WILLIAM S. MORRIS, IV
WILLIAM S. MORRIS, III
DEREK MAY, married into MORRIS family, made Record Publisher,
now MORRIS President, now a man without a company, having helped run MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS' newspapers into the ground, including the Record. Champion at table tennis, invented a table tennis racket, gets huge coverage in Record for pingpong, obviously a neglected "sport."
Under $120 million sale of eleven newspapers, MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS retains ownership of White Elephant St. Augustine Record building at 1 News Place, from which $5 million Goss printing press was removed and sold ten years ago. St. Johns County Chamber of Commerce is one of the tenants, making it easy for dodgy developers' corporate spin cycle to be completed -- without even leaving the building.
The right-wing MORRIS family ran the Record with a whim of iron, running it into the ground with:
1. Refusal to sue anyone, ever for Open Records violations in St. Augustine and St. Johns County.
2. Refusing to engage in investigative reporting.
3. Failing to investigate St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, the Michelle O'Connell case, and local corruption issues.
4. Omitting facts from stories on government meetings if they embarrass government employees.
5. Refusing to quote public comment speakers at government meetings; we're persona non grata.
6. Firing longtime newsroom employees in an orgy of age discrimination.
7. Discriminatory and unsound employment policies, including drug testing of reporters and requiring that all employees own automobiles and have drivers' licenses.
8. Anti-Gay bigotry, including smirky, snarky coverage of our June 7, 2005 federal court victory in the Rainbow flags case.
9. Reflexively taking the side of the City of St. Augustine and St. Johns County governments, even on First Amendment violations, including the Rainbow flags case, the City's anti-artist ordinance, etc.
10. Talking down to its readers and appealing to their prejudices and fears.
11. Giving prominent play to fascists and racists, as with its emetic embarrassing endorsement of DONALD JOHN TRUMP for President (one of the few U.S. newspapers to do so), stating that it supports "traditional values" (read: greed and bigotry), while emitting a cranky January 2017 tabloid supplement filled with ridiculously right-wing views.
12. Practicing pay-to-play, giving any advertiser, whether government or corporate, the ability to spike stories, often with little more than a visit or a phone call.
13. Retaining as its Opinion and Fishing Editor the addled JAMES SUTTON, who insults activists and reformers, scribbling editorials without solid research, as when he attacked St. Augustine's beloved reform Mayor Nancy Shaver based on one call with City Commission NANCY SIKES-KLINE, whom he only identified as his ex-girlfriend later, after I sent him an e-mail, confusing an e-mailwith a blog post and attacking me as a "conspiracy theorist." SUTTON's arrest after druvubg under the influence of Ambien and alcohol got the usual St. Johns County coverup treatment, evidently resulting in SUTTON'S refusing to run any guest columns critical of Sheriff DAVID SHOAR (on the baseless basis that the Record could be "sued" for printing an opinion about a public figure. SUTTON's mentor was Flagler College Vice President and former St. Augustine Record owner A.H. "Hoppy" Tebeult, who would trash an entire month's Flagler College Gargoyle. SUTTON apparently never read New York Times v. Sullivan. No class. No courage. He needs to go. Now.
13. Retaining as its Opinion and Fishing Editor the addled JAMES SUTTON, who insults activists and reformers, scribbling editorials without solid research, as when he attacked St. Augustine's beloved reform Mayor Nancy Shaver based on one call with City Commission NANCY SIKES-KLINE, whom he only identified as his ex-girlfriend later, after I sent him an e-mail, confusing an e-mailwith a blog post and attacking me as a "conspiracy theorist." SUTTON's arrest after druvubg under the influence of Ambien and alcohol got the usual St. Johns County coverup treatment, evidently resulting in SUTTON'S refusing to run any guest columns critical of Sheriff DAVID SHOAR (on the baseless basis that the Record could be "sued" for printing an opinion about a public figure. SUTTON's mentor was Flagler College Vice President and former St. Augustine Record owner A.H. "Hoppy" Tebeult, who would trash an entire month's Flagler College Gargoyle. SUTTON apparently never read New York Times v. Sullivan. No class. No courage. He needs to go. Now.
14. Endorsing a stable of devious developer whore politicians like ex-Mayor JOE BOLES in 2014, when it actually stated it likes "Business as Usual" in City Hall. How gauche and louche.
15. Hiring its erstwhile sports reporter STUART KORFHAGE to be the "Development" beat reporter, taking handouts from the likes of DAVID BARTON CORNEAL as if they were holy writ. KORFHAGE is most noted for calling Nancy Shaver an "upstart" in the Record's status quo oriented coverage of the August 26, 2014 primary election, in which Shaver forced incumbent Mayor JOE BOLES into a runoff. The "Development" reporter writes like a sports reporter, who has a crush on all developers, while omitting criticism of local governments' illegal and improper means of approving development projects (campaign cash, denying citizens the right to cross-examine developers, cabining public comment and failure to disclose ex parte contacts before quasi-judicial hearings, etc., etc.)
16. Making its approach to covering the rich and powerful a honky-tonk medley of analingus, hagiography and hokum.
17. Lacking critical thinking skills, as when tatterdemalion termagant ex-Editor KATHY NELSON wrote that New York Times investigative reporter Walt Bogdanich "didn't make any friends" in the Sheriff's Deparmtent, had "no regrets" about the Michelle O'Connell story, and had "parachuted in."
18. Lax copy editing, leading NELSON to offer the opportunity to do it for free, earning the right to a drawing for a free meal.
19. Failing to attend key government meetings, or covering them days later, or basing coverage on handouts.
20. Generally practicing mediocrity and mendacity as its guiding light, earning the sobriquet "The Mullet Wrapper."
21. Fired cartoonist Ed Hall for this cartoon:
21. Fired cartoonist Ed Hall for this cartoon:
I've had some 70 columns and letters printed in our hometown paper (all unpaid). I treasure having a hometown paper. But the controlling MORRIS family once gave instructions not to print my views, and that fatwa is still given effect too often on the editorial and news pages of the WRecKOrd.
To GateHouse, I say with enthusiasm, "Thank you for parachuting in!" Vive le difference!
October 2, 2017 -- let's call it Liberation Day. Liberation from a newspaper that empowers KKK hates, John Birch Society and the repulsive rebarbative retromingent Republican political machine of corrupt St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR f/k/a "HOAR," a place where fourteen of fifteen City and County Commissioners are registered Republicans.
The MORRIS family ruined the Record. Reading long-ago articles in our St. Augustine Historical Society Research Library reveals that even twenty years ago, The Record was still investigating wrongdoing, as when journalist Margo Pope exposed Sunshine violations.
The greedy MORRIS family turned the Record into a third-rate newspaper. This empowered one party misrule and dull Republicans and developers' corruption, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, waste, fraud, abuse, flummery, dupery and nincompoopery.
The Record was founded by seedy segregationists, whose seedy successors printed page one articles defending segregation and quoting the then-Mayor threatening black school children with arrests, incarceration and lifetime unemployment if they dared join protests against segregation with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The seedy segregationists sold the Record to a railroad, which sold it and the Times-Union to MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS for $200,000,000 in 1982. In 2017, 35 years later, GateHouse bought the Record, T-U and nine (9) other MORRIS papers for only $120,000,000.
Unlike other Southern newspapers, which have covered the news they did not cover -- like Marilyn Thompson at the Lexington, Ky. Herald-Leader -- the Record never atoned for its segregationist past.
Look at the numbers. MORRIS bought the Record and T-U for $200 million in 1992. Now they're selling those two papers, and nine others, for $120 million in 2017, 35 years later.
It at best facetious for some dupey MORRIS family member loser to pretend to have hung the moon to emit happy horse poop about how the sale was "strategic." It was a fire sale, avoiding bankruptcy for the second time since 2011.
The seedy segregationists sold the Record to a railroad, which sold it and the Times-Union to MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS for $200,000,000 in 1982. In 2017, 35 years later, GateHouse bought the Record, T-U and nine (9) other MORRIS papers for only $120,000,000.
Unlike other Southern newspapers, which have covered the news they did not cover -- like Marilyn Thompson at the Lexington, Ky. Herald-Leader -- the Record never atoned for its segregationist past.
Look at the numbers. MORRIS bought the Record and T-U for $200 million in 1992. Now they're selling those two papers, and nine others, for $120 million in 2017, 35 years later.
It at best facetious for some dupey MORRIS family member loser to pretend to have hung the moon to emit happy horse poop about how the sale was "strategic." It was a fire sale, avoiding bankruptcy for the second time since 2011.
New York state based GateHouse buys flailing, failing local newspapers and turns them around.
It's done it often, most recently buying the Gainesville Sun and Daytona Beach News-Journal. Much of its marketing and editing is centralized, in liberal Austin, Texas.
It's done it often, most recently buying the Gainesville Sun and Daytona Beach News-Journal. Much of its marketing and editing is centralized, in liberal Austin, Texas.
The only thing the MORRIS family goobers know how to run is their mouths. It actually filed an antitrust suit against the PGA Tour, demanding real time golf scores for free -- golf round scores within the first fifteen minutes is mainly Useful to gamblers (like the MORRIS family), but not of interest to newspaper readers. MORRIS even had assets in Great Britain and the only English-speaking radio station in the Principality of Monaco (allowing the MORRISS family tax-free trips to gamble in casinos there).
That $120 million fire sale price shows how the MORRIS family helped ruin journalism here. The New York Times and Washington Post are adding subscribers by vigorous investigative journalism (Post new slogan: Democracy Dies in Darkness).
This reporter and a professional colleague (Judith Seraphin, CEO of Global Wrap® filed in federal bankruptcy court in 2010-2011, asking to be heard on the Record's being relieved of $300,000,000 in debt while assuring readers "nothing would change." We said that was like a drunk going to an AA meeting and saying they weren't going to change a thing. The Record's response was to seek monetary sanctions and have Assistant Editor Richard Prior (since fired) write a hatchet job. Our words to the bankruptcy court were prophetic and proved correct. Without investigative reporting, we wrote, the Record would not make money and might cease to exist.
Fortunately, GateHouse acted like a white knight, saving the Record as our small town newspaper. Welcome! How can we help?
Here's more from the Poynter Institute:
Here's more from the Poynter Institute:
GateHouse acquires Morris Publishing’s 11 daily newspapers
SOURCE GATEHOUSE PUBLISHING
New Media Investment Group has acquired Morris Publishing Group, whose portfolio includes the Augusta Chronicle, the Savannah Morning News and the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville.
The price was $120 million for 11 daily newspapers, 30 weeklies and various online assets, which will join New Media's GateHouse chain.
The transaction, announced this morning, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.
The deal represents further consolidation of the struggling industry. GateHouse , with more than 120 dailies, offers scale with a centralized editing and production center in Austin and a group of system-wide advertising and marketing products.
Morris is family-owned and based in Augusta. William S. "Billy" Morris will remain publisher of the Chronicle and will oversee editorial policy for the three Morris papers in Georgia.
News Media Investment is publicly traded but also has the backing of of the huge Fortress Investment Group fund. It has been on a run of acquisitions over the last several years, buying the Columbus Dispatch, and Fayetteville Observer among other properties.
It has promised to spend $1 billion on acquisitions and with the latest deal is almost there -- at roughly $900 million. An early acquisition was Halifax Media which included what once were the New York Times Regional Group papers.
In a press release CEO Michael Reed said:
"For over 80 years, the Morris family has built and operated an incredible collection of local media assets. We are honored that the family has chosen us to uphold the rich tradition of journalism and innovation they have established. This transaction will expand our footprint into new states and add some very attractive markets to our local media portfolio. We see strong synergies between our two companies and look forward to the value creation opportunity that will exist as we combine the portfolios.”
Morris said that he sold after reluctantly concluding that the group was too small "to build and maintain the necessary resources to compete."
Other Morris papers sold were the Athens Banner Herald, the Amarillo Globe-News, the Juneau Empire and The Peninsula Clarion in Alaska, the Log Cabin Democrat in Conway, Arkansas, the Lubbock Avalanche Journal, The St. Augustine Record and The Topeka Capital-Journal.
Wall Street reacted favorably to the transaction. New Media shares were up more than 4 percent in late morning trading.
ReplyDeleteKeep on pretending.
http://www.unitedmediaguild.org/index.php/2017/02/28/new-mediagatehouse-keeps-buying-and-diminishing-newspapers/
Warren, thanks for link. I read that story last night, but I did not post it. Do you know why? Author is identified only as "Jeff." The website is apparently associated with the Newspaper Guild, I reckon, a union that I admire and that I wish would organize free democratic newspapers at all newspapers in Florida. But I have a problem with reprinting anything by someone without a last name. Unlike corporate oligarchs, who use initials, some of whose first names are presumably removed at birth, "Jeff" has no last name. Why?
ReplyDeleteHave posted two of Jeff Gordon's articles on Gatehouse. Thank you!
ReplyDelete