By Richard McCord
(University of Missouri Press, 1996; US$24.95; pp. 290)
Reviewed by Ian Lind
[This review was originally published by BlueEar.com: Global Writing Worth Reading, an online publisher concerned with understanding the world and understanding ourselves, publishing journalism, essays and discussions from around the world, blending professional authority and personal insight. Visit BlueEar.com to join the BlueEar Forum, or the BlueEar Books discussion list.]
I am a motivated reader, eager to learn lessons that could be applied in my newspaper's battle with Gannett, but THE CHAIN GANG left me oddly unsatisfied.It might have been Richard McCord's attempt to translate award-winning reporting into a first-person narrative, or the awkward movement among flashbacks to at least three different time periods. It might have been the lack of references or footnotes identifying court cases and quotes appearing throughout the text. But despite its flaws, McCord's book leaves the reader with a more intimate understanding of the dangerous edges of corporate journalism and their impact on lives in local communities.
The Chain Gang is built around two case studies of Gannett's attacks aimed at eliminating competitors in small markets, where the company typically has sought to establish monopoly control.
The first episode recounted in the book was the effort to crush a weekly paper that competed against a Gannett daily in Salem, Oregon, in the late 1970s. Drawing on court records and interviews with participants, McCord presents a detailed litany of Gannett's form of corporate hardball.
In 1989, McCord traveled to Green Bay, Wisconsin at the request of a friend who was trying to keep his small newspaper afloat against the now familiar tactics of a much larger Gannett daily.
In both cases, Gannett allegedly relied on business tactics that appeared to cross the line between fair competition and antitrust violations. Among the tactics McCord highlights:
* offering special discounts or free services to new advertisers.
* keeping advertising prices artificially low during periods of competition.
* selling ads on the condition that the buyer stop advertising in competing papers.
* threats against advertisers who continue to use the competition.
* refusing ads from clients also using competing publications.
* intentionally spreading false rumors about competing publications.
McCord produced investigative reports that drew local and national attention to Gannett's actions and, at a minimum, bought time for the smaller papers to develop means to compete successfully.
Gannett's street-level tactics rarely emerge into public view, making McCord's descriptions extremely valuable and thought-provoking. Reporters and editors typically are as ignorant about their own newspaper's business tactics as the general public, and McCord forces us to consider what's going on daily on the other side of the editorial/business divide.
But both his case studies are dated, stemming from the period when self-described SOB Allen Neuharth guided Gannett's growth from a regional chain to an international media powerhouse. We're left wondering whether these tactics, even if common two decades ago, remain such a key part of the current corporate landscape.
McCord's writing conveys an underlying weariness, a negative, defeated, just-plain-worn-out sense of battle fatigue that I initially found aggravating. Although conveying outrage, McCord is, from the first page to the last, a reluctant warrior, repeatedly pleading to be excused from battle.
One reason for pessimism, McCord correctly notes, is the failure of journalists to report on the controversial developments within our own industry and profession. Although several major papers reported on McCord's investigations, there was virtually no independent follow-up.
And when McCord's reporting in Green Bay won a prestigious Gerald Loeb Award for financial and business journalism, all mentions of the award were omitted from the written materials of the program, apparently a delicate compromise between the working journalists judging the competition and the Loeb Foundation's need for Gannett's continued goodwill.
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