Tag Archives: Wall Street Journal

When the WSJ Gets Snookered

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As a faithful, if sometimes dissenting, reader of the Wall Street Journal editorial and op-ed pages, I am distressed that the paper’s editors seem to have gotten snookered in running a commentary about Arizona State University. More troublesome, they have let their readers be fooled, as well.

Ann Atkinson, source: LinkedIn

Recall that Ann Atkinson, the now-former head of the university’s T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at the Barrett honors college, wrote in a June 19 op-ed that her center was being shut down after faculty members objected to a session she hosted showcasing several conservative speakers. The piece, “I paid for free speech at Arizona State,” implied that the closure was the action of lefty administrators kneeling before radical faculty members. Atkinson slammed the university for its “deep hostility toward divergent views.” She concluded that “ASU claims to value freedom of expression. But in the end the faculty mob always wins against institutional protections for free speech.”

Well, that’s not the way it went down, friends.

In fact, the donor who had sponsored the center pulled the plug on his financing. The donor, real estate magnate Tom Lewis, was irked at the faculty reaction to the February session, as he said in a statement issued after the commentary appeared. “After seeing this level of left-wing hostility and activism, I no longer had any confidence in Barrett to adhere to the terms of our gift, and made the decision to terminate our agreement, effective June 30, 2023,” he wrote. “I regret that this decision was necessary, and hope that Barrett and ASU will take strong action to ensure that free speech will always be protected and that all voices can be heard.”

Thomas W. Lewis, source: University of Kentucky Alumni Assn.

Tipping his hand ideologically, Lewis elaborated: “Because these were mostly conservative speakers, we expected some opposition, but I was shocked and disappointed by the alarming and outright hostility demonstrated by the Barrett faculty and administration toward these speakers. Instead of sponsoring this event with a spirit of cooperation and respect for free speech, Barrett faculty and staff exposed the radical ideology that now apparently dominates the college.”

By Atkinson’s account, 39 of the 47 Barrett faculty members condemned the session in a letter to the administration. Atkinson’s count may overstate the number of signers a bit, for one thing. More significantly, however – and something Atkinson did not say – the profs did not ask that the session be cancelled. Indeed, it went forward, and she wrote that thousands attended either in person or virtually (again, her numbers seem somewhat inflated).

So, because the profs raised their voices against the session, the conservative funder killed a program that provided a platform for conservative speakers who appeared, apparently without any trouble. Logical? Perhaps not so much. Perhaps a MAGA kind of logic.

Even more illogically, Lewis’s reference to “respect for free speech” is inconsistent with his pulling the bucks. It would seem Lewis respects only some types of speech – certainly not that expressed by the profs

ASU Provost Nancy Gonzales, source: ASU

ASU issued its own statement through Provost Nancy Gonzales: “Arizona State University is committed to, in practice, not just rhetoric, all things that support free speech and all of its components. ASU employee Ann Atkinson has lost the distinction between feelings and fact in her recent comments about what prompted her loss of employment at the T.W. Lewis Center at Arizona State University. Ms. Atkinson’s current job at the university will no longer exist after June 30 because the donor who created and funded the center decided to terminate his donation. Unfortunate, but hardly unprecedented. ASU is working to determine how we can support the most impactful elements of the center without that external funding.

“Ms. Atkinson’s frustration with those who would suppress freedom of speech is one we share. But her conclusion that ASU students are the ‘losers’ misses the obvious point: the ‘Health, Wealth and Happiness’ event hosted by Robert Kiyosaki, Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk was a success. Speakers came, they spoke, and more than 600 people attended. Ms. Atkinson is correct that this event was opposed by many faculty, students and others who are part of the ASU community. She is right to say that this opposition was vocal. This is not uncommon in a university setting.”

The university statement concluded: “… ASU has been awarded the ‘green light’ by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and that it adopted the Chicago Principles, which affirm the ‘free, robust and uninhibited sharing of ideas among all members of the university’s community.’” 

It it troubling that half-truths and omissions marked the op-ed. But it is far more unsettling that the WSJ, in its eagerness to pounce on a hot “cancellation” tale, would propagate such shortcomings.

While the paper on June 22 published the ASU statement as a letter, it has not issued a response correcting the misleading commentary or acknowledging that it got conned. At a minimum, a note from a perhaps red-faced editor — maybe op-ed chief James Taranto — would be welcome. It may be that in time somebody at the paper with a spine will fess up, something that would much serve readers of a paper ostensibly committed to accuracy, truthfulness and the full story. One can only hope.

Putin’s Inhumane Gambit

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Reporter Evan Gershkovich is a pawn in a cruel geopolitical game

The drumbeat of condemnation in the U.S. of Russia’s detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich continues. In a rare show of bipartisanship, U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Mitch McConnell issued a joint statement demanding “the immediate release of this internationally known and respected independent journalist.” This came a week after the Biden Administration, through Secretary of State Antony Blinken, similarly condemned Gershkovich’s arrest, blasting “the Kremlin’s continued attempts to intimidate, repress, and punish journalists and civil society voices.”

And it follows other expressions of support by news organizations such as the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, which warned that, “The arrest of Gerschkovich may signal a broader crackdown on the remaining Western reporters in Russia, which already has made it a crime for its citizens to criticize the unlawful invasion of Ukraine.” The National Press Club awarded its highest honor for press freedom, the John Aubuchon Award, to the journalist well ahead of its normal year-end schedule. A club official said: “we want to do what we can to call out his situation and stand up next to him.”

For its part, The Wall Street Journal has run a continuing series of pieces about such developments. In one piece it described how readers can offer their support for the reporter through social media posts featuring his photo and such phrases as “#IStandWithEvan. “Readers can download this collection of media assets to surface and share across their personal social-media accounts—from Twitter and Facebook to LinkedIn, Instagram and beyond,” the Journal advised. “They can be added as user profile photos, banners or posts.”

Of course, the Journal also editorialized against his detention. “The timing of the arrest looks like a calculated provocation to embarrass the U.S. and intimidate the foreign press still working in Russia,” the paper’s editorial board opined. “The Kremlin has cowed domestic reporting in Russia, so foreign correspondents are the last independent sources of news. Mr. Gershkovich’s arrest comes days after his byline was on a revealing and widely read dispatch documenting the decline of the Russian economy. The Kremlin doesn’t want that truth told.”

The New York Times also weighed in, pairing its condemnation with an attack on Putin and a defense of Ukraine. “The Kremlin’s readiness to seize an accredited journalist as a hostage demonstrates again why the United States and its allies need to stand firm to block Mr. Putin’s designs on Ukraine,” the Times argued. “Ukraine has chosen to be part of a Europe that is stable, peaceful and governed according to rules and law. Mr. Putin would supplant that with fear and force.”

Both papers also suggested that Putin may have grabbed Gershkovich in retaliation for the United States indicting Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, a Russian national suspected of spying against the U.S. Noting that Cherkasov posed as a Brazilian and reportedly entered an American university, the Times added the caveat that “there has been no indication so far that the Russians are looking to swap for him.” The papers also recalled the swap of athlete Brittney Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, with the Times noting she was held for about 10 months. In an unhelpful note, the Journal took a swipe at the Biden Administration, expressing its thanks for the administration’s condemnation but adding, “But it’s fair to ask why Mr. Putin believes he can snatch Americans and come out ahead.”

All these protests are necessary, of course. If Gershkovich’s arrest were met with silence, the Kremlin would likely take away the absurd message that this distinguished journalist was spying for the U.S. In fact, what he was doing – in open sight and perhaps even more infuriating to Putin – was churning out exceptional journalism, including work about how the war in Ukraine was weakening the Russian economy. The Journal republished much of his work here.

The question, though, is whether such protests will have any effect on Putin. Instead of finding them troubling, would he take narcissistic and sadistic delight in so riling up his enemies? Would he be gladdened that in Gershkovich he has taken a prize that really stings? Will he milk that for all its worth by keeping the gifted reporter in the notorious Lefortovo Prison for months to come. Putin is, after all, a former KGB operative who understands the West’s emotional reaction when individuals are tormented and who himself is insensitive to immiserating others: witness his murderous attacks on thousands of Ukrainians and his tolerance of huge losses on the Russian side. To say the man is an animal is an insult to animals.

Sadly, despite the condemnatory reporting, Putin already has cowed Western reporters with this move – or at least made it difficult for Western media to get reporting on the ground in Russia. The Journal’s bureau chief has left and the Times has no staffers in the country any longer, as the Times reported. From his perspective, Putin has won big with this single arrest.

Western media and governments, as well as ordinary citizens, should keep up their criticisms of Putin for this appalling move, if only to remind themselves of the sort of man and government they are dealing with. However, if the past is prologue, only two things will really matter: when Putin has squeezed the arrest for all its value to him and the size of the ransom – human or otherwise — he’ll get for Gershkovich.

Will this move weaken the West’s resolve on Ukraine, moving it down the isolationist path some Republicans hope for? That is doubtful, but Putin’s gamble suggests that the reporter could be a captive as long as that war goes on. Happily, that didn’t happen with Griner. But Putin’s game with Gershkovich seems much more calculated and inhumane.

Spitzer, News of the World and The Tree of Life

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I just saw the Terrence Malick opus “The Tree of Life,” the 139-minute meditation on God, evil, love, death, evolution and a tortured upbringing in the 1950s. No date movie this, but it certainly gives a viewer something to chew on. Kind of like “2001” meets a dark, dark version of the Hardy Boys. It does have a ring of truth to it, despite its grand self-importance and distinct lack of humor.

The peculiar thing is it puts me in mind of two unsettling developments in the news business this week, the cancellation of Eliot Spitzer’s effort at redemption, “In The Arena,” and the shutdown of the News of the World. The connection may seem remote – chalk and cheese — but bear with me, dear reader.

First off, both these deaths of journalistic enterprises were sad but perhaps inevitable, much like the death at the center of the movie. The movie revolves around the loss, at 19, of a young man whose problem seems to be his innocence, sensitivity and talent in a life that values such things too little. The boy’s passing was crucial to explore the movie’s central tension – the question of whether life is about grace and wonder or torment and struggle. Are we all doomed to life as a matter of “nature red in tooth and claw” or is there a divine force that brings love and justice to the chaos?

To bring this idea round to the end of the Spitzer program and the British tabloid, the question is, were these journalistic deaths just? Further, what do they say about the nature of the world of journalism today? What do they say about the torments and struggles of individuals and enterprises? And what do they say about the evolution of our media?

In Spitzer’s case, the cancellation at base was a matter of ratings and viewership. The show was just pulling too small of a viewership for CNN, which is struggling to compete with the ideologically driven appeal of Fox News, as well as the glut of “content” that afflicts all media in the Internet age. On one level, the show’s fall is yet another example of the evolution of journalism, with the inevitable deaths of outmoded approaches this brings.

A guy sitting at desk commenting on the news of the day, with interviews – especially of other CNN pundits – just doesn’t cut it these days. Viewers need more or they’ll turn away and troll for news and information on the Net or elsewhere on the tube. This is part of the reason that conventional TV news is struggling. Such is true also of print news operations.

But Spitzer’s fall was more than that. Spitzer is a tragic figure, someone every bit as tormented and driven as the character Brad Pitt plays in “The Tree of Life.” The Pitt figure longs to be a musician but instead is a would-be entrepreneur stuck in a deadend factory executive role. He’s tortured and in turn torments those around him, including his wife and sons, as he wrestles with a life where he sees only deception and money as the driving forces. He’s cold and distant, an angry and intense figure, a sad archetype of a certain kind of 1950s father.

Spitzer, it seems to me, is every bit as cold, and someone constantly at war with inner demons. By some accounts, during his tenure as Attorney General in New York he bullied defendants, especially corporate executives. He beat them into submission, often by going outside the rules of the courtroom. He likewise brought an intensity to “In The Arena” that reflected no humor, no grace, only a penetrating and cold intellect. He’s a smart guy and a relentless questioner, but every night was a painful struggle with issues of political venality and ideology.

How much of that can an audience take? It proved too much for most viewers, it would seem. Indeed, “The Tree of Life,” with its relentless intensity, is likewise too much at times. It has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

More than that, Spitzer lacked something indispensable to journalism. He had no innocence, something crucial in a news person. He carried far too much baggage as a disgraced former governor whose dalliances with prostitutes may never be forgotten. His demons made him fascinating in a way, as one could imagine the torment that underlay his aggressive questioning of guests. But it ultimately distracted from the core mission of a journalist – to be a reporter or analyst of the news, not a center of attention oneself but rather someone focusing the limelight.

Spitzer, much like the Brad Pitt character, is akin to a figure in classic Greek tragedy. Spitzer was done in by his own grand flaws in the end. He rose to great heights only to fall, twice. The Pitt character is more the tortured victim of outside forces, but his personal flaws figure into his failed home life.

Tragedy is too grand a word, however, for the News of the World case. Certainly it is discomfiting for the people tossed out of work there. And it’s a disappointment, perhaps, for the hundreds of thousands who bought the paper each week, however trashy it was. The world will be poorer, perhaps, for the silencing of yet another once-powerful journalistic voice. But by most accounts the paper was garbage. Its voice was shrill and vengeful and no exemplar of quality in the field. The loss is hardly worth grieving over.

It may be that News of the World demonstrates that there can be justice in the world. It was killed for its journalistic sins, its inability to draw lines about what newsgathering approaches are appropriate and what are not. Paying off cops and hacking into phone mail, as alleged of the paper, is just not right. Fleet Street in general should learn from this sorry case and one hopes that Rupert Murdoch’s commitment to quality papers, such as The Times, Sunday Times and The Wall Street Journal, will only be deepened by this. Maybe it could even make Fox News less shrill.

Sometimes, deaths are appropriate. That was not true in “The Tree of Life.” It may be so for “In The Arena” and the News of the World, sorry cases whose passing will help journalism evolve.

Making business journalism sexy (almost)

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Looking for ways to make business journalism come alive for students? How about creating scavenger hunts for juicy tidbits in corporate government filings? What about mock press conferences that play PR and journalism students against one another? Then there are some sure bets – awarding $50 gift cards to local bars for mock stock-portfolio performances and showing students how to find the homes and salaries of university officials and other professors – including yourself — on the Net.

These were among the ideas savvy veteran instructors offered at the Business Journalism Professors Seminar last week at Arizona State University. The program, offered by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, brought together as fellows 15 profs from such universities as Columbia, Kansas State, Duquesne and Troy, as well as a couple schools in Beijing, the Central University of Finance & Economics and the University of International Business and Economics. I was privileged to be among those talented folks for the week.

We bandied about ideas for getting 20-year-olds (as well as fellow faculty and deans) excited about business journalism in the first place. The main answer was, of course, jobs. If they’d like good careers in journalism that pay well, offer lots of room to grow and that can be as challenging at age 45 as at 20, there really are few spots in the field to match. These days, with so much contraction in the field, business and economic coverage is one of the few bright spots, with opportunity rich at places such as Reuters, Bloomberg News, Dow Jones and the many Net places popping up.

The key, of course, is to persuade kids crazy for sports and entertainment that biz-econ coverage can be fun. The challenge is that many of them likely have never picked up the Wall Street Journal or done more than pass over the local rag’s biz page. The best counsel, offered by folks such as UNC Prof. Chris Roush, Ohio University’s Mark W. Tatge, Washington & Lee’s Pamela K. Luecke and Reynolds Center president Andrew Leckey, was to make the classes engaging, involve students through smart classroom techniques and thus build a following. Some folks, such as the University of Kansas’ James K. Gentry, even suggest sneaking economics and (shudder) math in by building in novel exercises with balance sheets and income statements.

Once you have the kids, these folks offered some cool ideas for keeping their interest:

— discuss stories on people the students can relate to, such as the recent Time cover on Mark Zuckerberg or the May 2003 piece in Fortune on Sheryl Crow and Steve Jobs, and make sure to flash them on the screen (at the risk of offending the more conservative kids, I might add the seminude photo BW ran of Richard Branson in 1998)

— scavenger hunts. Find nuggets of intriguing stuff in 10Ks or quarterly filings by local companies or familiar outfits such as Apple, Google, Coca-Cola, Buffalo Wild Wings, Hot Topic, The Buckle, Kellogg, etc., and craft a quiz of 20 or so questions to which the students must find the answers

— run contests in class to see who can guess a forthcoming unemployment rate, corporate quarterly EPS figure or inflation rate

— compare a local CEO’s pay with that of university professors, presidents or coaches, using proxy statements and Guidestar filings to find figures

— conduct field trips to local brokerage firm offices, businesses or, if possible, Fed facilities

— have student invest in mock stock portfolios and present a valuable prize at the end, such as a gift certificate or a subscription to The Economist (a bar gift card might be a bit more exciting to undergrads, I’d wager)

— follow economists’ blogs, such as Marginal Revolution and Economists Do It With Models, and get discussions going about opposing viewpoints

— turn students onto sites such as businessjournalism.org, Talking Biz News, and the College Business Journalism Consortium

— have students interview regular working people about their lives on the job

— discuss ethical problems that concern business reporters, using transgressors such as R. Foster Winans as examples. Other topics for ethical discussions might include questions about taking a thank-you bouquet of flowers from a CEO or traveling on company-paid trips, as well dating sources or questions about who pays for lunch

— discuss business journalism celebs, such as Lou Dobbs and Dan Dorfman

— discuss scandals such as the Chiquita International scandal (Cincinnati Enquirer paid $10 m and fired a reporter after he used stolen voicemails)

— use films such as “The Insider,” “Wall Street,” and “Social Network” to discuss business issues

— use short clips from various films to foster discussions of how businesses operate. Good example: “The Corporation”

— team up with PR instructors to stage a mock news conference competition pitting company execs in a crisis against journalism students. Great opportunity for both sides to strut their stuff.

We also heard helpful suggestions from employers, particularly Jodi Schneider of Bloomberg News and Ilana Lowery of the Phoenix Business Journal, along with handy ideas from Leckey and Reynolds executive director Linda Austin, a former business editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer. My biggest takeaway: run some mock job interviews with students and teach them to send handwritten thank-you notes.

And we were treated to some smart presentations by journalists Diana B. Henriques of the New York Times about the art of investigative work (look for her new Madoff book), the University of Nevada’s Alan Deutschman about the peculiar psychologies of CEOs (narcissists and psychopaths are not uncommon), the University of Missouri’s Randall Smith’s view of the future for business journalists (it’s raining everywhere but less on business areas). We got some fresh takes on computer-aided reporting, too, by Steve Doig of the ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication as well as on social media by the Reynolds Center’s Robin J. Phillips.

For anyone interested in journalism, especially biz journalism, it was a great week. As I take the lessons from ASU to heart, my students will be better off. My thanks to the folks there.

Economic Slowdown: Ideology at Work

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To the Obama-haters at the Wall Street Journal, the stubborn economic slowdown reflects business’ fear of looming tax hikes. The Administration-friendly folks at the New York Times, by contrast, blame the lackluster economy on political stalemate in Washington. Meantime, over at Bloomberg Businessweek, they tell us it’s all a matter of us having our cake and eating it, too — loving both the Bush-era low taxes and Obama-era high spending and failing to choose between the two.

The inability of our economy to surge back consistently from the Great Recession has become a Rorschach test for pundits. They look at the ugly blot and discern a pattern, one that – not surprisingly – reflects their biases. Love small government and Bush-era tax cuts? Obama’s overreaching is to blame for our woes. Never met a problem that more money from Washington couldn’t solve? It’s the shortfall in such largesse that is making that blot so skinny. And if they can’t make up their minds, they blame both Bush-era “wisdom and folly” – whatever that fence-straddling phrase means.

For my money, the reality is more a matter of the Depression-era notion of pushing on a string. Our policymakers can’t find the levers that will kickstart the economy, that will ignite the animal spirits of our business leaders, and that will drive down the pathologically high unemployment rate. Nothing seems to work, though the folks at the Fed aim to keep pushing whatever buttons they can. Their newest tack, revealed on Aug. 10: buying up more Treasury debt to keep interest rates low.

In the end, the problem may be that the hole we put ourselves into in the Great Recession is just depressingly deep. It took years to dig. And it could take years, sadly, for us to find our way out. To take just one measure, U.S. employment plunged by more than six percent in the recession that began in 2007, the steepest fall of any of the 11 recessions we’ve suffered through since World War II. To take another measure, these downturns lasted from six to 16 months, and our latest slide – believed to have ended in 2009, though the National Bureau of Economic Research has yet to date it – will almost certainly prove to be longer than any of them. (For policy wonks, the Minneapolis Fed puts all these comparisons into perspective here.)

If history proves anything, however, it’s that economies do claw their way back. Sometimes, they do so with the help of Washington. Sometimes, they move on despite government meddling, however well-intentioned. Even today, economists don’t agree on whether D.C. pulled us out of the Depression or prolonged it – making that bout of global misery our first and biggest political and economic Rorschach test.

It’s no comfort to people who have been out of work for months or even years at this point. It’s also small comfort to investors or people considering whether to deploy capital, especially since they are still sussing out Washington’s new regulatory reach. And, if this downturn proves at all similar to earlier ones, whole industries will emerge reshaped as a result of it (think Detroit), not to mention companies (think GM). We will come out of this as a far different economy with areas like Internet-related industries taking a dominant place over the manufacturing icons of the past. (How is it that people still have enough money for iPads?)

Following every twist and turn in this uneven recovery is enough to generate serious palpitations. For players in the capital markets – or anyone, for that matter — it’s healthier to set aside the dire headlines of the moment and keep your eyes on the horizon, however distant it seems. Bet on a long slow ride up, with lots of dips. Keynes famously said that in the long run, we are all dead. But at the moment, the promise of the long run is the only thing we have to hang onto.