It's Steve Saslow's Mail Tribune

'It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to.
Cry if I want to.
Cry if I want to.
You would cry too, if it happened to you."

                Leslie Gore hit song, 1963 

Newspaper subscribers are customers. Not co-owners.  

Loyal subscribers of the newspaper don't want to lose "their" newspaper. Neither does the owner. Strangely enough, this evolved into a fight over whether the owner, Steve Saslow, has a good reputation and whether anybody damaged it.

Every morning

Yesterday this blog described what I characterized as a bonehead mistake by Saslow and his attorney, making a lawsuit threat claiming Saslow was defamed by how local subscribers characterized his plans to change the Mail Tribune.

I described the controversy from the point of view of public relations strategy for the owner, Steve Saslow. Nothing Allen Hallmark and others said about Saslow defames him so much as his own lawsuit threat against his critics, I wrote. It mitigates their damages, if by any chance this went to trial, and a jury decided somehow that Saslow's reputation as a well-respected man happy to invite criticism was in some way lowered. It also locks in exactly the image Mr. Saslow's attorney said defamed Saslow, that of Saslow-as-bully. Here is a link to yesterday's post:  Click: Dumb move

I illustrated the post yesterday with an image of Godzilla, but did not label it. If the shoe fits, wear it. If it doesn't, it doesn't.

The lawsuit changes the story from an "earnest well-intended, well-respected newspaper owner attempting to make his newspaper appeal to a wider audience"--probably pretty good optics for the Tribune--into very bad optics for him. He fed the meme of the "out-of-town media mogul who was suspected of being an editorial tyrant but now solidly confirms this by stomping on subscribers who dare criticize him publicly." 

I think it is a mistake but it is Saslow's mistake to make. He has every right to threaten critics with lawsuits. It's a free country. He has every right to manage his own public relations, and he is doing so.

He also has every right to change the political orientation of the Mail Tribune, and that is how the controversy over "defamation" started. Mr. Saslow was apparently unhappy with the prior political tone of his paper, so he said he was getting more involved. He announced a planned change to its news sources and its Letters to the Editor policies on February 28. Click: "Changes Afoot".

He can do that if he wants to. It is his newspaper.

Many local readers responded negatively, seeing it as one more nail in the coffin of the Tribune, which had already been hollowed out of reporting staff and editors.  And now, many people thought--me among them--that the owner was apparently choosing to go full-Sinclair, or maybe Newsmax. Saslow's comment that the paper "will shortly eliminate The Washington Post and other slanted sources that parade as unbiased news and information" sounded like Trump making his broad-brush denunciations of "the fake news." The "parade as" phrase sounded angry, hostile, Sean-Hannity-like. People make inferences from words like that. 

Some local subscribers took to social media to protest his announced changes. Comments sent to me have a consistent theme, one of psychological ownership. The Tribune is our community newspaper, and it is being taken away, they said. Loss is experienced with more intensity than are gains. The subscribers who criticized Saslow's presumed "Sinclair-izing" of the Tribune experienced it as both loss and betrayal. They had loyally weathered through the lay-offs and firings and thinning-out of the paper, but stayed subscribers, and now their loyalty and psychological ownership was being lost. 

I perceive their fears and the vigor of their response to be a sign of engagement, perhaps over-engagement. They love the paper they know--or used to know--too much. They thought it was somehow theirs to protect. I get that. I have read the Tribune for 60 years.

Were all the Tribune defenders' social media posts strictly 100% accurate in what they presumed the publisher intended? Maybe. Possibly not. It is not clear to me that the publisher's own editorial announcing proposed changes was strictly 100% accurate in projecting his own plans. That is why the paper needed a follow-up by the Tribune's editor, trying to clean up the owner's mess. Click: Clean-up  

My own view is that the paper would be stronger if more people subscribed. I don't object to Saslow trying to appeal to Trump voters, not because I want to read articles justifying overthrowing elections but because I do think a community is better with a newspaper, even a bad one. That is what we might have to settle for. I hope not.

And in a political environment where Republicans are arguing that Twitter and Facebook and YouTube have a duty to supply a platform for dangerous, dishonest material, even if they prefer not, I disagree.  I retain a very capitalistic view of media outlets. Free speech means freedom for media companies--and bloggers--to say what they want. It is free for critics of Saslow to criticize him. It is free for Saslow's attorney to sue critics and therefore confirm the public's worst fears of Saslow. It is free for Saslow to steer the Mail Tribune any direction he darned well wants. He can make it great or run it into the ground. His newspaper. His money on the line. His decisions. 

It's his party.