Howell Raines the Columnist

Howell Raines (remember?) is back, and maybe he's found his niche. As a swashbuckling bully at the New York Times, he was pretty much of a fizzle. But as an online columnist for Portfolio, he's off to a promising start. Here (link), using the Philadelphia story as a hook, he does a superb job of explaining everything that is wrong with "legacy newspapers" (he explains the term, too). E.g.:

The advertising whammy has squeezed the cadre of prominent newspaper buyers in the past few years: William Dean Singleton and his privately held Media News Group, with 57 daily papers; the McClatchy family group, with 31 dailies; and most flamboyant, the eccentric Chicago real estate tycoon Sam Zell. In December, he paid $8.2 billion for Tribune Co., which owns the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and some smaller papers. Of course, Rupert Murdoch, who shook the temples of journalism by taking over the Wall Street Journal, is no newcomer. Neither is Mort Zuckerman, who bought the ailing New York Daily News in 1992 and earned a profit quickly thereafter, as well as a measure of journalistic credibility, a rare thing in this group.

And here's a point I hadn't thought of before:

“There is a dearth of talent on the business side of this industry that is shocking to me,” [the Philadelphia publishser] says. “No one goes to Wharton and says, ‘I want to run circulation at Knight-Ridder.’ ” In general, he adds, “the business side has let down the journalistic side of newspapers.”

But I don't know quite what to do with this:

“The worst part of this experience has been the culture of the business side, particularly in advertising sales,” he says. “I’ve got some salesmen who make $100,000 a year and have no interest in making $120,000.”

Two thoughts: one, is this a newspaper thing, or a Philly thing? And two--there are ad men who make one hundred thousand dollars a year? Don't tell that to the reporters. No, actually, they already know.