Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: One Nation under Gold
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-ledbetter-9667312/ * https://www.inc.com/author/james-ledbetter
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 97093186
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n97093186
HEADING: Ledbetter, James
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PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and writer. Village Voice, “Press Clips” columnist, 1990s; The Industry Standard, New York bureau chief, then London bureau chief; CNN Money, deputy managing editor; Slate, founding editor of “The Big Money,” 2008; Reuters, opinion editor and editor-in-charge, beginning 2010; Inc., editor.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including the New York Times, Washington Post, the Nation, Mother Jones, Vibe, Newsday, American Prospect, and Time.
SIDELIGHTS
James Ledbetter is a journalist and writer. Ledbetter worked as the “Press Clips” columnist with the Village Voice in the 1990s and left to join the San Francisco-based start-up The Industry Standard. With the periodical, he served as New York bureau chief and later in London before it closed down shortly thereafter. He was the deputy managing editor of CNN Money and the joined Slate in 2008, where he was founding editor of “The Big Money.” Ledbetter became the opinion editor and editor-in-charge of Reuters in 2010 and subsequently joined Inc. as editor. Ledbetter has also contributed to a number of other periodicals, including the New York Times, Washington Post, the Nation, Mother Jones, Vibe, Newsday, American Prospect, and Time.
Made Possible by—
Ledbetter published his first book, Made Possible by—: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States, in 1997. The account looks at the creation and history of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). Ledbetter focuses on how it is frequently attacked by Republicans but also how its programming is susceptible to influence by the American military.
Writing in the Nation, Pat Aufderheide remarked that “Ledbetter’s presentation of his evidence sometimes confuses or even shakes reader confidence. Except for an intimidating chart, there’s no institutional overview to orient the novice or the acronym-impaired.” Aufderheide found that “in spite of Ledbetter’s subtitle, public broadcasting seems to be in no real danger, although exactly what services it will perform, for whom, may not be clear. Ledbetter calls for the perennial solutions of depoliticizing board appointments, stable funding, local viewer accountability. More controversially, he would cut kids’ programming, a suggestion that ought to be unnecessary with spectrum expansion.” In a review in the Progressive, Norman Solomon claimed that the book “hits its stride with a chapter called ‘Underwriting Politics.’ Ledbetter is devastating as he assesses the flood of corporate money into PBS.” Solomon reasoned that “while Ledbetter is suitably tough on public radio in general and NPR in particular, it’s unfortunate that only one chapter focuses on public radio. NPR news programs are influential and widely heard. Given the importance of NPR and its equally compromised rival Public Radio International, the book’s two-dozen pages devoted to public radio–while solid–are insufficient.”
Writing in Video Age International, Evan Wiener recorded that “despite shiny liberal credentials as a Village Voice media monitor, Ledbetter is never unfair, and he’s particularly adept at unraveling conflicts of interest that read like miniature conspiracies (or like the ordinary functionings of the American government). The book, however, is not at its best often enough. Rather than shaping the history, Ledbetter lets the history shape him—sentences grind along, needlessly tedious, sinking under a stop-start accretion of detail and typos. Even more damaging, Ledbetter’s defense of public television remains largely abstract.” A Publishers Weekly contributor called the account a “brisk and informative book.”
Starving to Death on $200 Million
Ledbetter published Starving to Death on $200 Million: The Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard in 2003. The book chronicles the greatly hyped rise of start-up magazine The Industry Standard in 1998 during the height of the dot.com boom. The magazine covered topics intersecting between media business, technology, and finance, and earned a reputation for being a respectable industry publication. Ledbetter offers his views of the periodicals rise and fall from his positions in New York and London.
Reviewing the book in Reason, Tim Cavanaugh stated: “We shouldn’t condemn the Standard for not being another magazine, but the magazine it actually was may not tell us much about the recent past or the digital future. The history James Ledbetter tells–of absurd buzzwords, squabbles over work stations, sky-high domainname purchases, office break-ins with stolen computers (a ubiquitous though unremarked phenomenon of the dot-coin experience)-ultimately tells us more about the era than did The Industry Standard itself.” In a review in the Washington Monthly, Jamie Malanowski lamented: “Unfortunately, Ledbetter was less than ideally positioned to capture the tale. The Industry Standard was headquartered in San Francisco; Ledbetter was the New York bureau chief, stationed a continent away…. It’s like telling us about the fall of the Roman Empire from the frontiers of Gaul. Ledbetter gives us snapshots of life at HQ from time to time … but we never get a real feel for the personalities, for their fevered delusions, for their terror as the train wreck approaches. Ledbetter doesn’t tell these stories because he doesn’t have these stories. He has his story, and a pretty boring tale it is.”
In a review in PR Week, Matthew Creamer countered that “Ledbetter makes up for geographic distance with insightful post-mortem interviews with the main players.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews found the book to be “a little long and occasionally repetitive, but a solid account nonetheless,” adding that it is “a fine study of both the business of business journalism and the corrosive power of corporate politics.” A Publishers Weekly contributor said that “despite having a limited initial audience … it serves as a fantastic testament to a bygone era.”
One Nation under Gold
Ledbetter published One Nation under Gold: How One Precious Metal Has Dominated the American Imagination for Four Centuries in 2017. Ledbetter examines the way gold fits into the American psyche as a monetary unit. He discusses the abandoning of the gold standard during the Nixon presidency but also arguments in favor of its use. The book shows the various arguments, from the early days of American nationhood to modern investors who are critical of the use of the Bretton Woods monetary agreements.
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called the book “an absorbing and often entertaining look at precious metal and its place–or lack thereof–in our wallets.” The same reviewer mentioned that the author “has a knack for finding the most interesting, if sometimes-obscure, pleas for gold.” Booklist contributor Gilbert Taylor described the account as being “a vibrant and fascinating account of monetary gold’s volatile fortunes in the U.S.” A Publishers Weekly contributor commented that “Ledbetter’s style is a little dry, but this is a solid look at America’s golden history.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 15, 2017, Gilbert Taylor, review of One Nation under Gold: How One Precious Metal Has Dominated the American Imagination for Four Centuries, p. 3.
Business Record, January 20, 2003, review of Starving to Death on $200 Million, p. 17.
Forbes, October 26, 2017, Nathan Lewis, “James Ledbetter Wants to Convince You That Gold Is Folly, Superstition, and Madness.”
Foreign Affairs, March 1, 2011, Lawrence D. Freedman, review of Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex, p. 174.
Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2002, review of Starving to Death on $200 Million a Year: The Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard, p. 1592; April 15, 2017, review of One Nation under Gold.
Los Angeles Times, June 22, 2017, James Ledbetter, “How Much Gold Do Americans Own.”
Nation, December 8, 1997, Pat Aufderheide, review of Made Possible by—: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States, p. 25.
Observer (London, England), February 10, 2014, Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke, “Inc. Turns 35 Under Editor Jim Ledbetter.”
Progressive, February 1, 1998, Norman Solomon, review of Made Possible by—, p. 40.
PR Week, March 31, 2003, review of Starving to Death on $200 Million, p. 19.
Publishers Weekly, December 8, 1997, review of Made Possible by—, p. 63; November 25, 2002, review of Starving to Death on $200 Million a Year, p. 53; March 13, 2017, review of One Nation Under Gold, p. 74.
Reason, May 1, 2003, Tim Cavanaugh, review of Starving to Death on $200 Million, p. 61.
Video Age International, October 1, 1998, Evan Wiener, review of Made Possible by—, p. 16.
Washington Monthly, January 1, 2003, Jamie Malanowski, review of Starving to Death on $200 Million, p. 59.
ONLINE
UPR, http://upr.org (August 1, 2017), review of One Nation Under Gold
James Ledbetter, before joining Inc., was the Opinion Editor of Reuters. He was the founding editor of Slate's financial site The Big Money, deputy managing editor of CNN Money, and has published six books, most recently One Nation Under Gold.
@jledbetter
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James Ledbetter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the Welsh rugby union player of a similar name see James Leadbeater
James Ledbetter is an author and editor based in New York City.
Contents [hide]
1 Career
1.1 Journalism
1.2 Books
2 References
3 External links
Career[edit]
Journalism[edit]
In 2010, Ledbetter became editor-in-charge of Reuters.com.[1] In 2008, he joined online magazine Slate, where he oversaw the business news web site The Big Money.[2] Prior to joining Slate, Ledbetter was at CNNMoney.com, a financial news Web site. In addition to Slate and CNNmoney.com, he also is a former senior editor of Time Magazine, The Industry Standard, and former staff writer for The Village Voice. His writing also has appeared in several other US publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Mother Jones, Vibe, Newsday, and The American Prospect.
Books[edit]
Ledbetter's most recent book is Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex, published in 2011 by Yale University Press. His previous work, Dispatches for the New York Tribune: Selected Journalism of Karl Marx, was published in the UK in 2007 and the U.S. in 2008 by Penguin Classics.[3] Ledbetter is also the author of Starving to Death on $200 Million: The Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard and Made Possible By...: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States.
References[edit]
Jump up ^ Jeff Bercovici, "The Big Money's Ledbetter Lands at Thomson Reuters," Daily Finance, September 9, 2010.
Jump up ^ Kenneth Li, "Slate to launch business site, 'Big Money,'" Reuters, March 17, 2008.
Jump up ^ [1]
External links[edit]
James Ledbetter Archive at Slate
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Observer
THE LEDBETTER BUSINESS BUREAU
Inc. Turns 35 Under Editor Jim Ledbetter
By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke • 10/02/14 9:00am
Jim Ledbetter
Jim Ledbetter in the Inc. offices at 7 World Trade Center (Photo by Adam Jones for The New York Observer)
Inc. celebrated its 35th anniversary this fall with a party that was markedly hipper than one would expect from a magazine once associated with buying yogurt franchises. It felt like stepping back into the 1990s, when there was plenty of advertiser money to throw at magazine parties and the word lavish still had a positive ring.
“Yeah, that’s Questlove. I don’t know why, though,” a middle-aged man told his companion. The Roots drummer, a last-minute sub for no-show Sky Ferreira, spun deafening tracks as the crowd danced and posed for pictures. “I think we don’t belong in this crowd,” another besuited man said.
Back when the magazine started, the word entrepreneur “was sort of a derogatory term,” said Eric Schurenberg, the magazine’s president and editor in chief. “An entrepreneur was seen as the guy who tried to sell you a hose when your house was on fire. It was like a synonym for opportunist. And now, it’s like a synonym for hero of the economy, innovator, job creator.”
At 35, Inc. is having a moment, its currency rising alongside the entrepreneurs it covers—no longer connoting a dowdy franchise owner in the Midwest, the new Inc. is a becoming a splashy and relevant title, positioning itself as a magazine that speaks to Silicon Valley start-up culture and those aspiring to join its ranks.
In January, James Ledbetter was named editor of the publication. On the surface, Mr. Ledbetter may seem like an unlikely shepherd to inject youthful swagger into the publication. The 49-year-old Yale grad is wonky and intellectual rather than slick and flashy. He dresses more like a reporter than an editor: just well enough to fit in at a cocktail party, but slightly frayed around the edges (when I met him at the swanky Inc. offices in 7 World Trade Center one Tuesday, I noticed that we both could benefit from taking our shoes to the cobbler).
Off the Record
The first version of the Observer’s “Off the Record” column on January 22, 1990, written by James Ledbetter.
What’s more, Mr. Ledbetter is better known for smart critiques than the reader service articles Inc. peddles. He made his name in the ’90s as The Village Voice’s “Press Clips” columnist (and wrote the Observer’s first “Off the Record” column back in 1990). Even though he left media criticism in an official capacity when he left the Voice 16 years ago, many people who got their start in 1990s New York media remember Mr. Ledbetter’s weekly column, which scrutinized what was then a still thriving industry. Mr. Ledbetter brought a sharp analytical eye and dissected editorial decisions at the city’s top publications, transforming a gossip column in a lefty paper into a watchdog for journalistic standards.
“He’s like a wunderkind. Everyone thought of him as this young kid, even when he wasn’t, because he had this press column so early,” said writer Alissa Quart, who first became friends with Mr. Ledbetter on the Voice’s picket line when the union shop went on strike during his tenure.
Shortly before he left the Voice in 1998, this newspaper called him “the city’s most prominent leftist media critic.” (“That’s awfully nice, but the fact is that very few are vying for the title,” he wrote in his final dispatch, where he envisioned “a fully functioning Internet” where it would make sense to publish his column multiple times a week.)
And few editors have as keen a sense of the fragility of start-ups as Mr. Ledbetter, who has logged many years both writing about them and experiencing their failures first-hand at media companies that went bust. “Start-ups are intrinsically hard, which is one of the messages of this magazine,” said Mr. Ledbetter. “And I’ve seen my share of a few, on all sides.”
In 1998, Mr. Ledbetter left The Village Voice after eight and a half years to become the New York bureau chief for The Industry Standard, a San Francisco-based start-up magazine that, like the tech boom it covered, burned bright before it burned through its cash.
In 2001, after he moved to London to run the Standard’s European coverage, the magazine folded. Mr. Ledbetter chronicled the experience in Starving to Death on $200 Million, a book he wrote in the months after the Standard’s demise.
“The experience taught me tons, not only about business reporting and managing a staff, but also about the importance of not buying too much hype, even when it comes from the people running your own company,” Mr. Ledbetter wrote in the epilogue.
Mr. Ledbetter, who is the author of several books, (his most recent title, published in 2011, is about Dwight D. Eisenhower and the military industrial complex and he edited a volume of Karl Marx’s journalism) cautioned that Starving to Death is not, in his opinion, his best. He signed the contract in August 2001 to write shortly after the Standard folded. Just weeks later, the September 11 attacks made an obituary of a dead magazine feel beside the point. But Mr. Ledbetter had a deadline.
After the Standard years, Mr. Ledbetter came back to New York to work for Time Inc., first as a senior editor at Time, then at Fortune. “When I worked at Time, I was very conscious of the fact that I was producing the product I once would have critiqued, and in some ways that was very helpful,” Mr. Ledbetter said.
In 2008, he left to run another media start-up. The Big Money was Slate’s stab at a stand-alone business site, pitched as a general interest site for people who wanted to read about finance but didn’t necessarily work in it.
But the site was ill-timed and closed after two years. It launched on September 15, the same day that Lehman Brothers folded. The 2008 financial collapse may have given writers plenty of material, but it made it hard to monetize the content. “We had a lot of great plans and a lot of great talent, but we were just doomed,” Mr. Ledbetter said.
He left Slate for Thomson Reuters in 2010, where he became the wire service’s first Op-Ed editor. It was a good time at Reuters, where the wire service attracted top talent to start Reuters Next, an ambitious consumer-facing website. But the project was ultimately cancelled before it even launched, scattering many of its high-profile hires, including Mr. Ledbetter.
“Waving my hanky a misty goodbye to the best editor I’ve ever written for,” Reuters’ often-acerbic media columnist Jack Shafer tweeted when Mr. Ledbetter announced his departure for Inc. last January.
When asked about that tweet, Mr. Ledbetter said he was very moved, but, more modestly, offered that the praise may have had something to do with the fact that he had also been Mr. Shafer’s most recent editor.
But the sentiment is one shared by many who have worked with Mr. Ledbetter. Multiple former colleagues and writers who spoke to the Observer were quick to praise him, but, as journalists who are usually on the other side of the conversation, struggled to think of anything that didn’t sound like pure positive spin.
“I am not objective,” warned Guardian finance editor Heidi Moore, who freelanced for The Big Money. “He is one of the best editors I have ever worked with. He would pick up on the things we’d say casually that we didn’t even know were journalism, and he’d make it journalism.”
“He’s an ideas machine, generally enthusiastic about the work, has a great hand, he can see around corners. Sometimes, he seems to know what you are going to write before you do,” Mr. Shafer elaborated to the Observer. “He’s a fun gossip, but not malicious. He’s one of the good boys. And he’s a good drinker.”
Inc editors
From left, executive editor Jon Fine, president and editor in chief Eric Schurenberg, editor James Ledbetter,
executive editor Laura Lorber and senior editor Kris Frieswick. (Photo by Adam Jones for The New York Observer)
And it’s a good time for Inc. Morningstar CEO Joe Mansueto bought Inc., together with the business culture title Fast Company, in 2005 from German publishing company Gruner + Jahr. Although the magazine has been somewhat under the radar in media circles, it has managed to retain its loyal base and benefit from the wider economic trends.
“A lot of the dynamism and growth in the economy is small businesses and start-ups,” Mr. Ledbetter said. “That’s why Inc. is doing so well. There’s a profound hunger for knowledge, experience and advice.”
The print magazine, which got a redesign and a magazine award last year, is up in ad pages. Meanwhile, the Inc. 5000, which started out as just 100 in 1981, has turned into a goldmine, via conferences, application fees and other brand extensions like logo packages, framed awards and posters.
The founder of a start-up who made the list told me that his company had spent almost $10,000 to do so. But, he assured me, it was worth it. “We get to network at parties like this,” he said, gesturing to the wall-to-wall crowd at the 35th anniversary event.
Privately owned companies have to verify three years of revenue growth in order to apply for the Inc. 500 and Inc. 5000 lists, which are printed in the September issue and culminate in an annual three-day conference that costs a minimum of $1,500 a head to attend. Although the company doesn’t disclose revenue figures, it did say that applications are “many thousands” over the 5,000 mark and have increased 36 pecent over the past three years.
Owing to the vetting process, Mr. Schurenberg called the list “impossible to reproduce” by competitors. “You would have to get 5,000 growing companies to tell you the stuff that they are loathe to tell their spouses,” he said.
The Inc. 500 conference, which will be held at a Marriott resort in Phoenix later this month, may be the highest profile event, but it is far from the only one. At a time when media companies are increasingly pinning their hopes on the conference business, Inc. seems to have that piece figured out as well.
The challenge for Mr. Ledbetter is to beef up the web presence while retaining the targeted identity of the magazine.
“I saw some holes that needed to be filled, but there was no profound need for change,” Mr. Ledbetter said. “I see my role as getting the most out of the people that we have, helping people do their best work and bringing in some fresh voices and fresh talent to make it really sing.”
Many of his fans already profess to see his influence at Inc. In April, he hired Fortune’s David Whitford as editor at large and former BusinessWeek media columnist Jon Fine as an executive editor.
Mr. Ledbetter’s reputation may help Inc.’s standing in New York media, and the qualities that make Mr. Ledbetter popular at magazine parties carry over to the more ceremonial duties as well.
During conversations, Mr. Ledbetter peppers his observations with flattering phrases like “good question,” just often enough that it seems genuine. “I like him because he really seems to like me,” one journalist who has met Mr. Ledbetter a handful of times volunteered.
At a recent cocktail party to kick off Inc. Women’s Summit, a roomful of female entrepreneurs, all of which had shelled out nearly $500 for a one-day conference, schmoozed, business cards at the ready, high up in the Bank of America tower.
Walking in toward the end of a brief panel about the importance of networking, Mr. Ledbetter was approached by two attendees who had flown in from Berlin for the summit. They were big fans of “The Inc,” as they called it. One of the women, who was visiting New York for the first time, showed us her iPad, where she had a stream of up-to-date stories from the magazine saved to Pocket. She explained that it was her feel-good reading and urged Mr. Ledbetter to bring Inc.’s coverage to Berlin.
As we walked away, he marveled that the two had made the trip for a one-day conference. “You should bring them to a sales conference,” he jokingly told publisher John Donnelly.
Up next was Michelle Shemilt, the founder of an undershirt company called Nudy Patooty, with whom Mr. Ledbetter had a seemingly endless, far-ranging host of anecdotes and observations to share. There was the sweet from an East Village bakery that the name Nudy Patooty recalled, some thoughts on Canada’s former finance minister, the hazards of accepting funding, the logistical difficulties of outsourcing to China, and so on.
“This is the kind of story we love,” he told Ms. Shemilt. It was too soon to include in the magazine or the magazine’s power lists, but he handed her a card and told her to stay in touch.
Mr. Ledbetter appeared to be in his element, overlooking Manhattan amid the conversation and cocktails, overseeing a publication that seems to have staying power. But then again, maybe he was just enjoying the moment.
“Come on, Bloomgarden-Smoke,” Mr. Ledbetter said, grabbing a shrimp from a passing tray and urging me to do the same. “It doesn’t get better than this.”
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Opinion #Economy
OCT 26, 2017 @ 10:15 AM 1,229 The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets
James Ledbetter Wants To Convince You That Gold Is Folly, Superstition And Madness
Nathan Lewis , CONTRIBUTOR
I write about monetary and tax policy for the 21st century.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
The purpose of James Ledbetter’s new book, One Nation Under Gold (2017) is to convince you that anything to do with gold – especially basing your money on it – is folly, superstition, mania, obsession, and madness. We know this because he tells us so, in the introduction:
Fixing our money to gold and amassing great stacks of it is no more a guarantor of sustained economic health than a witch doctor’s potions. And, as with religion, what gold believers do can often resemble, in the eyes of the less devout, madness and destruction. From the earliest days of the American republic, gold blinded men from seeing the financial realties around them. And it brought with it all manner of fraud and false hope, gold by-products that are still with us today. … To avoid gold’s false paths, we need to argue with the past, to test the assumptions that are too often and too casually passed uncritically. This book, I hope, is that argument.
“Witch doctor’s potions”? Really? The dollar was worth $19.39/oz. of gold in 1792; in 1914, it was almost unchanged at $20.67/oz. During this time, the United States was the most successful country in the world, rising from thirteen war-torn colonies along the Atlantic coast to command most of an entire continent, along the way going from crude subsistence agriculture to the world’s leader of industry, the wealthiest and freest people the earth had ever seen. After 125 years of money based on gold, America had achieved greatness; after 46 years of a floating fiat dollar, today we wonder how to make America great again.
photo courtesy of W.W. Norton
One Nation Under Gold (2017), by James Ledbetter
It wasn’t just the U.S. During the century before 1914, those countries that firmly embraced the principle of gold-based money – Britain, France and Germany – had the best economic performance, and, between them, ruled the world. The countries that had long bouts of floating currencies – Spain, Greece, Portugal – stagnated along the margins, while greater powers disassembled their once-mighty empires. When a country went from a floating currency to a gold standard – the U.S. in 1879, Russia in 1898, Japan in 1897 – a burst of strong economic progress followed. The lesson learned from this was pretty clear, and had nothing to do with superstition.
Nathan Lewis
Value of the U.S. dollar vs. gold, 1789-1914
This would be a pretty interesting tale to tell, but Ledbetter did not tell it. Instead, he focused on the California gold rush that began in 1848. The mining business (including copper, lead and tin, plus oil, gas and coal) has always been a playground for adventurers, rogues and charlatans, often exploitive of workers and an environmental blight. The gold mining business is no better. But, it turned out that gold mining, and the use of gold as a basis for money, never had much to do with each other. Annual gold production today is the highest it has ever been, and roughly double what it was in 1971, the end of the Bretton Woods gold standard system. Roughly half of all the gold ever mined, in human history, has been mined after 1971.
Ledbetter then focused on a series of crises in 1893 and 1896, intimating that they had “something to do with the gold standard.” Indeed they did – they were caused by various threats, by Democrats and Republicans alike, to devalue the dollar by about 50% and then let it float vs. gold, known at the time as “free coinage of silver.” Wouldn’t you panic if members of both political parties threatened a devaluation of this sort? The election of pro-gold president William McKinley in 1896 put an end to the crisis, ushering in two more decades of powerful economic growth.
Ledbetter followed with sections on the devaluation of 1933, when it was made illegal for U.S. citizens to own gold bullion; the Bretton Woods era; and some interesting details regarding the re-legalization of gold ownership during the 1970s. Much of this is valuable historiography, although, reinforcing Ledbetter’s stated intent to portray anything gold-related as being tinged with madness, it tends toward the clownish and absurd, including the legal adventures of a solid gold statue of a rooster that authorities claimed too-closely resembled a (then-illegal) bullion ingot; and some speculation that bismuth could be turned to gold with an atomic particle collider.
Harry Browne, the author of the hugely popular 1970 book How You Can Profit From the Coming Devaluation, was the target of more scorn from Ledbetter, who seems to have been blinded from seeing the economic realities of the time. The dollar was indeed devalued in 1971, going from its $35/oz. Bretton Woods peg all the way down to briefly touching $850/oz. in 1980, before stabilizing around $350/oz. in the 1980s and 1990s. Harry Browne’s followers enjoyed tenfold gains (in dollars) on their gold during the 1970s, while stock and bond markets swirled the toilet.
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OP-ED
How much gold do Americans own?
By JAMES LEDBETTER
JUN 22, 2017 | 4:00 AM
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In 2015, the U.S. Mint sold about $1.2 billion worth of American Eagle and American Buffalo gold coins.
Did you know that 23% of U.S. households have more than one refrigerator? Or that American workers who earn between $75,000 and $99,999 contribute an average of 7.7% of their incomes to retirement accounts? Americans live in what is almost certainly the most quantified society in the history of human existence. We are measured and surveyed around the clock, particularly regarding the facts of our economic lives — always of interest to companies trying to find a better way to sell us things.
Yet there is at least one significant-seeming economic question with no reliable answer: How many Americans own gold?
Certainly a notable portion of the country believes that gold makes a good investment. Gallup annually surveys American adults on their perceptions about investments; in 2011, when gold prices were relatively high, gold was deemed the best long-term investment by 34% of respondents (real estate was next at 19%). As gold prices subsided, the percentage naming gold as the best long-term investment fell. Nonetheless, in 2017's survey, gold still ranks as the third best-perceived long-term investment, behind real estate and stocks/mutual funds.
Even after a half-century of a floating currency in this country, a legacy of secrecy still surrounds the metal.
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Curiously, the higher an American's household income, the less likely he or she is to pick gold as the best long-term investment — and the more likely to choose real estate or stocks and mutual funds. Gold, it seems, is the preferred investment vehicle for those who can't afford it.
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But perceived value is, of course, a very different matter than how many Americans actually own gold in coin or bullion form.
We do know that the government sells a lot of gold. In 2015, the U.S. Mint sold about $1.2 billion worth of American Eagle and American Buffalo gold coins. That represents a fresh supply every year of hundreds of thousands of coins, and some Americans also purchase gold bullion and coins from other countries. Market vagaries, however, make it difficult to extrapolate from that figure how many Americans are buying. Some individuals may purchase large quantities of coins, and there is no easy way to track secondary coin markets or the number of non-Americans buying gold in the United States.
The World Gold Council, which gathers and disseminates mountains of statistics about gold, says it can provide no estimate for the number of Americans who own gold as an investment. Metals Focus, a London-based precious-metals consultant, says it has no figures that it can release. When I passed along an estimate that fewer than 10% of American adults own gold as an investment, a spokesman wouldn't confirm, but hinted that it was accurate.
A detailed 2010 poll designed to elicit the views of Americans sympathetic to the tea party movement found that 5% of those who viewed the movement favorably said that they had purchased gold coins or bars in the preceding 12 months. (The poll did not report a result for the same question from the general population.) Many of the newsletters and consultants that advise people to buy precious metals estimate that between 1% and 3% of the American population owns precious metals.
These guesses suggest that somewhere between 2.5 million and 25 million Americans own gold as an investment — a range so wide it makes any concrete analysis impossible.
The truth is that we have probably never known how many Americans owned gold. For most of America's history, that question has either been close to irrelevant (through the 19th century, the vast majority of Americans could not afford to invest in any assets beyond those that kept them alive) or a non sequitur (from 1933 to 1975, it was not legal for Americans to own gold as an investment).
When the Hoover administration began cracking down on gold "hoarders" in 1932, officials estimated that as much as $1.4 billion worth of gold was in private hands. If accurate, that impressive figure represented twice the amount of reserves in the Bank of England. Two years later, after the government had officially bought up all privately held gold, the Treasury estimated that there was still some $287 million worth of gold coins in private hands. Because that number couldn't be reconciled with the fact that gold was now illegal to own, the government simply subtracted that figure from all its books going back to 1913. Various bankers and economists concluded that this gold was smuggled out of the country or permanently hoarded — but no one will ever know for sure how much of it was ever actually there.
While we may think that we live in a more accountable era, our lack of knowledge about gold ownership suggests otherwise. Back when all major currencies were tied to gold, there were economic (and, arguably, national security) reasons to be vague about how much metal resided where. Yet even after a half-century of a floating currency in this country, a legacy of secrecy still surrounds the metal.
One price of this information void is conspiratorial thinking. Some of the conservative and libertarian figures who demand that the Federal Reserve be audited, for example, grumble that there may be a lot less gold — maybe none! — in Fort Knox than official numbers allow. Perhaps that lacuna does only minimal damage to the body politic, but it's hard to think of any good purpose that is served by perpetuating our ignorance about gold.
James Ledbetter is the editor of Inc. magazine and the author of "One Nation Under Gold: How One Precious Metal Has Dominated the American Imagination for Four Centuries."
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Print Marked Items
Ledbetter, James: ONE NATION UNDER GOLD
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Ledbetter, James ONE NATION UNDER GOLD Liveright/Norton (Adult Nonfiction) $28.95 5, 16 ISBN: 978-0-
87140-683-5
Is the dollar as good as gold? Not for a long time, writes Inc. editor Ledbetter (Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D.
Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex, 2011, etc.), and therein hangs a tale.As the author notes, gold finds in
Americans "a psychological wellspring that reaches beyond any purely physical qualities." Monetary gold, however, is
more complicated: gold mania may be one thing, but a modern economy is better based on more abundant materials.
Still, arguments for the gold standard, which was finally abandoned during Richard Nixon's second term, have been
constant throughout American history. Ledbetter has a knack for finding the most interesting, if sometimes-obscure,
pleas for gold, many offered by government officials. In the early Republic, one argued strenuously against paper
currency, saying "there would be no end to the legion of paper devils which shall pour forth from the loins of the
Secretary." In later times, the father of the multibillionaire Warren Buffett, a Nebraska congressman, urged that the
Bretton Woods monetary agreements would weaken American sovereignty--which was being betrayed, he added, by
Dwight Eisenhower, earning Buffett a reputation as "a bedrock reactionary who shot off his mouth once too often," as
columnist Drew Pearson said. Arguments for and against the gold standard have as often been politically as
economically grounded, and Ledbetter's book is a touch short on the actual mechanics of gold and its convertibility
while satisfyingly long on the sharp political divisions that have formed around it. Now that individual Americans are
allowed to own gold--a right, one Swiss-born commentator gloomily warns, that can be taken away at any time--it has
returned to popularity. Meanwhile, politicians on the right, including Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, have either outright
endorsed a return to the gold standard or confessed to a liking for the sound of it. An absorbing and often entertaining
look at precious metal and its place--or lack thereof--in our wallets.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Ledbetter, James: ONE NATION UNDER GOLD." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2017. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA489268387&it=r&asid=33c41170fa1b94665268025966040e87.
Accessed 12 Nov. 2017.
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One Nation under Gold: How One Precious
Metal Has Dominated the American Imagination
for Four Centuries
Gilbert Taylor
Booklist.
113.16 (Apr. 15, 2017): p3.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
One Nation under Gold: How One Precious Metal Has Dominated the American Imagination for Four Centuries. By
James Ledbetter. May 2017.384p. Norton/Liveright, $28.95 (9780871406835). 332.
Stipulated as legal tender in the Constitution, gold has been a political force ever since. Perhaps because minted or
printed money touches citizens like nothing else the federal government does, many an electoral and legislative
controversy has been animated by the question of whether the dollar should be backed by gold or be gold. Ledbetter,
editor of Inc. and well-versed in business history, starts with the Founders, who put the economy on a gold standard. In
the first decades of the 1800s, gold coinage represented dependability. If the introduction of paper currency during the
Civil War called into doubt the rationale of a gold-backed dollar, the 1896 election dispelled it. Silver champion
William Jennings Bryan lost to William McKinley, who nailed the dollar solidly to gold. Recounting gold's fall under
Franklin Roosevelt--it was decoupled from the dollar and banned from private ownership--Ledbetter explains the
repercussions of the revival of a gold standard in 1944, Nixon's 1971 abandonment of it, and the relegalization of goldownership
in 1974. A vibrant and fascinating account of monetary gold's volatile fortunes in the U.S. --Gilbert Taylor
Taylor, Gilbert
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Taylor, Gilbert. "One Nation under Gold: How One Precious Metal Has Dominated the American Imagination for Four
Centuries." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2017, p. 3. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA492536036&it=r&asid=6c267ff15ff5258c7d7c2554f581ae61.
Accessed 12 Nov. 2017.
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One Nation Under Gold: How One Precious
Metal Has Dominated the American Imagination
for Four Centuries
Publishers Weekly.
264.11 (Mar. 13, 2017): p74.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
One Nation Under Gold: How One Precious Metal Has Dominated the American Imagination for Four Centuries
James Ledbetter. Liveright, $28.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-87140-683-5
In this economic history, Ledbetter (Unwarranted Influence), editor at Inc. magazine, traces the complicated
relationship between gold and American monetary policy, examining our reliance on the metal alongside our frequent
attempts to sever that dependence. As Ledbetter explores and explains the waxing and waning of the gold standard, he
shows how it affects America's ties to the world economy, how it has influenced events in war and peacetime, and how
private ownership of gold has been a quagmire of controversy and opportunism. Ledbetter notes that "for much of
America's history, gold literally was money--and therefore ignited some of the most contentious political battles the
nation has ever seen." However, his own expertise in the material doesn't necessarily translate to accessibility; this is an
excellent book for those well-versed in economic topics, but less useful for the casual reader. Ledbetter hews closely to
the financial aspects of gold as an influence on the country's progress, though he does touch upon some of the cultural,
technological, and artistic roles it has played--such as the fate of the Golden Rooster of Las Vegas--which makes for
some entertaining diversions. Ledbetter's style is a little dry, but this is a solid look at America's golden history. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"One Nation Under Gold: How One Precious Metal Has Dominated the American Imagination for Four Centuries."
Publishers Weekly, 13 Mar. 2017, p. 74. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485971683&it=r&asid=b08645bd05fbd67616c0984747985c3d.
Accessed 12 Nov. 2017.
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Made Possible by ...: The Death of Public
Broadcasting in the United States
Pat Aufderheide
The Nation.
265.19 (Dec. 8, 1997): p25.
COPYRIGHT 1997 The Nation Company L.P.
http://www.thenation.com/about-and-contact
Full Text:
Public television suddenly has twice as much space on the airwaves as it had before February 1996, when the
Telecommunications Act granted broadcasters digital spectrum. That space could mean several more channels for every
station. Of course, stations will have to spend close to $2 billion to upgrade their equipment to transmit digitally.
They've asked Congress for $771 million to help out. Will this be a new frontier of electronic public space, or new toy
rooms for corporations capitalizing on public broadcasting? Who will decide what the taxpayers get out of their latest
investment? Will each station decide on how to use its newfound abundance -- WTTW with a round-the-clock upscale
shopping channel, WNET subleasing to Murdoch, WGBH co-producing news with T.C.I.-backed journalists? Might
PBS offer a pay channel for special subscribers, giving them sneak previews of material later available to the unwashed
or maybe just-for-you programs? Would that be (a) a wise business strategy, (b) a poor business strategy, (c) a misuse of
a public resource?
Don't ask the public broadcasters how they'll use it, or even if they'll be able to upgrade. Most truly don't know. The
Public Broadcasting Service says the space could be used not only for pioneer experiments in HDTV but also to offer
more old-fashioned channels. That way, public broadcasters could provide more background material for childhood
education, instructional programming and all the programs they've had to reject because of the draconian space
constraints of one-channel public TV.
Maybe. Or maybe not.
Public broadcasting is easy to pontificate self-righteously about, but excruciatingly hard to grasp. Among the stumbling
blocks: Public radio and TV are profoundly different animals, institutionally and culturally. Public broadcasting is not a
government service; even the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (C.P.B.), the umbrella organization that channels the
16 percent of public broadcasting budgets that comes from federal funds, is a private nonprofit, albeit with a federally
appointed board. People get licenses for "non-commercial," not "public," stations. Those stations (365 TV, 1,859 radio)
are all nonprofit fiefdoms; hundreds of radio and a few TV stations do not even take C.P.B. funds. Many non-C.P.B.
public radio stations run canned religious programming. PBS and National Public Radio (NPR) are not creations of
government but private, nonprofit networks selling program packages to member stations. Aspirin, anyone?
These twisted bureaucracies kick out barely enough distinguished material to get hot and bothered about. But consider
the alternative to "barely enough," and you can start to care. Public broadcasting, sad to say, is our most well-elaborated
center -- and potential base -- of electronic culture beyond the bottom line. This fall, when mergermania eliminated the
last commercial classical radio station in Philadelphia, a jazz-format public station rescued classical listeners (at the
expense of jazz fans) by clearing out some daytime hours. Public TV lumpily turns out the improbable along with the
predictable -- a history series like Cadillac Desert, an innovative documentary like P.O.V.'s A Healthy Baby Girl and a
long-range effort like the Democracy Project along with home repair how-to's, therapizing, nature specials and rightwing
rants.
James Ledbetter, a veteran Village Voice reporter, went back to the archives to look up the way federal politics has
shaped public broadcasting from the start. B.J. Bullert, a seasoned independent producer cum academic, channeled her
functions with public television into an ethnographic study of the relationships between public broadcasters and
independents, focusing on controversial documentaries such as Days of Rage: The Young Palestinians and Dark Circle.
Danny Schechter, a kind of Journalist Without Borders, has shaken up public broadcasting, among many other media
institutions, in the course of his career as self-styled "news dissector" and human rights advocate. Each author comes at
American public broadcasting from a different angle, while sharing a critical pragmatism.
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Ledbetter argues that "pressure from Congress, the White House, and a few special interest groups plays a much greater
role in shaping and determining the public broadcasting schedule than is generally recognized." While anyone who
wants to understand public TV's political origins and context must still consult Ralph Engelman's 1996 monograph
Public Radio and Television in America: A Political History (Sage), Ledbetter's book also contains some treasures. He
has, for instance, painstakingly charted links with the military and with military-related corporations in public TV's
early federal appointments. He reminds us what some of the more daring early programming looked like, especially a
series of experiments with "anti-advertising." He draws a direct line between corporate investment and program
choices, going both ways. (McDonald's drops its underwriting when Zoom!, which appeals to its core demographic, is
canceled; The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer treats major funder Archer-Daniels-Midland with kid gloves). Finally,
Ledbetter provides what he assures us must be only a partial list of indexed but missing documents from the Nixon
Administration.
But smoking guns are always hard to find. Nixon's attitude toward public broadcasting -- particularly public affairs
programs -- was ferocious. But when the fly-over-zone station managers who had rejoiced at his attacks came to
dominate PBS, did this reflect executive intimidation or conservative consensus? Ronald Reagan's budget office
recommended cutting off C.P.B., but after a year its budget rebounded.
Ledbetter's presentation of his evidence sometimes confuses or even shakes reader confidence. Except for an
intimidating chart, there's no institutional overview to orient the novice or the acronym-impaired. Thus, in his
description of NPR's Reagan-era funding crisis, it's easy to miss the fact that NPR is a private service. The political
history of the Independent Television Service (I.T.V.S.), the most recent dramatic tale showcasing conflict over the
system's mandate, is untold. And there are small errors, which can lead to misinterpretation. Commercial TV licenses
are not "`purchased' from the F.C.C. for a tiny fraction of their actual worth," unless you mean lawyers' fees; the F.C.C.
gives broadcast licenses away. The precursor to the Internet did not begin "as a means of linking computers so that they
might withstand a nuclear attack" but to facilitate collective research. The 1934 Communications Act did not reserve
public spectrum; that came later, begrudgingly. But overall, Ledbetter reminds us we can't divorce public broadcasting
from political structures.
From B.J. Bullert's Public Television: Politics and the Battle Over Documentary Film, you wouldn't know that the
actors on the ground think much, if at all, about these grand structures. While censorship is a real issue in her tales --
controversies over independent documentaries like Dark Circle, Days of Rage, Tongues Untied, Stop the Church and
Roger & Me -- the service has long since internalized its timidities and kicked them back out in the guise of journalistic
standards and pledge-week thinking.
Bullert's study is an admirable "thick description" of how and why shows outside mainstream expectations end up on
public television. It's designed to explain, not indict -- although its unflinching portraits of flabby, interlocked
bureaucracies will make insiders squirm. Again and again, Bullert finds vacillation, inattention and self-importance
within the system, with independent filmmakers often demonstrating institutional naivete along with commitment to
causes and relentless determination. Her readings are sensitive to differences between cases, but taken together, they
explain why a successful producer told the trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable last month, "HBO is willing to take
more chances than PBS."
In Danny Schechter's memoir, which well reflects his exuberant personality (even Schechter's F.B.I. file calls him
"amusing, good-natured and happy"), public television plays an unenviable role as one of the silliest institutions he has
dealt with. Schechter, who began his career at a scrappy public radio station, went on to work for a local commercial
TV station, then CNN, then ABC's 20/20. He worked for Ted, he worked for Rupert. A man whose mentor was Abbie
Hoffman may not seem a likely hire in commercial broadcasting, but his bosses always loved his entrepreneurial
dedication. His passion for real news eventually conflicted, one way or another, with corporate objectives. This is a
cautionary tale as much for believers in grand conspiracies as for those who refuse to believe that owners mess with the
news. It's a terrific testament to the limits of commercial media.
When Schechter started his own production company, with Rory O'Connor, the idea was to produce world news that
wasn't dumbed down and would really explain the issues. Globalvision's stumbling block hasn't been production
funding (although they have to use their own profits from work-for-hire jobs); it's been distribution. By going one-byone,
Globalvision got some public TV stations, as well as some cable channels, to carry its news analysis series South
Africa Now. But PBS infamously rejected its proposed human rights news show, Rights & Wrongs, calling human
rights an "insufficient organizing principle." Like Bullert's independent producers, Globalvision found the squishy
center of public broadcasting, where all is anxiety.
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In spite of Ledbetter's subtitle, public broadcasting seems to be in no real danger, although exactly what services it will
perform, for whom, may not be clear. Ledbetter calls for the perennial solutions of depoliticizing board appointments,
stable funding, local viewer accountability. More controversially, he would cut kids' programming, a suggestion that
ought to be unnecessary with spectrum expansion. Bullert sees public TV as a "hostile home" for independent
producers, but "a home nonetheless," a situation unlikely to change. She imagines a continuing role for independent
producers to force PBS "to address the challenges of a democratic society," although this assumes that a sixties-fed
sensibility in independent production will endure. Schechter, in the optative spirit of Abbie, imagines an emerging
social movement to call for media justice, and ends with a manifesto that calls for putting "the public back into public
broadcasting," fueled by taxes on corporate media.
But the real problem is that there is a vacuum at the center of the service, where the mandate or mission should be.
What it means to be public has always been more indicated by pieties -- on all side -- by definition. The lack of a core
makes the service vulnerable to all economic and political pressures, which is why no single conspiracy theory holds
water; public broadcasting is too broadly vulnerable.
However signal the lack of a notion of "public," just what would constitute such a notion in practice is not obvious. We
lack the elitist assurance that once produced a BBC. Certainly, it's not just leftists who want to come in from the
margins on this putatively public space. In response to the documentary Stop the Church, which savagely criticized the
Catholic hierarchy, as Bullert recalls, Catholic antiabortion advocates strategically demanded airtime. They claimed hey
were ignored. The Ku Klux Klan has just sued a St. Louis radio station for rejecting its underwriting message
("standing up for the rights and values of white Christian America since 1865"). That should provoke at least a public
debate on the obligations of public broadcasting, but will probably just involve dozens of lawyers dancing on the head
of the First Amendment. Meanwhile, commercial and religious buyers eagerly eye noncommercial stations as
deregulation heats up the market, hoping to capitalize on the loose definition of "noncommercial" and an even looser
concept of "public." The F.C.C. won't offer much protection; it says it can't judge program content.
If the core of public broadcasting is likely to remain squishy, at least there is room for all comers to contest its raison
d'etre. Digital spectrum is only one arena of opportunity. The F.C.C. must now decide the public interest obligations of
all broadcasters, and a President's Advisory Committee on Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television
Broadcasters has been formed. Anyone can submit comments (via e-mail to piac@ntia.doc.gov). I can hardly wait to
read these authors' best suggestions, and I bet they won't be alone.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Aufderheide, Pat. "Made Possible by ...: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States." The Nation, 8 Dec.
1997, p. 25+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA20097719&it=r&asid=4be29f64b694b32a435d6d3bd3e1237f.
Accessed 12 Nov. 2017.
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Standard issue: The dot-com tragedy denied.
(Culture and Reviews)
Tim Cavanaugh
Reason.
35.1 (May 2003): p61.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Reason Foundation
http://reason.com/about
Full Text:
Starving to Death on $200 Million: The Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard, by James Ledbetter, New York:
PublicAffairs, 272 pages, $26
EARLY IN Starving to Death on $200 Million, his memoir of the short-lived Industry Standard magazine, James
Ledbetter raises a question about the difference between trade and general interest magazines: "Would people read this
magazine if they didn't have to as part of their job?"
This litmus test was essential to the Standard, a slick, Business Week--style "bible" of the Internet industry, which
positioned itself as the red-hot opposite of a dull trade paper but whose fate was controlled by IDG Publishing, a tech
trade empire and former publisher of the For Dummies books. The question also applies to Ledbetter's book. I worked
at four different dot-coin start-ups and am still making a living on the Web. Yet even I am not sure I want to read about
The Industry Standard.
It's to Ledbetter's credit that lie manages to make his narrative breezy, readable, and (partly) convincing. Ledbetter, who
made his name with the excellent "Press Clips" column in The Village Voice, joined the Standard soon after its 1998
launch, quickly working his way up from New York bureau chief to editor of :he magazine's short-lived Euroean
edition. His talent for malting a succinct story out of conflicting narratives, his understanding of the personalities and
money troubles that shaped his subject, and his journalstic decency all help make this one )f the more engaging "what I
saw at the dot-coin revolution" chronicles. But the question is whether the subject matter rises to the level of Ledbetter's
talents. In arguing for his subject's uniqueness, he misses the archetypal qualities that make the Standard a model tale of
the late '9 90s.
I was never involved with The Industry Standard, having pissed away whatever work opportunities I may have had first
by telling Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Weber at a party how much I liked the way his magazine smelled (It's true! Early
issues of the Standard emitted a pleasing new-car odor), then by writing a negative article about Standard columnist
Michael Wolff author of the early (1998) dot-bomb diary Burn Rate. But the magazine's hullabaloo was inescapable for
a year or so. While most of that excitement was just the Gatsbyesque sizzle of a fat, ad-rich magazine, the Standard also
displayed a high degree of professionalism and a bracing skepticism about the tech boom that made it unique in its
genre. If nothing else, the magazine boasted a sharp editorial team.
That team's behavior makes for an interesting denouement in a book that is in some respects all denouement, As the
Standard went belly-up, principal players such as Weber and John Battelle, the magazine's visionary founder, worked
hard to guarantee themselves a range of golden parachute deals. Ledbetter, while he acknowledges this as unseemly
behavior, understands the impulse. Having been screwed several times in start-up bust-ups, I do too. Somewhere out
there in cyberspace floats a $25,000 signing bonus that never found its way into my bank account!
More troublesome is the behavior of IDG, which funded and maintained a controlling interest in The Industry Standard.
IDG's decision to pull the plug on the magazine in the summer of 2001 is the book's climax. It's also a business
mystery: Why would a bottom-line-driven publisher terminate a magazine that, in Ledbetter's telling, had sold 1,000
more ad pages than Fortune in the previous year and had been valued by a guesstimating outsider at $300 million to
$450 million?
The easy explanation is a culture clash: The blinkered suits at IDG failed to appreciate what a valuable property they
had, while the Standard staff intoxicated itself with visions of galactic business transformation and seemingly limitless
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growth. If you are unfamiliar with the sort of oracular notions circulating about the "New Economy" in the late 1990s,
there is no room to go into it here; suffice it to say that believing e-commerce had fundamentally altered the principles
of economics even down to the basics of supply and demand did not seem entirely crazy at the time. It's easy to see why
a company populated by trade paper drones would not accept that vision. At the first sign of trouble, IDG chose to suck
the marrow from the Standard's bones rather than keep its mutant offspring alive.
Ledbetter, with some qualifications (he prides himself on being hard-headed about matters of dollars and cents), accepts
this version. I'm not so sure. While I'm ready to accept IDG as the villain in this particular story I came away more
sympathetic to the corporate suits than I had expected. Not because I don't believe in the Internet vision, but because I
don't believe in The Industry Standard.
This is a brutal judgment, because the Standard really was the best in its class. But the class in question--Internet
business magazines--was exceedingly large. Without taxing my memory, I can name Fast Company, Business 2.0,
Upside, eCompany Now, Red Herring, and a few lesser lights like Smart Business and Context. If we throw in hybrid
business/consumer books published as subsidiaries of larger magazines, we get oddities like Time Digital (renamed
ON) and Forbes Digital Tool, the Web-only adjunct of Forbes that deserves pralse for bearing not only the worst title of
any Internet publication but the worst title of anything ever in the history of the universe. At the far reaches we find
general interest Internet mags like Yahoo! Internet Life (whose circulation at one time reached well into the trillions),
Shift, and a host of others I remember now not by name but by typeface.
It may seem a left-handed compliment to say The Industry Standard was by far the best and most professional of this
lot, but I mean it sincerely. The problem is that this still doesn't mean the Standard ever really mattered.
Ledbetter early on rejects the analogy between the Standard and the average failed Web start-up, contending that the
Standard had a viable and (for a while) extremely lucrative business plan. This is a variation on the joke that it's a
slowdown when your neighbor's out of work but a recession when you're out of work. A well-laid business plan is no
guarantee against the disappearance of the industry on which the plan is based. This is nowhere more apparent than in
an advertising-driven business. (I also question, based on some chronological assumptions in the book, whether
Ledbetter even now fully understands when and how the New Economy or at least the dot-coin version of it peaked and
when it really died.) The author doesn't even make the obvious joke that, by going down the toilet when it did, the
magazine proved itself the standard of its particular industry.
Lacking business intrigue, we're Left with what venture capitalists used to call "the story." The Standard's story isn't a
particularly bad one, but the dot-coin saga overall is lacking in the kind of outsize characters who make for a great
business narrative. The odious Michael Wolff served as his own villain in Burn Rate, but that's not the same thing. A
handful of e-commerce giants--Earthlink's soulful founder Sky Dayton and Amazon's always-game Jeff Bezos among
them--spring to mind as compelling Internet eccentrics. Ironically, the most convincing visionary-cuinimpresario was
another magazine publisher: Wired's Louis Rossetto.
This is important not just because The Industry Standard and its cousins were epiphenomena of Wired but because the
two define differing approaches to the digital revolution. By any normal yardstick, the Standard's business plan was
more sensible, quantifiable, and logical than Wired's tissue of vatic statements and whirling-dervish enthusiasms. But as
the smoke settles, it turns out Wiredwasn't just more inspiring; it was more accurate.
To be fair, this accuracy was partly a result of Wired's tendency to traffic in unfalsifiable pronouncements. But it's also a
function of that magazine's refusal to pin itself to any particular technology or industry, instead selling the story of a
"long boom," of a full-scale transformation of finance, politics, medicine, media, warfare, philosophy--essentially, of
every conceivable aspect of society. The Standard, intentionally or not, was anchored to the notion that a particular
industry--the dot-coins--would be the main engine of transformation. That bet turned out to be wrong, at least for now.
But it's no exaggeration to say that the last xo years have seen a revolution very much on the lines Wired's early issues
laid out, and that we're still far closer to the beginning than the end of that revolution. It was this absolute rightness on
the big picture that allowed Wired to be so often spectacularly wrong on the details. (For instance, I'm still waiting for
America Online's death, predicted with some re gularity in Wired's pages, to come true.)
We shouldn't condemn the Standard for not being another magazine, but the magazine it actually was may not tell us
much about the recent past or the digital future. The history James Ledbetter tells--of absurd buzzwords, squabbles over
work stations, sky-high domainname purchases, office break-ins with stolen computers (a ubiquitous though
unremarked phenomenon of the dot-coin experience)-ultimately tells us more about the era than did The Industry
Standarditself.
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Tim Cavanaugh (tcavanaugh@reason.com,) is reason's Web editor.
reason Web Editor TIM CAVANAUGH is pleased to announce that in February, reason online logged yet another
record-breaking month, topping out at 658,000 visits--a 40 percent increase in traffic since September 2002. Quips
Cavanaugh, who joined the staff last August, "It's either the growing popularity of laissez-faire, post-state principles, or
my promise of a free toaster with every page view." It may also have something to do with Hit & Run, reason's popular
staff blog that debuted in December, online at www.reason.com/hitandrun/. In this issue, Cavanaugh takes a break from
writing for the Web to write about a Web magazine, the defunct dot-com glossy The Industry Standard ("Standard
Issue," page 61).
Cavanaugh, Tim
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Cavanaugh, Tim. "Standard issue: The dot-com tragedy denied. (Culture and Reviews)." Reason, May 2003, p. 61+.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA99933037&it=r&asid=992c7e164105a5e47420433ebcb955ec.
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Made Possible by...: The Death of Public
Broadcasting in the United States
Norman Solomon
The Progressive.
62.2 (Feb. 1998): p40.
COPYRIGHT 1998 The Progressive, Inc.
http://www.progressive.org/
Full Text:
Made Possible By...: The Death of Public Broadcasting the United States by James Ledbetter Verso. 280 pages. $25.00.
These days, it's hard to say the words "public broadcasting" with a straight face. Corporate logos and de facto
commercials--steadily more blatant--symbolize what has become of dreams that the airwaves could serve the the public
interest.
James Ledbetter's book chronicles how we got into this grim situation. While doing an autopsy on "the death of public
broadcasting," he urges us to revive the corpse. "This volume is written with the belief that public broadcasting has
provided many moments of unique brilliance, and in the hope--admittedly dim--that it will continue to do so," he writes.
Some dreams die hard.
The revival Ledbetter has in mind should not be confused with the resurrection now under way. "Republicans have
virtually abandoned their attempts to end the federal financing of public radio and television or cut it back sharply," The
New York Times reported a few weeks before the close of 1997. "In fact, after a public-relations and letter-writing
campaign by the broadcasters, both houses of Congress have voted to increase the amount of federal money for the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting to $300 million in the year 2000, an increase of $50 million over 1999."
Such resilience is a hollow victory for today's shell of public broadcasting. "PBS and NPR programming is moving
further and further from the goals laid out by its founders," Ledbetter argues. And the book presents plenty of evidence
to back up his claim that "public broadcasters have spent the last decade rushing as hard as they can to merge their
services with those offered by commercial networks."
The Carnegie Commission launched public broadcasting in earnest with a high-profile 1967 report, "Public Television:
A Program for Action." Scenarios were hopeful--even starry-eyed--when Carnegie's prestigious panel declared that
public TV "should provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard."
Ledbetter illuminates how Washington politicians and "underwriting" corporations squeezed the life out of public
broadcasting, which has become just another product of the political economy. Carnegie's blue-ribbon theoreticians
could proclaim that, as Ledbetter puts it, "public broadcasting had to be insulated from commercial forces in order to
achieve its ideals." But those forces have proven relentless: "While the visionaries behind public broadcasting believed
that changing the medium of television would change the country, they never fully grasped that the medium itself could
not change against the wishes of the society's most powerful elements--the federal government, the military, and large
corporations."
Ledbetter cites Richard Nixon's heavy-handed moves to slash federal funding in retaliation for "liberal" documentaries.
During the next decade, President Reagan appointed far-right ideologues to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
board--which, Ledbetter reports, "has been used over the years as a dumping ground for the worst sort of political
hacks."
For a long time, federal subsidies through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting came under fierce attack from
conservative politicians and rightwing media watchdogs intent on suffocating the last flames of independence at outlets
like the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. But many on the left have grown critical themselves.
When Newt Gingrich and Company tried to eliminate federal funding in 1995, as Ledbetter notes, "most of the liberal
left ... declined to rally a defense for public broadcasting."
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Made Possible By ... hits its stride with a chapter called "Underwriting Politics." Ledbetter is devastating as he assesses
the flood of corporate money into PBS. "Underwriting provides a unique marketing opportunity, saturating the
presumably upscale public-broadcasting audience with the underwriter's product or service.... The underwriter
purchases an image of prestige and civic-mindedness by being associated with the `good cause,' or the content of public
broadcasting--the donation is a form of reputation laundering."
Other types of dividends also flow from underwriting. The agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, a longtime
funder now pumping $6.3 million a year into The News-Hour With Jim Lehrer on PBS, has gotten a high return on its
investment.
In a section titled "Buying Silence," Ledbetter adeptly exposes how ADM, facing a serious scandal in 1995, got off easy
on the News-Hour: "Not until October 1996--when ADM was hit with a $100 million criminal penalty for price-fixing,
seven times the amount of the next-highest such penalty--did the News Hour devote a full segment to this scofflaw
corporation." For many months before then, despite damning revelations and extensive coverage of the ADM scandal
by many other mainstream outlets, the News-Hour had dodged the story. In effect, Ledbetter says, "ADM could not
bribe the News-Hour into ignoring the ADM scandal altogether, but its underwriting serves to narrow and contain the
parameters of discussion on public television."
Such conflicts of interest are routine. Ledbetter recalls that in 1995 the News-Hour echoed Congressional debates when
it "held in-depth discussions about proposed cutbacks in education, aid to the poor, and medical subsidies. But
corporate welfare--without which ADM, the News-Hour's chief private contributor, could hardly exist--was never
discussed."
Ledbetter contends that corporate funding serves a larger, distorting purpose. "The underwriting process is an
investment in a forum that theoretically represents the many so that it will reflect the views of a wealth-and-power
elite.... Public-broadcasting contributions can thus be seen as part of a broader corporate communications strategy,
through which American-based multinationals help shift public debate away from their own malfeasance."
When he takes up noncommercial radio, Ledbetter reaches similar conclusions, alleging "a capitulation of public radio
to the established views of private lobbyists." Along the way, he supplies examples of how National Public Radio's
weekday All Things Considered and Morning Edition programs have moved into the corporate embrace. Occasional
islands of quality journalism are swamped by oceans of reliance on official sources, corporate-backed experts, and
conventional media wisdom.
To enhance its coverage as Congress considered health-care reform in 1993 and 1994, for instance, Morning Edition
regularly featured a debate between two former Congressmen, Tom Downey and Vin Weber. "Because one was a
Democrat and one a Republican," writes Ledbetter, "the discussions were presumed to be `balanced.' NPR failed,
however, to tell listeners that both men professionally opposed the Clinton health plan, since both were paid lobbyists
for various health insurers!"
While Ledbetter is suitably tough on public radio in general and NPR in particular, it's unfortunate that only one chapter
focuses on public radio. NPR news programs are influential and widely heard. Given the importance of NPR and its
equally compromised rival Public Radio International, the book's two-dozen pages devoted to public radio--while solid-
-are insufficient.
Right now, almost every trend in public TV and radio is moving in the wrong direction. The only hope is for the public
to organize and put up a fight.
Norman Solomon is a syndicated columnist on media and politics. His most recent books are "Wizards of Media Oz"
(co-authored with Jeff Cohen) and "The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh."
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Solomon, Norman. "Made Possible by...: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States." The Progressive, Feb.
1998, p. 40+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA21280701&it=r&asid=7bd150b2c718586b8490adba5c928fd3.
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Geek tragedy
Jamie Malanowski
Washington Monthly.
35.1 (January-February 2003): p59.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Washington Monthly Company
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/
Full Text:
STARVING TO DEATH ON $200 MILLION The Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard by James Ledbetter
Public Affairs, $26.00
IT'S IN THE NATURE OF WRITERS to love their stories, all their stories, even the lop-eared, runt-of-the-litter stories
that for mercy's sake should be stuffed into a sack and heaved into a swift-moving stream. It's also in the nature of
writers, particularly youngish writers at newish, underdoggy, out-of-the-mainstream publications, to love those
publications deeply, and romantically. This is because the work is exciting and involving, and because bosses at newish,
underdoggy, out-of-the-mainstream publications classically feed their underlings a motivational line that makes them
feel like Che Guevara in the mountains, even when they happen to be writing about latte or cell-phone corporations. In
the end, the work becomes not merely the writer's community and family, but also his or her raison d'etre. These
idiotically romantic feelings become especially intense if the publication craps out before descending into disappointing
middle age. In death, a magazine or a newspaper, like a lover, can forever remain perfect in its possibilities. In Starving
to Death on $200 Million: The Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard, a very fine journalist, James Ledbetter,
succumbs to both of these tendencies like the swoony boy lead in a Kirsten Dunst movie. The problem is that he simply
has less of a story than he thinks he does.
You remember the Internet--not the helpful tool most of us use every day for a host of tasks, but Internet the Idea, the
belief system which held that the Internet was a transformational force that was going to completely remake the society
in ways so far-reaching that most humans could not yet begin to comprehend them. This belief was so powerful that
people invested fortunes in the hope and expectation that soon, maybe even within a couple of quarters, vast numbers of
people would be downloading their dog food and consulting anonymous on-line physicians about their medical
problems, and other such miraculous transmogrifications. The Industry Standard was a weekly magazine that for about
two years chronicled this industry. It was a good publication, but it was one of a bunch that did what it did; its claims of
unique excellence, fashioned over so brief an existence, aren't immediately apparent to an outside observer. However,
during the height of Internet fever, its weekly status gave it a club-newsletter cachet, and over one extraordinary 12-
month period, The Industry Standard raked in advertising revenue at phenomenal levels--$2 million a week. Of course,
the boom didn't last. The dot.coms that advertised in it went broke and stopped advertising; the tech giants like Intel that
sold hardware to the dot.coms stopped advertising; and the dot.communists who worked at these disappearing
businesses, and who had billed the cost of their subscriptions back to their companies, were laid off and chose not to
subscribe with their own money. Soon the phenomenally profitable publication, which had grown and expanded and set
up subsidiary ventures and foreign bureaus and generally acquired all the other apparatus of an Information Age
empire, was hemorrhaging money. Whereupon the fusty old media company that owned a big chunk of the publication-
-IDG, the corporation that publishes the "for Dummies" books (Wine for Dummies, etc.) among a host of profitable,
dirt-dull niche publications--turned out the lights.
This story--a hot publication's rise and fall, the charismatic founder who was all grasshopper and no ant, the conflict
between the New Media dreamers and the Old Media bean counters--sounds pretty good. Unfortunately, Ledbetter was
less than ideally positioned to capture the tale. The Industry Standard was headquartered in San Francisco; Ledbetter
was the New York bureau chief, stationed a continent away. At least he was a continent away until things got really
hairy at the company, and the conflict started heating up, at which point he became the editor of the tiny European
edition, and moved to London, a continent and an ocean away. It's like telling us about the fall of the Roman Empire
from the frontiers of Gaul. Ledbetter gives us snapshots of life at HQ from time to time--the profligacy, the chaos, the
company's disorganized growth--but we never get a real feel for the personalities, for their fevered delusions, for their
terror as the train wreck approaches. Ledbetter doesn't tell these stories because he doesn't have these stories. He has his
story, and a pretty boring tale it is. He really does treat us to accounts of his problems finding decent office space in
Manhattan, his run-ins with copy editors, and his troubles with publicists and how he got back at them. Occasionally
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there's a tale of "How I Got That Story," but it's not that gripping. Back in San Francisco, his bosses were busy building
and crashing a Hindenburg; Ledbetter tells the story of operating their outposts. Had he reported the story, and done
interviews and dug around, his closeness to the story might have given him insights into the tale. But he didn't.
Of course, had he reported the story, his closeness might have been a problem. Ledbetter is a True Believer. He thinks
The Industry Standard was a great little publication that could and should have been saved, and would have been saved
if the bean counters at IDG hadn't hewn to their own agendas. At one point, he makes a harsh admission: Of the
170,000 readers the publication had in May 2000, only 44 percent actually paid for the magazine. The rest got theirs
through "controlled circulation," a laughable euphemism for "for free." By 2001, those who were paying were declining
to renew "in droves," as even Ledbetter puts it. In other words, The Industry Standard, as an idea, as the Bible of the
New Media World Order, as the future Dow Jones, was the greatest thing since sliced bread. But at rock bottom, the
thing that it really was--a magazine--simply wasn't popular enough to live. In that way, it was like so many of the
businesses it covered.
Under all the money that washed over them, these things that were supposed to be agents of transformation were just
businesses, tethered to the immutable laws of supply and demand. And at rock bottom, this book, which is supposed to
be a yarn about a publications rise and fall, is really about one man's disappointment that this thing he loved so much
turned out so poorly. So what?
JAMIE MALANOWSKI is a New York writer.
Malanowski, Jamie
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Malanowski, Jamie. "Geek tragedy." Washington Monthly, Jan.-Feb. 2003, p. 59+. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA97173640&it=r&asid=76727951bf4fb7fedd2cf1747458c9ed.
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Made Possible By....
Evan Wiener
Video Age International.
18.6 (Oct. 1998): p16.
COPYRIGHT 1998 TV Trade Media, Inc.
http://www.videoageinternational.com/
Full Text:
James Ledbetter's Made Possible By... (Verso, 280 pp.) has a suitably dramatic but somewhat misleading subtitle: "The
Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States." Even squabbling metaphysicists will agree that something dead
must once have lived, and readers of Ledbetter's tale will be hard pressed to detect more than a few blips on the EKG of
his subject.
Suffering from budget cuts, cable competition and a barrage of right-wing salvos, the future of the public broadcasting
system is more imperiled now than ever before. But from its very inception in 1967, public television has had to wiggle
through a political minefield that includes, among others, paranoid conservatives, grabby lobbyists, left-wing
ideologues, oppressive bureaucrats, military know-nothings and agenda-heavy corporate sponsors. As Ledbetter piles
on the damaging details, explaining how the nature of the system breeds so many assassins, exploiters and
incompetents, the book becomes something of a shaggy dog story, in which our protagonist lumbers from one enemy to
the next, from one misprision to another, and invariably ends up rolling over or being kicked. We begin to wonder how
any worthwhile public programming ever managed to squeeze its way into homes, what with the money, the mission
and the message being so hopelessly confused.
The book is not a polemic, but a grim history of the systems shortcomings. And PBS, we learn, is long on
shortcomings, starting with its relationship to its principal sponsor: the American government. When the Johnson
administration's Public Broadcasting Act was signed in 1967, establishing the federal government's role in funding
television programming, rumblings from Vietnam extended an already established link between the military and the
communications industry. Roughly a decade before, Sputnik's launch had stoked the nation's first stab at educational
television; by the late 1960s, when the government was ready to build a network from the ground up, "the only
Americans sufficiently versed in the logistics of creating a new network were part of the military-industrial complex."
Trouble mounted early: public television was prevented from accurately depicting the Vietnam experience because
"military scrutiny merged with federal budgetary control to define the limits of what could be discussed and debated
over the public airwaves."
"Defining the limits" is a key phrase, for everything in public television is at the mercy of history or just plain idiocy.
Johnson himself, an ostensible friend of the system, launched the tradition of dunder-headed, politically motivated
personnel appointments by naming Frank Pace Jr. as the first president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Pace, secretary of the army from 1950 to 1953 and CEO of a company that manufactured bombers and fighter planes,
proudly announced at the outset that he had commissioned a study on how public television might be used - for riot
control.
This is only the first punchline in the PBS comedy of mistaken identity. To this day, no one seems to have any fixed idea
of what public television should be doing on the airwaves. (Critic Les Brown called the enterprise a "name without a
concept.") Nixon, following Johnson, assumed that PBS was a haven for the media's liberal leanings and for all things
"anti-administration." He did what he could to destroy the system, but when public television became the standardbearer
in broadcasting the Watergate hearings, the system helped destroy him. In Ledbetter's mind, the extensive
Watergate coverage represented the acme of public television. But Nixon got his "revenge" when PBS began to crumble
under a paradox: taxpayer funding gives everyone the right to tell PBS how to operate, but because the government
never shells out quite enough money, PBS is forced to chain itself to corporate sponsors.
And so the Alabama Educational Television Commission refuses to allow programs on the Civil Rights movement;
Exxon (one of many oil companies with heavy dollars invested in public broadcasting) ensures that The
MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour avoids damning coverage of the Valdez disaster; and special interest groups create task
forces inside of task forces to insist that PBS programming reflect community diversity. A preacher in North Carolina
condemns Barney as "the purple messiah ... a satanic cult figure," while a senator from South Dakota charges that the
documentary Baseball leans leftward. With the government forcing public television to find a "strict adherence to
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objectivity and balance" (one wag wonders whether PBS "will balance out the astronauts with the Flat Earth Society")
and the oil barons putting their dollars behind shows that will bring "highbrow" respectability, PBS finds itself, 30 years
later, burdened by a tradition of fat men singing arias.
At its best, the book is an erudite confirmation of everything we might've suspected while watching one of those
interminable pledge drives. Despite shiny liberal credentials as a Village Voice media monitor, Ledbetter is never unfair,
and he's particularly adept at unraveling conflicts of interest that read like miniature conspiracies (or like the ordinary
functionings of the American government). The book, however, is not at its best often enough. Rather than shaping the
history, Ledbetter lets the history shape him - sentences grind along, needlessly tedious, sinking under a stop-start
accretion of detail and typos. Even more damaging, Ledbetter's defense of public television remains largely abstract.
Ledbetter backs the idea of his subject as if it were an absolute good, countering the A-list conservatives (Reagan, Dole,
Buckley) by merely pointing out incidences of their hypocrisy (Newt Gingrich, for example, is charged with lambasting
the system one moment and showing up for a pledge drive the next). The author goes on to dismiss or deemphasize
much of the programming that has given public television what little identity it has: children's programming ("too much
attention and expectation has been invested in the education qualities of children's TV on PBS"); The Civil War
("relatively safe"), Masterpiece Theater ("false snobbery is public broadcasting's brand recognition"). What are we left
with? Hard to say. More local and political programming seems to be in order, but Ledbetter is shorter on practical ideas
than he is on his fine whines.
Though funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting constitute 0.02 percent of the federal budget (the government
spends about $1 per citizen on public television), funding continues to atrophy. Meanwhile, matters have only worsened
on the corporate front: of the continuing tradition of corporate sponsorships, Ledbetter writes, "All historical evidence
indicates that when commercial companies are involved with producing and distributing public broadcasting programs,
they will reproduce the constrictions found in commercial broadcasting." Disturbing news indeed. Ledbetter, ever
noble, wants to pump some life into his subject, to know where it all went wrong and how it can be made right again.
But all too often we wonder if this body should have been disposed of long ago, before it began to stink.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Wiener, Evan. "Made Possible By...." Video Age International, Oct. 1998, p. 16. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA53392980&it=r&asid=5997036eb4ae43f7e6e6b15fbaa5195d.
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Starving to Death on $200 Million a Year: The
Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard.
(Nonfiction)
Kirkus Reviews.
70.21 (Nov. 1, 2002): p1592.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Ledbetter, James
STARVING TO DEATH ON
$200 MILLION A YEAR: The Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard
Public Affairs (304 pp.)
$26.00
Jan. 2003
ISBN: 1-58648-129-0
From its former European bureau chief, a eulogy for and autopsy of the late newsweekly, which chronicled the dot.com
boom and died in its bust.
An early hire, onetime Village Voice columnist Ledbetter first became New York bureau chief for The Industry
Standard in that golden age when all things connected to the Internet promised social revolution and instant wealth. For
a time, it seems, that was true of the feisty startup, which meant to rekindle some of the old Wired magazine's fire and
treat Internet companies of all kinds as businesses and newsmakers, not curiosities. Launched from San Francisco, the
Standard was a quick success: on its second birthday, the weekly was worth around $450 million, bringing in $200
million a year, and by the end of 2000 had sold 7,440 ad pages--"1000 pages more than Fortune magazine, which had a
century more publishing experience." For all that, as Ledbetter ruefully documents, the Standard sank as quickly as it
rose, scuttled by poor management with little apparent sense of budgeting and rejected by consumers who tired of
"suboptimal" journalism. (Though the talented staff included the likes of Harvard prof Lawrence Lessig and Atlantic
alumnus James Fallows, Ledbetter writes that many of the weekly's correspondents were unfamiliar with their beats and
inadequately coached by an overworked editorial staff.) In the end, the media giant that had bought the Standard
apparently decided when ad sales went down that it was more cost-effective to declare bankruptcy than to spend money
saving it. Ledbetter convincingly argues that the company could have kept the magazine alive without going broke,
noting in any event that "in a bear market, the average reader needs more and better financial advice than in a bull
market."
A little long and occasionally repetitive, but a solid account nonetheless: a fine study of both the business of business
journalism and the corrosive power of corporate politics.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Starving to Death on $200 Million a Year: The Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard. (Nonfiction)." Kirkus
Reviews, 1 Nov. 2002, p. 1592. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA94329700&it=r&asid=80c2d6dd7f3b90eae1b4079b1fd4b87b.
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Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower
and the Military Industrial Complex
Lawrence D. Freedman
Foreign Affairs.
90.2 (March-April 2011): p174.
COPYRIGHT 2011 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org
Full Text:
Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military Industrial Complex.
By James Ledbetter.
Yale University Press, 2011, 280 pp. $26.00.
The Civilian and the Military: A History of the American Antimilitarist Tradition.
By Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.
Independent Institute, 2010, 380 pp. $19.95.
Once upon a time, Republican presidents worried about deficit spending and were reluctant to be talked into
unnecessary defense expenditures by lobbyists inflating threats. Large peacetime military establishments were
considered risks to American democracy and security. President Dwight Eisenhower shared these concerns sufficiently
to warn in his valedictory address about the "unwarranted influence" of "the military-industrial complex"--a warning
that reflected his background in industrial mobilization and his experience in office. He came under enormous pressure
to authorize the purchase of expensive military systems, often by retired officers who had joined corporate boards. In
Unwarranted Influence, Ledbetter traces how the speech came about and charts its later influences, refuting those who
claimed it sank without trace.
A companion piece from the same period is a reprint of Ekirch's 1956 book The Civilian and the Military. Scholarly in
its research and scope, the book also celebrates that antimilitaristic tradition, with its hostility to standing armies and
conscription, warmongering by "merchants of death," distorted budgetary priorities, and the subversion of individual
freedom in the name of national security. It reveals, often unintentionally, the problems with this tradition (notably, how
to deal with states that are even more militaristic) while providing a compelling reminder of its historic influence.
Freedman, Lawrence D.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Freedman, Lawrence D. "Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military Industrial Complex." Foreign
Affairs, Mar.-Apr. 2011, p. 174. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA254244952&it=r&asid=802c1821884f7cc2e9aac4d5e3ca95f1.
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Starving to Death on $200 Million a Year: The
Short, Absurd Life of the Industry Standard.
(Nonfiction)
Publishers Weekly.
249.47 (Nov. 25, 2002): p53.
COPYRIGHT 2002 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
JAMES LEDBETTER. Perseus, $26 (304p) ISBN 1-58648-129-0
The Industry Standard began publishing in April 1998 and grew explosively. Judged on its second-year revenue, ad
sales and influence, it was one of the most successful magazine launches ever. It took in $300 million in its first 20
months, but didn't survive the next 20 months. Ledbetter, the magazine's European bureau chief, explains how it all
happened in a terrific inside account of the Internet boom. The Standard was positioned exactly at the intersection of
technology, media business and finance. It was the authoritative source for industry reporting; its stories could drive the
Internet stock market; and it was a startup new-media company with all the innovation and chaos the term implies.
Ledbetter is the perfect person to tell the story: an experienced business media reporter who learned about technology
and finance on the job; he had a position high enough to see the corporate machinations firsthand, yet had no day-to-day
involvement, since he was thousands of miles away from San Francisco headquarte rs, busy trying to get good stories
on a deadline. This mix of corporate history and memoir captures the story's economic and human sides, although at
times it's hard for readers to keep track of the characters and events. Despite having a limited initial audience--how
many people really want to read about a magazine that croaked not long after its second birthday?--it serves as a
fantastic testament to a bygone era. Agent, Kay McCauley. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Starving to Death on $200 Million a Year: The Short, Absurd Life of the Industry Standard. (Nonfiction)." Publishers
Weekly, 25 Nov. 2002, p. 53+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA94983662&it=r&asid=0b7d6eedd34b94f80d7c5c7a10a3b695.
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BOOK REVIEW: Inside The Industry Standard's
life
PR Week (US).
(Mar. 31, 2003): p19.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Haymarket Media, Inc.
http://www.prweek.com
Full Text:
'About 5% to 10% of the PR people I've worked with have always behaved decently, and I don't mind calling them my
friends. Unfortunately, the incidents that stick in my head involve the other 90%.'
So writes James Ledbetter in his chronicle of the rise and fall of the bible of tech journalism - The Industry Standard - a
tale in which PR pros play no small role. Their part, to the detriment of the profession's reputation, is typically to
provide comic relief or, worse, alarming examples of obfuscation or outright lying in this detailed look at how the title
got some of its biggest stories.
Written by an almost insider - the author was an editor in New York and London while much of the drama was
unfolding in San Francisco - Ledbetter makes up for geographic distance with insightful post-mortem interviews with
the main players. He leaves an overall impression of a magazine that was a hotbed for ambitious journalism, even if it
was a chilly place for meaningful business planning.
Title: Starving to Death on dollars 200 Million: The Short, Absurd Life
of The Industry Standard
Author: James Ledbetter
Publisher: Public Affairs, 291 pages
Reviewed by: Matthew Creamer
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"BOOK REVIEW: Inside The Industry Standard's life." PR Week [US], 31 Mar. 2003, p. 19. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA99291382&it=r&asid=287cf7cbcff85cdbcac4ecae1630323b.
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Made Possible by: the Death of Public
Broadcasting in the United States
Publishers Weekly.
244.50 (Dec. 8, 1997): p63.
COPYRIGHT 1997 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
James Ledbetter. Verso, $25 ISBN 1-85984-904-0
The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) was formed by an act of Congress in 1967. In this brisk and informative book,
Ledbetter, a staff writer for Manhattan's Village Voice, reveals what a political punching bag PBS has been, a scapegoat
of the Republicans from Richard Nixon to Newt Gingrich. Ledbetter charges that the board of PBS has been a
depository for political hacks; that corporate underwriting is a pernicious method of influencing content and that the
military-industrial complex also has power to affect programming. The author assesses National Public Radio (NPR)
and maintains that Bobby Kennedy's former press secretary Frank Mankiewicz fiscally mismanaged it in the 1980s.
Ledbetter discusses what he calls "Nixon's Revenge," the present conservatism of the talk shows that have become a
staple on PBS such as The McLaughlin Group, Firing Line and Washington Week in Review. Ledbetter offers solutions
for helping PBS to find its niche in the television of the 21st century, such as airing more documentaries on the failed
state of our educational system. A smart read. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Made Possible by: the Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States." Publishers Weekly, 8 Dec. 1997, p. 63.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA20048169&it=r&asid=b572d0b0d14c747349e0f0a091a66d03.
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Starving on millions. (Read This)
Business Record (Des Moines).
19.3 (Jan. 20, 2003): p17.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Business Publication Corp.
Full Text:
In "Starving to Death on $200 Million," James Ledbetter examines the rise and fall of The Industry Standard, a
magazine that sought to be the BusinessWeek of the Internet economy. It generated more that $200 million in revenues
in 2000, then crashed and burned, declaring bankruptcy within two years of its launch. The publisher dubs "Starving" a
"mock-heroic chronicle of the magazine that lived large and died young: the wild dreams, the sudden success, the
wanton excesses, the fatal hemorrhage." Although keeping track of the book's characters and events can be a challenge,
"Starving" is generating heat in business circles as a sardonic portrait of dot-com decadence. (Public Affairs, hardcover,
400 pp., Jan. 2003, $26)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Starving on millions. (Read This)." Business Record [Des Moines], 20 Jan. 2003, p. 17. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA97217954&it=r&asid=b87c2fcfa9a0aa1468a2b18ecb53c23e.
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(8/2010) Book Review: Benjamin Roth's: The
Great Depression: A Diary
Basilandspice.com.
(Aug. 29, 2010):
COPYRIGHT 2010 Basil & Spice
Full Text:
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Benjamin Roth's 'The Great Depression: A Diary' Brings Nation's Greatest Financial Meltdown to Life
The 'forgotten men' of today are the doctors, lawyers, insurance men, etc. They are down and out and can do very little
about it. -- Benjamin Roth, diary entry Nov. 10, 1933
That refrain -- echoing Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Forgotten Man" radio speech of April 7, 1932, when he was still
governor of New York -- runs through Benjamin Roth's The Great Depression: A Diary (PublicAffairs/2010, $15.95
quality paperback, 288 pages, edited by James Ledbetter and Daniel B. Roth, with an introduction by Ledbetter) much
as the Mahoning River runs through Roth's hometown of Youngstown, Ohio.
Benjamin Roth was born in New York City in 1894 but he moved with his family while still very young to
Youngstown. He received a law degree and moved back to Youngstown after serving as an army officer during World
War I. When the stock market crashed in 1929, he had been practicing law for about ten years, representing local
businesses for the most part. After nearly two years, he began to grasp the magnitude of what had happened to
American economic life, and he began writing down his impressions in a diary that he maintained intermittently until he
died in 1978.
Youngstown, midway between New York City and Chicago and about halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, was
a thriving industrial city of about 170,000 people at the time of the October 1929 stock market crash. Today it has about
78,000 residents, with legendary employers like Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. long gone. (A personal note: I worked
in the quality control department of YS&T's mill in Lake County, Indiana for about a year in the mid-1960s, before I
joined the reportorial staff of the Hammond (IN) Times in January 1966). If Pittsburgh and Chicago were the centers of
Big Steel, Youngstown was home to "Little Steel" companies like Youngstown Sheet and Tube and Republic Steel.
Most of the entries cover the period from 1931 to the end of 1941, after the Pearl Harbor attack and the declaration of
war against the U.S. by Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy on Dec. 11, 1941. Roth interjects brief updates with
dates in the 1940s, 1950s and even the 1970s, and the editors provide background essays to explain some of the events
Roth writes about. All in all, the package is an excellent brief introduction to the Great Depression, with anecdotes that
will resonate with today's readers.
In addition to his comments about the lack of work for lawyers, doctors, dentists and other professionals during the
entire period of his evocative diary, Roth records the travails of working class people at a time of industrial strife and
massive unemployment. He doesn't neglect the plight of farmers in Ohio and other Midwestern farm belt states,
including the epicenter of farm foreclosures, the state of Iowa. Roth devotes a great deal of space in his diary to real
estate, which must have been a big part of his law firm's business before October 1929 -- and very little after with the
almost total collapse of the nation's real estate industry.
Roth was a Republican who voted for Hoover's re-election in 1932 when FDR won in a landslide, and for Alf Landon
in 1936 when FDR swamped Landon in an even bigger landslide. In 1940 Roth campaigned for GOP Presidential
candidate Wendell Willkie on a "no third term" for FDR campaign. Although he worked for the Mahoning County
NRA, his beliefs that the New Deal was a socialist plot against America pervade the diary. Like people today, Roth
struggled to understand how the world's largest economy could collapse so quickly after the events of October 1929. He
obviously had plenty of time to read sitting in his frequently empty law offices and he cites dozens of books that he
perused to educate himself about finance, investing and economics.
Here's Roth's entry for March 8, 1933, four days after FDR's inauguration:
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We are greeted by a very dramatic announcement this morning. At 1:30 a.m. this morning as his first official act,
President Roosevelt issues a proclamation ordering every bank in the United States to close for four days -- including
the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve Banks. It now appears that during the past two weeks foreign countries and
domestic depositors have withdrawn gold from the U.S. Treasury at an alarming rate. This proclamation also forbids
exportation of gold. As a result of this announcement the U.S. will be technically off the gold standard for four days. I
don't see how the government can resume gold payments at the end of that time because all Europe will be waiting at
the Treasury doors to withdraw gold. In Youngstown every bank and loan company is closed to all business and large
placards in the windows bear notice of the President's proclamation. Everybody is fearful of the immediate future. In
the meantime all over U.S. plans re (sic) going forward to issue scrip against bank deposits. Likewise every stock
exchange in the country is closed.
It's important to remember than before the passage of the Banking Act of 1933 -- commonly called the Glass-Steagall
Act for its congressional sponsors -- later in 1933, there was no federal insurance on bank deposits. Glass-Steagall
separated "boring" commercial banking and "risky" investment banking and created the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corp. Most of Glass-Steagall was discarded in the latter part of the Clinton Administration, but the FDIC was retained.
The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 effectively removed the "Chinese Wall" that previously existed between
Wall Street investment banks and depository banks and has been blamed by some -- including the present reviewer --
for exacerbating the damage caused by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market that led to the current financial
crisis.
About the editors: James Ledbetter is the editor of "The Big Money," Slate.com's Web site on business and
economics. Prior to joining Slate, he was deputy managing editor of CNNMoney.com, a financial news site. His most
recent book is Dispatches for the New York Tribune: Selected Journalism of Karl Marx . He is also the author of
Starving to Death on $200 Million: The Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard and Made Possible By...: The
Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States . He lives in New York, NY. Daniel Roth is a son of Benjamin Roth
and is the chairman of the law firm of Roth, Blair, Roberts, Strasfeld & Lodge in Youngstown, Ohio. He is the cofounder
of National Data Processing Corporation and the co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Torent, Inc (formerly Toro
Enterprises, Inc.) He divides his time between Youngstown, Ohio and Florida.
MORE FROM DAVID M. KINCHEN
Copyright (c) 2006-2010, Basil & Spice. All rights reserved.
To view this article at basilandspice.com, click here: http://www.basilandspice.com/financial-well-being/82010-bookreview-benjamin-roths-the-great-depression-a-diar.html
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"(8/2010) Book Review: Benjamin Roth's: The Great Depression: A Diary." Basilandspice.com, 29 Aug. 2010. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA236026259&it=r&asid=6a8e860b9c9fa017d1e4f00ca4b70c6f.
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Roth, Benjamin. The Great Depression: A Diary
Sara Miller
Library Journal.
134.18 (Nov. 1, 2009): p75.
COPYRIGHT 2009 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Roth, Benjamin. The Great Depression: A Diary. PublicAffairs: Perseus. 2009. c.304p. ed. by Daniel Roth & James
Ledbetter. photogs. ISBN 978-1-58648-799-7. $24.95. HIST
A Youngstown, OH, attorney during the Great Depression, Roth emerges as researcher and author in this diary, edited
by his son Daniel Roth and James Ledbetter (editor, "The Big Money," Slate.com). Tracking both the social evolution in
his town and the disruptions to the American economy during the 1930s and early 1940s, Roth wrote clearly, with an
attorney's eye for detail about the drastic changes occurring; modern readers will see striking parallels between the
economy then and now. Roth, an active Republican, clearly explained why he disagreed with New Deal policies and
why he ultimately adjusted his reactions. Editors' notes add needed historical information to clarify Roth's explanations
of market trends and events that might otherwise be fuzzy to today's average reader. Though the stock market quotes
can become rather tedious, they are still helpful for comparing to trends historical and current. VERDICT This diary,
while not rich in personal detail, is an excellent choice for those interested in the local and economic impact of the
Great Depression.--Sara Miller, Atlanta-Fulton P.L. Syst., GA
Miller, Sara
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Miller, Sara. "Roth, Benjamin. The Great Depression: A Diary." Library Journal, 1 Nov. 2009, p. 75. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA211439882&it=r&asid=8af10267c913e442bda6d3bf01c4593c.
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To the End of Time: The Seduction and Conquest
of a Media Empire
James Ledbetter
Washington Monthly.
24.4 (Apr. 1992): p49.
COPYRIGHT 1992 Washington Monthly Company
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/
Full Text:
As if scripted by publicists for Richard Clurman's book,*, the board of Time Warner in late February ousted its co-CEO,
Nicholas J. Nicholas in what was widely described as a "coup." The awkward two-chief arrangement that had existed
since the companies' 1989 merger finally gave way, and Warner mogul Steve Ross, even as he seemed to be dying of
prostate cancer, had won again. By the time Nicholas left the company, he and Ross were no longer even speaking--a
feud born, reportedly, of the vastly divergent styles that are described in Clurman's book.
In a gesture of excess that has come to characterize the company, Nicholas will receive somewhere between $24 and
$45 million for the privilege of being booted out of the company. That decision prompted a lawsuit from four
shareholders who claim, not at all unreasonably, that the payment "would constitute a gift and a waste of Time Warner's
assets." A quote from Clurman, whose book details many such greedfests, became mandatory in everybody's account of
the Nicholas debacle.
This was only the most recent example of publishing hype that Simon and Schuster couldn't possibly buy. The excerpt
in January's Vanity Fair profiling Ross, for all its discussion of his mob-tinged past and obscene $100 million annual
compensation, contained very little that hadn't already been published. But it managed to catch the tsunami of
resentment rising against American executive perks, prompting tongues to clack in the microcosmos where such things
matter--so much so that New York City Council president Andrew Stein was compelled to write a letter to Vanity Fair
saying Clurman had done Ross wrong. Stein defended Ross as "a unique human being, a great New Yorker, and a
visionary business leader," and thanked him for continuing to employ 7,000 people in the city where Stein hopes soon
to be mayor. That Time had, just weeks before, laid off hundreds of employees and that Time Warner has a monopoly
on cable television services in New York City were clearly less important to Stein than the fact that Ross had recently
co-chaired a $5,000-a-plate Stein fundraiser that helped him circumvent public campaign financing laws.
Add to this a story in March's Equire by former Time writer Robert Sam Anson about the newsweekly's ongoing
identity crisis. Even before Esquire had hit the stands, Clurman accused Anson, whom he'd hired at Time in the sixtiies,
of stealing from his sallies. This baseless charge came to the attention of noted literary critic Liz Smith, who trumpeted
it in her syndicated gossip column without bothering to ask Anson his opinion.
What's most remarkable about all this mud-slinging in glamorous venues is that Clurman's book is spectacularly dull.
Had I not had to read it for professional reasons, I would never have made it past the first chapter. Most of the book
recounts the on-again, off-again negotiations between the Time board and Warner's Ross. The biggest question isn't who
won, but who cares? Surely the world has reached a saturation point beyond which there is no justification for another
book about gree-fueled corporate mergers and the investment bank legerdemain that made them possible. The financial
tedium is by no means enlivened by Clurman's plodding prose and stunning lack of analysis.
Luce slips
The only reason anyone would care enough to talk about this book is that the company in question is the vaunted Time
Inc., a media empire once known for its rigorous separation of editorial and business operations and its commitment to
journalistic excellence. Clurman, a two-decade Time reporter himself, sprinkles the company history throughout the
book, barely able to hold back his tears when describing its founding fathers. In typically fetishistic fashion, he opens
and closes with descriptions of oil paintings of Henry Luce, Andrew Heiskell, and Hedley Donovan.
The premise of To the End of Time is that this publishing palace has been irreparably sullied by contemporary business
practices and the merger with tacky Warner Communications. Beset with inherent conflicts of interest (what happens
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when Entertainment Weekly reviews a Warner Brothers movie?), declining readership, and a multibillion-dollar merger
debt, the empire, says Clurman, is now almost certain to drift away from its founding mission.
The problem is that Clurman's nostalgis history isn't just simplistic, it's bunk. While Time may have structurally kept
the influence of advertising away from its copy, the editorial content of the newsweekly during what it celebrated as the
American Century was often abysmal by the standards of independent journalism. The Luces were rabid antiCommunists
who routinely smeared labor and other segments of the American left, making Joe McCarthy's mission
much easier. The magazine regularly propagandized for the CIA's illegal and ill-conceived foreign escapades and
provided wildly distorted accounts of State Department-sensitive areas from Korea to Nicaragua. Culturally, it trashed
the likes of Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, and anyone else perceived as a threat to domestic stability.
It goes without saying that the upper echelons of Time, like most of corporate America, were and are places where
women and minorities have no place. I am told reliably that during a recent pre-launch meeting about Volume, Time
Warner's upcoming magazine on hip-hop and black culture, corporate editor Gil Rogin had his shoes shined by a black
company shoeshiner as he discussed how to cover the black music scene. Although Clurman's book is filled with such
corporate obscenities, he doesn't seem any more troubled by them than his subjects do. In a representative passage,
amidst a description of a lush Bahamian corporate retreat meant to acquaint officers of the two companies, Clurman
quotes Time managing editor Henry Muller without raising an eyebrow: "We don't like anybody outside the family who
isn't one of us."
The book does provide some wonderful dish on Ross' infamous greed and how he bamboozled and persuaded Time
honchos to do the deal, largely by guaranteeing that they'd all become filthy rich, regardless of the company's
performance. Frankly, though, Clurman has dug up little that is genuinely new: The most salacious Ross details
appeared in Connie Bruck's New Yorker account of the merger. And the perpetual screwing of Time Warner
stockholders has been amply documented in The Wall Street Journal, where it was certainly read by anyone who cares.
Ironically, it's precisely Clurman's intense focus on the financial aspects of the merger that makes his book so shortsighted.
Clurman clearly spent a great deal of time educating himself about the intricacies of takeover and stock plans,
and is a little angry that capitalism has come to this king of chicanery. But he's thoroughly incapable of recognizing
that, far from violating his precious "Time Inc. culture," the merger was its logical conclusion. Time's Cold War
addictions and conservative agenda made its "culture" the desired blueprint for multinational corporate capitalism--a
kind of journalistic imperialism. The company both financially and ideologically supported the very forces that led to its
eventual merger with a global media giant. If Clurman weren't so wedded to Time's catechisms, he might've used his
material to make that point. But it's hard to see how the proper recent history of Time can be written by one of the
faithful.
James Ledbetter is a media critic for The Village Voice.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Ledbetter, James. "To the End of Time: The Seduction and Conquest of a Media Empire." Washington Monthly, Apr.
1992, p. 49+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA12148935&it=r&asid=467952269ebd8fc26acf5818c8374b44.
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Once Upon a Distant War
James Ledbetter
The Nation.
262.1 (Jan. 1, 1996): p29.
COPYRIGHT 1996 The Nation Company L.P.
http://www.thenation.com/about-and-contact
Full Text:
Any nonfiction book boasting that movie rights have already been sold to HBO causes a mild wave of distrust to lap
insistently around a reviewer's ankles. An exploration of the press in the early days of U.S. involvement in Vietnam is
sufficiently engaging; the reader doesn't need the distraction of wondering who will play David Halberstam or whether
the author hasn't leaned a bit too heavily on the cinematic. For God's sake, the book opens with an Associated Press
reporter landing at the Saigon airport, triggering the Anglo-correspondent-abroad cliche alarm before you've turned a
page: It's Malcolm Browne's Year of Living Dangerously! Cue the elephants.
Fortunately, William Prochnau's Once Upon a Distant War transcends the tigercage limitations of its genre and provides
a worthy piece of Vietnam history and press criticism. Judging from his closing notes, Prochnau considered several
different frames before settling on the lives of a handful of journalists working in Vietnam in the "early" years of 1961
to 1963. This was a wise choice, in part because the Saigon press crew at that time was minimal but extraordinary:
Homer Bigart from The New York Times (soon replaced by Halberstam), Neil Sheehan from United Press International,
Browne and Peter Arnett from the Associated Press and a handful of supporting cast members.
Prochnau's choice ofthe 1961-63 window is also fertile because it represents the American involvement in Vietnam in a
pure phase--not one of moral purity but of an unambiguous sense of purpose and rectitude. The Kennedy
Administration could not have known what relative luxuries it enjoyed: nonexistent public opinion; Congressional
support; a can-do, technocratic Army still maintaining an "advisory" posture; the pliant, if erratic, client government of
Ngo Dinh Diem--in short, considerable freedom to believe its own foreign policy myths and lies.
What it did not have was the full cooperation of the press. In wartime, the American press's conduct resembles a frozen
concentrate version of its conduct in peacetime: Official sources become the only sources, "briefings" become the news
itself, naked propaganda images become stirring national symbols (think of the Patriot missile or the P.O.W. bracelet).
In Vietnam, the American government and the military expected that wartime press standards would allow them to
carry out their little fight against Communism--in such poetically named packages as Project Beef-Up--without anyone
reporting it. The secrecy reached absurd levels: The U.S. government officially denied using napalm in Vietnam until
1964, more than two years after a full-color photo of a napalm strike ran on the cover of Life. The Defense Department
ordered an investigation into who "leaked" information about the 1961 arrival of an American aircraft carrier, even
though it had sailed up the Saigon River, its forty helicopters in full view of visiting Time correspondent Stanley
Karnow, who was sipping a drink at the riverside Majestic Hotel.
Had the United States been conducting a declared war in Vietnam during this period, it is plausible that home-team
pressure would have convinced many correspondents that they had seen no carrier at all. But Vietnam was a backwater,
a speck on Washington's Risk board, where Kennedy could move his pieces to the ignorant applause of Washington
pundits like Joseph Alsop. Prochnau points out that the Times was the only daily newspaper to station a reporter in
Saigon in those years; there was no regular network presence, no the Times or other regional paper, none of the
Washington dailies, not even The Washington Post. (Prochnau, who went to Vietnam for the Post a few years later, says
the paper's failure to assign a reporter until 1965 and its editorial support for the war until 1968 are still sources of
embarrassment there.)
The general media indifference, paradoxically, empowered the Saigon correspondents. Their shared isolation from the
South Vietnamese government, the U.S. Embassy and even their own employers helped bind them together in what
Halberstam called the "band of brothers." They were all young: None was older than 30 when he first came to Vietnam,
a fact that generals and hawks loved to emphasize when attacking their critical dispatches. And they had landed in a
lush postcolonial country where exotic women, opium and story tips were there for the taking--often at the same party.
If that sounds like romanticized macho war correspondent stuff...well, it is. This is a movie, remember? A movie filled
with terrific detail: In this war without a front, reporters would get a tip about a skirmish and take a cab to the war. The
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A.P. and U.P.I. reporters would scramble back to the precious telephone, trying to beat one another to avoid teletype
scorn: 12 MINUTES LATE ON CHOPPERS LOST EAST COAST AYEMS 3-14 CRANK IT. The band of brothers are
played as tough and honorable: Halberstam was thrown out ofthe embassy offices of the deluded American Ambassador
Fritz Nolting a few minutes into their first meeting. But they also have their human vulnerabilities: Sheehan had to
overcome alcoholism, Halberstam nearly derailed his career by ignoring draft board notices. And most of them fell in
love with Vietnamese women with names like Blue Lotus. (Memo to HBO: Can we get Tia Carrere from Wayne's
World for this part?)
Although his sympathy for the band of brothers is never in doubt, Prochnau skillfully navigates - around the prevailing
myths: that the reporters were treasonous liberals who wanted to shame the U.S. military, or that their stories poisoned
American public opinion against the war effort. Prochnau points out repeatedly--though without much depth--that the
beleaguered crew never, in those days, questioned the reasoning behind U.S. involvement in Vietnam, only the tactics.
They were angered not by the excesses of cold war foreign policy but by having the prosecutors of that policy lie to
them or freeze them out of the story. In many instances, they filed sunny reports about the hapless South Vietnamese
forces making progress, and they withheld information--such as the fact that U.S. "advisers" were operating guns on air
raids against the Vietcong-that would contradict the Washington line. The Saigon pack had patriotic reflexes as spry as
those of their Washington counterparts: Time's Charley Mohr cranked out a dandy 1962 cover story portraying the
dreaded Gen. Paul Harkins as a new Patton ("the same, certainly, in their drive to win") and generally laying out "What
It Takes to Win." To Mohr's credit, it was not long before he denounced his own article as "stenography."
What set this crew apart was that they had the will and the position to prove that in Vietnam, lies and policy were the
same thing. Prochnau expertly depicts stonewalling's unintended consequences, a pattern recognizable from any rotten
City Hall all the way to Saigon: When Official sources lie and higher-ups dissemble, good reporters will cultivate
loquacious and ambitious leakers a few rungs down the ladder. The reporters who sought out murky figures along
Saigon's Rue Catinat and ground-level military sources laughed at Alsop's insistence that he never spoke to anyone
below the rank of colonel. "With a few exceptions," writes Prochnau, "the Young Turks weren't talking to anybody
above the rank of colonel." Eventually even routine confirmation calls to the press office became a waste of everyone's
time--Sheehan went for months without talking to the U.S. Embassy's press office.
This method of reporting had its own pitfalls. Both Halberstam and Sheehan became enamored of Lieut. Col. John Paul
Varm, who leveled with them about the failed Ap Bac mission, in which three Americans were killed: "A miserable
damn performance, just like always," Vann said, his name omitted from the news accounts in return for his candor.
Vann was not so candid about the sex scandal that would soon bring him down, catalogued in Sheehan's book A Bright
Shining Lie. Similarly, when confronted with the charge that he was being manipulated by protesting-and occasionally
self-immolating--Buddhists in their attempts to bring down the Diem government, Halberstam would shrug and give his
epigram version of Journalism 101: Use and be used.
Moral trade-offs to get the Vietnam story right, however, were the least of the correspondents, troubles. When
skepticism turned to paranoia, their editors, with some nudging from Washington, had increasing difficulty believing
their reports. In October 1963, Kennedy personally--if indirectly--asked Times publisher Punch Sulzberger to remove
Halberstam, the culmination of official dissatisfaction with his work. Two months earlier, when South Vietnamese
special forces declared martial law and arrested hundreds of dissenting Buddhist monks in a late-night raid, the Times
split its front-page story, tempering Halberstam's version of who was responsible with a contradictory account from
Washington that began, "The United States government believes . . . " After a few weeks, the State Department came
around to Halberstam's view that the Mid had been planned and executed by Diem's brother--but neither Diem nor
Halberstam would stay around much longer. Sheehan and Browne would end up working at the Times, the former
printing the Pentagon Papers and the latter eventually writing perhaps the most critical firsthand account of censorship
in the Gulf War--Browne complained that U.S. military censorship reduced the press to the role of German propaganda
corps. Prochnau does not aspire to be a theoretician of foreign policy or the media. Once Upon a Distant War offers the
journalistic equivalent of Oliver Stone's Platoon: Vietnam reality as experienced by the newspa per grunt. Noticeably
absent is any attempt to understand the Vietnamese Communists as a political movement; the reporters did not look
very deeply into that question, and thus neither does Prochnau. That does not keep the book from being a valuable
insider's tour of how the press works. I'm just afraid the most insightful parts won't survive the script meetings.
James Ledbetter, a Village Voice staff writer, is publishing a political history of public broadcasting with Verso Books
in 1997.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Ledbetter, James. "Once Upon a Distant War." The Nation, 1 Jan. 1996, p. 29+. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
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Public Television: Politics and the Battle over
Documentary Film
Pat Aufderheide
The Nation.
265.19 (Dec. 8, 1997): p25.
COPYRIGHT 1997 The Nation Company L.P.
http://www.thenation.com/about-and-contact
Full Text:
Public television suddenly has twice as much space on the airwaves as it had before February 1996, when the
Telecommunications Act granted broadcasters digital spectrum. That space could mean several more channels for every
station. Of course, stations will have to spend close to $2 billion to upgrade their equipment to transmit digitally.
They've asked Congress for $771 million to help out. Will this be a new frontier of electronic public space, or new toy
rooms for corporations capitalizing on public broadcasting? Who will decide what the taxpayers get out of their latest
investment? Will each station decide on how to use its newfound abundance -- WTTW with a round-the-clock upscale
shopping channel, WNET subleasing to Murdoch, WGBH co-producing news with T.C.I.-backed journalists? Might
PBS offer a pay channel for special subscribers, giving them sneak previews of material later available to the unwashed
or maybe just-for-you programs? Would that be (a) a wise business strategy, (b) a poor business strategy, (c) a misuse of
a public resource?
Don't ask the public broadcasters how they'll use it, or even if they'll be able to upgrade. Most truly don't know. The
Public Broadcasting Service says the space could be used not only for pioneer experiments in HDTV but also to offer
more old-fashioned channels. That way, public broadcasters could provide more background material for childhood
education, instructional programming and all the programs they've had to reject because of the draconian space
constraints of one-channel public TV.
Maybe. Or maybe not.
Public broadcasting is easy to pontificate self-righteously about, but excruciatingly hard to grasp. Among the stumbling
blocks: Public radio and TV are profoundly different animals, institutionally and culturally. Public broadcasting is not a
government service; even the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (C.P.B.), the umbrella organization that channels the
16 percent of public broadcasting budgets that comes from federal funds, is a private nonprofit, albeit with a federally
appointed board. People get licenses for "non-commercial," not "public," stations. Those stations (365 TV, 1,859 radio)
are all nonprofit fiefdoms; hundreds of radio and a few TV stations do not even take C.P.B. funds. Many non-C.P.B.
public radio stations run canned religious programming. PBS and National Public Radio (NPR) are not creations of
government but private, nonprofit networks selling program packages to member stations. Aspirin, anyone?
These twisted bureaucracies kick out barely enough distinguished material to get hot and bothered about. But consider
the alternative to "barely enough," and you can start to care. Public broadcasting, sad to say, is our most well-elaborated
center -- and potential base -- of electronic culture beyond the bottom line. This fall, when mergermania eliminated the
last commercial classical radio station in Philadelphia, a jazz-format public station rescued classical listeners (at the
expense of jazz fans) by clearing out some daytime hours. Public TV lumpily turns out the improbable along with the
predictable -- a history series like Cadillac Desert, an innovative documentary like P.O.V.'s A Healthy Baby Girl and a
long-range effort like the Democracy Project along with home repair how-to's, therapizing, nature specials and rightwing
rants.
James Ledbetter, a veteran Village Voice reporter, went back to the archives to look up the way federal politics has
shaped public broadcasting from the start. B.J. Bullert, a seasoned independent producer cum academic, channeled her
functions with public television into an ethnographic study of the relationships between public broadcasters and
independents, focusing on controversial documentaries such as Days of Rage: The Young Palestinians and Dark Circle.
Danny Schechter, a kind of Journalist Without Borders, has shaken up public broadcasting, among many other media
institutions, in the course of his career as self-styled "news dissector" and human rights advocate. Each author comes at
American public broadcasting from a different angle, while sharing a critical pragmatism.
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Ledbetter argues that "pressure from Congress, the White House, and a few special interest groups plays a much greater
role in shaping and determining the public broadcasting schedule than is generally recognized." While anyone who
wants to understand public TV's political origins and context must still consult Ralph Engelman's 1996 monograph
Public Radio and Television in America: A Political History (Sage), Ledbetter's book also contains some treasures. He
has, for instance, painstakingly charted links with the military and with military-related corporations in public TV's
early federal appointments. He reminds us what some of the more daring early programming looked like, especially a
series of experiments with "anti-advertising." He draws a direct line between corporate investment and program
choices, going both ways. (McDonald's drops its underwriting when Zoom!, which appeals to its core demographic, is
canceled; The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer treats major funder Archer-Daniels-Midland with kid gloves). Finally,
Ledbetter provides what he assures us must be only a partial list of indexed but missing documents from the Nixon
Administration.
But smoking guns are always hard to find. Nixon's attitude toward public broadcasting -- particularly public affairs
programs -- was ferocious. But when the fly-over-zone station managers who had rejoiced at his attacks came to
dominate PBS, did this reflect executive intimidation or conservative consensus? Ronald Reagan's budget office
recommended cutting off C.P.B., but after a year its budget rebounded.
Ledbetter's presentation of his evidence sometimes confuses or even shakes reader confidence. Except for an
intimidating chart, there's no institutional overview to orient the novice or the acronym-impaired. Thus, in his
description of NPR's Reagan-era funding crisis, it's easy to miss the fact that NPR is a private service. The political
history of the Independent Television Service (I.T.V.S.), the most recent dramatic tale showcasing conflict over the
system's mandate, is untold. And there are small errors, which can lead to misinterpretation. Commercial TV licenses
are not "`purchased' from the F.C.C. for a tiny fraction of their actual worth," unless you mean lawyers' fees; the F.C.C.
gives broadcast licenses away. The precursor to the Internet did not begin "as a means of linking computers so that they
might withstand a nuclear attack" but to facilitate collective research. The 1934 Communications Act did not reserve
public spectrum; that came later, begrudgingly. But overall, Ledbetter reminds us we can't divorce public broadcasting
from political structures.
From B.J. Bullert's Public Television: Politics and the Battle Over Documentary Film, you wouldn't know that the
actors on the ground think much, if at all, about these grand structures. While censorship is a real issue in her tales --
controversies over independent documentaries like Dark Circle, Days of Rage, Tongues Untied, Stop the Church and
Roger & Me -- the service has long since internalized its timidities and kicked them back out in the guise of journalistic
standards and pledge-week thinking.
Bullert's study is an admirable "thick description" of how and why shows outside mainstream expectations end up on
public television. It's designed to explain, not indict -- although its unflinching portraits of flabby, interlocked
bureaucracies will make insiders squirm. Again and again, Bullert finds vacillation, inattention and self-importance
within the system, with independent filmmakers often demonstrating institutional naivete along with commitment to
causes and relentless determination. Her readings are sensitive to differences between cases, but taken together, they
explain why a successful producer told the trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable last month, "HBO is willing to take
more chances than PBS."
In Danny Schechter's memoir, which well reflects his exuberant personality (even Schechter's F.B.I. file calls him
"amusing, good-natured and happy"), public television plays an unenviable role as one of the silliest institutions he has
dealt with. Schechter, who began his career at a scrappy public radio station, went on to work for a local commercial
TV station, then CNN, then ABC's 20/20. He worked for Ted, he worked for Rupert. A man whose mentor was Abbie
Hoffman may not seem a likely hire in commercial broadcasting, but his bosses always loved his entrepreneurial
dedication. His passion for real news eventually conflicted, one way or another, with corporate objectives. This is a
cautionary tale as much for believers in grand conspiracies as for those who refuse to believe that owners mess with the
news. It's a terrific testament to the limits of commercial media.
When Schechter started his own production company, with Rory O'Connor, the idea was to produce world news that
wasn't dumbed down and would really explain the issues. Globalvision's stumbling block hasn't been production
funding (although they have to use their own profits from work-for-hire jobs); it's been distribution. By going one-byone,
Globalvision got some public TV stations, as well as some cable channels, to carry its news analysis series South
Africa Now. But PBS infamously rejected its proposed human rights news show, Rights & Wrongs, calling human
rights an "insufficient organizing principle." Like Bullert's independent producers, Globalvision found the squishy
center of public broadcasting, where all is anxiety.
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In spite of Ledbetter's subtitle, public broadcasting seems to be in no real danger, although exactly what services it will
perform, for whom, may not be clear. Ledbetter calls for the perennial solutions of depoliticizing board appointments,
stable funding, local viewer accountability. More controversially, he would cut kids' programming, a suggestion that
ought to be unnecessary with spectrum expansion. Bullert sees public TV as a "hostile home" for independent
producers, but "a home nonetheless," a situation unlikely to change. She imagines a continuing role for independent
producers to force PBS "to address the challenges of a democratic society," although this assumes that a sixties-fed
sensibility in independent production will endure. Schechter, in the optative spirit of Abbie, imagines an emerging
social movement to call for media justice, and ends with a manifesto that calls for putting "the public back into public
broadcasting," fueled by taxes on corporate media.
But the real problem is that there is a vacuum at the center of the service, where the mandate or mission should be.
What it means to be public has always been more indicated by pieties -- on all side -- by definition. The lack of a core
makes the service vulnerable to all economic and political pressures, which is why no single conspiracy theory holds
water; public broadcasting is too broadly vulnerable.
However signal the lack of a notion of "public," just what would constitute such a notion in practice is not obvious. We
lack the elitist assurance that once produced a BBC. Certainly, it's not just leftists who want to come in from the
margins on this putatively public space. In response to the documentary Stop the Church, which savagely criticized the
Catholic hierarchy, as Bullert recalls, Catholic antiabortion advocates strategically demanded airtime. They claimed hey
were ignored. The Ku Klux Klan has just sued a St. Louis radio station for rejecting its underwriting message
("standing up for the rights and values of white Christian America since 1865"). That should provoke at least a public
debate on the obligations of public broadcasting, but will probably just involve dozens of lawyers dancing on the head
of the First Amendment. Meanwhile, commercial and religious buyers eagerly eye noncommercial stations as
deregulation heats up the market, hoping to capitalize on the loose definition of "noncommercial" and an even looser
concept of "public." The F.C.C. won't offer much protection; it says it can't judge program content.
If the core of public broadcasting is likely to remain squishy, at least there is room for all comers to contest its raison
d'etre. Digital spectrum is only one arena of opportunity. The F.C.C. must now decide the public interest obligations of
all broadcasters, and a President's Advisory Committee on Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television
Broadcasters has been formed. Anyone can submit comments (via e-mail to piac@ntia.doc.gov). I can hardly wait to
read these authors' best suggestions, and I bet they won't be alone.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Aufderheide, Pat. "Public Television: Politics and the Battle over Documentary Film." The Nation, 8 Dec. 1997, p. 25+.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
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The More You Watch, the Less You Know
Pat Aufderheide
The Nation.
265.19 (Dec. 8, 1997): p25.
COPYRIGHT 1997 The Nation Company L.P.
http://www.thenation.com/about-and-contact
Full Text:
Public television suddenly has twice as much space on the airwaves as it had before February 1996, when the
Telecommunications Act granted broadcasters digital spectrum. That space could mean several more channels for every
station. Of course, stations will have to spend close to $2 billion to upgrade their equipment to transmit digitally.
They've asked Congress for $771 million to help out. Will this be a new frontier of electronic public space, or new toy
rooms for corporations capitalizing on public broadcasting? Who will decide what the taxpayers get out of their latest
investment? Will each station decide on how to use its newfound abundance -- WTTW with a round-the-clock upscale
shopping channel, WNET subleasing to Murdoch, WGBH co-producing news with T.C.I.-backed journalists? Might
PBS offer a pay channel for special subscribers, giving them sneak previews of material later available to the unwashed
or maybe just-for-you programs? Would that be (a) a wise business strategy, (b) a poor business strategy, (c) a misuse of
a public resource?
Don't ask the public broadcasters how they'll use it, or even if they'll be able to upgrade. Most truly don't know. The
Public Broadcasting Service says the space could be used not only for pioneer experiments in HDTV but also to offer
more old-fashioned channels. That way, public broadcasters could provide more background material for childhood
education, instructional programming and all the programs they've had to reject because of the draconian space
constraints of one-channel public TV.
Maybe. Or maybe not.
Public broadcasting is easy to pontificate self-righteously about, but excruciatingly hard to grasp. Among the stumbling
blocks: Public radio and TV are profoundly different animals, institutionally and culturally. Public broadcasting is not a
government service; even the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (C.P.B.), the umbrella organization that channels the
16 percent of public broadcasting budgets that comes from federal funds, is a private nonprofit, albeit with a federally
appointed board. People get licenses for "non-commercial," not "public," stations. Those stations (365 TV, 1,859 radio)
are all nonprofit fiefdoms; hundreds of radio and a few TV stations do not even take C.P.B. funds. Many non-C.P.B.
public radio stations run canned religious programming. PBS and National Public Radio (NPR) are not creations of
government but private, nonprofit networks selling program packages to member stations. Aspirin, anyone?
These twisted bureaucracies kick out barely enough distinguished material to get hot and bothered about. But consider
the alternative to "barely enough," and you can start to care. Public broadcasting, sad to say, is our most well-elaborated
center -- and potential base -- of electronic culture beyond the bottom line. This fall, when mergermania eliminated the
last commercial classical radio station in Philadelphia, a jazz-format public station rescued classical listeners (at the
expense of jazz fans) by clearing out some daytime hours. Public TV lumpily turns out the improbable along with the
predictable -- a history series like Cadillac Desert, an innovative documentary like P.O.V.'s A Healthy Baby Girl and a
long-range effort like the Democracy Project along with home repair how-to's, therapizing, nature specials and rightwing
rants.
James Ledbetter, a veteran Village Voice reporter, went back to the archives to look up the way federal politics has
shaped public broadcasting from the start. B.J. Bullert, a seasoned independent producer cum academic, channeled her
functions with public television into an ethnographic study of the relationships between public broadcasters and
independents, focusing on controversial documentaries such as Days of Rage: The Young Palestinians and Dark Circle.
Danny Schechter, a kind of Journalist Without Borders, has shaken up public broadcasting, among many other media
institutions, in the course of his career as self-styled "news dissector" and human rights advocate. Each author comes at
American public broadcasting from a different angle, while sharing a critical pragmatism.
Ledbetter argues that "pressure from Congress, the White House, and a few special interest groups plays a much greater
role in shaping and determining the public broadcasting schedule than is generally recognized." While anyone who
wants to understand public TV's political origins and context must still consult Ralph Engelman's 1996 monograph
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Public Radio and Television in America: A Political History (Sage), Ledbetter's book also contains some treasures. He
has, for instance, painstakingly charted links with the military and with military-related corporations in public TV's
early federal appointments. He reminds us what some of the more daring early programming looked like, especially a
series of experiments with "anti-advertising." He draws a direct line between corporate investment and program
choices, going both ways. (McDonald's drops its underwriting when Zoom!, which appeals to its core demographic, is
canceled; The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer treats major funder Archer-Daniels-Midland with kid gloves). Finally,
Ledbetter provides what he assures us must be only a partial list of indexed but missing documents from the Nixon
Administration.
But smoking guns are always hard to find. Nixon's attitude toward public broadcasting -- particularly public affairs
programs -- was ferocious. But when the fly-over-zone station managers who had rejoiced at his attacks came to
dominate PBS, did this reflect executive intimidation or conservative consensus? Ronald Reagan's budget office
recommended cutting off C.P.B., but after a year its budget rebounded.
Ledbetter's presentation of his evidence sometimes confuses or even shakes reader confidence. Except for an
intimidating chart, there's no institutional overview to orient the novice or the acronym-impaired. Thus, in his
description of NPR's Reagan-era funding crisis, it's easy to miss the fact that NPR is a private service. The political
history of the Independent Television Service (I.T.V.S.), the most recent dramatic tale showcasing conflict over the
system's mandate, is untold. And there are small errors, which can lead to misinterpretation. Commercial TV licenses
are not "`purchased' from the F.C.C. for a tiny fraction of their actual worth," unless you mean lawyers' fees; the F.C.C.
gives broadcast licenses away. The precursor to the Internet did not begin "as a means of linking computers so that they
might withstand a nuclear attack" but to facilitate collective research. The 1934 Communications Act did not reserve
public spectrum; that came later, begrudgingly. But overall, Ledbetter reminds us we can't divorce public broadcasting
from political structures.
From B.J. Bullert's Public Television: Politics and the Battle Over Documentary Film, you wouldn't know that the
actors on the ground think much, if at all, about these grand structures. While censorship is a real issue in her tales --
controversies over independent documentaries like Dark Circle, Days of Rage, Tongues Untied, Stop the Church and
Roger & Me -- the service has long since internalized its timidities and kicked them back out in the guise of journalistic
standards and pledge-week thinking.
Bullert's study is an admirable "thick description" of how and why shows outside mainstream expectations end up on
public television. It's designed to explain, not indict -- although its unflinching portraits of flabby, interlocked
bureaucracies will make insiders squirm. Again and again, Bullert finds vacillation, inattention and self-importance
within the system, with independent filmmakers often demonstrating institutional naivete along with commitment to
causes and relentless determination. Her readings are sensitive to differences between cases, but taken together, they
explain why a successful producer told the trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable last month, "HBO is willing to take
more chances than PBS."
In Danny Schechter's memoir, which well reflects his exuberant personality (even Schechter's F.B.I. file calls him
"amusing, good-natured and happy"), public television plays an unenviable role as one of the silliest institutions he has
dealt with. Schechter, who began his career at a scrappy public radio station, went on to work for a local commercial
TV station, then CNN, then ABC's 20/20. He worked for Ted, he worked for Rupert. A man whose mentor was Abbie
Hoffman may not seem a likely hire in commercial broadcasting, but his bosses always loved his entrepreneurial
dedication. His passion for real news eventually conflicted, one way or another, with corporate objectives. This is a
cautionary tale as much for believers in grand conspiracies as for those who refuse to believe that owners mess with the
news. It's a terrific testament to the limits of commercial media.
When Schechter started his own production company, with Rory O'Connor, the idea was to produce world news that
wasn't dumbed down and would really explain the issues. Globalvision's stumbling block hasn't been production
funding (although they have to use their own profits from work-for-hire jobs); it's been distribution. By going one-byone,
Globalvision got some public TV stations, as well as some cable channels, to carry its news analysis series South
Africa Now. But PBS infamously rejected its proposed human rights news show, Rights & Wrongs, calling human
rights an "insufficient organizing principle." Like Bullert's independent producers, Globalvision found the squishy
center of public broadcasting, where all is anxiety.
In spite of Ledbetter's subtitle, public broadcasting seems to be in no real danger, although exactly what services it will
perform, for whom, may not be clear. Ledbetter calls for the perennial solutions of depoliticizing board appointments,
stable funding, local viewer accountability. More controversially, he would cut kids' programming, a suggestion that
ought to be unnecessary with spectrum expansion. Bullert sees public TV as a "hostile home" for independent
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producers, but "a home nonetheless," a situation unlikely to change. She imagines a continuing role for independent
producers to force PBS "to address the challenges of a democratic society," although this assumes that a sixties-fed
sensibility in independent production will endure. Schechter, in the optative spirit of Abbie, imagines an emerging
social movement to call for media justice, and ends with a manifesto that calls for putting "the public back into public
broadcasting," fueled by taxes on corporate media.
But the real problem is that there is a vacuum at the center of the service, where the mandate or mission should be.
What it means to be public has always been more indicated by pieties -- on all side -- by definition. The lack of a core
makes the service vulnerable to all economic and political pressures, which is why no single conspiracy theory holds
water; public broadcasting is too broadly vulnerable.
However signal the lack of a notion of "public," just what would constitute such a notion in practice is not obvious. We
lack the elitist assurance that once produced a BBC. Certainly, it's not just leftists who want to come in from the
margins on this putatively public space. In response to the documentary Stop the Church, which savagely criticized the
Catholic hierarchy, as Bullert recalls, Catholic antiabortion advocates strategically demanded airtime. They claimed hey
were ignored. The Ku Klux Klan has just sued a St. Louis radio station for rejecting its underwriting message
("standing up for the rights and values of white Christian America since 1865"). That should provoke at least a public
debate on the obligations of public broadcasting, but will probably just involve dozens of lawyers dancing on the head
of the First Amendment. Meanwhile, commercial and religious buyers eagerly eye noncommercial stations as
deregulation heats up the market, hoping to capitalize on the loose definition of "noncommercial" and an even looser
concept of "public." The F.C.C. won't offer much protection; it says it can't judge program content.
If the core of public broadcasting is likely to remain squishy, at least there is room for all comers to contest its raison
d'etre. Digital spectrum is only one arena of opportunity. The F.C.C. must now decide the public interest obligations of
all broadcasters, and a President's Advisory Committee on Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television
Broadcasters has been formed. Anyone can submit comments (via e-mail to piac@ntia.doc.gov). I can hardly wait to
read these authors' best suggestions, and I bet they won't be alone.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Aufderheide, Pat. "The More You Watch, the Less You Know." The Nation, 8 Dec. 1997, p. 25+. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA20097721&it=r&asid=0467857219107265ace8c574ba89c2c3.
Accessed 12 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A20097721
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'One Nation Under Gold': The Gold Standard With James Ledbetter on Tuesday's Access Utah
By TOM WILLIAMS • AUG 1, 2017
Access Utah
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Listen Listening...41:18 A conversation with James Ledbetter, author of "One Nation Under Gold"
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In 2016, now President Donald Trump became the first major-party candidate in more than half a century to advocate a return to the gold standard for the U.S. dollar. In ONE NATION UNDER GOLD: How One Precious Metal Has Dominated the American Imagination for Four Centuries (Liveright: June 2017) INC Magazine editor and financial writer James Ledbetter explains how most mainstream economists argue the idea of returning to the gold standard is just not possible.
He also explores how regardless of the current economic realities, for much of American history people have believed that real money should be gold or at least redeemable for gold or another precious metal.
In this economic history, Ledbetter traces the relationship between gold and American monetary policy, examining our reliance compared to attempts to sever the dependence. As Ledbetter explores and explains the waxing and waning of the gold standard, he shows how it affects America’s ties to the world economy, how it has influenced events in war and peacetime, and how private ownership of gold has been a mix of controversy and opportunism.
Ledbetter discusses:
How gold was not discovered by California prospectors but by a twelve-year-old North Carolinian in 1799. When the 16-pound rock he used as a doorstop was correctly identified as gold, it set off a rush foreshadowing the California-bound “Gold Fever.”
The complex history of gold in the United States, outlining how the precious metal became synonymous with American industry and identity.
The complex issues around America going back to the gold standard.
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