic," I've always thought reality was about as realistic as you can get, but what do I know?

Sad Shermy Socks Steve & Sun

Some of you expect me to blast back at disgraced former Review-Journal publisher Sherman Frederick after a desperate-for-attention post -- yes, he still blogs, who knew? -- in which he finds fault in both the Las Vegas Sun's multiple award-winning series on Vegas health-care problems and me for being in position to cover that paper's possible second Pulitzer in three years. I did toss off a few quick replies via Twitter, but I'm otherwise going to abstain. Frederick is a sad, infirm, irrelevant man whose tenure at the helm of Nevada's largest newspaper will be remembered for:

(a) Catty, juvenile, occasionally off-colored feuds with competitors and political adversaries
(b) A disastrous inability to capitalize in circulation numbers on one of America's most intense population booms in history
(c) A failure to comprehend or embrace new media in a meaningful or convenient way, thereby placing his entire enterprise in grave jeopardy
(d) Some of the most foolish and now demonstrably inaccurate political commentary of our age
(e) Having, through a completely inappropriate and obsessive jeremiad, undermined the credibility of several fine and hard-working reporters attempting to cover the most important Senate race in state history
(f) This somnolent, mumbling, coffee-cup-fondling moment of greatest glory, a Fox News appearance:

and

(g) Having his inaccuracies vivisected on national TV and later being so tone-deaf as to be proud of this:

So, yeah. I'm gonna lay off. It's the only appropriate thing to do.

The First Words On The New R-J Editor

Could a pay wall be in the offing for the Las Vegas Review-Journal's website?

I have no idea if there are any such plans, but that is the most notable Web-related innovation that incoming R-J Editor Michael Hengel has to his credit as editor and publisher of the Pine Bluff, Ark., Commercial. That ought to make a lot of Vegas cheapskates a little antsy.

I held off on writing about the new editor, announced in yet another news dump by Stephens brass on the day before Thanksgiving, because I wanted a chance to actually, you know, learn something about him. And so I did some checking. He starts on Dec. 6.

As it happens, there's good news and bad news.

The bad news is aforementioned. According to Pine Bluff Commercial managing editor Scott Loftis, Hengel "has some deep convictions about what the future of newspapers is and where the business is going." The Commercial recently put its content behind a pay wall -- it's free for print subscribers, $11 a month for non-subscribers -- so that gives us a fairly good idea of where Hengel thinks it's all going. And he may be right, seeing how other publications are going this route, but that's generally hit this sort of discouraging news -- or encouraging if you're part of the Internet-Must-Be-Free sector.

It's unclear whether a paywall for the R-J would even work with the Las Vegas Sun sitting out there happy to poach the eyeballs that turn away. The Pine Bluff paper has no competition, so far as I can gather, not even from TV stations since it is in the Little Rock regional market. Also, the R-J's site itself would need some dramatic improvements to make it even worth paying for, and the Pine Bluff paper's website is even more primitive so it's unclear Hengel has that in his DNA.

So what's the good news?

For one thing, Mr. Hengel is exceptionally well-liked. Loftis said: "I've been in the journalism business for 22 or 23 years. This is the best boss I’ve ever had. He’s very fair, he’s very respectful. He can make a tough decision when he has to. This guy’s awesome."

OK, so this comes from a guy who still works for him and maybe is being political, although he really seemed earnest and sincere. Sadly, the Pine Bluff paper is fairly small in every way -- 12,000 circulation, four full-time reporters -- so it's not like the sieve that is the R-J, where there's always a few folks willing to gossip off-record.

But what the public in Vegas really wants to know is whether Hengel will arrive with a political or philosophical axe to grind. Former editor Thomas Mitchell, of course, joined obsessive ex-publisher Sherm Frederick in an open jeremiad against Harry Reid, inserting himself into the dynamic of the U.S. Senate race in a way that made his reporters' coverage appear tainted whether it was or not.

What about Hengel? Check out this exchange:

Friess: What do you know about Mike's political views?

Loftis: Nothing, which I think is as it should be.

Friess: Really?

Loftis: I really don’t. Mike has not indicated to me even that he leans one way or the other politically. I haven’t seen any decisions made that would reflect that, either. And I think that’s the way it ought to be.

Well, dang, so do I. An editor who isn't interested in personally being part of the political conversation? What a novel idea!

Another positive bit of news: Hengel understands issues of race. He has to, given that Pine Bluff is majority African-American. There are black city and features editors as well as a black staff writer. Could it be that he's a man who believes his staff ought to reflect the demographics his publication serves? One can hope. I suspect he'll be utterly blinded by how white his new newsroom is, especially given the rapidly changing demographics of Las Vegas.

So far, there are reasons to be optimistic. Hengel kindly wrote back to me via email to postpone an interview with me until he gets his "feet on the ground in Las Vegas." I look forward to it.

"It’s a home run for them," Loftis said. "I know he’s coming from a smaller paper, but this guy is the best I’ve ever been around."

Great. That's a start.

This week's LVW Col: The R-J's troubling future

So I thought about the changes at the R-J for a few days and here's my post-game analysis for the Las Vegas Weekly. Read on! -sf

Why the sudden changes at the Review-Journal
may be a very, very bad thing

By STEVE FRIESS

The more I think about it, the more I worry.

Like many in Las Vegas, my first reaction to the sudden dismissals Friday of Sherm Frederick as publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Thomas Mitchell as R-J editor was to smile. The two had failed the newspaper and the community in spectacular ways for years, Sherm by becoming an arrogant, obsessive enemy of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Mitchell by being so openly hostile to all things related to the Internet.

But it’s not as simple as that, is it? The actual changes that were made could, in fact, harm Nevada journalism even more than leaving these ineffective, visionless men in their places.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com

The R-J's "Successes" Enumerated

I'm in the midst of a debate with a journalist friend who finds it ridiculous that the mighty Stephens clan would bother sucking up to the most powerful senator in America after the largest newspaper they own went on a years-long jeremiad to get him fired. What a crazy idea, huh?

Well, I've listed the other possibilities. But click on this to read it more easily:

That's a scan of a full-page ad the R-J has been running for a few weeks. If these things were true, then the Frederick-Mitchell tenure at the newspaper would not possibly be viewed as anything other than an unmitigated success. It claims the ReviewJournal.Com enjoys the biggest monthly uniques and pageviews, that the paper is read by 720,000 different people a week, that their total monthly online and print audience is more than 3.25 million people. There's been very robust increased web traffic, according to this, to several different R-J-related web properties.

They use the phrase "No one else comes close" after every claim. ("No one can do more" was already taken.)

Perhaps the claims in the ad are suspect -- I understand that part of the R-J's readership spike comes from links from the Drudge Report, which means a huge portion of the audience of is of absolutely no interest to local advertisers anyway -- or there are other things going on here.

More On The Review-Journal's Housecleaning

I'm hearing burblings that Sherman Frederick and Thomas Mitchell will be spinning that Reid victory was not the coup de grace that ended their regime. I'm fairly confident -- and have sources that have provided some proof -- that it played a pretty big part, but the trouble with any spin whatsoever is that the other alternatives at least as equally if not more professionally bad.

You see, Sherm may be leaving because of his health issues, but that doesn't explain Mitchell's reassignment or the sacking of the GM, Allan Fleming. That's a wholesale housecleaning and it was prompted by something. So, if they weren't sacrificed on that altar, what other choices are there?

* Revenues aren't satisfactory.

* Circulation isn't satisfactory.

* The news product isn't satisfactory.

* The Internet presence isn't satisfactory.

* The image of the company isn't satisfactory.

Pick one, boys!

I find it very doubtful the Righthaven lawsuits issue played into this. Mitchell had nothing to do with that, but he did certainly participate in the Reid-bashing and could be seen as having caused many of the above-listed possibilities. Steve Stern of Stern & Co., which is the subject of one of the Righthaven lawsuits, has a different take, but I think he's engaging in some wishful thinking.

There's just a lot that's weird about all of this, most notably the fairly shoddy way Frederick, Mitchell and Fleming are treated in the R-J story that announces the changes. It opens:

The Las Vegas Review-Journal today named a new publisher to replace longtime publisher Sherman Frederick.

Huh. We didn't even know he needed replacing! The guy's been publisher for, well, we don't really know from the story. He's also a major public figure. If this was a mutually happy parting, the lead would have cast Frederick as the main character. You know, like:

Stephens Media CEO and Review-Journal publisher Sherman Frederick retired today, leaving behind a tenure [insert most important legacy, if any, here.]

The fact that Mitchell's reassignment was held to the last paragraph is just amazing and really, really insulting to him. His own newspaper now thinks of his tenure as an afterthought. And, again, there's no standard-issue biographical information on his tenure, not a thumbnail of his career or a quote about his accomplishments or even his age.

And Fleming? Not even worth a digital inch. After all this time. Awkward!

Oh, by the way, it's been pointed out to me that the comments section for the R-J story has been closed and comments already left -- some mourned Sherm and Mitch's removals -- were removed. So they don't even want the public to be able to express their support for the men who led this enterprise for all those years. That's just cold.

Review-Journal Publisher, Editor AND GM Are Out

News just broke that R-J publisher Sherm Frederick is stepping down as publisher of the newspaper and as CEO of Stephens Media and Thomas Mitchell is out as editor. And yet, there's even more to it than that.

Not in their story? Allan B. Fleming, the Review-Journal's general manager, is also out. And Mitchell is getting a new gig created for him, some sort of senior editorial page editor role.

The article published by the R-J announcing this posits that Sherm is leaving for health reasons, and he certainly has had a rough year with surgeries for prostate and heart ailments this summer.

But the real explanation of what's happening here? Harry Reid won.

An extremely knowledgable source at the paper called this move a "shakeout" and a "head slap" from the top, meaning the owners back in Arkansas. He reminded me that the Stephens family are big Washington D.C. players, with banking interests and other issues to deal with in Congress. They may have supported Republican candidates, but the over-the-top efforts by Sherm Frederick and Thomas Mitchell to support Sharron Angle and unrelentingly beat up on the Senate Majority Leader was exceptional. It was nasty and personal and harmed the reporters' ability to have their work taken credibly, but even more importantly, if the Stephens clan wanted to make nice with Harry Reid, the only way to do it was to get rid of Frederick and Mitchell.

It's entertaining that the newspaper tried to soft-pedal this news, leaving out the Fleming angle and reducing to the very last paragraph the fact that Mitchell was also departing from his role. Those are the clues that this is a much bigger change than just an ailing publisher choosing to reduce his stress load.

Two of the announced changes, though, look like Titanic deck chair shuffling. The company's chief operating officer Michael Ferguson ascends CEO of Stephens Media and advertising director Bob Brown will be publisher of the R-J. Brown has no significant journalism experience, and what this paper needs is someone in control of the purse who understands why they need more reporters and more resources. I fear an ad guy won't have that sensibility.

Still, there is one huge reason to be encouraged: They're going out looking for a replacement for Mitchell as editor. That means that for the first time in a couple of decades, that newsroom's leadership will have some serious new energy and ideas.

The stagnation has been crippling. If Stephens is courageous, they will bring in someone young and sharp from the outside who understands (or at least doesn't openly despise) the Internet, who can give that rudderless features section a solid redo, who can advocate for more resources so reporters can spend more time digging into important stories.

Plenty of questions left:

* Will Sherm, who will retain his Sunday column, keep up the feud with the Greenspuns and the Sun, or is there a chance for a little class and maturity to break out in Vegas newspaperland?

* Will the dramatic efforts to sue to protect copyrights continue via Righthaven?

* What becomes of "Director of Visuals" Al Gibes, City Editor Mary Hynes, Features Editor Frank Fertado and Managing Editor Charlie Zobell, all of whom have been in their posts for unusually long stints?

* If Mitchell had been outright fired, would he have filed for welfare unemployment benefits?

Righthaven Provides Wiggle Room, Re: Angle

I got Righthaven LLC chief Steve Gibson on the phone today to find out when he's going to sue Sharron Angle for lifting entire Review-Journal articles for months and, frequently, not even providing bylines or links.

It was an educational conversation.

His answer was that he would "have to take a look at it," but when I asked for his email to send him some links, he declined to provide it and told me: "I don't have time to review every case I receive a call about. I'm not going to do a spot evaluation. I can't do due diligence on alleged infringments and then give you an impromptu response to those alleged infringements."

Huh. I'd think they'd be really worried about this one. I mean, they've gone and sued very, very small websites with tiny, valueless audiences. Here we've got a case of the site of the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, which undoubtedly receives thousands of page views every day. It's an extremely high-profile case and the potential damages are probably among the highest Righthaven could seek. It would also generate national news, which is great for Righthaven, no?

Gibson also said he doesn't "talk about infringing matters that we don't pursue," which means they're using discretion after all. And I can totally see Sherm Frederick, never a paragon of consistency or logic, instructing him to lay off Angle to avoid generating embarrassing headlines for the candidate. Would Sherm do the same for Harry Reid? Duh. Of course not.

"There are probably millions if not billions of infringements we won't be able to address," Gibson told me. "It doesn't weaken our position at all. ... Two wrongs don't make a right. Two infringers doesn't make an innocent infringer."

Gibson continued to trumpet the fact that his firm hasn't been ideologically driven. But that's precisely why this is the perfect test case, isn't it?

"You've seen Righthaven make claims against left-wing sites, right-wing sites. Rightaven has even been tied to the Obama Administration. [Some on the Web] believe because I'm from Chicago, because of the background I have and the fact that we went after some right-leaning sites, somehow I'm doing this at the behest of Barack Obama. We're going to displease a lot of people because we do not discriminate on politics or what have you."

Fascinating. I tried to get him to explain, then, how he decides who to sue and who not to sue. He kept talking about how that's proprietary and that he may soon have competitors in this space. But he did say this:

"I can tell you this much. We have an automated search matrix that generates a tremendous amount of reviewable content, an absolutely tremendous amunt of reviewable content. ... I just can't be in the business of commenting on every possible infringment. I wouldn't get anything done."

After the interview was over, by the by, he asked me out to lunch so he can earn me as a client. In fact, he asked me in the beginning of the interview, too. In the beginning I redirected us to what I wanted to discuss, and at the end I tried to explain how inappropriate that question was given that I'm covering this situation and his company as a journalist.

He didn't understand.

Will the R-J Sue Sharron Angle?

Now the fun starts.

As you may know, the Review-Journal has turned over copyrights on its articles to Righthaven LLC to sue dozens of websites and organizations for damages for reposting entire or large swaths of R-J stories. I have supported this effort as an innovative approach to protecting media copyrights, writing a Las Vegas Weekly column and appearing on KNPR to defend the practice.

That doesn't mean I mind watching publisher Sherm Frederick and editor Thomas Mitchell -- both full-throated Sharron Angle supporters and Ahab-like Harry Reid haters on an order unbecoming people who wish their newspaper's coverage to be respected -- wander into a political pickle.

Y'see, based on their own statements and those of Righthaven chief Steven Gibson, they now have absolutely no choice. They must sue Sharron Angle. For damages.

Check this out.


The Angle campaign today posted 845 of the 1,651 words in Laura Myers' Sunday story. That's more than half of it. It would be fun to see how many readers on SharronAngle.Com were so compelled by this brilliant piece to hop over to the full article; I'm betting not many.

But wait, there's more!

The campaign posted the entirety of an August 13 piece in the R-J about new poll results...


...and an Aug. 9 Glenn Cook column on the campaign...


...and an Aug. 6 editorial about the race...


...and on and on. There are several more examples, dating all the way back to a June 9 story about her primary win, see?


I post all these screenshots to help the Righthaven folks in their litigation, seeing how the Angle folks may soon pull all of this down after this post appears. That really doesn't matter to Righthaven's stated modus operandi, though; thousands of readers have seen these stories on SharronAngle.Com and not ReviewJournal.Com; that's a clear loss of the eyeballs that translate into advertising revenue.

The Righthaven approach is to sue first, ask questions later and Gibson has been proud of not taking an ideological slant in which sites they attack. This means even if Angle takes these down, they still must sue her and pursue damages. And the lawsuit has fascinating potential: They could subpoena the web traffic data for a major political candidate's site, something I don't believe journalists have ever been privy to. C'mon, Thomas "Open Records" Mitchell! You can get that for us!

What Righthaven cannot do is send a friendly, "Hey, that ain't cool, take it down" note because they've established that they don't do that. And, again, I'm OK with that. Scare the crap out of 'em, even the cat blogger. You're hard-core badass. Don't soften up now!

By the way, when I first inquired about the R-J's policy earlier this year as the lawsuits began landing, I was told I would remain in bounds with the R-J policy if I used the material under "fair use" -- that is, I was excerpting pieces for legitimate commentary -- or if I provided a headline and the first paragraph or two of a story, with a link.

You know, like this:


Angle's campaign has done neither and has been flouting the R-J's copyrights for more than two months now.

Righthaven must sue. It took effort to find the cat blogger, but this one was on a major candidate's site, there in plain sight. If they don't sue Angle, they provide dozens of infringers with a clear example of the company's inconsistency in defending its copyright. And there goes the whole enterprise, right there.