Idaho Radio News Etc.

One of my favorite parts of the month is getting a copy of The Borah Senator delivered to my desk. It’s where I got my journalism start – and I’m always impressed by what these young journalism students dig up each month. This month they put together a great “Vs.” issue – comparing things like The Flicks and Edwards, Swine Flu and Seasonal Flu and more.

The paper also compared Boise Weekly and the Idaho Statesman’s Scene magazine. Writer Felicia Arnold talked to reps for both BW and Scene – Amy Atkins and Michael Deeds.

The Boise Weekly is a local newspaper that has articles that range from news to opinion, arts and entertainment to previews/reviews, interviews with extraordinary people, and letters to the editor. The Boise Weekly comes out every Wednesday.

“We do cover some of the same stories as the Statesman–that’s always going to be the case for media outlets in a relatively small market–but we work to cover them differently, from different angles, with a different voice. Better,” stated Boise Weekly’s A&E Editor, Amy Atkins.

The Boise Weekly’s competitor is The Idaho Statesman Scene magazine. Scene is a local magazine that expands the community’s horizons and publishes more articles about news, entertainment, reviews, interviews, and calendar listings.

“We focus exclusively on entertainment. They don’t. They’re free. We’re not. Our circulation is twice theirs. Really, it’s sort of apples and oranges,” commented Michael Deeds, Scene editor.

The Boise Weekly and Scene both have their advantages. The Idaho Statesman’s Scene is a little larger, and not free, whereas the Boise Weekly is free and about things around town.

What struck me was the tone of Deeds’ comment to the young journalist. He also has a key fact wrong – since Scene is available free in those teal boxes all over town.

(Disclosure: I am on the Borah High School Journalism Advisory Committee – along with reps from BW, the Statesman and other organizations).

Nathaniel Hoffman wrote up a story on a poll that the Idaho Statesman ran this week. I’ll let you read the story here.

I don’t have an opinion on the reporting one way or the other — except that I’m glad to see someone reporting on the paper. Statesman opinion editor Kevin Richert DOES have an opinion on the piece. But he pulled out one of his favorite tricks — calling out Hoffman by name, then saying this:

In pursuit of one of his journalistic habits — jabbing at the Statesman — the Boise Weekly writer accuses us of push polling, because of a survey question we asked about the Boise Downtown streetcar project.

Sound familiar?

Day… took to his Idaho Radio News blog Sunday to blast the Statesman. No big news there.

This is a device Richert seems to use when he is emotionally tied to the subject. He tries to discredit the source by pointing out that they dared criticize the newspaper in the past.

Kevin’s a smart guy and a great writer. His output is simply amazing. I think you could ask him to defend the merits of a round coffee table vs. a square one and he could give you 500 compelling and convincing words. The bottom line: he can argue anything. It’s the route he takes to get there that leaves me stymied at times.

All I can say is… welcome to the club Nathaniel!

I don’t really understand this story… especially the entirely bizarre first sentence:

Those newspapers, sponsored by third parties, have little value to advertisers, the Idaho Statesman said.

I’ll refrain from my usual blah blah blah here… and let you dissect for yourself! Feel free to comment…

McClatchy – owner of Boise’s Idaho Statesman had a good quarter, and was able to turn a profit, despite shrinking revenue. This from the AP:

Newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. rode a wave of traumatic cost cutting and a one-time tax adjustment to a higher third-quarter profit, overcoming yet another jarring decline in revenue.

McClatchy earned $23.6 million in the quarter. The company was able to turn a profit despite the decrease in revenue by aggressively cutting costs (and, unfortunately – jobs).

There’s one very sober line in the AP piece:

McClatchy probably wouldn’t be making money if it hadn’t been dumping payroll and other costs more quickly than its revenue eroded.

But, the company’s online revenue grew by about 3% in the quarter.

Neither of these are directly tied to the Idaho Statesman – but are interesting McClatchy items:

• The United States Olympic Committee is trying to stop Statesman sister The Olympian from getting a trademark on… well… its own name. McClatchy filed a trademark in 2006 – but last month the USOC filed an objection. They have a Congressional mandate that gives them control over a slew of Olympic-related trademarks, of which “Olympian” is one. But McClatchy says there’s a carve-out for businesses related to the Olympic Mountains in Western Washington. Pretty bizarre story — and it seems odd that the USOC would try to stop a well-established newspaper from trademarking its own name. The USOC says it could cause confusion… but you’d have to be pretty dumb to think The Olympian newspaper was named for the Games.
• The Charlotte, NC News & Observer has hatched a new scheme: Any employee who sells a subscription will get a $50 kickback. That’s right, another attempt by a newspaper to try and fix its past instead of focusing on the future. McClatchy Watch has the memo… and a great quip comparing this scheme to Amway.

Michael Deeds, in today’s IdahoStatesman, jabs at KQLZ/99.1 The Virus. Repeatedly. (Bold emphasis is mine)

The temporary cowpoke radio gag may have been amusing, but it felt like a spur in the ear to potential Virus listeners.

When I explained to Statesman sports columnist Brian Murphy that 99.1 wasn’t a country station after all, he wondered why Impact would spend days building up hype to a format change, then confuse us for the first few hours: “Seems brilliant,” Murphy remarked. “I just wiped it off my dial.”

Reception can be iffy in certain parts of Boise.

(W)hat exactly does “alternative” even mean these days?

“Linkin Park,” Fuentes adds, “you’re going to hear on this radio station a lot.”

True, unfortunately. And it feels a little odd to hear Linkin Park back to back with R.E.M. Or within a few songs of the White Stripes.

All that’s left to do is sit back, sample The Virus, and hope for pleasant symptoms of infection. Just be sure it’s not swine flu.

There is a shot at KQXR in the piece – but it’s quickly backed up with a defense.

“There are a lot of radio stations that call themselves alternative. This is not the radio station where you’re going to hear AC/DC,” (Fuentes said).

Zing! The X plays AC/DC. Not so long ago, The X was considered alternative. Nowadays, it’s evolved (or, devolved, depending on your perspective) into what’s known as an active rock format. “We stopped playing that stuff for a reason,” Nicolato says.

If The Virus decides to “come over and twiddle in our territory a little bit, then so be it,” Nicolato adds, before jabbing: “We’ll just have to kick their ass.”

Gotta love it.

This escaped my notice, and probably yours too: Statesman columnist Tim Woodward wrote up last month’s History of Idaho Broadcasting Foundation meeting – and the tribute to Del Chapman. There’s an interesting side story about Woodward, Chapman and the Beatles… Read here.

This doesn’t happen every day – Boise radio competitors mixing it up in the battlefield – er… airwaves. (No tridents anywhere to be found)

Sunday night on KRVB/94.9 The River’s “The Other Studio” – hosts Tim Johnston and Idaho Statesman Scene Editor Michael Deeds were joined by a surprise guest. A guest who works at another radio station. And no – this wasn’t an employee of KQXR or KJOT or KTHI. It was… KeKe Luv of KSAS/103.3 Kiss FM.

Say… what?

This week’s show focused on trying to identify “the song of summer.” Each year, Deeds writes a column that focuses on the song that has that certain… something. Past examples include Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy, Hey There Delilah by Plain White T’s and the Beyonce/Jay Z Crazy in Love.

But this summer… that song has been elusive. Candidates, in the eyes of Johnstone and Deeds include Taylor Swift’s You Belong To Me, Kings of Leon’s Use Somebody and others.

Since that big summer song is usually driven by top 40 radio, they put KeKe on the air at KRVB to talk about his thoughts (he’s kindofabigdeal) . As I’ve said before, The Other Studio does things that are out of the ordinary and “break the rules” – which is what makes it great radio.

Here’s an IdahoRadioNews.com bonus… listen to the interview in MP3 format (recorded from my iPhone voice memo… so the quality isn’t perfect. And if you listen realllly closely, you might hear me folding laundry).

You stay classy Boise Idaho.

145 years ago, The Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman rolled off the presses for the first time. Now, nearly 150 years later, the publication is still humming along cranking out news each day. Rocky Barker has a nice recap of the orginization’s history.

The results are in – and readers of the Idaho Statesman have named their picks for the best radio station and talent in the valley.

KCIX/Mix 106 takes top honors for top station — while morning hosts Mike & Kate grab the prize for best DJ. Even Tommy gets a mention in the write-up…

“Honorable mentions” go to about half the market:

• KBOI/News Talk 670
• KSRV/96.1 Bob FM
• KTSY/89.5
• Boise State Radio
• KRVB/Idaho’s 94.9 The River

And talent:

• Tracy & Margo, KTHI/107.1 K-Hits
• “Big” Jack Armstrong, KQLZ/99.1 Idaho’s True Oldies Channel
• KeKe Luv, KSAS/103.3 Kiss FM
• Pete & Joe, KJOT/J-105
• MISSED ONE! Brenda and Kevin Mee, KIZN/Kissin’ 92.3

If you’ve walked around the neighborhoods of Boise in the past few days, you’ve probably seen this:

Little bundled up rolls of paper. If you unfurl it (which clearly very few people have done by the looks of it), you find an Albertsons ad, a bridge column and some crosswords. It is a product of the Idaho Daily Statesman, which inexplicably dropped them all over town Wednesday. Unsolicited. I happened to be outside at my home when the driver dropped them in my neighborhood and couldn’t figure out what the deal was.

The deal was this — the Statesman was littering.

Litter: trash, such as paper, cans, and bottles, that is left lying in an open or public place

Why? I don’t know. But the unsolicited papers are in gutters all over town. Hopefully this was a one time deal…

The Idaho Statesman will soon charge you 50% more to purchase a copy of the daily paper from a newsrack or store – and 33% more on Sunday.  This follows a series of home delivery increases – though the Statesman isn’t raising those rates right now.

This is the latest in a series of moves from Idaho’s largest daily this year: layoffs, wage freezes, a reduction in paper size, outsourcing of printing and expense reductions.

As Bloomberg notes, the Statesman is just following the crowd with is rate increase.

And in an odd twist, publisher Mi-Ai Parrish equated her newspaper to Crystal Light. The jokes write themselves.

Related: Maker of newspaper vending boxes feels plight of newspaper industry

UPDATE: The Boise Guardian’s Dave Frazier caught THIS in Sunday’s paper. (Read the first word of the headline realllly closely). Oh man.

According to figures just released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Idaho Statesman saw daily circulation figures improve slightly.

Daily increased from 57,846 during the six months ended 9/30/08 to 58,243 for the six months ended 3/31/09.  That’s an increase of about 1%.

Red ink starts to creep in when you look at weekend numbers.  Sunday circulation slid a bit, from 76,765 copies to 75,380 – a decline of just about 2 percent.

Saturday numbers also declined – from 62,309 to 58,959 – a decrease of nearly six percent

The Idaho Statesman’s website figures also continued to slide – down to 6,468,953 pageviews in March.  That’s off from 7,045,567 in September 2008, a drop of nearly nine percent.

One-time Idaho Daily Statesman employee Dave Frazier noticed something in Friday’s printed edition:

“Effective Monday, April 6, we will no longer be able to offer re-delivery of missed papers within the metro area…”

As Dave noted, how can you “re-deliver” something that wasn’t delivered in the first place? The bottom line is simple: If the Statesman screws you over and doesn’t deliver that day’s paper… they aren’t going to try and make it right by getting a paper out to ya. Geez.

UPDATE: Dave didn’t note – and since I didn’t do my own research – I didn’t mention that if you don’t get your paper, they’ll send you a voucher for a free copy of the paper, credit your account or give you an e-edition password. Still not perfect, but at least it’s an attempt.

In that same Friday edition, entertainment writer Mike Deeds decided that a drug reference was a good idea:

Hide your daughters! Hide your daughters’ stashes! Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland is heading out for a solo tour.

Always smart to talk about drug use by kids.

Another note: My very smart mother has been trying to cancel her newspaper (wonder why). While IdahoStatesman.com (the second most popular website in the market) lets you start delivery, put on a vacation stop and a dozen other things… you can’t cancel. As my old boss Mark Danielson used to say: That’ll Hold ‘Em!

The “former Idaho Statesman employees” Facebook group sheds a ton of light on how things work at the paper – with many employees talking about their “last experiences” with the paper:

• Last straw was slinging agate for 22 straight shifts near the end of my term
• Laid off over the phone while on vacation
• Hired just before 9/11 Laid off 3 months later and just two weeks after buying my first home…

Lastly – former Thrive Magazine writer Chad Dryden now has a blog – it’s called “Laid Off Loser” – you can check it out here. It joins Jeane Huff’s excellent “First, the good news…” blog. I’ve added both to the blogroll.

Kevin Richert may think I’m a hypocrite – but at least I am willing to take the criticism head on.

After the opinion writer put together a second post on his blog trying to justify his sharp and misleading criticism of this site, I decided the best course of action was to be direct. I wrote a lengthy comment on his blog which I spent a great deal of time crafting. At the end of the post I put forth an invitation to meet face to face. I followed that with two personal e mails.

That was Wednesday night. I think it is now safe to say he doesn’t want to have a personal discussion because he has not returned my messages.

It is easy to feel powerful behind a keyboard. However, it seems Richert would rather write blogs from the safety of the Curtis Rd. building than meet me face to face. That’s his choice, but I find it surprising. My offer remains open.

One more thing. On the very post in which he says that I’m not consistent, he let a comment which labeled me as “bi-polar” stand. He said he removes libelous comments… But I guess he makes an exception in my case. There’s a word for that…

UPDATE: My e-mail box is still bare, but the libelous comment’s been removed… six days after the fact. Wonder why.

My mother always taught me not to engage a bully — but you should be aware of this – and judge for yourself.

From Kevin Richert on his blog:

Don Day isn’t happy with the Statesman.

Don Day is also a hypocrite.

Day, who works at KTVB, took to his Idaho Radio News blog Sunday to blast the Statesman. No big news there. This time, he is mad because we have removed a link to his blog from the IdahoStatesman.com blogroll.

“Statesman doesn’t want to link to criticism,” reads his headline.

Umm, not exactly.

Richert goes on to note that my post about the Statesman’s 10% layoff and significant pay cuts had the comments turned on — but my post about a single layoff at KTVB did not.

After I saw Day’s posts last week, I encouraged our online team to remove the link to his blog.

I only wish we’d done it sooner.

Three things here. One, I’m not mad about the link loss — amused is the right word. Two, I usually don’t post TV news on this site — but wanted to be fair to the Statesman… ironically… and give you the full picture. Three, I also noted WHY comments are turned off:

I try not to report much TV news here primarily because of the comments… I cannot be a fair arbiter of comments that affect my friends and co-workers (whether they be at KTVB or another station in the market). Even though I haven’t posted KBCI or KIVI’s layoffs here — I think it’s fair to mention this.

Kevin left all that out. You can decide why.

If one of you writes something nasty about my employer… it puts me in a tricky spot. At the end of the day, my loyalty is to a company that has employed me for the past decade.

And as you’ll note, there has long been a link to Michael Deeds’ column in the right hand rail of this site… lest I be accused of being a hypocrite for something else.

(Disclosure: I sit on the board of the Idaho Press Club with Kevin. He doesn’t talk to me much.)

The Idaho Daily Statesman removed the link to IRN from its blog page. Is it something I said? They took the link off the day after we were the first to report about the 10% pay cut…. so apparently the answer is yes.

As hinted this weekend, today is indeed d-day at the Idaho Statesman, according to a memo to employees.

The paper will cut ten percent of its workforce (25 positions), and also cut pay for those workers not eliminated.

Some of the job cuts will not be voluntary:

Where positions are being eliminated, affected employees will be notified over the next two days. Some reductions will be involuntary. Others will provide an opportunity for employees to volunteer to take a severance package where reductions are occurring in work groups of two or more employees. If enough employees do not take the voluntary option, then the positions with the least tenure will be eliminated.

Here’s how the pay cuts break down:

• People making $25,000 to $50,000 will be docked three percent
• Employees making $50,000 to $100,000 will lose six percent of their pay
• Folks making more than $100,000 will be making ten percent less.

Mi-Ai Parrish also tells staff that furloughs may be possible (short term layoffs, usually of a day or two without pay). All annual bonuses have been eliminated:

Other savings include everything from better ink contracts to lighter newsprint, from savings from our press project to our redesign, from cutting daily redelivery of newspapers to dropping dues for industry organizations, from reducing the number of free Scene copies to eliminating low-selling single copy racks. These large and smaller expense cuts saved the equivalent of 99 jobs.

McClatchy Watch has the full memo.

Read (or watch) Doug Petcash’s excellent story on the challenges facing the Statesman, Press-Tribune and the Idaho Falls Post-Register.

A couple quick notes on The Idaho Statesman:

- KTVB’s Doug Petcash has put together a two part series on the future of newspapers – specifically looking at the Boise area and its two daily papers (Statesman and Press-Tribune). It runs Sunday and Monday on News at Ten (I haven’t seen it and wasn’t involved in any way).

- There’s buzz that announcements are coming from the Statesman building on Monday. What that may be isn’t known – though there are lots of rumors swirling of course. Keep you posted…

KBCI’s Kiersten Throndsen reports that the Idaho Statesman will likely be cutting more jobs.

In a 10pm story, Throndsen called Statesman managing editor Vicki Gowler and put the results on TV.

Throndsen: Can you at least tell me, are layoffs going to have to potentially have to happen again?

(long pause)

Gowler: Eeeee…. ummmm… layoffs potentially will have to happen.

Bad news for the good people who work at the paper.

The Idaho Daily Statesman’s BSU basketball beat writer wrote a story about how airing the games on the 24/7 channel hurts attendance.  Then the same night the team notched a season-high crowd of 7,000+ fans. The game was on TV.

Idaho Statesman photographer/reporter Joe Jaszewski takes a look at Boise’s newest radio station – KWYD/Wild 101 – for a story in today’s business section.  Read the piece here.

More big changes are coming to Curtis Rd. – with the transition to a press-less world for the paper. Starting early next year, the Idaho Statesman – which has printed its own paper since the beginning – will put its fortune in the excellent hands of the Idaho Press-Tribune and its world-class printing plant in Nampa.  The plant already prints the Press-Tribune, Boise Weekly, many high school newspapers and community weeklies throughout the region.

• The paper will again be smaller – this would be the fourth shrinkage in my memory.
• There will be fewer sections
• The features pages may be created as part of a regional syndicate producing this type of content for papers around the region. There will likely be less local feature content
• The Statesman will have an earlier press deadline, and will be printed before rival Idaho Press-Tribune

Also, you may have noticed the paper is now occasionally putting ads above the fold on the front page.

UPDATE: The New York Times says McClatchy is looking to sell one of its largest papers.

Someone needs to teach this search engine some respect.

Multiple sources confirm this head scratcher: Idaho Statesman sports columnist Brian Murphy is getting a new assignment. Instead of writing about the Xs and Os of Bronco Football, he’ll be sorting through the Ds and Rs of Idaho politics. Yes… Murph’s Turf will now be the Capitol Mall, as he’ll join the Statehouse beat this winter.

No announcement from Curtis Rd. on the switch yet – and Murphy didn’t return my e-mail for comment.

These types of beat changes aren’t entirely without precedent. Former Statesman sports editor Jennifer Swindell moved to a job on the editorial page — and one-time newsroom chief Bill Roberts now serves as the paper’s education reporter.