You know, I’m just loving watching Sam Zell. He’s old and rich, and always had a certain “who gives a f**k” attitude – which I’ve got to believe has only gotten stronger as he’s gotten older and richer. Here’s LA Observed talking about his latest communications with the LA Times staff:

The specific quote varies in the telling, but I’ve heard from several sources that in defending his decision to allow strip club ads back into the Times, Zell said:

Some of my best friends go to gentlemen’s clubs. It’s unAmerican not to like p***y.

The exactness of the second sentence is the least in question, repeated to me by a senior editor among others.

* Update: Clarification from another Times editor:

He actually used the word twice. He said: “Everyone likes p***y. It’s un-American not to like p***y.”

The comment about some of his best friends going to gentlemen’s clubs was separate from the above line. That came earlier in the talk, when saying that when he learned of the ban on running ads from the clubs, he was stunned because “some of my best friends go to gentlemen’s clubs.” The un-American comment came later, in reference to advertising guns, to which he said hunting is American – and somehow made the leap to the above comment.

He believes that the Times needs to go after advertising from gun manufacturers and the Indian casinos.

I can just picture Patt Morrison fanning herself into a rage here…

Let me take a second be kind of serious and give my theory of what’s wrong with newspapers today, where they might be going, and what someone like me would like to see from them.

(Note that if you’re serious about understanding media, you ought to be reading Jeff Jarvis’ blog.)

Once upon a time, back in the 60’s and 70’s and 80’s, there were giant media companies that controlled the distribution of books, news, music, movies, and television shows. because there were only so many channels, shelves in book and music stores, movie theaters, or places to put your ads for your used car or local store.

Those companies had 99% of the market in their domains, and enjoyed monopoly pricing of their goods – both in terms of what they paid and what they could demand from consumers.

So their margins were high enough that they could build huge headquarters buildings, hire layer on layer of executive management, pay that executive management extraordinarily well, and view themselves as ‘winners’ in the grand lottery of economic life.

Then everything changed, and their stranglehold was broken by Amazon, Craigslist, Netflix and Direct TV. they aren’t going to go away – there will still be huge media brands that will be the dominant entities in their various domains.

But their monopoly pricing power has been broken. That means that their cost structures are unsustainable. So while the LA Times will go on being a major newspaper with 60+ percent of the regional market, they won’t be able to afford floors and floors of executive management, and columnists who make six figure salaries. The social impact on these organizations of those changes may shatter some of the companies; others will retool and survive.

There’s a little bit of personal schadenfreude here. back in the mid-90’s, I interviewed with Harry Chandler for the job of New Media guy for the Times. The interview seemed to be going well, until I asked one question: “What will you do when your classified ad revenue goes away? It’s something like 10% of your topline, and 30% of your profits?” He disagreed – strongly – that that was a possibility, and kind of thought I was a doofus for believing it could happen. Ha, I say.

Now the question is – the ones that retool and come back will retool and come back as what?

I’ve drunk Jarvis’ Kool-Aid, and believe that they will survive as open ‘brand networks’ rather than walled cities.

Look, what is the fundamental business these media companies are in? It’s collecting attention and monetizing it.

They’ve done that within the walls of their brands for a long time. Newspapers were bounded by the edge of their pages.

It doesn’t have to be that way any more. The LA Times is primarily an ad-selling institution; the are great at taking attention and selling it to advertisers. Where they are suffering right now is in getting that attention as blogs like this compete for it.

So – explode the brand. Create networks – some tightly controlled, some loosely coupled – of bloggers who write about local issues, high school sports, national politics, technology, business, women’s issues, men’s issues, raising children, romance – most of the stuff that people are blogging about now. Create a regional focus, and capture the attention on those blogs and market it to your advertisers. There’s a huge arbitrage opportunity between what bloggers can get as CPM for their ads and what major media companies can get for theirs.

Move your columnists and commentators out to their own blog sites, and let them stand or fall on their ability to retain audiences.

Music companies could start to do the same things – and are, as bands are increasingly self-producing and self-promoting.

And finally, as a consumer, one of the critical problems newspapers face is the quality of what they produce. That quality has broken the trust that many of us have in the product that the media companies are putting out – crap movies, bad music, and untrustworthy news.

The news isn’t trustworthy for two reasons, really. The increasingly ‘academic’ path to jobs as journalists has given us a crop of idealistic, committed, inexperienced, green journalists who have little experience in or respect for the messy realities of the real world.

And, most of all, they have an inflated sense of what it means to be a journalist – forgetting that they are citizens, that they live under and are protected by the common bonds of the society that we all share.

Just to save you the clicks, that problem is summed up here:

Then Ogletree turned to the two most famous members of the evening’s panel, better known than William Westmoreland himself. These were two star TV journalists: Peter Jennings of World News Tonight and ABC, and Mike Wallace of 6o Minutes and CBS. Ogletree brought them into the same hypothetical war. He asked Jennings to imagine that he worked for a network that had been in contact with the enemy North Kosanese government. After much pleading, the North Kosanese had agreed to let Jennings and his news crew into their country, to film behind the lines and even travel with military units. Would Jennings be willing to go? Of course, Jennings replied. Any reporter would-and in real wars reporters from his network often had. But while Jennings and his crew are traveling with a North Kosanese unit, to visit the site of an alleged atrocity by American and South Kosanese troops, they unexpectedly cross the trail of a small group of American and South Kosanese soldiers. With Jennings in their midst, the northern soldiers set up a perfect ambush, which will let them gun down the Americans and Southerners, every one. What does Jennings do? Ogletree asks. Would he tell his cameramen to “Roll tape!” as the North Kosanese opened fire? What would go through his mind as he watched the North Kosanese prepare to ambush the Americans? Jennings sat silent for about fifteen seconds after Ogletree asked this question. “Well, I guess I wouldn’t,” he finally said. “I am going to tell you now what I am feeling, rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans.” Even if it means losing the story? Ogletree asked.

Even though it would almost certainly mean losing my life, Jennings replied. “But I do not think that I could bring myself to participate in that act. That’s purely personal, and other reporters might have a different reaction.” Immediately Mike Wallace spoke up. “I think some other reporters would have a different reaction,” he said, obviously referring to himself. “They would regard it simply as a story they were there to cover.” “I am astonished, really,” at Jennings’s answer, Wallace said moment later. He turned toward Jennings and began to lecture him: “You’re a reporter. Granted you’re an American”-at least for purposes of the fictional example; Jennings has actually retained Canadian citizenship. “I’m a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you’re an American, you would not have covered that story.” Ogletree pushed Wallace. Didn’t Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot? “No,” Wallace said flatly and immediately. “You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!” Jennings backtracked fast. Wallace was right, he said. “I chickened out.” Jennings said that he had gotten so wrapped up in the hypothetical questions that he had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached. As Jennings said he agreed with Wallace, everyone else in the room seemed to regard the two of them with horror. Retired Air Force general Brent Scowcroft, who had been Gerald Ford’s national security advisor and would soon serve in the same job for George Bush, said it was simply wrong to stand and watch as your side was slaughtered. “What’s it worth?” he asked Wallace bitterly. “It’s worth thirty seconds on the evening news, as opposed to saving a platoon.” Ogletree turned to Wallace. What about that? Shouldn’t the reporter have said something? Wallace gave his most disarming grin, shrugged his shoulders and spread his palms wide in a “Don’t ask me!” gesture, and said, “I don’t know.” He was mugging to the crowd in such a way that he got a big laugh-the first such moment of the discussion. Wallace paused to enjoy the crowd’s reaction. Jennings, however, was all business, and was still concerned about the first answer he had given. “I wish I had made another decision,” Jennings said, as if asking permission to live the last five minutes over again. “I would like to have made his decision”-that is, Wallace’s decision to keep on filming. A few minutes later Ogletree turned to George M. Connell, a Marine colonel in full uniform, jaw muscles flexing in anger, with stress on each word, Connell looked at the TV stars and said, “I feel utter . . . contempt. ” Two days after this hypothetical episode, Connell Jennings or Wallace might be back with the American forces–and could be wounded by stray fire, as combat journalists often had been before. The instant that happened he said, they wouldn’t be “just journalists” any more. Then they would drag them back, rather than leaving them to bleed to death on the battlefield. “We’ll do it!” Connell said. “And that is what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get … a couple of journalists.” The last few words dripped with disgust.

We’re all disgusted.

And beyond disgusting, the quality of work we’re seeing isn’t very good.

I commissioned research from specialists at Cardiff University, who surveyed more than 2,000 UK news stories from the four quality dailies (Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent) and the Daily Mail. They found two striking things. First, when they tried to trace the origins of their “facts”, they discovered that only 12% of the stories were wholly composed of material researched by reporters. With 8% of the stories, they just couldn’t be sure. The remaining 80%, they found, were wholly, mainly or partially constructed from second-hand material, provided by news agencies and by the public relations industry. Second, when they looked for evidence that these “facts” had been thoroughly checked, they found this was happening in only 12% of the stories.

The implication of those two findings is truly alarming. Where once journalists were active gatherers of news, now they have generally become mere passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material, much of it contrived by PR to serve some political or commercial interest. Not journalists, but churnalists. An industry whose primary task is to filter out falsehood has become so vulnerable to manipulation that it is now involved in the mass production of falsehood, distortion and propaganda.

And the Cardiff researchers found one other key statistic that helps to explain why this has happened. For each of the 20 years from 1985, they dug out figures for the editorial staffing levels of all the Fleet Street publications and compared them with the amount of space they were filling. They discovered that the average Fleet Street journalist now is filling three times as much space as he or she was in 1985. In other words, as a crude average, they have only one-third of the time that they used to have to do their jobs. Generally, they don’t find their own stories, or check their content, because they simply don’t have the time.

It’s a death spiral – because what they are selling is their credibility, and as that credibility is eroded by social isolation and a workplace that doesn’t allow time to do good work – there is less and less for each of us to buy.

Rebuilding that credibilty – by reconnecting journalists to the citizens of the communities that they want to be reporting for, and by creating a business structure that can give them the space and time they need to do good work – ought to be job #1.

There are two ways to go about it. One is to hire and train people who have deep connections to the communities they serve. Fewer Columbia School of Journalism grads, more CSUN and CSLB. Another is to make the dialog and correction a part of the story – much as we do here in the blogs. (Hint: a network does that inherently).

I’m actually looking forward to seeing how this works out. Los Angeles – the city that I love – and America – my country – both need it. Here’s hoping.

And if it costs me the half an hour every morning that I got back when I cancelled, that’d be a small price to pay.