Truth, Lies and Media”

I read on the Huffington Post this week that the New York Post had closed down its weekly, English language Hispanic targeted “publication” Tempo and fired it’s editor Sandra Guzman. Huffington Post Blogger Sam Stein wrote an article hypothesizing that the firing had something to do with Guzman’s criticism a few months back of the Post’s very controversial cartoon which depicted the author of President Obama’s stimulus package as a dead chimpanzee.

Numerous comments about the article depicted Rupert Murdoch as grand orchestrator of this “racists” dismissal and Miss Guzman as a courageous soul for standing up to big bad Rupert and the numerous white supremacists at the New York Post.   Few mentioned the very real fact that the newspaper industry is in the midst of a historic shakeup amid the recession and no one mentioned the fact that Tempo had shrunk down to a shell of its former self with often just a page or two per week and maybe one or two sponsors.

My experience with Tempo is that it had degenerated to Hispanic “tokenism” pure simple, with the minimum effort given to New York Latino readers while trying to extract the maximum possible from Latino targeted advertisers. That never works long term so there you have it.

Tempo closed down and probably the News Corp folks are saying “good riddance”, but that is not racism. Its just bad business.  Tokenism is not unique to News Corp or even to Non Latino companies.

Below is an excerpt of the comment I posed on the Huffington Post site (after they deactivated my original username for some unknown reason). You can read the Huffington Post article at

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/06/ny-post-fires-editor-crit_n_311432.html

I’ve worked in the media my entire career and in the Hispanic Media industry most of that time. The saying that “a fish stinks from the head down” couldn’t describe a company better than Murdoch’s News Corp. They are ruthless and opportunistic and will do anything for profit or power, like most corporations and media companies. That being said, there are some very good people that still manage to work there.

However, blaming the editor’s discontinuation on criticisms she made about the NY Post’s cartoon months ago is not only way off , it hurts the credibility of legitimate issues associated with Murdoch’s media outlets.

The bottom line is:
1) The Newspaper industry is getting killed and probably won’t recover.
2) Tempo was not a serious effort at courting New York Latin readers. It was a token effort to attract Hispanic ad dollars, lack of quality writing, intriguing stories or good management be damned.

It’s too easy and lazy to scream racism at every turn when Murdoch is involved. Based on my experience with Tempo and News Corp., it was probably a business decision pure and simple.

Tempo had several shots to be a much needed voice for the Latin community, but they blew them, so now it no longer exist. That is the way business works. Please stop screaming racism and painting the editor as a martyr by connecting dots that don’t exist. Save the accusations for the many, many legitimate times race is a factor.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/06/ny-post-fires-editor-crit_n_311432.html