Lee update

An e-mailer who asks to remain anonymous takes exception to an anonymous comment about Lee Enterprises below that says that "Lee is also alone among the major newspaper corporations in that it has no professional ethics policy to guide its newsgathering."

The e-mailer is correct: Lee does in fact have a statement of Principles for Quality Journalism.

David Summerlin also asks, "In your most honest moments, is it possible that your contempt for Lee is driven as much by jealousy as by high minded journalistic principles?"

It's a fair question, worth reflecting upon. My contempt for Lee actually drips at a much slower rate than Nathaniel Blumberg's. And although it is driven by many factors, jealousy, I believe I can safely say, is not one of them.

I always have ranked Lee somewhere in the middle of the pack of corporate newspaper behemoths. It offers good benefits. It has conducted layoffs with a certain restraint. Corporate headquarters seems content to stay out of local editorial matters. As competitive pressure on newspapers has intensified, Lee has doubled up on its commitment to publishing newspapers, a move that I find admirable if not especially smart.

Mr. Summerlin is correct, I believe, in saying that Lee's faults are typical of, and probably less serious than, those of larger media conglomerates. So why pick on Lee?

1. Lee is a medium-sized fish in the world of media conglomerates, but it is a great white shark in Montana. You fight the enemy where you find it.

2. All corporate newspapers, in my view, are far more alike than they are distinguishable, and their differences become tinier every year. That means that the worst newspaper companies either reform or get out of the business (Thomson, Worrell), and that the best newspaper companies cut editorial quality to jack up profits (Knight Ridder). Attempting to choose the best of the lot of is a fool's game, a meaningless scoresheet on an ever-contracting scale.

3. Most of my knowledge about Lee comes from The Gazette. At the time I worked there, I thought it was the worst-run newsroom I had ever seen, and I thought the publisher was a chronic abuser of both the staff and the newspaper's reputation. By all accounts, things are better there now, but I can't let Lee off the hook for what went on there.

4. Lee can't be relied upon to aggressively cover stories in which it is involved. Just look at how Lee covered its Pulitzer acquisition.

5. As another commenter below notes, Lee is a ruthless monopolist that tries any tactic it can think of to sew up every media-related market niche in every town where it operates. It starts pointless niche publications with no editorial aim other than to dry up advertising dollars in the market. When we ventured into the car ad business, Lee cut rates in half for selected advertisers to induce them to sign long-term contracts. It did the same thing in the early days of The Outpost. When we asked the Legislature to give us a chance to bid on county legal ads, Lee's lobbyist (so I am reliably told) threatened senators with retaliation.

Sometimes Lee's attempts to head off competition can be amazingly petty, such as the Missoulian's refusal to run help-wanted advertising for a perceived competitor. Then there's this story, which I can't prove but which was told to me by a person involved whom I believe to be reliable: The founder of a media outlet in this region was nominated for recognition in the Gazette's 40 Under 40 special edition, but the Gazette rejected the nomination because she was a competitor. A competitor? Her creation is too small even for The Outpost to worry about, and The Gazette is a hundred times larger than we are.

Jealous? That's not the word for how that sort of story makes me feel.