Avoiding the problem: Snowe misses the point of healthcare reform

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Over the course of Olympia Snowe's career in the US Senate, companies and workers in the healthcare and insurance industries have been her top donors (except for retirees and retiree political-action committees, which are obviously also concerned with healthcare issues).

And as she wades into the middle of the healthcare-reform debate, Snowe — who declined to answer Phoenix questions about her donors' influence — is urging the exasperated American public to give private health-insurance companies one more chance.

Snowe, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee (which handles healthcare issues), says she is afraid that a government-run health-insurance option (an option, mind you, not a mandatory-participation program) would unfairly compete with the private sector. She told the Associated Press last week, "If you establish a public option at the forefront that goes head-to-head and competes with the private health insurance market the public option will have significant price advantages."

That is, Snowe fears that the public option will be cheaper than the choices offered by private insurers. Of course, lower costs are precisely what Americans are seeking in healthcare reform.

But Snowe — and her colleague Senator Susan Collins (for whom healthcare and insurance-industry gifts are among the top six campaign donors) — are instead seeking to protect the insurers, advocating for delaying the public option until it is demonstrated that the private companies can't expand coverage and decrease costs. Instead, they are advocating a system by which taxpayer-funded subsidies would help Americans pay private insurers' market rates for health-insurance plans.

They neglect two vital facts. First, healthcare is a basic human right — though Snowe, through her press secretary, Julia Wanzco, declined to say whether she believes that, saying only that she supports "universal access" to care. Second, private companies have already proved unwilling to solve the problem: insurance premiums nationwide have doubled over the last 10 years (income hasn't followed suit, obviously), and insurance-company profits have quadrupled. Forty-seven states, including Maine, have near-monopoly situations in which one or only a very few companies control the health-insurance market.

Progressives throughout the country, and all over the Internet, are screaming. And they are acting, seeking tales of woe from those struggling to get and pay for healthcare, sending pollsters out into the streets to ask people for their opinions, and airing television ads urging constituents to contact their senators to urge more reform. Last Wednesday in Portland and Augusta, Mainers took to the streets to oppose the high premiums of Maine's near-monopoly health-insurance provider, Anthem.

Citing figures that show premiums in Maine rose five times faster than the state's median income, and that Anthem continue to show massive profits despite the poor economy, the protesters called on Snowe and Collins to support a public option from the get-go. At the rallies, organized by the Maine People's Alliance, a progressive advocacy group, several Mainers spoke about their problems with the private health-insurance industry, citing high prices and low benefits.

While progressives cite stats like the Wall Street Journal's recent poll showing 75 percent of Americans are strong supporters of an government-run option, both Snowe's and Collins's offices say that the thousands of constituent comments they have received show, in Collins spokesman Kevin Kelley's words, "little agreement on what ought to be done."

Press releases: Nice to meet you

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Rich Connor, the mercurial new co-owner and editor/publisher of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, the Waterville-based Morning Sentinel, and the Augusta-based Kennebec Journal, is a curious figure, who himself seems a good candidate for interesting copy in the coming years. Here are a few scenes from his first couple weeks of ownership:

• The press conference at which Connor announced his purchase of the papers (you can see the full video at thePhoenix.com/AboutTown) featured lavish praise for his wife, Deborah. And understandably so, as he went on to admit that, while he ran several papers in Texas for six years, THEY WEREN'T PROFITABLE UNTIL HE LEFT to run the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader in Pennsylvania, and Deborah took over the Texas operation.

• During that press conference, he recalled that a friend, a rich woman in Texas, told him that he shouldn't buy the newspapers if he couldn't get a local bank to support it. Perhaps someone should lend him an atlas — he ended up BORROWING THE MONEY FROM BRITISH TAXPAYERS. Citizens Bank, whose Portland office did the paperwork, is owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland, which was taken over last year by the British government during the banking crisis. Maine is part of New England, but, c'mon.

• He also promised to assume that "the customer is always right." Of course, if you define "customer" the way Connor does — someone who is either an employee, a reader, or an advertiser — it's easy to imagine a situation where there are THREE GROUPS WHOSE INTERESTS CAN BE SIMULTANEOUSLY "RIGHT" AND WILDLY DIVERGENT. Here's just one: Should a reporter stay up very late at night, away from her family, to cover a contentious city-council meeting, during which an advertiser's business plan is at stake?

• Perhaps most troubling, he is USING THE PAPERS' MAIN NEWS SPACE IN WAYS HARDLY BEFITTING A SERIOUS NEWS ORGANIZATION. First there was the 1500-word June 21 lead story (it was clearly marked "opinion") describing the astrological projections, as well as the reminiscences of the last time he lived in Maine (more than 40 years ago), that led to his purchase of the paper. Two days later, the lead "story" was about a newspaper promotion that no doubt surprised those "customers" who had paid for their papers: the Press Herald and its sisters are giving away free copies at various locations in their coverage areas. And last Friday, he printed large color photos of his biggest advertisers grinning awkwardly with their Press Herald sales reps on the back page of the front section. (Not to mention his giddily obsequious and boosterish column in Sunday's "Insight" section.)

But Connor was serious when he said, before the assembled cameras (and his bankers): "We will be profitable this year."

What that will look like is unclear. He plans to keep all three papers open (the Sentinel and the KJ are in better financial shape than the Press Herald), and hopes to pay off some debt by selling the Press Herald's downtown-Portland real estate.

There will, though, be significant cost-cutting. Connor's cagey about where, but we have two clues. First there's the press conference's Freudian slip: Confirming that there will be as many as 100 more layoffs in the near future, he added, "we're hoping it will be more than that."

And there is the praise he offered for newsroom staffers who worked until midnight one night and came in at 5 am the next morning. "We didn't ask them to do that," he said. Those employees just took a 10-percent pay cut, and face at best a 75-percent chance of keeping their jobs, so maybe Connor is suggesting he needs volunteer labor.

FairPoint watch: Making a quiet killing — of itself and Maine's economy

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Businesses in downtown Portland are on the move. Retail-property rents are lower than they have been in years, and stores are making deals left and right, with more than a dozen changing location in the past couple months. You don't know where your favorite store will be next — but don't count on calling them to find out where they've gone. They can't take your call — and won't even actually hear it ring.

That's because FairPoint — you remember them, our state's primary telephone-service provider? the nearing-bankruptcy company that has trouble providing phone service to 911 operators or even its own customer-service call centers? — has been making businesses wait more than a month to transfer phone connections to their new locations.

A simple stroll through the Old Port one recent afternoon led to three lengthy conversations with shop owners complaining about FairPoint (we'll save them the embarrassment of identifying them, if only so FairPoint won't target them for further delays). And there are many more, all of whom are talking about complaining to the Maine Public Utilities Commission, canceling their FairPoint service, getting their phone and Internet through TimeWarner Cable, or all three.

Even businesses moving a couple of buildings over, or onto the next block, have waited weeks and still can't get connected. And nobody from FairPoint seems available to help.

"I've spent hours on the phone with them," said one shop owner. "I give up." Another is forced to call a nearby business to process credit-card transactions, because he has no working FairPoint phone line to do it himself.

The problems are well known to state officials: Both Richard Davies, the head of Maine's Office of the Public Advocate (which represents consumers at-large in issues before the state's Public Utilities Commission), and Andrew Hagler, director of telephone and water regulation at the PUC, say they have heard complaints from businesses and residents.

Hagler adds that FairPoint has a "stabilization plan" it is using to mark its progress toward service-as-expected. But company filings with his office show that improvement is slow, and in some cases, not actually happening.

It is, therefore, little wonder that FairPoint recently told federal securities regulators that it might declare bankruptcy, unless its creditors allow it to delay interest payments on more than $500 million in debt (some of which is accruing more than 13-percent interest). In addition, its June 24 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission declared that FairPoint has exhausted its available credit, and its revenues continue to decline.

While Davies says bankruptcy is "clearly ... more than a remote possibility," he is hoping that FairPoint will be able to "stop those losses and get people to come back," so as to avoid another transition to a new owner, or the involvement of a federal bankruptcy court in the state's telecommunications industry.

At least businesses and residents can take heart from one thing: The FairPoint public-relations department is no more responsive than its customer service. Company spokesman Jeff Nevins responded to three interview-seeking voicemails with an e-mail asking for the questions; the Phoenix's reply remained unanswered at our deadline. (Read the questions and the answers — if FairPoint responds — at thePhoenix.com/AboutTown.)

Music Seen: Gypsy Tailwind at Port City Music Hall

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Sometimes "studio magic" doesn't translate well to the stage — especially when 15 musicians perform in a single song. But other times, you wish such large live performances were being recorded for the next album.

Given their connections to crowded-live-act extraordinaire Rustic Overtones (including performances and arrangements by Dave Noyes and Ryan Zoidis), it's no wonder that Gypsy Tailwind's CD-release show falls into the latter category. On Saturday night, they started small(ish), with just five musicians on stage. Frontman Dan Connor sang and played guitar all night, but the double-length set didn't really get going until frontwoman Anna Lombard put down her guitar and focused on singing.

Gently mixing songs from their first record, Halo Sessions (2008) and the new one, Grace, as well as at least one as-yet unreleased tune, the band carefully managed the energy in the 600-person-plus crowd. Connor's smooth crooning, coupled with Lombard's grounded power, held sway — with the occasional guitar, keyboard, drum, and banjo solo — until late in the night, when the crowds started to rush the stage.

Or at least that's how it seemed. During a break in the set, eight music stands, five mikes, five audio-input lines, and five chairs were arranged on stage. What little space remained was soon filled with five string musicians (a cellist, and a pair each of violists and violinists, including sometimes-Rustic band member Angela Doxsey) and a five-piece horn section (with Noyes and Zoidis, there were two trombones, a trumpet, an alto sax, and a baritone sax), who almost immediately got rousing ovations from the crowd.

Arching over all of it, though, were Lombard's vocals, soaring to the heights of the city and never seeming to want to come down.

GT play the Boston Harbor Boat Cruise July 31 and Baystock Music Festival at the Maine State Pier August 8 | gypsytailwind.net

Jailed HIV-positive pregnant woman released - for now

Published in the Portland Phoenix and the Boston Phoenix

Quinta Layin Tuleh, the HIV-positive pregnant woman a federal judge in Bangor, Maine, ordered jailed until her baby was delivered, has been released on bail while her appeal of her sentence makes its way through the courts.

In May, Judge John Woodcock Jr. ruled that he would jail Tuleh — who pleaded guilty to possessing false immigration documents — for the rest of her pregnancy because he believed that, if she were in prison, she would be more likely to get medical treatment that would reduce the risk of her fetus contracting HIV. He told her that if she were either not pregnant or not HIV-positive, he would have sentenced her to the 114 days she had already spent in jail and let her go free.

The decision was so unusual that both Tuleh and federal prosecutors appealed the sentence for being too harsh. Fifteen state and national organizations (mainly advocates for women's issues, HIV-patients' rights, and reproductive rights) and medical experts filed a joint document supporting both the appeal and Tuleh's request for bail, saying medical care would be better outside of the prison system, and that keeping her locked up simply for being pregnant and HIV-positive was a dangerous precedent other courts have studiously avoided.

Last week, Woodcock agreed, though he is powerless to alter the sentence — the appeal process removes that option from his jurisdiction. Tuleh and the prosecution have asked the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston to immediately overturn the sentence and return the case to Woodcock, with the expectation that, this time, he will sentence her to time served and release her immediately.

White-supremacist code printed nationwide

Published in the Portland Phoenix, the Boston Phoenix, and the Providence Phoenix

Imagine you are a white supremacist who is getting on in years. You've spent your life writing, extolling the virtues of Nazism, and denouncing Jews and African-Americans. You even wrote a book (published only online) that claimed the Jewish holy book, the Torah, demands the slaughter of Christians, and used that spurious beginning to justify the slaughter of Jews instead. You know full well that it was part of Hitler's justification for the Holocaust.
As 2009 dawns, you are nearing 90 years old, and you have watched your fellow World War II veterans struggle and suffer their ways through slow, degenerative deaths. You have no desire to endure that. You see yourself as a warrior, even perhaps a holy warrior. So you hatch a plan that will bring you a warrior's death, and simultaneously make you a white-supremacist martyr. And you realize that your age gives the plot an incredible twist only those in the know will discover: it is the key to getting all the world's media to print "Heil Hitler" in your obituary. But time is short — your birthday is in July.
The Southern Poverty Law Center last week confirmed that it is investigating a theory similar to my own, which is described above, in the aftermath of the fatal shooting at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, on June 10. In that incident, James von Brunn, a long-time white supremacist and neo-Nazi, allegedly shot and killed an African-American guard before being shot by other security staffers.
And while von Brunn survived to face federal criminal charges and may yet die slowly in federal prison, he did manage to get newspapers around the globe to print a white-supremacist code praising Adolf Hitler right next to his name. "James von Brunn, 88," was a phrase in almost every news story — indeed, it was a common piece of harmless information that would have been more noticeable if reporters had left it out. It is his age.
But white supremacists and those who monitor hate groups know it is also a numeric code meaning "Heil Hitler." The letter "H" is the eighth letter of the alphabet, and hatemongers around the world have long used "88" to mean "HH," or "Heil Hitler," honoring the leading historical icon of hate and intolerance, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
Von Brunn himself knew and used this code often. Even before this year, he signed many of his Web postings "James von Brunn 88" — differing only by a comma from how newspapers and online news sites described him after he put his tragic plan into action.

Power through peace: In exile, Burmese monks still carry the torch

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Now is a critical time for democracy's worldwide battle against totalitarianism. Rioters in Iran are disputing the outcome of a possibly stolen presidential election. North Korea has sentenced two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor for allegedly crossing the border into the closed country from China. And Burma's only living democratically elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was recently allowed to leave her home after years of house arrest — but only because the country's ruling military junta decided she should be in prison instead.

That crisis comes into local focus with this week's showings of Anders Østergaard's documentary Burma VJ: Reporting From A Closed Country at SPACE Gallery. Comprised of footage filmed by undercover journalists risking their lives to share truth with the world, it chronicles the so-called "Saffron Revolution:" five weeks in 2007 when Burma was rocked by pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks. (See the review, "Pixel Revolt," by Christopher Gray, on this page.)

But what the movie doesn't show is as important. Accompanying the film, and holding discussion sessions after the screenings, will be three of the monks who led the Saffron Revolution, and who continue to demand the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all other Burmese political prisoners. These monks have much more perspective to share than what's included in the 85-minute doc.

One of them, U Pyinya Zawta (who appears in the film making calls from Burma to Thailand using the pseudonym Ko Nyo), tells through a translator on the phone from his new home in western New York of the 10 years he spent in Burmese prisons — which didn't deter him from helping to lead the Saffron Revolution. (Wanted by the government, he has since escaped the country, and found political asylum in the US.)

While he pronounces himself "very pleased and satisfied with the work and the sacrifices" of the undercover videojournalists, he notes that the movie, and the VJs' work overall, necessarily "only shows a fraction of the reality that's taking place in Burma."

One major limitation: available light. "Much more severe and brutal human rights abuses took place when night falls and after the military curfew," he says. The military waits until after dark to surround temples and neighborhoods, disconnects what little electricity is still on, and storms in. In some incidents, he recalls, people were "almost beaten to death," and others were "buried alive."

The regime's repression is overt. U Pyinya Zawta's own temple, Maggin, in the center of the capital city of Rangoon, was closed completely, its head monk and another two leaders imprisoned, the young monks sent back to their home villages, and many other senior monks scattered into hiding and exile.

But the Burmese people still demand the military honor the 1990 election in which they chose Aung San Suu Kyi as prime minister; they continue to resist, even as the military steps up repression, hoping to prevent an uprising if — but more likely, when — they sentence Aung San Suu Kyi to more prison time.

The junta is hoping to prevent a different type uprising, at the same time: one from the international community. And this leads to U Pyinya Zawta's final twin pleas: He asks the military to "free Aung San Suu Kyi along with the National League for Democracy political prisoners," or "there will be no peace." And he says the United Nations, the US, and the world at large must put real pressure on the Burmese junta.

"They issue statement after statement condemning" the junta, he says of these international entities, but that is "dancing to the tune" of the dictatorship, because "these resolutions are all on paper." What is needed, instead, is for the world to "give them a deadline" with "clear and decisive consequences." Maybe something like what he, thousands of other monks, and the videojournalists would face if they were ever caught in Burma.

Under attack: Civil liberties' limits grow

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Recent decisions by President Barack Obama and Maine Governor John Baldacci have dampened progressive hopes that the Republican-inspired war on civil liberties might be winding down.

First up, OUR TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS AND E-MAIL MESSAGES ARE NOT PRIVATE, AND MAY BE RECORDED AND GIVEN TO THE GOVERNMENT WITHOUT US EVER KNOWING. The Obama administration took a page from Dubya and argued that telecommunications companies should not have to disclose what, if any, information they gave the government in the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program.

It all began in 2006, when 21 Maine telephone customers asked the Maine Public Utilities Commission to investigate whether Verizon violated the state law requiring phone companies to protect customers' privacy rights.

When the warrantless wiretapping scandal broke, Verizon publicly rejected news reports that it had given the government information about customers' calls. The MPUC asked Verizon to affirm that statement under oath, but the request was blocked by the Bush administration's Justice Department, which insisted that any talk about warrantless wiretapping would inflict "exceptionally grave harm to national security."

The Obama administration kept up that argument, and on June 3 a federal judge in California agreed, despite the fact that we already know that — in addition to possible surveillance of terrorism suspects — publicly owned companies based in the United States helped the federal government spy on innocent citizens, as well as journalists, American soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and international aid workers by monitoring their telephone calls.

And then, here in Maine, Governor John BALDACCI RELINQUISHED MAINE'S POSITION AS AN OPPONENT TO PRIVACY-INVADING FEDERAL RULES that do little to protect national security and mostly just inconvenience and intimidate people who want driver's licenses.

The so-called "REAL ID" law set out federal standards for state identification cards, saying they would prevent undocumented immigrants from getting official government ID. To force compliance, the Bush administration waved a hefty stick: If states didn't comply, their IDs would be considered invalid for federal purposes, like entering federal buildings or boarding commercial aircraft, even for domestic flights.

Maine was the first state whose legislature officially rejected REAL ID — back in 2007, saying it was an unfunded mandate from Washington that would endanger Mainers' privacy rights. A year later, under heavy pressure, Baldacci forced lawmakers to cave to the feds' demands, saying the potential inconvenience to Mainers was too great. He had, however, managed to hold out long enough to make it obvious Maine was being bullied by the Bushies.

But this year, with a new president seeking to revamp the REAL ID program, Maine lawmakers passed a bill that would have repealed most of the terms of last year's capitulation. On June 3, Baldacci stymied that effort to again be in a leading position, by vetoing it.

Fetal obligations: Federal judge: more rights for the unborn

Published in the Portland Phoenix and the Boston Phoenix

Following the tragic shooting in Kansas last month, pro-choice advocates have been dealt another disheartening setback: a federal judge in Bangor has recognized a new right of fetuses — to be protected from diseases carried by their mothers — that could become a key element in the nation’s ongoing abortion debate.

In May, Judge John Woodcock Jr., the chief federal judge in Maine, ordered an HIV-positive pregnant woman from Cameroon, who pleaded guilty to possessing false immigration documents, to remain in federal prison until after her expected delivery date in order to protect the child’s welfare. The judge said he worried that if Quinta Layin Tuleh was released or in the custody of immigration officials — who are seeking to deport her — she would not have access to medication that can prevent HIV transmission from a mother to her fetus.

“My obligation is to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant, and that public, it seems to me at this point, should likely include that child she’s carrying,” ruled Woodcock, a Bowdoin College and UMaine Law graduate who was appointed to the federal bench in 2003 by President George W. Bush. “I don’t think the transfer of HIV to an unborn child is a crime technically under the law, but it is as direct and as likely as an ongoing assault.”

Woodcock went on to say that he has an “obligation to do what I can to protect that person, when that person is born, from permanent and ongoing harm.” Having admitted that he would have released Tuleh on time served if not for her medical conditions, he remanded her to federal prison for 238 more days.

This sets out an argument that, legal experts say, if taken to its logical conclusion, could be used by a court to protect a fetus from its mother. (At the moment, fetal rights are generally limited to protection from strangers acting without the consent of the mother — as when someone who assaults or murders a pregnant woman can be charged with two offenses: one for the attack on the mother, and one for the attack on the fetus.) It also contradicts a key element of current abortion rights: namely, that a mother is allowed to do what she wishes with a fetus, including abort it.

Maine activist groups are reeling, with some worrying that it could mark a dangerous precedent for so-called negligent mothers. “When are you allowed to lock up a pregnant woman?” asks Zachary Heiden, the legal director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. Can a pregnant woman convicted of a crime be sentenced to jail solely to ensure she takes prenatal vitamins, or stays away from junk food?

Women’s issues and reproductive-rights organizations, as well as those dealing with immigration questions, HIV status, and prisoner treatment, have also huddled to craft responses.

“It’s crazy that we live in a country where you have to be in prison to get health care,” says Ben Chin, the Maine People’s Alliance’s federal-issues organizer, who believes that if our immigration laws were reformed to allow people who are here to legalize their status, this issue would not even have come up. “She was here to work, she was contributing to the economy,” he says. Jailing her and sending her out of the country does neither her nor the country any good.

Peter Rice, legal director of the Augusta-based Disability Rights Center, notes that HIV-positive status is a disability under federal law, and says Tuleh “was imprisoned for her disability,” which is against the spirit of the Americans with Disabilities Act. (That law, however, does not specifically apply to federal judges handing down criminal sentences.)

Another curious wrinkle to this case: federal prosecutors objected to the sentence, and have appealed it to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which is expected to hear arguments by August. “I’ve never heard of a prosecutor appealing” when the judge’s sentence is longer than the government requested, says Heiden. Both his organization and the Disability Rights Center are considering supporting the appeal.

Paula Silsby, the US Attorney for Maine, declined to comment, saying it was an ongoing case. Judge Woodcock did not return calls seeking comment.

Keeping faith: Piers Paul Read looks inside the Church

Published in the Portland Phoenix

His publicist calls Piers Paul Read "the anti-Dan Brown." She's capitalizing on a buzz-worthy name, sure, but it's a fairly insightful description of a man whose latest book, The Death of a Pope, explores not the Brownish theme of the Catholic Church secretly at work in world affairs, but rather its inverse — how worldly factions seek to transform the traditionalist Church through its cloistered traditions.
Read is best known to a generation of readers as the author of Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (J.B. Lippincott, 1974), about the high-mountain plane crash that killed several members of a Uruguayan rugby team; the survivors, strengthened by eating the flesh of their dead friends, made a nearly impossible trek to civilization and rescue.
"I had quite a sheltered upbringing," says the soft-spoken Englishman, who stopped through Maine last week for a reading in Augusta (but, oddly, not in Portland). As a young adult, he says he was "very revolutionary," promoting Marxism in Latin America, but came to doubt whether his socially disruptive efforts would really help people in need. That period in his life both was part of, and deepened, his quest to overcome insularity by inquiring deeply into the outcomes of efforts by those who claim to know the ultimate unknowable, God's will.
His understanding of that struggle lends a quiet weight to the smooth, quick readability of The Death of a Pope. Set in the days between John Paul II's death and the election of Benedict XVI, the book follows the forces swirling around the conclave of cardinals that selects a new pope, including conniving princes of the church, radical Catholic missionaries, and innocents who find themselves involved.
The end leaves much room for speculation about what comes next, but suggests an answer to the age-old question of whether salvation is earned by words, deeds, or faith alone.
The Death of a Pope | by Piers Paul Read | Ignatius Press | 225 pages | $21.95

Press Releases: Death knell

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Last week was a bittersweet week for the people who work at the Portland Press Herald and its sister publications. It is hard to fault them for the steps they took to try to preserve some semblance of the present, but we cannot avoid the fact that they have sounded the death knell both for the newspapers that employ them and the unions that represent them.

Which is not to say they had much choice. At a press conference announcing a contract agreement between the Portland Newspaper Guild and Richard Connor, the Bangor native who has been trying to buy the papers for the past year, guild president Tom Bell put a positive spin on things, calling the deal "a remarkable story." He is certainly right that without the agreement of his union and the several smaller ones involved with the company, the papers might well have closed altogether. But the price the unions are paying to avoid that fate is a cruel second-best.

Thanks to union concessions including a 10-percent wage cut to a new level that will be frozen for two years, a pension freeze, suspension of company 401(k) contributions, the papers are not closing. But they certainly will be changing significantly.

Even the unions themselves are speculating that more than 100 jobs will disappear (the unions hope they'll come through buyouts rather than outright layoffs, but that remains to be seen). What they are not saying, publicly at least, is that if that lowball number is real, union membership will shrink by 25 percent (the 500-employee company has just more than 400 union workers). And if more people's jobs go, the unions will be even smaller.

Collective power, already almost nil, will weaken further. Sure, those union members who keep their jobs get "sweat equity" in the form of 15 percent of any increase in the company's value. But there are no guarantees that the company will, in fact, gain value. And while the guild also gets three seats on the company's board of directors, that won't be a majority, and (depending on whether the board has seven or nine seats) may be an utterly powerless bloc.

In fact, in an ironic twist, the unions may end up in a position relative to Connor similar to where Knight-Ridder and now McClatchy have found themselves in dealing with the Blethen family: as minority owners who find out the results of important decisions only after they have been made.

It does remain, though, hard to blame the unions for trying. Many of those who voted for the new contract will lose their jobs — as will some who voted against it, presumably. But the people who remain will still be part of a union, and there is a principle they are upholding by attempting to defend the strength of numbers, even as they must realize the entity is a shadow of its former self.

Connor has been clearly in the driver's seat for some time now, and the unions' concessions only make him stronger. They have tacitly accepted his argument that union members have been overpaid and otherwise overcompensated in the past. Earning back any of the things they just gave up will be difficult, if not impossible: As an example, it will take at least eight years for any worker who survives the layoffs to return to his or her previous pay level — and that's true only if, after the two-year wage freeze, raises return to their previous 2-percent-per-year rate.

It will, then, be quite hard for the unions to counter any further claims Connor makes about what his company's financial needs are, and nigh impossible for them to effectively oppose anything he wants to try.

After the battle: Where will same-sex marriage be in 2010?

Published in the Portland Phoenix

In a fast-moving and historic couple of days in Augusta (pity they don't move so fast on other important issues), the Maine Legislature last week approved same-sex marriage, and Governor John Baldacci ended weeks of speculation about what he would do by signing it that very day.

The bill is now slated to take effect 90 days after the close of this legislative session, or September 14. But opponents are widely expected to collect the 55,087 signatures required to bring the question to the ballot in either November or June 2010, setting the stage for what may be a pretty intense fight. That's the short term. But it's much less clear what will same-sex marriage will be like in Maine after the post-battle dust settles, say, in late 2010.

We asked few folks involved in the debate what they think. And a large number of them — whether they are for or against same-sex marriage — predict that most people won't really give it a second thought, even a scant 18 months from now. Among the remainder, the chief sentiment is that the degree to which same-sex marriage is controversial will shift with time, possibly resulting in a repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (which limits federal marriage benefits to one-man-one-woman couples), subtle shifts in clerical practice, or both.

An expanding movement

"Gay and lesbian couples will be getting married," predicts Shenna Bellows, executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, one of the organizations that led the drive for marriage equality in Maine. But, like a true activist, she doesn't see it ending there. "Some of those couples may start to look to the federal level to rectify the discrimination that's occurring federally," she says, adding that "Maine's success will inspire citizens of other states to advocate for equality." And on a personal note, "In 2050, I think that I'll be telling my grandkids about the most historic moment of my legislative advocacy, and they'll be bored. They won't be able to imagine a time when we discriminated against gays and lesbians," similar to how many young people today struggle to imagine discriminating against African Americans.

End of controversy

Like Bellows, Dennis Damon, the Democratic senator from Hancock County who was the lead sponsor of Maine's same-sex marriage law, expects the controversy will largely blow over, though there will remain pockets of people who don't accept it, "just like there are those probably in this nation who have never accepted desegregation."

Damon, a notary public who is allowed to conduct civil marriages under Maine law, says he has been pleasantly surprised to find that people have asked him to officiate at their same-sex marriage ceremonies. He says the law allows him to agree to conduct some, and not others, as he has previously decided individually whether or not he will conduct heterosexual marriages, and "I'm not worried about being sued" over those decisions, as some same-sex marriage opponents have suggested might happen.

Stronger traditional marriages

Damon finds what may be unlikely agreement from Bob Emrich, director of the Maine Jeremiah Project, which has opposed same-sex marriage, and which is leading the people's-veto effort. By late 2010, same-sex marriage will be overturned and not mourned, but rather considered "a fad that's passed by," Emrich says.

But some, he hopes, might say to themselves that they "really haven't taken marriage as seriously as we ought to," and will undertake both personal efforts to shore up their relationships and begin to demand that state government act to "stabilize families."

Clearer church-state divide

Reverend Deborah Davis-Johnson, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Portland and a member of Maine's Religious Coalition for Freedom to Marry, thinks the boundary between church and state will continue to become clearer. "Likely people will have separated the religious ceremony of marriage from the legal ceremony," she says. Some of that may come, she suggests, from clergy who, in efforts to treat all couples equally, regardless of sexuality, will eventually decline to sign state-issued marriage licenses, choosing rather to conduct religious marriage ceremonies and send couples to state or local government representatives for the legal certification process.

End to 'marriage control'

Mark Henkel, founder of TruthBearer.org, an Old Orchard Beach-based group promoting "Christian polygamy," says conservatives will continue to object to same-sex marriage, and predicts they will ultimately come around to his perspective: that governmental "marriage control" of any kind should end. "Both sides are redefining marriage," he says, either as one-man-one-woman, or any-two-adults; both, he says, discriminate against polygamists. He hopes government will eventually get entirely out of determining what is or is not a marriage, so long as it is between "unrelated consenting adults."

Increasing acceptance

Betsy Smith, executive director of Equality Maine, a leader in the push for same-sex marriage, is mostly thinking about the referendum fight, which to her is an effort to protect "fairness and equality for all Maine families."

She sees hope as young people, who "don't understand what the big deal is" and quite strongly, as a demographic group, support same-sex marriage, grow into political power that will continue that protection. (She also predicts "a big boost" for Maine's economy in wedding tourism.)

No destruction

"I don't think it'll be anything anybody's interested in anymore," says Reverend Stephen Carnahan, pastor of the Open House Church in Portland and a member of the Religious Coalition for Freedom to Marry. "Everyone will have found that it doesn't actually cause Armageddon."

While opponents fear "the end of marriage in Maine," he suggests that what they will find is that "even if they still disagree with it, they'll realize that it's not going to destroy things."

'Ongoing cultural divide'

Marc Mutty, the public affairs director for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, expects success for the people's veto effort he is helping to lead, but says it won't be the end of the road, saying gay-rights activists will continue to push for same-sex marriage, in Maine, in other states, and at the federal level. "I expect this to be an ongoing cultural divide for years to come," he says, though he hopes that the people's veto will end most of the political debate, at least for a while. And, for his part, Mutty hints that if the veto fails, there won't be a next step.

Mercurial influence

Predictions from Portland's Best Comic and Psychic

Brian Brinegar, voted Portland's Best Comedian by Portland Phoenix readers earlier this year, went non-comic (and succinct), citing philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

Robin Ivy, voted Portland's Best Psychic by Portland Phoenix readers, checked with the skies and has this to add: "The gay-marriage decision was made on the eve of Mercury retrograde, so it's a pretty sure thing it will be revisited sooner rather than later. Mercury retrograde is all about retracing steps and rethinking decisions made. At the same time, though, Pluto in Capricorn is working for long-term restructuring and confronting structures that have been in place like governments and, yes, the tradition of marriage. I predict in 10 or 12 years there will still be opponents of gay marriage, but for the most part all different kinds of families will live side-by-side with bigger concerns and a need for community, and move beyond this as an issue. We may be dealing with alien life forms, environmental changes, and technology to preserve life in general. Okay, that may be extreme, but you get the idea. We will have other work to do by then."

Prison Watch: Putting an end to the hunger strike

Published in the Portland Phoenix; co-written with Lance Tapley

Maine State Prison officials ended a hunger strike involving at least 10 inmates of the solitary-confinement Supermax unit in Warren by threatening to withhold the strikers’ psychotropic medications, according to allegations by an inmate who participated in the strike.

Eight inmates began striking on Sunday, May 3, demanding access to televisions or radios to help relieve the isolation of 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement. (Inmates in Maine, and in most other states, are not sentenced to solitary confinement by a judge, but rather are assigned there by prison staff, often for breaking even minor prison rules — a common practice despite the fact that many inmates suffer from mental illnesses that are not properly treated in prison and make it hard for them to follow rules.)

“Most states recognize that it’s a necessity to have a TV or radio to keep sane” in solitary, one of the protesters, Jesse Baum, wrote the Portland Phoenix in a letter dated the day the strike began. (Read an online report posted during the early days of the strike at thePhoenix.com/AboutTown.)

One inmate dropped out of the strike early last week, and two more had dropped out by May 8, though Associate Corrections Commissioner Denise Lord said then that two more prisoners had joined the protest.

Lord says the inmates did not receive radios, but voluntarily resumed eating over the weekend (she did not know the exact time it the strike ended, but said all were eating by the morning of May 11). According to Lord, prison medical and mental-health staff checked the striking inmates daily, though she would not say what they found, or whether inmates received any treatment, citing medical-privacy regulations.

In a May 7 letter to the Phoenix, Baum wrote that the prison’s medical staff were not treating the health problems he and other inmates had, and were planning on withholding medication for their various mental illnesses, such as “psychosis, paranoia, panic attacks, ADHD, bipolar, depression.” And in a May 10 letter, he said Acting Deputy Warden Dwight Fowles and prison mental-health workers “told inmates they were not to get meds while on hunger strike.”

Initially, Lord disputed those statements, saying “We would never refuse medication,” though adding that inmates can refuse to take it. But upon further questioning, Lord admitted that medical staff might have talked about withholding medications if it was “medically deemed necessary.” (She offered no examples, but agreed with a Phoenix suggestion that some of the medicine might have carried recommendations that it be taken with food.)

“Going on a hunger strike is a personal decision,” Lord said, saying that withholding medication might have been “a consequence” of that, and saying medical and mental-health staff would have given inmates “full understanding” of that possibility.

Ultimately, though, Lord said, “I’m not sure if medication was stopped. I really don’t know.”

Baum had previously said he thought the prison banned Supermax inmates from having radios for fear they would use the radio parts to harm themselves. Lord seemed to agree, saying Supermax inmates are restricted from having very much “personal property” (a designation that includes TVs, radios, electronic game systems, books, magazines, and photographs) in their cells, “primarily for safety and security reasons.”

Several of the inmates suffer from serious mental illness, Baum wrote to the Phoenix, identifying one hunger striker as Michael James, a severely mentally ill man whose incarceration at the prison has long been controversial. Robin Dearborn, his mother, describes the part of the Supermax where he is held as a “dungeon.” (For more on James, see “Punish the Mentally Ill,” by Lance Tapley, April 13, 2007.)

The last Supermax mass hunger strike, which lasted for several days, occurred in 2006 to protest the treatment of Ryan Rideout, a mentally-ill man who had hanged himself in his cell. (See “State Sued Over Inmate’s Death,” by Lance Tapley, March 5, 2008.)

Though the strike has ended, the Black Bird Legal Collective and the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition will hold a rally at noon on Saturday, May 16, outside the prison, at 807 Cushing Road, Warren, to support the inmates and to demand “humane treatment of prisoners and an end to long term isolation and other forms of torture in Maine prisons.”

Press Releases: Dodging Shots

Published in the Portland Phoenix

In politics, and with the media, it's the outcome, and not the intention, that matters. That's fortunate for Senator Susan Collins, who got lucky twice in the same week.

Back in February, "moderate Republican" senator Collins managed to strike $780 million designated for preparing for and fighting flu pandemics from President Obama's economic-stimulus package — all part of her efforts to cut Democratic proposals down to a size she could support.

When the swine-flu panic struck last week, Collins was a main target of critics from outside the GOP who labeled her budget-cutting efforts part what lefties call "the party of No's" campaign to gut Obama initiatives.

But as the mainstream media joined the attack, the senator was able to defend herself with two key points. There was a December 2008 letter in which she and other senators asked Senate leaders to add $905 million to the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund, which is run by the US Department of Health and Human Services. And, during the stimulus-package debate, she'd actually come out in favor of flu-pandemic funding. She just wanted that kind of spending to go through the regular federal-budget process, rather than sliding into an emergency stimulus spending package.

Those moves, the kind of calculated bet-hedging political-speak that all elected officials spout, turned out to be a solid enough counter-attack that the mainstream folk gave her a little breathing room. During that time, nature took its turn to hand Collins a win (at least so far). The H1N1 (swine) flu pandemic threat appears to be smaller than originally feared, so we don't seem to need the millions of dollars she slashed — nor the millions she asked for and failed to get — after all.

If Collins had slashed pandemic funding and hundreds or thousands had been sickened or died, she would have been roundly castigated for her two-facedness. But since that hasn't happened, the media — but not the blogosphere — is allowing her to escape criticism for, in reality, failing to increase pandemic funding even a little bit.

This example illustrates one way the public can become more informed, not less, by carefully using both the traditional media and the blogosphere. Sure, the ranting bloggers didn't do what the pros did — call Collins's office and seek some answers — but they called attention to something needing further investigation, which the pros promptly provided.

What the pros found, when they took the bloggish outrage and made it (not Collins's action) the story, was that the senator's staff were already in backpedal-defense mode.

The crucially telling quote came in spokesman Kevin Kelley's hastily issued statement last Monday: "There is no evidence that federal efforts to address the swine flu outbreak have been hampered by a lack of funds."

Of course, a quote like that led to more criticism from bloggers, who noted that Collins hadn't stuck to her guns about increasing flu-pandemic funding. The latest federal budget added just $1.4 million in that area, and Collins (because she objected to other things in the bill) voted against the whole thing anyway.

It also led to an uncommon swipe by the mainstream press: the Washington Post's comment that "Collins and the others who led the fight to axe the flu money three months ago can only hope that doesn't change."

Whether or not it does, we can be sure that Collins knows that she is being more closely watched than she might be used to, and by people who are undeterred by the relentless "news cycle." Blogging watchdogs are more like hounds than shepherds. And only luck protected Collins this time.

Testimony before the Maine Legislature

Testimony before the Joint Standing Committee on the Judiciary of the Maine Legislature, on behalf of the Maine Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, with support from the National Freedom of Information Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Maine: Why We Live Here

Published in the Portland Phoenix; my contribution to a 13-person group essay

I'll blame my sister. Sort of, at least. For a while, having grown up and gone to college elsewhere, and traveled a good bit, I had no home at all. My stuff was in a self-storage unit in Vermont (or in my parents' basement). I had been living out of a duffel bag and a backpack (or just a backpack) for 18 months when I stopped in Portland to visit my sister and some other friends who lived here. I was about to go back on the road for another six-to-eight-month stint and was talking about that prospect, when everything changed. The group ganged up on me and told me that since I didn't actually live anywhere else, why didn't I just live here?

(I suspect they planned this in advance, so well-coordinated was the approach. But they couldn't possibly have known that while on the road, I had so longed for a home, any home, that I had been sketching a house in my journal, just to explore the concept.)

I couldn't answer the question — I actually still can't — and so when I got back from that road trip I borrowed my sister's spare room and went apartment-hunting. Without boring any of you with the quotidian details, I've gotten married, bought a great house (from which I've been walking to work lately in the glorious sunshine), got a dog, found a job I truly love, and see my sister and her children all the time.

But as much joy and pleasure those facts bring to my life, I live here because it has become home. I used to think of other places I lived — Vermont, New Zealand, Antarctica — as home, and for a time, they each were. I carry pieces of them with me every day (even literally — around my neck is a piece of New Zealand jade).

Sometimes, I confess, I long for them. Of late, my faith in Maine has been a bit shaken. One of the biggest things bothering me is that some people are going around claiming — without having asked me — that somehow my marriage and every other marriage in Maine will suffer irreparable harm if we allow more people to marry. If our senses of mutual respect and personal dignity — not to mention outright practicality — are this disjointed and illogical, and if our faith in our own relationships is this weak, I worry what might be next.

But close-mindedness and selfish behavior happen elsewhere. Here, we have an expanded, and more complicated, interdependence. We let each other be, but we look out for each other, too. (A Vermont columnist once described it as knowing that while you and your next-door neighbor may never have spoken or waved after years of living side-by-side, she'll be the first person banging on your door if your chimney catches fire.)

It's spring now, so naturally I'm thinking about winter. It was early morning, and I was going to be late for work because I was digging like hell after one of this year's interminable blizzards, trying to clear the massive snowbank the plows had left at the end of my driveway, when a pickup truck zoomed in from out of nowhere (well, outside my hatted, hooded peripheral vision, anyway), and swiped the berm away in one go. I raised my arms to the sky, thanking whatever heavens had brought this godsend to my aid. It wasn't until the truck came back for a second pass — to clean up the remnants, which were easily shovelable — that I realized it was the guy who runs the business next door to my house. He rolled down the window and his dog's nose poked out. Vinny told me that the dog treats my wife had made and dropped off a couple days before had been quite a hit. I went back inside and told my wife to start making some more biscuits, because it looked like more snow was on the way.

In summer, it's much the same — I was walking the dog once in a local park, and passed a few other people. We said hello just briefly, and went on our ways. And then the dog just plain ran off. Gone. I searched everywhere, yelling, beseeching, pleading, in hopes that he'd hear me and come back. No dice. I had already called my wife to come and help me look when one of the people who had passed earlier came up to me and said he had my dog — his family had seen him running toward the road, and had caught him. They had him on a leash nearby. The relief I felt was the same as at the appearance of the plow: the purity of outright serendipitous good-heartedness from a totally unexpected quarter.

I am not for a moment saying that these kinds of small miracles — and that is the right word — don't happen elsewhere. I am, though, saying that the fact that they happen here so often makes me all the more sure that this is the right place for me.

Portland Phoenix The Best of Portland on WCSH's 207 (with Lone Wolf Documentary Group)

Aired on WCSH's 207

Press Releases: Naming names

Published in the Portland Phoenix

In last week's cover story (see "Fold or Float") I outlined what the Portland Press Herald has to do to survive — either under existing ownership or somebody new. It started with attracting and keeping readers. The task includes dreaming up new ideas and experimenting with them, to see what will work as a business model that can support good, solid journalism.

Any effort at survival should take advantage of the ample brainpower and ability already on staff — ideally, by naming the sharpest tools in the shed to what we'll call the Survival Committee. Here are the top five candidates, and a few ideas for a strong supporting cast.

• DIETER BRADBURY, who was briefly the paper's "online reporter" and handled video and audio with competence, if not a gift. With practice, he'd get better. With support from co-workers, the passable stuff he did in his abortive stint (before staffing cuts eliminated his position and sent him back to writing for print) would actually get some traction.

• JUSTIN ELLIS, the only person in the newsroom who shows any evidence of knowing how to blog or use the Web. He's also the only one who appears to have actually met anyone under the age of 35, much less imagined that they might read his newspaper.

• DEIRDRE FLEMING, the former outdoors reporter who now writes for the corporate-speak-renamed "How We Live" beat. She not only spent a ton of time actually in the out-of-doors while reporting, but found ways to sneak public policy into recreation pieces, and vice-versa, which made her pieces about waterways, in particular, must-reads.

• DAVID HENCH, a veteran cops reporter who has gotten some of the best scoops the paper has ever had, including jailhouse interviews with all manner of accused criminals, and even a few confessions. He's been too distracted lately, which has hurt some of his work (his initial response was to take the Portland Police Department at its word that it was a good idea to buy Tasers with federal stimulus money, but he soon came to his senses and started probing deeper), but his connections remain solid enough for him to really get into the grit of this city.

• TUX TURKEL, a longtime business and public-affairs reporter who appears not only to remember most of what anyone has ever told him, but to keep a list of interesting stories that develop over time and need to be checked in on periodically. Witness, as just one example, his close coverage of Portland's television-news market, which can be excused for its intermittency by its clarity and sense of history, even in short briefs.

Those five will need some solid help in other aspects of news coverage and presentation. And the Press Herald has those handy, too. Gregory Rec is one of the best still photographers in Maine (we'd love to see his picture-making eye applied to video); when he's both in high dudgeon and thinking straight, Bill Nemitz can weave great columns; and the Web-development crew (specifically Suzi Piker and Jeff Woodbury) can organize and lay out information online really well, as evidenced on the rare occasions when they've been allowed to break the boring-as-all-hell format of MaineToday.com.

The Survival Committee's first move should be to get rid of editor Jeannine Guttman, for the simple reason that she regularly — and publicly — fails to understand what readers want (see "Gender Confusion," February 15, 2008, by Jeff Inglis).

The paper can save itself, but only if smart, capable people are allowed to step forward and try bold ideas. Some of those experiments will fail, but some will succeed. And time's running out.

Fold or float: How to save the Portland Press Herald

Published in the Portland Phoenix

It doesn't matter who the new owner of the Portland Press Herald is, or whether there even is one. The state's largest-circulation daily newspaper simply cannot survive in its current form. This situation is not helped by the fact that PPH execs both here and in the state of Washington seem incapable of imagining themselves out of this mess.

A glance at the most recent figures pairing circulation declines with those in advertising revenue show that while papers like the PPH have a problem keeping and attracting readers, the bigger problem is keeping and attracting advertisers. The problem has worsened significantly over the past several months, with the economy's downward spiral.

The Press Herald has lost 16 percent of its subscribers in the past eight years, according to reports from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the independent organization that monitors media-readership statistics.

That decrease is on par with the other two big dailies in Maine: the Bangor Daily News lost 15 percent of its subscribers in the same period, and the Lewiston Sun Journal lost 19 percent of its subscribers in the eight-year period from 1996 to 2004, when the paper stopped ABC audits.

And it's better than stats for the Boston Globe and the Hartford Courant, which have respectively lost 24 percent and 20 percent of their readers between 2000 and 2008. (The other major daily in the region, the Providence Journal, saw its circulation drop 15 percent over that period.)

It's not good that one-seventh of Press Herald readers stopped reading in the past eight years, but it's much worse that the paper's advertising revenue dropped by half, according to statements from the company. (The other papers are quieter on their revenue situations, but massive reductions in newspaper-ad spending are extensively documented nationwide, with many papers seeing double-digit ad drops in just one year.)

That is, in fact, the problem that threatens the paper today, and will continue to hang over the heads of any new owners. Ads and circulation are, of course, intertwined: reduced revenue means cost-cutting, which means making the paper worse for readers. Common cost-cutting measures, used at papers nationwide, as well as at the Press Herald, include shrinking the size of physical pages, printing fewer pages, and lowering the percent of space in the paper that is used to print news. In turn, this requires a smaller staff to report, assemble, edit, and lay out a paper.

That saves money, but readers drop away — particularly if, as the Press Herald did, the paper raises its cover price at the same time it cuts content.

This circling-the-drain problem gives us a good starting point for troubleshooting the Press Herald's future.

Cutting costs
The Blethen family borrowed roughly $230 million in 1999 to buy the paper, and has struggled to meet its quarterly debt-service payments ever since. Over the past decade, they've certainly lowered the amount they owe — to perhaps as low as $100 million — that's still a crushing burden for the paper to bear. Certainly, staff costs are a significant contributor, too, but a paper needs people to run. Debt service is an unnecessary killer.

The family and their top execs continue to claim that the Press Herald is still profitable. And they're probably half right. Despite the massive revenue drop, it's a good bet that the paper is covering its expenses — except for debt-service payments and transfers of money to the parent company (either through inter-company charges or outright profit-taking to prop up the Seattle Times Company).

If there's a new owner, we need to hope that he or she or they pay cash and view the purchase as a long-term investment, so they won't need to make very big profits (or any at all) right away. The price will certainly be lower than $230 million, and perhaps as low as $11 million, according to documents released by PPH suitor Richard Connor in last month's failed attempt to convince the Maine State Retirement System to invest in the papers. But it matters less what the price is than the point that the buyer shouldn't take on significant debt to make the deal.

And whether the Blethens remain in control or there is a new owner, a key way to pay off debt is to do what the Blethens have already done in Seattle, and Connor has proposed doing here: sell real estate. In Portland, the Blethens own not only the historic flagship building at 390 Congress Street, ideally situated between City Hall and the federal and state courthouses, but also a building across Congress Street and the parking surrounding it. While the building at 389 Congress was formerly home to the printing presses and is therefore likely contaminated with all matter of toxic printing chemicals, its prime location may help preserve its salability.

Another option would be to seek support from an allied non-profit, along the lines of the non-profit groups helping to bankroll the for-profit St. Petersburg Times and The Nation magazine. Yes, strictly speaking, the Press Herald may need to start begging for cash to stay alive. That's why selling real estate is smarter.

Boosting readership
As noted above, losing readership means losing advertisers. If, however, ad reps can show a paper growing circulation (or, frankly, in this sector, merely holding steady), that's a good prospect for advertisers. So an early step has to be attracting readers.

But it's not quite that easy. Daily newspapers, in particular, have tried for many years to be all things to all people, offering the Red Sox box score, NASCAR results, photos from the local high-school football team, reporting on town and state government, updates from Iraq and Afghanistan, features on businesses and individuals, the weather, horoscopes, comics, puzzles, and recipes (plus many more things, too!), in hopes that every person will be interested in at least one of those myriad offerings, and will therefore buy the paper.

This actually causes two problems. First, readers find themselves marginalized — by design, any one reader's areas of interest are a small proportion of what's in the whole paper, but they had to pay for the whole thing, which results in flipping pages quickly and recycling whole sections unread. And second, it becomes almost impossible to describe an "average reader," because the interest areas and demographics are so broad.

So they've upset readers by making them pay in full for something they want only part of, and they've annoyed advertisers by being unable to explain whom the paper will help the advertisements reach.

Obviously, the slumping economy has made both of these problems even worse — readers have less money to buy things with, and are less willing to part with it for the privilege of reading a few tidbits and then pitching the paper; and advertisers have fewer dollars that they want to spend in increasingly targeted ways.

The only way to tackle these problems is head-on. It's time to reinvent the paper to make its content attractive to readers who are countable, quantifiable, and demographically describable to advertisers.

Creating a whole new Press Herald doesn't mean hiring additional staff — which is good, because taking on more expenses is something to be avoided if possible. And some of what arises may be uncertain — as Clay Shirky observed in the must-read media-industry critique of the year, his March 13 post at shirky.com entitled "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable," there is nothing that will replace newspapers, and no certainty about how journalism will be provided. Daily newspapers need to experiment grandly, and have many of those experiments fail, before any of us will figure out what comes next.

A few tips: Giving the Press Herald a fighting chance

Published in the Portland Phoenix

There are, in fact, some pretty basic things that would help ensure the paper might have a chance.

STOP PRINTING THE INTERNET. The Press Herald — like many dailies — is filled with wire content, including sports scores and foreign news. But because of the timing of the newspaper deadline, any wire story in the paper is by definition at least 12 hours old. Some of it has been online worldwide for more than a day. To get a sense of the real value of any newspaper, take an issue or two of it and the same days' (or weeks') issues of any other papers covering similar turf. Then cross out every story that appears in more than one paper. What remains is what each paper actually brings you. For the Press Herald, the value is low — most of what's there can be gotten elsewhere, and often sooner. Stopping this redundancy will make everything in the paper an exclusive — just what readers need to get them picking up the paper again.

TAKE THE PAPER FREE. And once they want to pick up the paper, don't put a barrier up. The Press Herald is competing with large numbers of free papers, and isn't winning. If people still want home delivery, they can pay for that service — at a price that covers the total cost of paying drivers to get them there. Otherwise they'll need to pick up copies around town. (As for going online-only, as many newspapers are trying to do, the biggest problem is that it's hard to reverse. They should try sticking with print — though possibly less often than daily — first, and go online-only if they need to later.)

MAKE EVEN BIGGER COST REDUCTIONS. The union is already on board for a significant — at least 10 percent — cut in workforce, and probably a similar reduction in pay. But even more people will have to go. This will be made easier by a smaller paper that has only exclusive-to-itself news — no more editors need to "sit on the desk" waiting for wire copy to arrive. The newsroom will be a shadow of its former self, but the paper will be alive, and — most importantly — able to do what it needs to. And that's the final item in our recipe for survival.

START DIGGING UP REAL STORIES AGAIN. The poor sods running the show for the Blethens have gotten old, tired, or both, and some of their reporters have, too. It's long past time for the state's most widely read daily newspaper to actually be an aggressive, energized watchdog, looking out for the people of Maine.

Sitting pretty: The guy with the cash can play a waiting game if he wants

Published in the Portland Phoenix

There are two players in this daily-newspaper game: the Blethens, and whomever Richard Connor is working with. Connor has cleverly cornered the market on the Portland Press Herald and its sister papers, and is now in what can only be called the catbird seat.

By keeping his interest in buying continually in the public eye, and by occasionally signing letters of intent that lock out other buyers for 30-day periods, Connor has blocked any other prospective suitors (a few were reportedly considering making an offer back at the beginning of the sale process), and he is now in a position to wait. And wait. And wait.

For what? For anything he wants. He's only putting up $250,000 of his own money, and his "financial backer" is only pledging $1.1 million more. Frankly, he could wait until the Blethens are so broke they will accept that pitiful amount as the total purchase price for something they bought 10 years ago for $230 million. That day may not be far off.

And he can wait until more newspapers shut down, which is happening about daily now. That strikes fear into the heart of the Blethens and the Maine employees. Connor, a union-buster from way back, has already gotten the Maine unions to agree to slash salaries and staff numbers for the sake of preserving at least a few union jobs — if they get more worried, they'd probably take almost any carrot Connor might dangle before them, even if it's a rotten one.

If he can line up investors to offer a price the Blethens will take, everyone's happy. If he can't, and waits until desperation sets in even more deeply with both the current owners and employees, the price will drop — as will the prospective salaries, benefits, and employee numbers the unions will accept. He can basically name his price, and pick his time. And if he can't find a deal he's happy with, he can walk away with no penalty and watch the Press Herald die.

Is anybody home? FairPoint finally responds — but not to customers

Published in the Portland Phoenix

As the Portland Phoenix went to press, FairPoint Communications was supposed to submit to state regulators its plan for fixing the problems that have plagued the company — and brought in legions of customer complaints about service interruptions, billing, and even about the process for resolving customer complaints — since it took control of the northern New England telephone lines it bought from Verizon for $2.3 billion last year.

Suggesting that regulators' demands — not customers' feelings — are the best means to force the company to provide proper service, customer dissatisfaction deteriorated to the point where, at the end of last week, the Maine Public Utilities Commission gave the company less than three business days to finish making its "stabilization plan." FairPoint spokesman Jeff Nevins has limited his public comments on the matter to promises that the company would respond by the commission's deadline.

The commission asked FairPoint to describe how it would deal with long-delayed service orders from residential and business telephone customers, as well as with backlogged service requests from phone- and Internet-service resellers such as Biddeford-based GWI.

On top of that, the company was asked to explain what it is doing to "improve its customer call-center performance" (a reference to the high numbers of complaints from FairPoint customers seeking help with their service), as well as "resolve billing errors and related customer confusion" (a reference to, well, billing errors and related customer confusion).

As of press time, the plan had not yet been filed with state regulators, but there is no penalty — apart from additional public embarrassment — if FairPoint meets the deadline.

Text of the same-sex marriage bill Key sections from "An Act To End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom"

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Language and careful word choice are important in this discussion. Here is the full official legislative summary of the bill that would legalize same-sex marriage and key excerpts (with explanations) from its legal language. Read the full text of the bill here.

The legislative summary
This bill repeals the provision that limits marriage to one man and one woman and replaces it with the authorization for marriage between any 2 persons that meet the other requirements of Maine law. It also specifies that a marriage between 2 people of the same sex in another state that is valid in that state is valid and must be recognized in this State.

This bill also clarifies that the authorization of marriage between 2 people of the same sex does not compel any religious institution to alter its doctrine, policy or teaching regarding marriage or to solemnize any marriage in conflict with that doctrine, policy or teaching. It also specifies that a person authorized to join persons in marriage and who fails or refuses to join persons in marriage is not subject to any fine or other penalty for such failure or refusal.

The legal language, explained
Be it enacted by the People of the State of Maine as follows:

• Sec. 1. 19-A MRSA §650, as enacted by PL 1997, c. 65, §2, is repealed.
Repeals the "Maine Defense of Marriage Act," which specifies that the legal definition of "marriage" is "the union of one man and one woman."

• Sec. 2. 19-A MRSA §650-A is enacted to read: § 650-A. Codification of marriage: Marriage is the legally recognized union of 2 people. Gender-specific terms relating to the marital relationship or familial relationships, including, but not limited to, "spouse," "family," "marriage," "immediate family," "dependent," "next of kin," "bride," "groom," "husband," "wife," "widow" and "widower," must be construed to be gender-neutral for all purposes throughout the law, whether in the context of statute, administrative or court rule, policy, common law or any other source of civil law.
Replaces the previous definition with a new legal definition of marriage as "the legally recognized union of 2 people."

•Sec. 3. 19-A MRSA §650-B is enacted to read: § 650-B. Recognition of marriage licensed and certified in another jurisdiction: A marriage of a same-sex couple that is validly licensed and certified in another jurisdiction is recognized for all purposes under the laws of this State.
All marriages from other states and countries, whether same-sex or heterosexual, are automatically recognized in Maine.

• Sec. 4. 19-A MRSA §651, sub-§2, as amended by PL 1997, c. 537, §12 and affected by §62, is further amended to include the sentence: The application may be issued to any 2 persons otherwise qualified under this chapter regardless of the sex of each person.
Specifically states that the gender of the two people seeking a marriage application is not a criterion for their eligibility.

• Sec. 5. 19-A MRSA §655, sub-§3 is enacted to read: 3. Affirmation of religious freedom. This Part does not authorize any court or other state or local governmental body, entity, agency or commission to compel, prevent or interfere in any way with any religious institution's religious doctrine, policy, teaching or solemnization of marriage within that particular religious faith's tradition as guaranteed by the Maine Constitution, Article 1, Section 3 or the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. A person authorized to join persons in marriage and who fails or refuses to join persons in marriage is not subject to any fine or other penalty for such failure or refusal.
Clarifies that this act does not affect the rights of any church or other religious group to define "marriage" in its own terms for religious purposes; clearly separates "civil marriage" from "religious marriage," and specifies that this bill is only addressing the legal implications of "civil marriage."

• Sec. 6. 19-A MRSA §701, as amended by PL 2007, c. 695, Pt. C, §4, is further amended to remove the specific statutory bar to same-sex marriage contained in paragraph 5, which now reads: 5. Same sex marriage prohibited. Persons of the same sex may not contract marriage.
Deletes the line in Maine law that bans same-sex marriage.

• Other parts of the bill involve: 1) gender-neutral rewording of marriage-related language (example: changing the language prohibiting marrying close relatives from words barring a man from marrying his mother, grandmother, and so on, to language barring all people from marrying their parents, grandparents, etc.); 2) deleting the specific denial of marriage rights to Maine residents who got same-sex marriages elsewhere; 3) language that is not being changed by the bill, or is only being changed in minor clerical ways (such as to correctly count the number of paragraphs or sections in the bill).

FairPoint's finances are failing fast

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Two major safety valves in the financial house of cards that is New England's largest landline telecommunications service provider blew last week, leaving FairPoint Communications in a position of significant weakness, even as the company admits that its financial picture will worsen in the short term.

The North Carolina-based company, which bought Verizon's northern New England operations last year, had always made questionable assumptions when arguing it had the financial wherewithal to do the deal. (See "No Raises For Seven Years," November 16, 2007, and "No Raises — It Gets Better," November 20, 2007, both by Jeff Inglis.)

Regulators at the Maine Public Utilities Commission and its counterparts in New Hampshire and Vermont were so concerned that when they approved the $2.3 billion deal, they specified several limitations intended to preserve FairPoint's long-term financial stability.

But recent documents filed by FairPoint with state and federal regulators show that "stable" isn't exactly the right word for its current status.

The company has asked regulators in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont for permission to miss a March 31 $11.25 million quarterly payment to creditors, saying that while the states' public-utilities commissions had required the payment as a condition of the Verizon purchase, FairPoint's actual lenders don't require any money until the end of June.

"FairPoint is essentially reneging on the agreement," says Wayne Jortner, senior counsel in Maine's Office of the Maine Public Advocate, a state agency charged with defending customers' interests in utilities regulation.

The company is promising to make up the payment by the end of the year, to meet its state-mandated obligation of paying $45 million annually to reduce the heavily leveraged company's debt load. And Jeff Nevins, FairPoint's Maine spokesman, says the request will allow "more financial flexibility." But that flexibility may not help it keep that promise, based on the company's March 4 filing with federal securities regulators.

In that document, the company announced that it is suspending dividend payments entirely, and offered no date on which they may resume. This is alarming for two reasons. First, FairPoint is a holding company designed and intended to pay shareholders the kind of significant dividends earned from operating telecommunications companies (in previous quarters, it has paid as much as 36 percent). The company lost $68.5 million last year — down more than $100 million from a $32.8 million profit in 2007 — but had nevertheless been projecting paying out $93 million in dividends in 2009. The Maine PUC, through spokesman Fred Bever, calls the move "consistent with the commission's order" because it protects "customers against financial issues FairPoint might encounter." It nevertheless is a shift in the company's business model, though Nevins is quick to note that the company intends to continue "returning cash to shareholders over the long term."

But perhaps more important, ordering a reduction or elimination in dividends was one of the tools state regulators had in reserve to force FairPoint to strengthen its financial position if the regulators believed the company was in trouble. Now that tool is no longer available — and therefore, the means by which state officials could try to protect telephone customers is weakened.

"Our biggest concern is that this is not the start of something bigger," Jortner says. "We really need to get some reassurances." He expects to get that data and have formed an opinion based on it by March 13, and the Maine PUC may hold a hearing on March 16.

The picture gets worse. FairPoint is losing customers at a steeper-than-expected rate, which is, in turn, reducing its income. At the same time, FairPoint has warned federal regulators that its troubled transition to a new billing system — which meant delays in sending out bills, leading to receiving payments later than projected — could mean further cash shortages, even taking into account the suspended dividend.

And that's actually a best-case scenario. While Nevins says the billing system is now working properly, dozens of other systems still need to be transitioned. And buried in pages of boilerplate warnings about the future (such as the non-startling "the price of our common stock may fluctuate substantially"), the March 4 filing warns that "Due to, among other things, the size and complexity of our Northern New England operations, . . . we may be unable to integrate the (former Verizon) business in an efficient, timely and effective manner."

Even if they get it working, there will be far fewer customers to serve than FairPoint was hoping for. While numbers are not yet in for the first quarter of 2009, which includes the first months that FairPoint was actually running the show, 97,000 Maine residential customers have dropped their landlines since January 2007, when the sale was announced. Residential subscriber numbers dropped 7.3 percent in 2007, but as the sale approached, the decline accelerated, with an additional 10.5 percent of residential customers dropping service in 2008.

Many of them have gone to cellular phones or telephone service provided over the Internet, often via phone-Internet-TV packages sold by cable television companies. And FairPoint has recently re-emphasized its longstanding position that the key 21st-century telecom technology, fiber optics, is not in its plan — the company told the Wall Street Journal that a private plan for several Vermont communities to build their own fiber network "isn't necessary." Rather, FairPoint plans to bring them much-slower DSL service — eventually.

Press Releases: Countdown

Published in the Portland Phoenix

With last week's news that Portland Press Herald managing editor Bob Crider has been summoned back to the state of Washington to run a Blethen-owned paper there, the countdown to the end of the Press-Herald-as-we-know-it has begun in earnest.

In 2006, the Blethens moved Crider from the Blethen-owned Yakima Herald-Republic, where he had spent nine years as managing editor, to Portland to be the ME here. Now, they're bringing him back to be the top editor in Yakima.

In the advertising and management departments, Blethen family members have already departed; last to go was Rob Blethen, who left his job as director of advertising at the PPH six months ago for a post as the associate publisher of the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, another family-owned paper.

This withdrawal is unsurprising, but it lays the groundwork for three possible outcomes: two bad, one uncertain, and all three potentially leaving the city without an established daily paper.

• First up, of course, is the continuing prospect that the Portland Press Herald and its Maine siblings might fold entirely, leaving their buildings to a real-estate deal (see "After the Fall," by Jeff Inglis, August 1, 2008).

Richard Connor, a Bangor-raised Pennsylvania newspaperman, continues to claim he is trying to buy the papers, but of his three 30-day letters of intent to purchase them in the past year, two expired because the needed financing didn't come together. The third, signed February 17 — which, like the previous two, included an escape clause in case the money fails to materialize a third time — is just days away from running out. (No other players are in the running, though Connor and the Blethens could sign a fourth letter of intent if they were so inclined.)

If the paper closes, the buildings it occupies might fetch $30 million for their property value alone (see "Herald or Harbinger?" by Jeff Inglis, July 4, 2008). But that's probably a high estimate, given the Blethens' eagerness to get out of Maine, and the economic collapse, which has led to a drop in commercial-property values.

• The second bad possibility is that the Press Herald will continue publishing in limbo indefinitely, but without effective leadership. While plenty of media watchers around town will say that's been true for ages, the perennially just-over-the-horizon appearance of a new owner (who's likely to signal regime change by ordering top management to pack their desks) will surely vaporize whatever clout Jeannine Guttman, editor at the PPH, and Eric Conrad, executive editor of the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, still hold. Neither is likely to follow Crider to Washington: Both arrived pre-Blethens, in 1994 and 1995 respectively; Conrad left in 2006 for a job in Connecticut but returned to the Blethen Maine fold less than a year later.

• The third outcome — the uncertain one — is what might happen if Connor actually closes the deal. He has been a hands-on editor-publisher in Wilkes-Barre (even writing a 1450-word personal endorsement of John McCain to counter his editorial board's 375-word Barack Obama endorsement; both appeared in the October 26, 2008 issue of that city's Times-Leader).

He is remembered in union circles as a vicious strike-breaker and union-buster (dating back to the late '70s), and though Maine union officials speak of him in positive and even cheery tones, he's driving a hard bargain. His offer: union workers get a collective 15-percent ownership stake in a near-valueless company and the prospect that some of them will keep their jobs, in exchange for a wage freeze, longer working hours, and what even union folk expect will be significant layoffs — on top of the massive staff-slashing that went on in 2007 and 2008.

Whether it collapses, pokes along aimlessly, or takes an all-new form, tomorrow's Press Herald will be nothing like today's.