Tag: Otis Sanford

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Serendipity and Synchronicity: Simultaneous Homages to Racial Harmony, 3-30-17

CREDIT: JB

JB

“We must embody the character and teachings of Dr. King and demonstrate that no one has a corner on the market of the principles of patriotism, compassion, and equality. There are times in our lives that we cannot change the direction of the wind, but there are always opportunities to adjust ourselves for a more just America. And let us pray that we can proclaim that it is through the peace that comes with understanding that we should, we must, and we shall overcome.”

— Peggy Wallace Kennedy, daughter of the late Governor George Wallace of Alabama, speaking to the Academy of Professional Family Mediators National Conference at the downtown Doubletree Hotel, Thursday, March 30. (Kennedy, center, is pictured here with Paula Casey (left) and Jocelyn Wurzburg, hostess for the event.)

Kennedy, a teen at the time of her father’s ill-fated 1962 pronouncement of “Segregation Today, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever” from a doorway of the University of Alabama, disagreed intensely with her father’s position, but, as she said in an interview with the Flyer, “I had no power to speak in my family.” She speaks now, frequently and powerfully, on the theme of racial equality, and has  joined U.S. Representative John Lewis, a hero of the 1965 Selma march, in a symbolic re-enactment of the crossing of the Edmund Pettus bridge there.

She believes that her father, who, late in life, after being wounded by an assassin, began trying to make amends, came to sincerely regret actions that he took, she said, not for reasons of the heart but for reasons of political expediency.,

JB

“It was in this particular Clayborn Temple, I was speaking on the Martin Luther King Celebration on this stage [in 1991], and Congressman Harold Ford walked in from this entrance here and what the audience was talking about was, they wanted Mayor Hackett out, and they wanted a black mayor. I really didn’t want to be the Mayor. Harold Ford walked in and I said…”Harold, you heard the people. Take leadership!”….That was the genesis of the People’s Convention. I did not seek the Mayor’s office…They said, “Dr. Herenton, we want you to be the Mayor. That would give it credibility.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be the Mayor.’ I was selected on the first round, 70-something percent, and all of a sudden, I said, I’ve got to run!”

— Willie Herenton, former five-times-elected Mayor of Memphis, speaking simultaneously in historic Clayborn Temple in Memphis on Thursday, March 30, on how he came to be a candidate and became the first black mayor of Memphis in 1991. (The occasion was the unveiling of Otis Sanford’s book, From Boss Crump to King Willie: How Race Changed Memphis Politics.)

Sanford (right, below), was interviewed on stage at Clayborn by Susan Thorp. The author, former managing editor of The Commercial Appeal and current holder of the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Economic/Managerial Journalism at the University of Memphis, was scheduled to appear also at Square Books in Oxford, MS, at 5 p.m., Monday, 4-3-17.

JB

Categories
Book Features Books

Otis Sanford’s From Boss Crump to King Willie.

Between the two giant pillars of Edward Hull Crump, the white Mississippian who established an enduring political dominion over Memphis in the early 20th century, and Willie Herenton, the five-times-elected black mayor whose seeming invincibility concluded that century, lies a tumultuous story worth telling.

And Otis Sanford, the former managing editor of The Commercial Appeal and now holder of the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Economic/Managerial Journalism at the University of Memphis, tells it with accuracy and grace in From Boss Crump to King Willie: How Race Changed Memphis Politics, hot off the University of Tennessee Press.

In a way unusual for a work of history, this book reads like a novel — its facts accounted for both in concise summaries of events and circumstances and in key moments that are rendered as scenes.

Among the latter is an account of how a chance encounter in 1991 between then Congressman Harold Ford and the Rev. Ralph White at a Union Avenue video store resulted in White’s church, Bloomfield Baptist Church, becoming the venue for Ford’s long-postponed “summit meeting” to determine the identity of a consensus black candidate for mayor.

Sanford follows up that revelation with choice reportage of the upstairs meeting at the church involving Ford, Herenton, and disappointed contender Otis Higgs while an auditorium of Herenton supporters, whose energetic wall-to-wall presence had basically called the congressman’s hand, waited impatiently in the church auditorium to hear Ford’s inevitable anointment of Herenton as the people’s choice.

Sanford’s book is a textbook case of how to handle the black-and-white realities of Memphis’ political evolution with appropriate shadings of gray. His narrative concludes before the lengthy period, after Herenton’s ascension to power, of the often grim public and private struggles for preeminence between the African-American mayor and the African-American congressman stemming from the implicit rivalry of these two monumental egos.

But that feud, after all, belongs to a different historical era, post-1991, which has been intermittently post-racial. Consider the overwhelming white support for A C Wharton, an African American, first as Shelby County mayor and, in 2009, as Herenton’s immediate successor as Memphis mayor, or Steve Cohen’s serial victories over black opponents in a 9th Congressional District that is at least two-thirds African American in population, and the comfortable win of Jim Strickland, another white, in 2015 over Wharton in a city whose increasingly black complexion is unmistakable.

Consider the consistent ability of white Republican candidates to prevail over black Democrats in all the Shelby County elections that have taken place in the 21st century, a period when the county at large, like the city, has had a majority-black electorate.

From the standpoint of Sanford’s narrative, such anomalies might be regarded as signals of a modus vivendi between the two dominant races, of a political balance of sorts that required both the deconstruction of white supremacy and the liberation and triumph of an erstwhile black underclass. A viable new order may somehow have been achieved, though undeniable inequalities of various sorts persist and just plain differences endure.

Sanford’s story is one of transformation — from an urban landscape under the domination of Crump, a de facto plantation boss whose quasi-benevolent attitude toward a black population enabled both his own immediate power and the stirrings of that population’s own ultimate abilities and ambitions.

The giant-sized convulsions that belong to the intermediate stages of this saga — the strikes and assassinations and political showdowns — are not overlooked. They are covered in satisfying detail, as are the more nuanced encounters between winners and losers in the chess games of our political history.

Sanford, whose astonishing objectivity as reporter and analyst continues to be featured in his weekly columns in the Sunday CA, knows not heroes and villains. His characters, both black and white, are presented with all the roundness and complex motivations they owned as real live people.

Categories
Cover Feature News

New Day at the CA (Again)

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

From outside those shiny windows of The Commercial Appeal headquarters at 495 Union, there’s a perception that things are tense inside. Over the years, the paper has been hit hard from many angles, toiling in a daily newspaper industry experts call “beleaguered” and “strained” when they’re trying to be nice about it (and “dead” when they are not).

Many cycles of newsroom layoffs and worries about future newsroom layoffs have created what is now a routine kind of stress at the CA, according to sources. But if, as expected, the Gannett Co.’s deal to buy the paper is done, that old tension will sharpen.

The Commercial Appeal will have a new owner, one that’s notorious for shrinking newsrooms. For an example, look 200 miles east to Nashville’s daily, The Tennessean. Last year, Gannett implemented its “Newsroom of the Future” project there, which entailed firing the newspaper’s entire newsroom and making them reapply for their jobs, a move that bled veteran reporters from the ranks in what’s been called a “massive exodus.”

If the Gannett deal is done, the CA will have had three owners in the span of about a year. The paper, which had been owned by the Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co. since 1936, was sold in April to the Journal Media Group. That lasted until October, when Journal Media announced that it was merging with Gannett.

Stormy skies and unpredictable seas, indeed. But inside the newsroom at 495 Union, there’s also an undercurrent of routine calm.

“There’s apprehension. A lot of people are concerned about job security and the kind of changes that might be coming,” says Wayne Risher, a business reporter for the CA and president of the Memphis Newspaper Guild. “I think it’d be the same no matter who the buyer is. Just the act of being sold again so soon after April 1st just has people kind of on edge. Still, everyone has a job to do. People are going about their business.”

The Deal

On October 7th, Milwaukee-based Journal Media Group and McLean, Virginia-based Gannett announced a deal that would merge Journal Media (which was six months old at the time) into the Gannett portfolio of newspapers. Gannett said it would pay $280 million (or $12 a share to Journal Media stockholders) for the 15 daily papers and 18 weeklies that Journal Media owned in 14 markets.

Market watchers told The Wall Street Journal that Journal Media was valued at $192 million when the Gannett deal was announced, meaning Gannett paid a fat premium ($88 million over market value) for the takeover.

But the deal was “highly attractive” to Gannett, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC], because it would add $450 million in annual revenues (the top line) and about $60 million each year to earnings (the bottom line).

But the deal would also consolidate some corporate and administrative functions that could save the combined companies $35 million annually. This (called corporate synergy) is a concept that means a combined company is more valuable together than as separate entities. It increases share prices to stockholders, and is usually what makes merger deals attractive in the first place. “Synergy” also likely means job cuts and service cuts and, according to the newspaper groups, they’ve found $35 million worth of them.

The deal would give Gannett a total reach into 106 local markets across the country, in addition to its flagship national paper, USA Today. The new papers would give Gannett’s total print circulation a bump of about 1.6 million. Websites for the acquired newspapers would add about 10 million unique digital visitors a month to Gannett’s digital network, for a combined total of about 100 million monthly unique visitors.

Gannett is a newspaper-only company now, having spun off its broadcast division last year, and it’s on the hunt to aggressively expand its print empire. Experts say print companies are cheap compared to years past, and Gannett is set to gobble them up.

Here’s how Robert J. Dickey, Gannett president and CEO, said the Journal Media purchase fits into the new strategy: “This transaction is an excellent first step in the industry consolidation strategy we have communicated to our shareholders and is a good example of the value-creating opportunities we believe are available.”

The deal still has to get approval from Journal Media shareholders and federal antitrust regulators, though few believe the deal will face much government pushback. If all goes according to plan, the deal will be done in the first three months of 2016.

Justin Fox Burks

What We Know

Unknowns abound about what might happen if Gannett does purchase The Commercial Appeal. But thanks to public merger documents filed with the SEC, we do know a few things (or, at least we know what the companies say):

•Newsroom layoffs: Gannett won’t lay off anyone in the CA newsroom (or the newsroom of any Journal Media paper) for one year after the deal is closed.

A clause in the merger document says “for a period of not less than 12 months” after the deal is done, Gannett is to “maintain the editorial staffing levels existing” just before the deal was done “in all newsrooms” of Journal Media Group and its subsidiaries.

However, Risher isn’t so sure the statement will hold. Attorneys for the Newspaper Guild said the clause isn’t legally binding and is more like a statement of intent between Journal Media and Gannett.

“If they don’t follow it — if they do come in and make wholesale changes — (the Guild) would have no standing,” Risher said. “No one outside of Journal Media and Gannett have any standing to do anything about any part of that agreement that doesn’t get followed.”

He said the Guild wouldn’t be able to file a grievance if Gannett went back on its word. Still, though, Risher said the clause does give some “reassurance that there won’t be any big changes right off the bat.”

•Customers: Nothing should change for subscribers or advertising clients of the CA. Journal Media says “subscriptions will continue uninterrupted.” Advertisers and “key partners” will continue to work with their current sales reps.

•Syndication: Content generated at the CA will be syndicated across a new network that will include all Gannett properties, called the “USA Today Network.” With it, Gannett hopes to “bring the nation’s largest news gathering force together.”

•Outside content: You’ll find USA Today content (and other Gannett news) in the CA in print and online. Journal Media says, however, that “Gannett is committed to investing in differentiated relevant local reporting.”

•Website: Commercialappeal.com will likely be integrated to the Gannett platform. The document was unclear as to whether or not we’ll see a newly designed website for the CA, which just got an overhaul this year, complete with a marketing campaign pumping its content.

Richard Thompson, a former CA reporter and now a Memphis media critic who writes the Mediaverse blog, said a USA Today-style website for the paper is one of the things he’s most dreading about Gannett’s possible ownership.

“It’s cookie-cutter,” Thompson said. “You want Memphis to have a website or a news service that reflects the value and the nature of the city. That’s one of the things you had [on commercialappeal.com] before Scripps started centralizing everything.”

•Benefits: No changes are expected for employees’ base pay, vacation, or insurance (at least through 2016).

•The Journal Media Group brand will disappear.

What We Don’t Know

•Management: “No decisions have been made yet” as to whether or not Journal Media managers will join Gannett. But leaders from the two companies will meet soon to “review staffing needs.” This could mean key leaders at the CA could leave.

•Layoffs: The merger document says, “certain jobs may be affected as plans are enacted to streamline operations between the two companies.” Laid-off employees will be offered a company-paid severance package and COBRA health insurance.

•Integration: “Specific integration plans have not yet been determined,” the merger document says. Though, it notes that The Commercial Appeal will be part of a network with papers such as The Arizona Republic, The Indianapolis Star, The Des Moines Register, and The Detroit Free Press.

•Newspapers: Journal Media was vague as to whether all of its papers will survive. It says that its portfolio of newspapers “complements” Gannett’s but doesn’t say outright that they don’t overlap. “We anticipate that we will be able to leverage our combined resources for the benefit of both readers and advertisers.”

Layoffs and Memphis

Layoffs have been frequent at the CA in recent years. The first question Memphians want to know is usually how many were let go in the newsroom?

All of this attention paid to one Memphis company may seem excessive to some. Why aren’t long, detailed news stories written about layoffs at every company?

Former CA editorial editor Otis Sanford said it’s simple: Reporters watch out for their communities. Sanford is now a media professor at the University of Memphis but he started as a Commercial Appeal reporter in 1977 and still writes a weekly opinion column. Sanford saw the first rounds of layoffs after he was promoted to managing editor in 2002.

People who really care about news and information in Memphis, Sanford said, know that the CA is best positioned to cover hard news, tell important stories, and uncover what’s been covered up.

“They want to see news covered, and they want to see [oversight on the] government — the watchdog responsibility that news organizations have. They want to see that fulfilled,” Sanford said. “That’s why they get worried when they hear about layoffs. They worry that they don’t have enough folks down there to check on city hall or county government or the school systems or the environment or education.”

Bruce Dobie is a former editor of the Nashville Scene and a former columnist for The Tennessean. He watched Gannett’s Newsroom of the Future project bleed reporters from the Nashville daily. Soon after that, Dobie and some investors tried to buy The Tennessean, according to a story by the Nashville Scene, but Gannett rejected the deal. Dobie and others have since purchased the long-defunct daily Nashville Banner and are trying to revive it.

Asked why he thought newsroom reductions hit so hard in a community, Dobie said that newspapers, in general, are still important because social media — while ubiquitous — is unreliable when it comes to reporting the truth.

“You have to have instruments of record that really attempt to arrive at the correct version of events in a city. Newspapers are still the best medium for that,” Dobie said. “I’d argue that newspapers are the best version of the truth that you can find in any American market today. So, it’s vital for us as citizens in our communities to have a common understanding of the environments in which we live, and for that we turn to newspapers.”

Gannett and the Newsroom of the Future

When it comes to American newspapers, nobody’s bigger than Gannett. The company has more than 90 papers all across the country and, of course, “America’s newspaper,” USA Today.

When asked what Gannett ownership of the CA may bring, many point to The Tennessean. Gannett has owned the paper since the 1970s, and it didn’t make any radical changes for many years. But in 2006, Gannett debuted its “Newsroom of the Future” project to reinvent its newsrooms to compete in a digital marketplace. It rolled out the new newsroom structure in four newspapers, including The Tennessean, last year. Gone were many of the traditional newsroom titles, replaced by job descriptions such as “community content editor,” “content coach,” “engagement editor,” and other online-era monikers.

To fill these jobs, The Tennessean fired its entire news staff and made them reapply for their jobs (under the new titles). In the end, according to the Nashville Scene, about 15 percent of the news staff was cut. That list included a travel and society writer, a copy editor, two high school sports writers, a Predators beat reporter, and a photographer.

The paper’s executive editor at the time, Stefanie Murray, wrote that the move was a “bold step forward in our evolution.”

But the move opened the floodgates. In the following months, many reporters, including several veteran beat reporters, became fed up with the company and moved on, according to the Scene.

“It was a massive exodus of people,” Dobie said.

Whether Gannett will take such drastic measures at the CA remains to be seen. However, Risher said someone asked Gannett CEO Dickey about the move to fire everyone and have them reapply for their jobs, and he said it was a model the company wasn’t sticking with.

Dobie said such cutbacks in the newspaper business are not unique to Nashville or even Gannett. The company has to show stock value growth to shareholders, and in an age of declining print revenues, cuts are the next preferred method to get there.

Ken Paulson agreed. He spent nearly 20 years working with Gannett. He was one of the first team members at USA Today and rose to become the paper’s editor-in-chief. He’s now the president of the First Amendment Center and dean of the College of Media and Entertainment at Middle Tennessee State University.

Paulson said he’s not a Gannett apologist, but he said there have been “countless examples” of new owners making newsroom cutbacks all over the country and pointed to recent examples at the Los Angeles Times and ESPN.

“New owners are always trying to improve profit margins,” Paulson said. “I suspect there will be that kind of scrutiny applied to every newspaper Gannett owns. … If you’re a reporter in Memphis, you have every right to wonder [about layoffs], but that would be the case no matter which ownership interest came in.”

Newsroom cuts and even the threat of newsroom cuts made it tough for some to stomach a news report last week from the Milwaukee Business Journal. The paper reported that if the Gannett deal closes on time, Journal Media Group CEO Tim Stautberg would get a payday of $4.56 million for less than a year’s work.

Gannett Will Dominate Tennessee

Another fact about Gannett’s possible purchase of Journal Media emerged in analysis following the news announcement. If the deal gets done, Gannett will own nearly every major newspaper in the state of Tennessee.

It owns the The Tennessean, The Jackson Sun, The Daily News Journal (Murfreesboro), and The Leaf-Chronicle (Clarksville). The new deal would give it The Commercial Appeal and The Knoxville News Sentinel. (The Chattanooga Times Free Press remains privately owned by WEHCO Media, a family company.)

For those with corporate media conspiracy theories, the Gannett deal in Tennessee is a smorgasbord. Gannett would theoretically be able to tell each of its editorial boards whom to endorse for public office.

Paulson said in all his years at Gannett, he never saw corporate intervention in editorial board policy. Why? ”It’s simple,” he said, ”money.”

“You have to remember that for a company like Gannett, profit is the greatest priority,” Paulson said. “There’s really no percentage in getting entangled in local politics. They’re looking for high (website) traffic numbers and as healthy a circulation number as they can deliver.”

Thompson said that he was less concerned about corporations as kingmaker and more concerned that news will lose its Memphis focus once reporters from across the state begin contributing to The Commercial Appeal.

“I think Memphis readers, Memphis people, are very news-centric, they know their news,” Thomspon said. He said the change might further diminish the CA‘s work on “heavy news.”

New Faces in High Places

Thompson’s fears are backed up by what Dobie said he saw in Nashville last year. At one point, he said, the publisher and the editor of The Tennessean had collectively lived in the city for less than 18 months.

“[Another problem] was the fact that the editors and publishers [Gannett] brings in to run these markets usually know very little about the character and soul and personality of the markets for which they’re supposed to be publishing a newspaper,” Dobie said.

Dobie predicted an “immediate change” in the management for the CA. That prediction corners one of the few concerns Sanford said he had with the Gannett deal, the possible replacement of newsroom leaders Louis Graham as editor and Mark Russell as managing editor.

For now, it’s largely a wait-and-see game for the CA. That game has been played for a long time by veteran employees. It’s by no means any fun, according to a former newsroom employee.

“One of the things that was hardest to deal with was this cloud of dread and uncertainty that hung over you every single day, because you kept thinking: Am I next?” the former staffer said, on the condition of anonymity.

Layoffs came in shocking waves over the years, the former employee said, and were unannounced and unexpected. One minute a colleague was there, and the next moment they were gone.

After landing another job, the former employee said he had a revelation.

“When I got that offer, I was thrilled that somebody wanted me,” the former employee said. “You had that whole Stockholm Syndrome where you’re treated as if you’re expendable. ‘You should give all you’ve got for [the paper], but just know we may get rid of you at any second.'”

Risher said the Guild’s contract will be recognized by Gannett and that his group will try to meet with the company this month. But, he said, he doesn’t have a whole lot of insight into the proceedings of the merger deal.

Risher was resigned to the purchase, however, noting that Gannett is probably good at making cuts by now, and that, as far as dealing with a new company, “We’ve been dealing with a kind of hostile management here going back 30 years.”

He said his CA colleagues soldier on inside those shiny windows at 495 Union out of a sense of duty, but also because the future is largely out of their hands.

“That’s all you can do,” he said. “It’s not going to do any good to worry about what might happen. We’ll just wait and see what comes and deal with it when it happens.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1327

Digital Appeal?

Your Pesky Fly has managed a few blogs in his time and is all too familiar with the phenomenon of uploading photos that look great in a preview but mysteriously post sideways or upside down. These things happen. But since receiving its new digital makeover there are some image-posting quirks at The Commercial Appeal that are so consistent they almost seem like a design choice. Take for example the “Kilroy was here”-style headshot.

So maybe the CA wants to show readers what these guys might look like peeking in a window?

In a few more extreme cases the images are cropped even higher. This is former CA managing editor Otis Sanford’s literal head shot as it appeared next to a story about his induction into the Tennessee Journalists Hall of Fame.

TV-5 anchor Joe Birch is also being inducted and was given the same hairy treatment. Of course Joe is immediately recognizable.

So Memphis

The corner of McLemore and Mississippi.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Expensive Secrets

Let’s cut right to the chase. The head of nonprofit Baptist hospital system, Stephen Reynolds, makes more than $3 million a year, and the head of nonprofit Methodist hospital system, Gary Shorb, makes more than $2 million, according to 2011 tax returns for the hospital systems.

Why do I bring this up now? Because a column on the op-ed page of The Commercial Appeal last week set off my inner Mr. Cranky.

The column by Albert R. Hunt, a columnist for Bloomberg View, was titled “U.S. health care sicker than we thought.” Hunt praised a recent story in Time magazine by Steven Brill about “the scam the U.S. health care system has become” called “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills are Killing Us.”

Hunt and Brill zeroed in on the fact that nonprofit hospitals, “the cornerstone of many communities, capriciously overcharge patients, sticking the powerless with exorbitant bills while paying lavish salaries to their executives.”

Another Brill bite: “In hundreds of small and midsize cities across the country — from Stamford, Conn., to Marlton, N.J., to Oklahoma City — the American health care market has transformed tax-exempt ‘nonprofit’ hospitals into the towns’ most profitable businesses and largest employers, often presided over by the regions’ most richly compensated executives.”

At the end of his column, Hunt wrote that “the system’s big stakeholders have well-connected lobbyists, are important campaign contributors or forces in their communities. They react to articles such as Brill’s, but really aren’t much worried. They are rich, powerful, and protected.”

Yes, they are protected, and one way they are protected is by local media. On March 3rd, CA editor Chris Peck used his column to write about health care and the newspaper’s meeting with Shorb, CEO of Methodist. The subject of salaries and Brill’s article apparently never came up. Or at least it didn’t make it into Peck’s column.

Perhaps that was because, as former CA editorial page editor Otis Sanford wrote in his column two years ago, “Salaries are always a touchy subject.”

Salaries are a touchy subject because people like to know what other people make, but most of them don’t like other people to know what they make. The salaries paid by nonprofits, if they are over a certain amount, are reported on tax Form 990, available online via guidestar.org to anyone with minimal curiosity and computer skills.

Some salaries are touchier than others. When former Flyer reporter Mary Cashiola left the newspaper to take a job as brand manager for the city of Memphis, the CA saw fit to publish her salary — a jaw-dropping $64,000. Twice. The CA and local television stations often report on the salaries of public officials, as they should. It so happens that women and minorities are heavily represented in those ranks, just as they are underrepresented in the executive suites of big business.

What Memphis media rarely do, however, is report the salaries of highly paid chief executives of nonprofits even when they are in the news. Nonprofits, foundations, and quasi-public organizations that get public funding and/or tax-exempt status have taken over a big slice of the functions governments used to do — the Riverfront Development Corporation, Overton Park and Shelby Farms conservancies, the Kroc Center, and charter schools to name a few. 

Since publishing the first-ever survey of local nonprofit salaries 20 years ago, Memphis magazine and the Flyer have periodically reported on nonprofit and corporate salaries. This is not wildly popular with the people in the surveys or, probably, some people in our sales department. But it makes no sense to report about, say, an athlete or celebrity making $10 million a year (they don’t care what you say and are not going to call you up) or a public employee making $64,000 or $200,000 and report nothing about the local people in the middle who are just as influential.

The backdoor way to do this is to let someone else do the dirty work. But why have Al Hunt use space in your newspaper to quote Steven Brill on something your own reporters can localize? It’s like doing an arm’s-length story about the National Enquirer breaking a sleazy story.

Except salaries are not sleazy. They’re serious business and may well be justified and then some. If it’s worth Steven Brill’s time and Al Hunt’s time and space in your product, and there’s a local angle that hits you in the face, it’s worth your time too.

City Beat columnist John Branston is a Flyer senior editor.

Categories
Opinion

The Commercial Appeal and Hospital Salaries

baptist_memorial_hosp.jpg

Let’s cut right to the chase. The head of nonprofit Baptist hospital system, Stephen Reynolds, makes more than $3 million a year and the head of nonprofit Methodist hospital system, Gary Shorb, makes over $2 million, according to 2011 tax returns for the hospital systems. That is not news to regular readers of this column, but it might be news to readers of The Commercial Appeal.

Why do I bring this up now? Because a column on the op-ed page of The Commercial Appeal this morning, Wednesday, set off my inner Mr. Cranky.

CAstory-jpg.jpg

The column by Albert R. Hunt, a Washington insider, television pundit, and columnist for Bloomberg View is titled “U.S. health care sicker than we thought.” Hunt lavishly praises a recent story in Time magazine by Steven Brill about “the scam the U.S. health care system has become” called “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills are Killing Us.” Brill’s story is a memory-choking 20,000 words so I am not going to link to it but you can find it easily enough if you want to.

Hunt and Brill zeroed in on nonprofit hospitals, “the cornerstone of many communities, capriciously overcharge patients, sticking the powerless with exorbitant bills while paying lavish salaries to their executives.”

Another Brill bite: “In hundreds of small and midsize cities across the country — from Stamford, Conn., to Marlton, N.J., to Oklahoma City — the American health care market has transformed tax-exempt “nonprofit” hospitals into the towns’ most profitable businesses and largest employers, often presided over by the regions’ most richly compensated executives. And in our largest cities, the system offers lavish paychecks even to midlevel hospital managers, like the 14 administrators at New York City’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center who are paid over $500,000 a year, including six who make over $1 million.”

At the end of his column, Hunt wrote that “the system’s big stakeholders have well-connected lobbyists, are important campaign contributors or forces in their communities. They react to articles such as Brill’s, but really aren’t much worried. They are rich, powerful, and protected.”

Yes they are protected, and one way they are protected is by local media not responsibly reporting readily available information on profits and salaries. Last Sunday, CA editor Chris Peck used his column to write about health care and the newspaper’s editorial board meeting with Shorb, CEO of Methodist. The subject of salaries and Brill’s article apparently never came up. Or at least it didn’t make it into Peck’s column.

Perhaps it was because, as former CA editorial page editor Otis Sanford wrote in his column two years ago, “Salaries are always a touchy subject.”

Salaries are a touchy subject because people like to know what other people make, but most of them don’t like other people to know what they make. That’s private, unless the salary is public information. The salaries paid by nonprofits, if they are over a certain amount, are reported on a publicly available tax Form 990, available online via guidestar.org to anyone with minimal curiosity and computer skills.

Some salaries are touchier than others. When former Flyer reporter Mary Cashiola left the newspaper to take a job as brand manager for the city of Memphis, The CA saw fit to publish her salary — a jaw-dropping $64,000. Twice. The CA and local television stations often report on the salaries of public officials, as they should. But the visuals are awful. And what about so-and-so? On Tuesday night, a WREG-TV reporter mentioned that Rick Masson, the newly appointed special master, will be paid $250 an hour. Co-anchor Richard Ransom correctly noted that lawyers in the schools cases are making more than that.

Whoa! Where ya goin’ with that, Richard? Co-anchor Claudia Barr raised an eyebrow and segued into the next story. Maybe Ransom and Sanford, now holder of an endowed chair of journalism at the University of Memphis, will explore this subject on WREG’s “Informed Sources.”

What media rarely do, however, is report the salaries of highly paid chief executives of nonprofits such as hospitals, even though that is also easily accessible public information and very much in the news. Nonprofits, foundations, and quasi-public organizations that get public funding and/or tax-exempt status have taken over a big slice of the functions governments used to do — the Riverfront Development Corporation, Overton Park and Shelby Farms conservancies, the Kroc Center, and charter schools to name a few.

For 20 years, Memphis magazine and the Flyer have periodically reported on nonprofit salaries, usually in the context of a news story or survey. This is not wildly popular with the people in the surveys or, probably, some people in our sales department. But it makes no sense to write about, say, an athlete or celebrity making $10 million a year (they don’t care what you say and are not going to call you up) or the mayor or some superintendent or division director making $64,000 or $200,000 and write nothing about the local people in the middle who are just as influential or more, and whose salaries are also public information.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that there are days and weeks when column writers struggle to find something to get exercised about. Occasionally speaking truth to power — local power that can bite back — is part of the job. The CA has some very able reporters who are well aware of the salaries paid to hospital executives and other heads of nonprofits. I know because I used to work there and have nagged a couple of my ex-colleagues about this.

The backdoor way to do this is to let someone else do the dirty work. But why have Al Hunt use space in your newspaper to quote Steven Brill in Time magazine on something your own reporters can localize? It’s like doing an arms-length story about the National Enquirer breaking a sleazy story.

Except salaries are not sleazy. They’re serious business, and may well be justified and then some. If it’s worth Steven Brill’s time and Al Hunt’s time and space in your product, and there’s a local angle that hits you in the face, it’s worth your time too.