DeWine, Ganley: Candidates on cruise control

IT'S NOW official that there will be NO debates at the Akron Press Club involving two Republican candidates who appear to have put their campaigns on cruise control. Both Tom Ganley, the GOP challenger to U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton, nor Mike DeWine, who is trying to unseat Atty. Gen. Richard Cordray, have unequivocally turned down invitations to debate their Democratic opponents.

As one who moderated many of the previous Press Club debates before stepping aside a couple of years ago, I'm not inclined to salute this wary twosome for their political wisdom and courage. For better or worse, debates come with the territory, particularly for these guys whose yearnings tell them they ought to be in political office for awhile until something better comes along.

Item: Ganley, the mega-auto dealer who is relying heavily on TV ads, did make a solo appearance at the Press Club last fall when he was running for the U.S. Senate. But he has flinched at the thought of facing an incumbent now that he is running for Congress. (He didn't even show up for Alex Arshinkoff's big finance dinner.) DeWine finally agreed to speak alone on Sept. 28 without the bother of an opponent staring him in the face. So Cordray has had to settle for an appearance sans DeWine on Oct. 7.

There has been a long tradition at the Press Club that when both candidates are invited, there would be an empty chair for either candidate who didn't show up. The Cleveland City Club has played by those rules, too. In this instance, however, Press Club board members tell me that club president Bruce Winges, the Beacon Journal editor, is skittish about having Sutton speak alone without offering Ganley another date for his solo even though he's already been there in a campaign mode. Inexplicably, Winges, in a conciliatory mood, is said to feel that unless he gave Ganley a similar opportunity now it would look too "political" by the Press Club. Good grief! Will there next be an agreement to have Ganley address the club's audience from his patio?

Time out for a little history here: Over the years Democrats have always agreed to debate their opponents. The late Rep John Seiberling never turned down a challenge from his opponent. When the Press Club series began a decade ago, neither Mayor Don Plusquellic nor former County Executive Jim McCarthy failed to show up at the Martin Center on time to face their rivals.

The rules of combat have now changed and the Press Club's front office is riding the fence when there shouldn't be the slightest question about what it should do. Why now?

When readers are converted into chatterers

IS THERE ANYTHING  more that one can add to the endless eulogies that are being intoned for the sadly imminent demise of the newspaper industry?   Probably not, although there is still talk in the front offices that somehow your daily newspaper will indeed survive.  But there is less clarity on what the survivors will look like.

Such were the guarded opinions of three Northeast Ohio editors who occupied the dais of an Akron Press Club luncheon program in the Martin Center on Thursday. And, I regret to note, there wasn't much said that suggested full confidence in the industry's future.   They agreed bravely and with collegiality that there would be a future, as well as agreeing on everything else that infected the revenues of their dailies - the Internet, the recession, the shrinking ad bases as well as the shrinking news room staffs that can only mean shrinking news coverage. And that budgetary retreat, of course, will fray the papers' tight ropes even more. 

The panel included Bruce Winges, the Beacon Journal's editor and vice  president (the veep title comes with the territory); Susan Goldberg, the Plain Dealer editor; and Jeff Gauger, the executive editor of the Canton Repository.   Unsurprisingly, they gave a lot of attention to electronic editions and home pages that prompt comments  in what is now the  buzzword of the new media generation - reader conversations.   As a later arrival in the blogging business after 40 years  in the newspaper world,  I suppose I should concede the benefits of readers chatting with each other, and even getting vulgar at too many times, although I'm not sure what they are.   And someday we may learn more about how electronic comments sold more print newspapers. 

I would agree that today's newspaper editors are being held hostage by faraway corporate owners who read dollar signs better than the stuff in news columns.  Even the great media Midas, Rupert Murdoch, has taken some major hits to his pocketbook with his overzealous aspirations of owning the entire industry.  Did he misread Wall Street's tea leaves?

The essential question today is how did the industry get to this swampy point.  Recession? it hurts.  Electronic media? Of course it had a role.    But you must roll back the tape for a quarter century to find the   beginning of the end. 

 I was happy to hear Goldberg suggest that newspapers simply weren't paying attention - not yesterday, nor last year - but a couple of decades ago when, as she put it, they were making profits of "20-30-40 pct."  and weren't motivated to be innovative. (The media and General Motors must have been sharing trade secrets on how to stand pat.)  But Wall Street was still dissatisfied with those fat profit margins and one of the marquee owners,  Tony Ridder,  from his richly provided outpost in California,  represented the corporate thrust to freeze hiring at the Beacon Journal for many months at a time to assure still greater profit margins.  It's been all downhill ever since.  (The staff was always assured the cutbacks would not hurt the product! Fat chance. )

Too bad.  We are now being told that even with lean news rooms the remaining readers will get the full measure of local coverage, investigative journalism and even some stories about the arts.  That's a nice try, but newsroom production requires people, not robotic efforts to join every paper in Ohio with single story sources.  The habit-forming  charm and consistency of the daily newspaper are no longer in play.  Competitive  reporting among newspapers is history.  And so the reader is the loser.  If reporters are limited to clinging to their jobs and not jumping out of bed at dawn to see whether he or she  was beaten by a newspaper up the road, the assembly-line stories become increasingly lifeless.  Will that be the price of survival? 

Journalists have been ridiculed over the years as "trained seals".  I used to laugh it off to disguise my bruised feelings.   Today I believe it would be fair to apply the term to the publishers who have presided over the decline and fall of their papers while being taken to lunch by their brokers.   

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