Poll: Will You Subscribe If stltoday.com (Post-Dispatch) Puts Up A Pay Wall?

Last month our daily paper laid off another round of journalists, editors, photographers and others:

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch laid off nearly two dozen employees, 14 of them from the paper’s newsroom, NewsChannel 5 Sharon Stevens has learned.

Speaking to Post-Dispatch employees Friday afternoon, Stevens learned the newsroom employee layoffs included: 3 reporters, 1 photographer, 1 cartoonist, 2 copy editors, 4 photo editors, 1 deputy managing editor, 1 news editor and 1 food editor. The remaining cuts were made in other departments. (KSDK)

This is really a shame too, especially for my friends who’ve lost jobs.

Some might say it’s just the changing media environment while other blame the debt carried by parent Lee Enterprises:

DAVENPORT, Iowa (July 17, 2012) — Lee Enterprises, Incorporated (NYSE: LEE) reported today for its third fiscal quarter ended June 24, 2012, a loss of 3 cents per diluted common share, compared with a loss of $3.46 a year ago. Excluding reorganization costs in 2012, non-cash impairment charges and a non-cash curtailment gain in 2011, and debt financing costs and other unusual matters in both years, adjusted earnings per diluted common share(1) totaled 2 cents, compared with 21 cents a year ago. The majority of the decline is attributable to higher interest cost in 2012. (Reuters)

Lee Enterprises purchased the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2005:

Lee Enterprises is currently the fourth largest newspaper group in the United States of America. The company acquired Howard Publications (16 daily newspapers) for $694 million in 2002 and Pulitzer, Inc. (14 daily, over 100 non-daily), for $1.5 billion in 2005. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2011. It emerged from bankruptcy less than two months later. (Wikipedia)

CEO Mary Junck was rewarded handsomely so far this year:

Lee Enterprises disclosed yesterday [July 25, 2012] that CEO Mary Junck acquired 500,000 shares of company stock. That stock was worth $1.31 per share at the close of business on the date the paperwork was filed, but Junck paid nothing for it.

Junck received the stock as a “Grant by the Issuer’s independent Executive Compensation Committee (ECC) of non-incentive restricted shares of common stock pursuant to Issuer’s 1990 Long Term Incentive Plan,” according to the footnote on the company’s paperwork.

This marks the second time this year that Junck has received a bonus from the company. She was gifted $500,000 in March for leading the company into and out of bankruptcy. Yesterday’s bonus totals out to a cash value of $655,000, which is a pretty good take for a Wednesday. (Riverfront Times)

Currently the only way to subscribe to the Post-Dispatch is by receiving a delivered paper, but that may change:

We introduced digital subscriptions in 11 more markets during the quarter, for a total of 17 so far, and expect nearly all of Lee’s 52 markets to follow by the end of the calendar year. (Lee Enterprises)

It’s still unknown if some form of a digital subscription will be added to the Post-Dispatch website, stltoday.com. The poll question this week asks you to assume the Post-Dispatch puts up a pay wall, will you subscribe? If yes, how much are you willing to pay? The poll is in the right sidebar.

— Steve Patterson

Poll: Which Race In The August 7th Primary Will Be The Closest?

Often the August partisan primary is rather boring — at least to me some have been. But for 2012 we have hard fought races on the local, state and national level. Incumbents are being challenged from within their own party (Republican & Democrat), redistricting and term limits pits former allies. Fascinating stuff to observe.

The GOP races have candidates fighting to prove who’s the most conservative while Democrats just sling mud at their opponent(s), TV commercials have been non-stop and our mailboxes jammed with slick mailers. I still haven’t decided how I’m going to vote so I’m not making any endorsements.

I want to know which race you think will be the closest in the final vote count, the converse being which will have the biggest spread. Here are the races I’ve picked for this poll, there are others but these are the five I think people are watching closely:

• MO US Senate (GOP: Akin, Beck, Steelman, Brunner, Memoly, Lodes, Poole, Maldonado)
• MO US Rep Dist 1 (Dems: Britton, Clay, Carnahan)
• MO Lt. Gov (GOP: Kulmann, Lager, Kinder, Carter)
• MO State Senate Dist 5 (Dems: Wright-Jones, Nasheed, Mott-Oxford)
• STL Treasurer (Dems: Wessels, Wahby, Jones, Boyd)

Included in the poll are answers for “unsure” and “another race.” The poll is in the right sidebar, the answers display in random order in the poll. So vote in the poll and be sure to vote on Tuesday August 7th, the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners has sample ballots.

— Steve Patterson

Poll: Which Term Best Describes The St Louis Region Attitude Toward Urban Planning

The St. Louis region as multiple counties and hundreds of cities in two states. I want to know how you’d describe the region’s attitude toward urban planning. Progressive? Staid?

I don’t want to narrow the question or give specifics, I want to know how you feel. I’ll share my thoughts on Wednesday August 1, 2012 when I post the poll results. I used the graphic from the City’s 2005 Strategic Land Use Plan but think regionally.

Please vote in the poll in the right sidebar and share your thoughts below.

— Steve Patterson

Readers: Good Decision To Upgrade City’s Email To Gmail

In the poll last week readers supported the city’s move to Gmail, after emailing with the person in charge, I agree. Here were the results:

Q: St. Louis spent $275,000 to upgrade city email to Gmail, good or bad move?

1. Good: the old system had no tracking which isn’t good for government transparency 50 [64.94%]
2. Bad: talking about laying off police/fire and wasting money on email 12 [15.58%]
3. Neutral 7 [9.09%]
4. Unsure/no opinion 5 [6.49%]
5. Other: 3 [3.9%]

And the three “other” answers:

1. Overpaid. As usual, PD won’t follow the money.
2. Tracking doesn’t concern me. Saving money and improving service is a good move
3. Why is this really a question? Use an archaic system or a modern upgrade?

So why do I agree? I learned the city had their own physical servers located in city hall to run the old email system. Servers wear out, take personnel and electricity to keep them running. Before the rise of cloud computing large organizations had little choice but to maintain their own physical servers. For over six years now I’ve leased server space for this blog, I think it’s located in California.

The city’s old system was a Novell GroupWise setup. I’ve never worked at a big enough company to use such a system. One city employee said they’ve been taking about trying to change the system for the past 11 years. Things apparently began to change when Robbyn Wahby took over the city’s Information Technology Services Agency (ITSA) in November 2010.

First step was to increase the bandwidth and firewall protection which “added to stability of the network” says Wahby. However, problems remained.

March 2011, contracted with SLMPD for tech advice and support. Dele Oredugba is the director of technology and is a consultant to the department. Part of his contract was to help analyse our network. We contracted with REJIS [Regional Justice Information Services] to diagram the network. Discovered a core switch was long in the tooth. Replaced Nortel with a Cisco last month (no small measure!). Put in change management program. Network manager resign June 2011; interim put in place, until a new manager hired in March 2012. Determined that GroupWise was too expensive to continue with (lack support, dying product, servers required too much maintenance, expertise in this product declining, few employee’s liked it, etc.)

Wahby continues…

Formed ITSA advisory board and ITSA Focus Group in late spring/early summer 2011. ITSA advisory board is made up of City employees from various departments who have some level of responsibility and expertise in IT. They advise ITSA (Dele and Robbyn) on what they thought needed to happen with the department. Review RFP for email services for technical needs. ITSA Focus Group was formed to provide input from users (non-technical) about what they wanted from IT and from the applications they use every day. General consensus that GW was lacking (mobility issues, problems with stability, archiving, etc) and lack collaborative features.

This group crafted the key elements of the RFP.

Both groups, along with directors and anyone who wanted to attend, were invited to attend presentations by the top 3 vendors. We had two Gmail vendors and 1 MS vendor present. They were chosen based on a) full completion/compliance with the RFP b) price point

The RFP can be read here.

— Steve Patterson

Poll: Support the Planned $14 Million Renovation of Soulard Market?

Over the years there has been talk of giving Soulard Market a top to bottom facelift but it hasn’t happened. Such talk is happening again:

The master plan for Soulard Market proposes spending as much as $14 million on improvements over the next several years. The report suggests that funding could come from grants and donations, a parks bond issue or a future parks tax. (see stltoday for plan details)

Some are excited by the idea and others say the charm will be designed out in the process. You can view the full plan here.

Share your comments below and vote in the poll in the right sidebar. Poll closes a week from today and results will be published on Friday July 20th.

— Steve Patterson