PHXations—Friday, August 20, 2010
The Hoover Dam bypass is almost done. The most noted part of the new route, which means that the trip from Phoenix to Las Vegas will not include the crawl over the two-lane Hoover Dam, is a gynormous, 900-foot-high bridge.
Reports the Republic:
The Federal Highway Administration has not picked an exact opening date for the $114 million span, officially named the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. At a sneak preview Thursday to showcase the completion of the bridge deck, officials announced an opening gala on Oct. 16. A federal spokeswoman said the bridge will open in early November.
Workers are finishing the last details on the bridge as well as the highway connections and access paths for walkers, gawkers and bicyclists. The work includes installing a pedestrian railing, building a parking lot for visitors, and adding lighting, striping and crash barriers to the approach roads.
The story says that the Arizona approach to Hoover Dam will be closed, so you’ll have to get to Nevada if you want to see the dam proper.
The dam’s official name is the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge.
Tillman, of course, is the Arizona football star was was killed in friendly fire in Afghanistan. O'Callaghan is a former governor of Nevada.
Nick Martin is the Valley’s best blogger, Phoenix magazine says.
The mag’s Best of the Valley issue salutes Martin’s blog, Heat City, calling it “a true marvel of D-I-Y journalism”:
Competing against entire newsrooms at The Arizona Republic and other newspapers, Martin took first place in breaking news at the most recent Arizona Press Club Awards for getting the scoop on a series of arrests related to the 2004 bombing of the Scottsdale diversity office
IN other media awards, the Republic’s E.J. Montini is given best columnist and Buildproof.com, which helps folks remodel their kitchens, is deemed best local web site.
The Arizona Department of Commerce says that unemployment in the state held steady at its already high rate of 9.6 percent.
From the PBJ:
The Phoenix metro area’s unemployment rate moved from 8.7 percent in June to 8.8 percent in July
From July 2009 to July 2010 Arizona lost 6,800 jobs, or 0.3 percent of its total workforce.
6:40 AM
Nick Martin joining the Arizona Guardian
This sucks for fans of Martin, because the Guardian is a pay site. Here’s what the local political blogger said on his site, Heat City:
That model has worked for the Guardian so far. Now, the founders are hoping to build on that accomplishment. They are open to new ideas and experiments, and that’s where I’ll be playing a role. What does that mean specifically? I’ll let you know once we figure it out.
Heat City will still be here. This site will remain a place for me to write stories that don’t have a home anywhere else. The only difference now is that my political (and sometimes legal) stories will be appearing in the Arizona Guardian.
More about Martin here.
The Guardian is here.
10:26 AM
PHXations—Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Arizona Democrats are asking the state Supreme Court to disqualify two GOP candidates:
Democrats on Monday asked the state Supreme Court to overturn a judge’s decision that kept two Republicans on the Aug. 24 ballot, even though the judge found they had broken the law in getting there.
The appeal comes in the wake of a ruling that state Sen. John Huppenthal, a Republican candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, and Bob Thomas, who is seeking the GOP nomination for state Senate in central Phoenix, violated the law when they collected signatures on their nominating petitions.
The two collected signatures before they had formed their campaign committees, Judge Robert Oberbillig found, which is against state election law.
But the punishment for that violation is a fine, he ruled, not removal from the ballot, which is the remedy the state Democratic Party had sought.
Party officials then turned to the state’s highest court for an appeal. Spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson said it would be hard to assign a dollar value to signatures that were collected outside of the official period. A more fitting punishment would be removal from the ballot, she said
Arizona’s Border Security is getting a $50 million boost:
A new $50 million pot is available to local law enforcement in Arizona and along the U.S.-Mexico border for border-security projects.
The money comes from a $94 million settlement that Attorney General Terry Goddard’s office reached with Western Union earlier this year to end a seven-year investigation into drug smugglers' use of wire companies to move money across the border.
Goddard’s office sent out grant applications Monday to city, county and state law-enforcement agencies in Arizona, Texas, California and New Mexico. Each state is guaranteed at least $7 million, Goddard said.
The money can be used to attack the issue of cross-border smuggling of drugs, people, weapons or money, he said. The drugs and people come north into the U.S., and the weapons and money go south to fuel the cartels' operatio
Read more at the AZ Daily Star.
Heat City is reporting that the Mexican government has joined the fight to stop Arizona’s immigration law:
The Mexican government formally joined the fight to stop Arizona’s new immigration law on Monday, telling a U.S. court the law “threatens to poison the well” of diplomacy between the two nations and exposes Mexican citizens to racial profiling by police.
In a 28-page brief (pdf) filed in the U.S. District Court of Arizona, lawyers for Mexico said the creation of the law, widely known as S.B. 1070, “has been closely followed at the highest levels of the Mexican government and throughout Mexican society.”
The government said it believes the Arizona law, which among other things makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally, violates the U.S. Constitution. It asked the court to throw the law out entirely.
More here.
Border agents captured some elusive prey on the border: More than 100 piñatas of Disney characters, according to an AP story on the KTAR site:
DOUGLAS, Ariz. – It was no fiesta on the Arizona-Mexico border for the driver of a shipment of pinatas that looked like Disney characters.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Rob Daniels says officers at the Douglas port of entry stopped a tractor-trailer coming from Mexico for further inspection on Friday.
Officers found the tractor-trailer was loaded with papier-mache items, including 108 pinatas in the likeness of Disney characters on their way to Thornton, Colo.
The story quotes a border official saying, stopping counterfeit goods is “a vital element in national security.”
NYT story on the piñata underground here.
12:22 PM
Buz Mills: I'm a "real man"
We’re deeply indebted to Heat City for this screen shot of a Buz Mills campaign mailer:
Mills’ campaign manager, who, by the way, is also a woman, denied the flier was meant to be sexist and blamed the poor word choice on a mix up at the print shop. Camilla Strongin told the Guardian the mailer should have said it’s time to hire “a real leader” for the job.
Brewer is the third woman in a row – and the fourth in Arizona history – to occupy the governor’s office.
7:17 AM
Nick Martin takes home a big one at the Arizona Press Club awards
While the Arizona Press Club’s fondness for Young Martin Cizmar™’s work is somewhat quizzical, the club did take note of what I think was arguably the most memorable piece of local journalism over the past year outside of the regularly impressive investigative stuff New Times does: Nick Martin’s eerie Phoenix mag piece on the mysterious “third man” involved in the horrific Serial Shooter case.
When I wrote about his piece last year, it wasn’t available online; it is now, and can be read here.
Here’s my favorite part, detailing the unusual friendship the two known shooters had:
Known by regulars as a likable drunk, [killer Sam] Dieteman was the kind of guy who could toss down cocktails until last call, sleep it off for a few hours and return to the bar again in the morning when it reopened. That lifestyle fit well with [his shooting partner] Jeff Hausner, who claimed that because of anxiety attacks, it was better to drive drunk than sober.
So when Dieteman fell on hard times in early 2006 and had no job and no place to stay, Jeff Hausner offered to let his pal stay with him for a while. The quarters would be cramped. It was a two-bedroom townhouse where Jeff Hausner was already living with his female roommate and her son. But they would make it work in their own unusual way. The son had his own bedroom. The roommate slept on a couch in the living room. And Dieteman copped a spot on a pile of blankets next to Hausner’s bed in the other bedroom.
Martin now writes the Heat City blog. He was also given a first-place nod for breaking news, notable for a guy working alone against operations with scores of reporters on duty at any given time.
From the club:
First place: Nick R. Martin, Heat City, “Exclusive: Arrests made in ’04 bombing of Scottsdale diversity office”
Judge: Acting on a tip, Martin beat the competition on a big story — arrests in the 2004 bombing of Scottsdale’s diversity office. But he didn’t stop there. Within hours, he produced two more newsy write-throughs that continued to develop the story by using court documents and Web site statements from white supremacist groups to add important details. On a tight deadline, the pieces broke new ground, were authoritative and had just the right amount of background for readers to understand the story.
And finally, Martin came in second in the category of public safety reporting:
Second place: Nick R. Martin, Heat City, “Gilbert police investigating mayor on suspicion of poisoning wife”
Judge: Expansive story, raises questions and seeks to provide answers. Utilizes public records, documents and interviews.
9:56 AM
Potential East Valley Tribune sale is expanded
The East Valley Tribune is reporting that its long-discussed sale to Thirteenth Floor Street Media has been delayed because the company is negotiating to get the EVT’s sister papers in the Valley as well:
The new letter of intent also includes assets of the Sun City Daily News-Sun, Ahwatukee Foothills News and Arizona Interactive in Chandler, which publishes the Clipper advertising shopper and does commercial printing. The Daily-News Sun also publishes the Glendale/Peoria Today and Surprise Today newspapers.
The deal expanded because the operations are so closely intertwined, Freedom said in a statement.
Thirteenth Street owner Randy Miller was expected to be in the Valley this week visiting the staff at Freedom locations.
More details on the new developments at Heat City.
7:00 AM
The bright side of the decade from hell
Chris Coppola, the editor of the East Valley tribune, tries to limn it in a commentary today. He acknowledges the wars and economic troubles that have marked the past ten years, but makes this case:
[…] I’m not convinced the ’00s were all bad for us locally. The progress made in developing our freeway system and introducing light rail in the East Valley, along with ongoing improvements at Gateway and Falcon Field airports in Mesa, and Chandler’s municipal airport, will pay major dividends for this region down the road. History has proven that an efficient transportation system is a major key for any area’s economic health.
We’ve also seen an explosion of new hospitals and medical facilities and expansion of higher educational facilities — all the types of things that add to quality of life and prove attractive to new industries looking to set up shop with varied, and well-paying, jobs.
He goes through each town in his subscription area and notes the steps each has taken to position itself for the future.
My only complaint: In such a Republican area, in reviewing the crises of the decade he could have noted the failures of that party, both philosophically (in how, for example, its distaste for regulation helped create the housing and financial mess) and politically (an utterly failed president, a dismaying 2008 presidential candidate).
Don’t get me wrong: If anything, PHXated despises Democrats even more than Republicans. And I’m rooting for both Coppola and the paper. But it doesn’t help anyone not to utter some simple truths.
The future of the EVT, incidentally, remains in doubt, Heat City reports:
Earlier this month, a spokesman for the Mesa newspaper’s parent, Freedom Communications, said Dec. 24 would likely be the day the company would tell a federal bankruptcy court about the deal it hopes to strike with a Colorado businessman wanting to buy the Tribune.
But late Thursday, after nothing had been filed with the court, company spokeswoman Maya Pogoda said attorneys “have not finalized the agreement” with hopeful buyer Randy Miller.
7:00 AM
The Maricopa County craziness rachets up a notch
The reporter wanted to come film the raid. (?!) The judge, Barbara Mundell, went code red. She went to the Arizona Court of Appeals to block her offices’ being raided. But at the hearing, an assistant county attorney said no warrants were being issued.
Heat City’s Nick Martin cites this as an example of hair-trigger tensions in the court system, as Arpaio and his Dimmer Twin, County Attorney Andrew Thomas, have used just about any aspect of their police and legal powers to harass and intimidate enemies.
The journalist in question is identified only as a TV reporter, and no gender was cited. Unanswered is where the reporter got the tip. According to Martin, the ADA at the hearing said no warrants had been “sought or obtained.” That could mean a) the reporter was lied to; b) the reporter was given a good tip but somehow got the judge in question wrong (a possibility, since he or she seemed to have a screw loose in any case*); or c) Thomas’s office was choosing its words carefully in front of the judge to obscure the fact that some sort of action was about to be taken against Mundell.
Martin says the judge has reason to find herself on Arpaio’s enemies list:
In May, Mundell told a Phoenix TV station she thought Maricopa County’s judges were facing serious intimidation by the sheriff, including possible investigations and retaliation. She said the sheriff was upset, in part, because a judge had just criticized his office for bringing inmates late to their court appearances.
Mundell also fought the sheriff’s office as far back as 2007 over whether his deputies should have access to thousands of emails she and other court officials had sent or received that year. Mundell and Superior Court Administrator Marcus Reinkensmeyer denied the request, and the sheriff’s office eventually sued.
- By which I mean it’s inappropriate for a reporter to find out a raid is about to happen and then call up the target of it to ask permission to film.
7:00 AM
A buyer for the EVT?
A buyer for the East Valley Tribune, slated to close at the end of the year, has been found, publisher Julie Moreno told employees today.
The paper’s owner, Freedom Communications, is in bankruptcy and said two weeks ago that it would shut the paper down at the end of the year after a suitable buyer could not be found.
EVT story here.
The only discomfiting thing about the news is that … we don’t know who the new owner might be:
The buyer was not identified.
Moreno said the buyer has indicated they plan to keep a “substantial” number of Tribune employees.
In a conference call with Tribune employees Friday from Freedom headquarters in Irvine, Calif., Moreno said she has not had any conversations with the buyer about how the business will operate in the future, “but it’s my understanding the intention is to continue to operate the newspaper and Web site.”
More on the sale at Heat City.
If the buyer ever officially materializes and the deal actually goes through, this is great news for the paper’s employees, who were facing a grim new year.
Whether the paper can financially support itself after the deal is the hard part. Freedom’s in the trouble it’s in because it over-leveraged itself buying up new properties, and found itself with its financial pants down after the economic downturn.
Let me underline this point, because it’s not often mentioned in stories about the state of the newspaper industry: Up until very recently, most newspapers made a lot of money. Even in an economic collapse the papers should have been able to get by. (I guess we have to take the word of Freedom that the EVT has been unprofitable for the last two years, but I’d also like to see the sort of money it was throwing off up until 2007.)
But variations of expansion and acquisitions have burdened them with excessive debt, and that’s what’s killing a lot of them.
Now, Freedom is a special case. Some of the family ownership was smart and unloaded about half their interest about five years ago, in a deal that saw a couple of private-equity groups take a 40 percent share.
A WSJ story on the issue said this deal entailed a “relatively small” amount of debt. But here’s an example of how the numbers are working: That same story said the company’s revenues were down fully 75 percent—but it still was earning $50 million. (Note that it was making some $200 million a year until recently.)
Now, that’s not an enormous figure for such a large company (which owns dozens of small papers and eight TV stations).
But when their corporate ownership is leveraged up to its keister, two things happen. One, the papers’ profits are devoted to paying off the companies’ debt. (Which is to say, the profits are going to pay the bill for the privilege of being owned by the financial manipulators who put the deal together.)
That mean the profits aren’t going into making the property better; when the owners themselves aren’t getting their money first, they have even less impetus to sink money into the papers—and that gives subscribers less reason to stay with them.
And two, the leverage gives the papers no breathing room. The advantage of being held by a private company is that in theory you can weather troubled times and think long term without pressure from stockholders to maximize short-term profits. That’s not happening any more.
Here, it seems Freedom’s owners will be wiped out; they’ve supposedly already written off close to $500 million.
The big question about the new owner is: How much debt will it be carrying?
The answer to that question will tell us whether we’ll be reading the same stories a year from now.
12:00 AM
Freedom Communications: Bankruptcy ... and executive bonuses
Over at Heat City, Nick Martin has a list of execs at Freedom Communications who got bonuses, even as the company headed toward bankruptcy.
Freedom holds about 30 newspapers and eight TV stations across the country, including the East Valley Tribune, which announced last week it would close at the end of the year. The bankruptcy is a reorganization plan; the company as a whole isn’t going out of business. It was just a way to help it deal with nearly a billion dollars in debt it ill-advisedly built up.
As PHXated has noted before, before you cry tears for the newspaper industry, remember that it brought most of its problems on itself.
… Which makes the bonuses all the more appalling. Top execs were apparently getting more than $100,000 each—just for helping to run the company into the ground.
Heat City is here. The list of bonuses is here.
12:00 AM
Nick Martin's "Beta Journalism"
Martin is one of the better reporters in town; you can see his grim piece on the third serial shooter in the most recent issue of Phoenix Magazine.
He was an EVT staffer let go in one of the recent rounds of layoffs, but his blog, Heat City, lets him follow a few of his reportorial hobbyhorses.
His latest posting is a proposal for a variant on some of the new thinking of how traditional journalism can take advantage of some of the power of the web.
The trouble to this point has been that traditional journalism has had a hard time letting go of the control it’s used to having in reporting and telling stories. Martin’s proposal:
This could be done by creating a new web application to make it all possible. Here’s how the app would work:
- A journalist writes a story and posts it online in “beta” form. The public can then log in to suggest extra sources, point out typos, critique for bias and upload media. The journalist or editor makes or approves changes, verifies facts and posts a final draft sometime later (maybe hours or days). The names of the people who helped in the process are included at the bottom of the story as named contributors, giving them ownership of the piece.
Beta Journalism (working title) would be that open-source application. The idea relies heavily on the concept of crowdsourcing. It embraces the knowledge of the community. It tells readers: This is a work in progress – please help us improve it.
You can read his complete idea here.
6:00 AM