The Shepherd’s gambit worked.
Mere weeks after owner Louis Fortis took to the pages of his weekly paper to insinuate it was the victim of political persecution at the hands of Roundy’s Supermarkets, the grocery retailer reversed itself and agreed to keep the free publication in the vestibules of its Pick ‘n Save and Metro Market stores.
The surprisingly swift change of heart came after Fortis sparked revolt among Shepherd Express readers with a column urging them to call the office phone number of Roundy’s high-profile Chairman Bob Mariano and “politely” urge the grocer to reconsider.
Fortis’ original open letter to readers went right up to the edge of claiming that the paper had been pulled from some Pick ‘n Save stores for its political stance (endorsing Joanne Kloppenburg for state Supreme Court and condemning the agenda of Gov. Scott Walker) by noting the timing of the change, on the eve of last April’s Supreme Court election. But he avoided the accusation outright. Not so the state Democratic Party, which made explicit what Fortis had only hinted at.
In backing down, Roundy’s stuck to its position that the whole thing was never about politics to begin with.
“We made the decision to remove all free publications from our vestibules to utilize the space to serve our customers’ grocery needs,” Vivian King, Roundy’s director of public affairs, says. “The Shepherd Express was included. Additionally, the decision was not political as implied by an ad in the Shepherd Express. However, because of customers who have reached out to us, we will continue to have the Shepherd Express in its regular rack at our stores.”
I don’t know how many people actually called Roundy’s. Fortis says “many thousands,” and Roundy’s King left that question unanswered. But it was clearly enough to move the needle inside Roundy’s corporate offices.
So will other free publications demand equal time?
For some, like The Onion, it’s not that important. “The Onion has not been in Roundy’s for some time anyway, so their initial decision was not going to affect our circulation,” Erin Frank, sales manager in Milwaukee for the satirical weekly, tells me. By contrast, Frank estimates the Shepherd could have lost as many as 15,000 papers by being shut out of the chain – an “alarming” number that could hurt advertising sales and the bottom line.
“For a free weekly paper, circulation is a constant challenge,” Frank says. “It is a difficult and non-stop process, which here at The Onion we choose to manage in a strategic and proactive way. When drops are lost, we find it effective to immediately scope out new locations to begin to build the number back up, whether it is by finding new street box locations or building a positive relationship with business owners.”
The Shepherd, she observes, “employed a different strategy in this situation, which appears to have worked for them.” She adds: “I do have concerns that Mr. Fortis may have taken advantage of Milwaukee’s currently mobilized base of progressive, enthusiastic activists for somewhat insincere reasons, whether he intended to or not.”
But for Wisconsin Gazette editor Louis Weisberg, the news of Roundy’s turnabout is a spur to action.
When I asked if he planned to seek equal time – or more precisely, equal space – for the gay biweekly he produces, Weisberg replied, “You bet we will!”
“The Shepherd has a virtual monopoly on major distribution outlets in the Milwaukee area, including Walgreens, Barnes and Noble, Sendik’s and corporate Starbucks,” Weisberg continues. “Every time I make an effort to get placement in strategically placed outlets with those companies, someone promises to get back to me. It’s been going on for two years.
“In the wake of all this, we’re not waiting any longer. We’re now officially fighting mad ourselves, especially since some of those companies – including Walgreens and Sendik’s – get so many gay dollars. It’s so hypocritical. The Shepherd has 900-number ads in the back of its publications inviting gay people to hook up for sex. We won’t allow those kind of advertisers, but we’re told that the very word ‘gay’ on our cover is unacceptable. Meanwhile, we’re offering a more polished, sophisticated and professional editorial product. We got into this to change such scenarios, and it’s time that we did!”
And Weisberg says he expects the Wisconsin Democrats to offer the same sort of support they gave the Shepherd just a few weeks ago.
In case you missed it, the silly little man that Keith Olbermann calls “Boy Journalist Jimmy O’Keefe” is on a new crusade, using selectively edited and tendentious sting videos “To Catch a Journalist” betraying liberal bias. So far, it appears to have flopped — no early signs that he’s collected the scalps of a new James Schiller or Vivian Schiller.
The Atlantic sums up the news here, Gawker comments here, Jay Rosen at New York University relates his own encounter here, and Columbia University prof Dale Maharidge (another O’Keefe target) offers his account here.
But for sheer entertainment value, nothing beats the response of Maharidge’s colleague, Columbia J-school Dean of Student Affairs Sree Sreenivasan’s turning the camera on O’Keefe – there’s a still here, video here, and Sreenivasan’s takeaway on the whole matter here.
Back at the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf plumbs the way O’Keefe has exploited the media’s increasingly strained ethic of strict neutrality and objectivity.
Read the comments on that one – they’re almost uniformly excellent, regardless of the fact that they don’t all agree with each other. (My favorite is the one that describes O’Keefe for what he is – not a real journalist at all, but someone whose fundamental method is “to support partisan claims with anecdotal information and dishonest editing.”)
Indeed, Fridersdorf earlier was eerily prophetic on the whole affair, in an essay that more thoroughly lays out arguments similar to those made by Jack Shafer recently; I linked to Shafer’s remarks last week (Scroll down), and do so again here and here.
Sigh… Jim Romenesko, who was Milwaukee Magazine’s first dedicated media columnist, has moved up his resignation from the Poynter Institute in a controversy over whether his style of curating news about the news – something he arguably invented before we even called it that – should have employed more quotation marks.
The column that set it all off here, The Awl’s pointed rejoinder here, and the spot-on roundup and analysis from my East Coast J-school classmate, and now journalism professor, Barbara Selvin here.
The whole pointless controversy reminds me of nothing so much as the PolitiFact insistence that even though Gov. Walker is paid $7,300 more than his predecessor, it’s a sweeping offense against the truth to call it “a raise.”
Comment below, or write Pressroom at pressroom@milwaukeemagazine.com.
Follow Pressroom on Facebook or on Twitter.
