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July 24, 2012· scvtalk.com · WordPress (SCVTalk 3.0) · Wayback capture

July 24, 2012 Daily Brief – “Bummer in the Summer” Edition

By Timothy Myers SR. — Tim Myers

  • Big story that broke yesterday afternoon:  Morris Thomas, the current General Manager of the Signal, will replace Bob Haueter as Buck McKeon’s District Director. SIGNAL  SCVTalkers and commenters on the article sense an “A HA” moment.  Two nuances I would throw in.  The general manager of a newspaper is more concerned with the running of the printing press and making sure the newspapers reach the driveway than editorial content.  Second, if this is some type of reward for faithful service it is a reward based on failure, since despite any “efforts” that MAY have existed by TMS to control coverage, Patricia McKeon still came a distant third in the jungle primary and the Congressman himself still remains under attack from multiple fronts.  SCVNEWS has more detail on Mr. Thomas’s impressive resume, which includes service as a DC cop and a law degree from UCLA.
  • Alleged machete attack in Agua Dulce, but I guess everyone kissed and made up because there were no injuries or arrests.  SIGNAL
  • Within a week we have another near drowning of a toddler, this time in a backyard pool in Canyon Country.  SIGNAL  I am begging folks to please be diligent with small children around water.  Also, since we live in California every child should learn how to swim.  Useful instruction can begin at age three.
  • Story of deceased man on Frisca Drive gets more mysterious.  Talk of a possible “drowning” seems to have mutated to an official categorization of the death as “suspicious.” Only fact not controverted is that the body was found in the yard at 5:30 am.  SIGNAL
  • Karen Henson writes an LTE that seemingly references the recent death of the young man from Saugus High School, and bemoans the fact that bereft friends and neighbors think they are somehow insulated from this tragedy.
  • And like we don’t have enough problems.  Jim McElvain complains about baseball and basketball players pants being too long.  LTE 

Comments (21)

  1. mikeJuly 24, 2012 at 1:25 AM PT
    I’m neither a fan of McKeon, nor a fan of the direction the Signal is heading, but I’m with Tim. Even in a senior position, I never got the sense that Morris was in a position to lean on reporters or editors to affect editorial decisions. Maybe I’m wrong. If I am, there are about four or five ex-Signal’ers who will correct me by noon.
  2. ToddJuly 24, 2012 at 1:28 AM PT
    Don’t forget about BBQ… this Saturday @ Noon. Longhorn’s.
  3. LarMccJuly 24, 2012 at 3:45 AM PT
    Just picked up a $40 family pack there last night. Meats were excellent. Plenty of good food too for the whole family with leftovers. I will try to make it Saturday.
  4. IHeartSCVJuly 24, 2012 at 2:02 AM PT
    *From TMS’s “Change to endorsement letter policy”, April 2012: “Effective immediately, letters endorsing any candidate will be published on special pages as paid political endorsements at a rate of 10 cents per word. [...] It will also reserve the Letters to the Editor section on the Opinion page for discussion of the many important issues around our valley.” *From the LTE Tim links today: “Basketball players look like they came from the beach in their Bermuda shorts. Michael Jordan wore them like that because he didn’t want anyone looking at his tiny thighs. They’re so low now; you’ll be seeing the crack very soon. It’s very hip-hop, you know. I guess it’s time for me to go back to high school and college sports or maybe marbles. Sorry about the ranting. I do feel better now!”
  5. Timothy Myers SRJuly 24, 2012 at 2:38 AM PT
    IHEART: I thank God for Mr. McElvain because before his bold writings I was not even aware I needed to worry about the length of baseball and basketball players panta!
  6. amandaJuly 24, 2012 at 2:28 AM PT
    Morris Thomas was on the editorial board until Randy Morton took over as publisher. Then, though his name was removed from the list in the paper, he still attended the ed board meetings.
  7. PetzJuly 24, 2012 at 2:47 AM PT
    The following is a LTE of TMS that I prepared subsequent to the document release by Buck McKeon last week. It asks for a correction to be published for an article printed on January 28, 2012 written by Jason Schaff, the contents of which I relied upon in preparing my LTE “Be Fair to Buck”. I do not hold out a lot of confidence for it appearing in print and release it here for public consideration Buck’s Countrywide Fable I reviewed Buck McKeon’s Countrywide loan documents with a great deal of surprise and disappointment on Monday. Last week, The Signal printed a letter from me , “Be Fair To Buck”. Unfortunately, I have now come to the conclusion that congressman Buck McKeon has not been fully transparent or truthful with The Signal his constituents. The documents released to the public were limited to the final HUD I closing statement and Truth in Lending Statement (only page 1 of 2). I will be kind, and call it a translucent disclosure. The closing statement does reflect the payment of legitimate third party fees to the title and escrow company, along with fees paid for the appraisal and credit report and prepaid items. What DOES NOT appear are “junk fees” aka “garbage fees” charged by the lender. Rather than vindicating congressman McKeon, the documents tend to confirm the charge that Countrywide’s VIP processing staff complied with the inter-office memo of a Countrywide employee reflecting the directions of Angelo Mozilo, “Take off one point, no garbage fees, approve the loan”. Buck knows this, but he spins the document to the uninformed as, paraphrase (hey look at all the closing costs we paid) This is misleading at best. What I find even more troubling is that The Signal reviewed these same documents with Buck McKeon and a local mortgage broker, Christopher Mendenhall in January, 2012. In feature article on January 28, 2012 written by Jason Schaff, there is a quote from the loan broker, “Mendenhall said the Countrywide documents did have the usual amount of “junk fees” attached to the loan.” This is manifestly false and your reporter and the readers of The Signal were misled. Christopher Mendenhall is an experienced loan professional and knows the difference between a “junk fee” and other closing costs. The Signal should print a correction prominently in an upcoming issue of the paper. My letter to the editor last week relied upon the truthfulness of this statement. I was a fool to do so. The January article led the reader to believe that there was no basis for serious concern in the Issa investigation. It was printed at a critical time when Buck and his wife Patricia were involved in primary election battles for congress and state assembly. Now, the public release of the documents puts a prominent stain on the hard news reporting credibility of The Signal. We should both lament this unfortunate fact and your readers deserve an explanation. Every voter should be concerned by the continued spin and parsing of words by congressman McKeon regarding the Countrywide investigation. His story is like a fable, spun to promote the singular interest of the author, with no morals at the conclusion for the reader. My concern goes to Buck’s credibility on so many other issues upon which he has significant input and decision making authority. What can we really believe from you Buck? This is my question as we approach the election in November. These are painful observations for this Conservative and faithful Republican voter to write. However, the recent document release requires me to face unpleasant facts and share them with your concerned readers. Last week I called out for everyone to “Be Fair to Buck”. As of today, I can no longer be an apologist for him . Stephen C Petzold-Saugus, CA- 661-609-1739 Cellular Phone
  8. Timothy Myers SRJuly 24, 2012 at 3:10 AM PT
    What? Bringing in the documents and your own expert to explain them and then leaving with the documents so they cannot be reviewed further raises suspicion? Who knew? (Thank you Petz for your thorough and thoughtful letter.)
  9. LarMccJuly 24, 2012 at 4:15 AM PT
    Does this explain the Rogers sign I saw on your lawn?
  10. PetzJuly 24, 2012 at 5:40 AM PT
    Lucy went out and p$%#@# on it.
  11. Leon WordenJuly 24, 2012 at 3:14 AM PT
    To the person who said he might be wrong about Morris Thomas’ lack of influence on editorial policy, I’m afraid to say yeah, you are. In hindsight, one of the watershed moments in recent years was Ian Lamont’s appointment of Morris Thomas to The Signal’s editorial board. As Ian’s health failed, Morris expanded his influence. There is much I could say, and perhaps one day I will, but suffice it for now to say that SCVTV and The Signal had always enjoyed a wonderful working relationship. When Morris asked me to leave the editorial board a year ago(?), it was for the singular reason that Morris perceived SCVTV as a threat, and tried in vain to undermine us…which I’ve always thought weird, because (a) we’re first and foremost a nonprofit public television channel that serves the schools and the community, and a news organization second; and (b) Morris knew we had crafted a partnership with KHTS that has proven to be mutually beneficial, and we sought to do the same for and with The Signal. Instead, Morris went the other way; by leveraging resources, SCVTV and KHTS grew measurably while The Signal constricted. As a result, as The Signal continued to reduce its staff, it had nowhere to grow. (Today SCVTV is in 66,000 homes on television while The Signal is in 8,900 homes in print; The-Signal.com is still more heavily trafficked than any one of our websites, but we don’t have a one-website business model. Our four major websites combined are bigger than The Signal’s websites.) We could have brought The Signal along with us by providing video and helping it with branding – which Morris told me, in so many words, that The Signal did not need because it had been around for 90-some years. That is the ultra-short version; let me simply say I hope SCVTV and The Signal can begin a healing process and (re)develop an amicable working relationship. I grew up with The Signal, I brought it into the online world during my decade there (in spite of itself!), and I still bleed Signal red. The Signal is a huge part of me, and I believe our community is best served by having strong local media – on television, in print, on radio, online and and on other new media platforms – that put community first, ahead of all else. Editorially, as he flexed his muscle while I was still there, Morris was out of touch with the community. The blowback was pretty severe when Morris personally steered the board (in a split decision) to endorse an unknown union Demorat over Sharon Runner. I will not comment on things I’ve heard second-hand after I left the board. Whether at The Signal or SCVTV, there have been times when I’ve had a good working relationship with Mr. McKeon’s office, and there have been times when the relationship can at best be described as cold. I far prefer to have a positive relationship, but I don’t need one. I’ve gone without in the past. I firmly believe in giving people a second chance, but I’m afraid that we have already given Morris Thomas far too many second chances.
  12. Coastal SageJuly 25, 2012 at 3:23 PM PT
    Hey Leon, The Signal was at its very best, in terms of investigative reporting and protecting the public interest, between 2000 and 2002, when you were acting as an editor and Patti Shea was a reporter. I’ll never forget the weekend you “burst the b.s. balloon” and exposed the fact that Bermite’s Phoenix based owners had no money to do the clean-up of the property…much to the consternation of the powers that be. And I’ll never forget the week you and Patti exposed the occurrence of the EPA/FBI raid at the Keysor Century plant, and that the Feds were claiming that Keysor Century employees were accused of dumping highly toxic chemicals directly into the south branch of the Santa Clara River. Then the “men in charge” forced Patti out, and then you left, and it’s been down hill ever since, in terms of intelligent and thorough reporting at The Signal.
  13. Leon WordenJuly 25, 2012 at 6:27 PM PT
    Thank you, Coast, I appreciate the kind words. We all benefit when our local media put community first. It’s a difficult business, and The Signal will have some tough decisions to make in the months and years ahead. We’re here to help – and frankly I hope all of us are here to help – whenever and in whatever form that help may be desired. — “Newspapers, particularly community newspapers, are the best and bravest rampart a free people have to protect themselves from political repression. … “A fine community must support its newspaper. And a fine newspaper must support its community. “Newspapering is a pleasure and a privilege. Newspapering is the best and the brightest world of all.” — SCOTT NEWHALL Santa Clarita Valley Citizen newspaper May 3, 1989
  14. mikeJuly 24, 2012 at 3:37 AM PT
    Thanks to Petz and Leon for the eloquent insight this morning.
  15. LarMccJuly 24, 2012 at 4:14 AM PT
    Tim, I am sure Bill Gates is more interested in running Microsoft, but if he wanted to change the brand of coffee being served in the employee lounges, it would take a single phone call. To claim that Morris had little or no concern over what appeared in the paper about Buck is naive. I would think it would stroke one’s ego to be connected to an US Congressman and one would not wish to speak ill of him. It’s obvious there is a preexisting relationship here which explains the shoddy coverage. BTW, has McKeon called you again recently? The fact is that The Signal has sidestepped covering many of McKeon’s controversies. They could not ignore the Countrywide scandal, but they covered it as daintily as possible. Also, don’t kid yourself, The Signal changed their LTE policy in advance of Patricia’s attempt at running for the Assembly. You and I both know that without this, every day there would have been submissions to the opinion section bashing Patricia. So, the policy was created to silence these critics without having to ignore their LTE submissions. The Signal did their part. For many people in this valley, The Signal is their main or only source of local news. They trudge out in their driveway, pick the wet paper up out of the planter, dry it off and then read it. As Leon points out, they also run the most highly trafficked SCV news website. So it would make sense to buy influence at there.
  16. Leon WordenJuly 24, 2012 at 4:58 AM PT
    Lar – Sorry for any confusion; what I said was that The-Signal.com is bigger than an individual SCVTV website, but the SCVTV-SCVNews network of websites is bigger than The-Signal.com. (We’ve got a multiple-website business model, and our major advertisers run across the entire network.) The KHTS website (hometownstation.com) is also bigger than The-Signal.com.
  17. IHeartSCVJuly 24, 2012 at 5:27 AM PT
    F’reals? If you go to Compete, Alexa, or Quantcast–all of which are trying to estimate web traffic with somewhat different methods and using different units–they all agree that The Signal is the biggest website in town. Alexa says TMS has 2.7x the reach of KHTS; Compete says TMS has about 3x as many unique visitors per month; and Quantcast gives an edge (albeit a very slight one) to TMS over KHTS, noting it has to estimate (vs. directly measure) traffic for The Signal. Or by “bigger” did you mean something other than traffic?
  18. Leon WordenJuly 24, 2012 at 5:35 AM PT
    All measurement websites have their own problems and quirks; I use Quantcast when I use them at all. In “real life,” I use the direct measurement off of our servers.
  19. Timothy Myers SRJuly 24, 2012 at 6:15 AM PT
    Lar: McKeon has not called since December 30, 2011 when he asked for several days grace to respond to “Really Patricia’s” allegations of overpayments for web services to companies under the control of McKeon family members. (No response was ever forthcoming.) Since Dave Bossert will link to any anti-McKeon piece almost immediately (he did with the Really Patricia blog entries) I think Team McKeon gave up on trying to control was goes on in the ether and just concentrate on print journalism.
  20. LarMccJuly 24, 2012 at 3:52 PM PT
    I agree he gave up on trying to control the blogosphere, but did he get influence with The Signal via Morris? It would certainly appear so. I just think there should be a lot for finger wagging at The Signal and Morris, the whole thing just reeks.
  21. Need for Involved CitizenryJuly 24, 2012 at 4:47 AM PT
    Air Quality Forecast for Santa Clarita Vly, CA Today Moderate (O3) TomorrowModerate (O3)

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