The Oregonian is about to get Newhouse’d.
As the billionaires’ Advance Publications has rolled out its newspaper-liquidation plan across the country, it has engaged in a curious bit of corporate name-shuffling.
The Times Picayune company yielded to NOLA Media Group (and Advance Central Services). The Plain Dealer shifted focus to digital, cut publication/delivery, and added Northeast Ohio Media Group. Advance’s Alabama papers became Alabama Media Group. All more or less followed the same template: gutted newsrooms, reduced publication, and a turn to the hamster-wheel model of digital journalism.
Now Portland’s Willamette Week reports that The Oregonian’s holding company has filed to trademark the name Oregonian Media Group:
On May 17, the Oregonian Publishing Co. filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for protection of a new brand name: Oregonian Media Group.
For the employees of the state’s biggest newspaper—and anyone concerned by the paper’s already weakened state—this is an ominous move.
When I was reporting my story on the Battle of New Orleans, in our March issue, I tried to answer the question of why Advance had gone through the trouble of creating new corporate entities for these publications.
Here’s some string that didn’t fit the piece but may help shed some light on the matter.
The Newhouses have long been anti-union. That’s hardly unusual among their class, but their famous Newhouse Pledge helped prevent unionization at Advance’s papers, including in New Orleans, by promising employees that “no full-time, non-represented, regular employee will ever be laid off because of economic conditions or because of the introduction of new technology.”
In 2008, when the Newark Star-Ledger was bleeding tens of millions of dollars and needed to sharply reduce staffing to cut costs, the Newhouses found their hands tied by the Pledge. They threatened to sell the paper if the nonunion staff didn’t agree to a 27 percent reduction in headcount. Forty percent of the newsroom eventually took buyouts.
Less than a year later, when Advance launched AnnArbor.com, it made the decision—strange at the time—to kill the 174-year-old Ann Arbor News and form a new corporate entity, AnnArbor.com LLC. It would run the website, with a drastically reduced newsroom, and print a newspaper twice a week. Advance was so eager to bury the News entity that the “new” paper is actually called AnnArbor.com.
The next month, Steve Newhouse announced that Advance would rescind the Pledge, telling The New York Times that “It was not meant for a time when our newspapers, like others, are struggling to survive.”
Among the talking points handed out to managers, one said, “I suggest you stop worrying about being laid off and focus on your work,” according to court documents.
The ultimate question here is whether Advance thought it had a serious legal liability due to the Pledge. Can you promise employees that “no full-time, non-represented, regular employee will ever be laid off because of economic conditions or because of the introduction of new technology” and then unilaterally say “oopsie! we don’t mean that anymore”? I don’t think so.
Advance never responded to my requests for an interview during my reporting in New Orleans, but we do know the company had reason to worry about the implications of the Pledge.
One week after rescinding the Pledge, Advance forced out the publisher of the Mobile Press-Register, Howard Bronson, who had run into trouble with brass in part by advocating charging for news online. Bronson sued Advance for breach of contract, citing the Pledge, and asked for 10 years of his whopping $745,000 salary.
The case went to trial in 2011 and even forced Donald Newhouse to the stand to say the Pledge “was intended to be a promise that Advance would keep as long as it could keep it,” according to the Mobile Lagniappe’s excellent coverage of the trial.
It’s worth noting that later versions of the Newhouse Pledge added a critical clause: “No full-time, non-represented employee will be laid off or otherwise lose his or her job due to technological change or economic conditions, as long as our newspaper continues to publish daily in its current newsprint form.”
As Bronson v. Newhouse neared a close, Advance settled the case on undisclosed terms.
This entire mess with the Cleveland Plain Dealer is absolute BS, just sell the Paper to a REPUTABLE Company. Take your Electronic Edition and stick it where the Sun doesn't shine. I don't want to sit in front of a computer to read my paper, I want to feel it, touch it, pass it back and forth between my wife and I, and carry it around with me. Three Days a week is not going to cut it and the fact that you are cutting the local reporting staff means that it will no longer be worth reading anyway.
#1 Posted by Jeff Myers, CJR on Wed 19 Jun 2013 at 08:32 AM
I think that last quote was meant to say an "object'' lesson, not an abject lesson. Although, perhaps both meanings work.
#2 Posted by Sara Pagones , CJR on Wed 19 Jun 2013 at 09:52 AM
That would be "pass it back and forth between my wife and me," Jeff Myers.
#3 Posted by Daniel Burnette, CJR on Wed 19 Jun 2013 at 10:05 AM
So let me get this straight. People who run newspapers who turn out not to care about their First Amendment watchdog mission, public edification, community improvement, and all that other wonderful stuff they told us about newspapers, who turn out to care only about maximizing profit, turn out to be goddamned liars when it comes to a no-layoff pledge. I'm shocked, shocked.
#4 Posted by Matt Roush, CJR on Wed 19 Jun 2013 at 10:17 AM
Let's remember here that people under the age of forty don't waste time and money on paper and, increasingly, neither do advertisers. Whining about newspapers going away just makes people sound old and curmudgeonly. The simple reality is that the 7-day "yesterday's-news-on-paper" model is moribund. Selling such a company to another owner - at best - is only delaying the inevitable, people. As for the layoffs? Making that kind of a pledge was a mistake. The newspaper industry's finances make keeping large, expensive newsroom staffs unrealistic. However, remaking newspaper companies into organizations into something that might be covering local news years from now instead of simply going out of business for the sake of ink and paper is something that might be worth examining more closely - whether you like the web or not.
#5 Posted by Anon Y. Mous, CJR on Wed 19 Jun 2013 at 01:20 PM
The concern is not even so much about newspapers going digital, although I'd rather read the paper edition and not have to use a computer. It is about laying off staff, not covering or breaking news or even worse, publicly holding to account the people in authority who use our money and govern our lives in many ways, uncovering corruption and corporate greed...all those facets we need an independent and well-staffed newspaper to do. THAT is what I whine about.
#6 Posted by Ellie Bee, CJR on Wed 19 Jun 2013 at 03:09 PM
Well, that's a good point. However, no one has yet reversed the massive erosion of support (double-digit declines year-after-year in circulation and ad revenue) that newspapers are facing. It is simply not possible to maintain the level of staffing in that kind of a financial climate. We certainly need independent news gathering organizations to keep those forces in check but, let's face it, it's not gonna be a newsPAPER filling that role for much longer. We need to find the next thing.
#7 Posted by Anon Y. Mous, CJR on Wed 19 Jun 2013 at 05:35 PM
@Anon -
No offense, but your comment seems to make some sweeping assertions based on false assumptions.
While it's true that ink on paper has a justifiable loyalty base due to its appeal as a medium, a larger portion of the debate, at least it seems to me, has focused on what happens to the craft of journalism in a democracy if print media fails. There's a strong argument to be made that newspapers are the canary in the coal mine.
Most of this is not about grumpy old guys complaining that things were better in the old days; it's about broken business models brought about by unintended consequences. The newspaper business in general is currently engaged in what the military-- never ones to back away from a euphemism-- might call a movement in retrograde. The cause being a dollars-to-dimes dilemma. Online in most cases simply doesn't generate enough revenue to support the creation of original content at a more-or-less adequate level. Or at least one we've come to expect.
Almost every one of the things presented so far as an online silver-bullet solution to the decline of journalism as a business has been a failure. And it's a long list.
Still, that's not to say that those failures haven't provided some lessons. Crowd sourcing, as one example, can work in some use cases but not others. Social media has a certain kind of value. There are some talented bloggers who should be getting paid more than they are now.
It might also be pointed out that one of the bigger problems with online news is that around 70 percent of online advertising revenue is collected by only five companies who produce comparatively little original content.
#8 Posted by Perry Gaskill, CJR on Wed 19 Jun 2013 at 05:50 PM
Well, it's nice that all that effort was put into talking about The Pledge, but the name change is probably because Advance is planning to merg two companies into one. The website and the newspaper in these markets are run by two separate companies- a legacy of the days when Advance dismissed the internet as a fad or god knows what. It no longer makes sense to have two companies, one print, one digital, both selling ads, both coordinating sports, etc, etc. I think they are making the wise move to simply get things under one roof. Maybe not.
#9 Posted by Seven11, CJR on Wed 19 Jun 2013 at 07:55 PM
"The Newhouses have long been anti-union. That’s hardly unusual among their class"
"Laid-off Picayune employees were given fairly generous severance packages, presumably not out of the goodness of the Newhouses’ hearts."
You know this how?
"Thomas Maier, author of the authoritative biography of Si Newhouse, told me when I was reporting my story a few months ago: 'I think it’s an abject lesson for anybody concerned about unions and middle class existence for reporters. It’s a classic case study of people who bought the plantation owners’ promise of a lifetime job and when things truly got bad found out that there was nothing behind the promise.'"
Gee, I wonder why anyone would want to employ people who spew such bile? The Newhouse pledge was obviously meant for temporary conditions, economic or technological, ie cyclical not structural, where the company would presumably use its large portfolio to tide smaller newspapers over until such conditions passed, rather than cutting during a recession and then rehiring when the economy recovers, as many companies do.
This current newspaper downslide is clearly not temporary: it'll be a wonder if any media organization survives the online transition. Obviously the current situation is completely different from what the pledge was meant for and only a fool would insist that it be kept. Well, welcome to the world of journalists, the biggest fools about economics and business there are.
The only people determining whether there's a "middle class existence for reporters" are the paying customers, a dwindling group. Since the readers don't much care if reporters have a good lifestyle and the journalists and newspaper publishers are too incompetent to provide them with an online product worth paying for, destruction is the only possible outcome. It couldn't have happened to a sorrier bunch of lefties.
Those journalists who have any talent- not many, I'd guess- will rise from the ashes in the world of paid blogging that will eventually emerge and do great. Most will have to move on to jobs that better fit their skills, data entry or burger flipping I suspect.
#10 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Thu 20 Jun 2013 at 02:16 AM
Seven11,
You'd think that would be the case, but it's not. In New Orleans, Alabama, and Michigan, they created new companies called "Advance Central Services" to go alongside the Media Groups.
Ajay,
I don't know this. In fact, it's unknowable, which is why I said "presumably." I would have asked them myself if they'd returned my calls.
You're flat wrong about the Newhouse Pledge. What do you not understand about this sentence: "no full-time, non-represented, regular employee will ever be laid off because of economic conditions or because of the introduction of new technology”?
#11 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Thu 20 Jun 2013 at 04:07 PM
Ryan,
I don't know this. In fact, it's unknowable, which is why I said "presumably." I would have asked them myself if they'd returned my calls.
If there is no evidence that they were legally required to, then isn't it likely that it was out of "the goodness of their hearts?" If they are in fact moving to an About/AOL searchbait model, I agree that they're running the place into the ground. But in that case, wouldn't you want to leave with a "generous severance," before the collapse is final?
You're flat wrong about the Newhouse Pledge. What do you not understand about this sentence: "no full-time, non-represented, regular employee will ever be laid off because of economic conditions or because of the introduction of new technology”?
What do you think it means? "Economic conditions" presumably refers to general macroeconomic conditions like a recession, not to the functional solvency of the business. If you think it means that nobody will ever get fired while revenue at the entire Advance Publications is down 30%, you are taking a far too liberal interpretation of what those words could mean.
"New technology" likely refers to replacing workers whose jobs are diminished or obsoleted by new tech implemented by Advance, say printing press workers who aren't needed after switching to a more automated digital press. It obviously cannot mean, "We are getting killed by free bloggers who are using 'new technology' called the internet, therefore we cannot fire anyone."
If I'm so wrong about what the pledge means, please, by all means, explain what you think it says, why they can't fire these people.
The newspaper business cannot be saved. These were large organizations built a century ago around a giant investment into a printing press, which is now obsolete. Now that anyone can start a blog online, ie the barrier to entry is nil, the natural model is a sea of independent bloggers. That is simple economics, you can't fight that. They are stupidly fighting it, but they cannot win.
#12 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Fri 21 Jun 2013 at 04:09 AM
Wait! They were paying just one dude $745k? per year? in Mobile, Alabama??
#13 Posted by Edward Ericson Jr., CJR on Fri 21 Jun 2013 at 11:52 AM
@Ajay
Sorry, but I don't agree. Your last graf is the same blogger meme we've been hearing for almost ten years; resistance is futile all you buggy-whipped dinosaurs, you will be assimilated. So far, it hasn't happened, and the fact that it will happen in the way you predict is not a given.
A primary problem with the free-as-in-beer blogger community is that it tends to break down into either dilettantes, or people with an agenda. And I'm not using the word dilettante as a pejorative; it's simply used to describe someone who wants to work on a certain kind of thing at a time of his choosing. A process that has not demonstrated the ability to include an adequate range of discourse particularly down at a granular local level.
Here's an example by way of illustration:
A couple of years ago, Dave Winer, considered by many to be the godfather of RSS, was working on some coding in his apartment in New York when he looked out the window and spotted smoke coming out of a building a few blocks away. Sensing a news scoop in progress, Winer snatches up a smartphone and takes a picture which he then posts to his weblog with a self-congratulatory comment about how this was the future of news.
Nowhere in the post was there any information about the fire in the sense of the who, what, where, etc. information bundle normally considered as a minimum for a story.
I'm not trying to beat up on Winer by pointing this out. He's a gifted coder, just not a very good journalist.
Nobody knows how this is going to shake out. It wouldn't surprise me if newspapers in smaller markets stayed healthy for the next 20 years. Those expensive presses, after all, may already be paid for. Such a time frame also adds breathing space to work out a digital transition.
Two other things interesting to watch are how online local pureplays are working out, and what happens as an end game for consolidated entities such as Advance in the event they fail.
One example of the kind of thing that might happen, sorry if the evidence is anecdotal, goes like this:
In a effort to shed some of its unprofitable properties, the New York Times decided a couple of years ago to dump its regional newspaper group, which was picked up by the PE firm Halifax in Florida. Halifax then proceeded to break up the group and sell the papers individually.
One of those papers, the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat in California, was bought by a consortium of local investors. Accounts so far indicate that the financials of the paper, both print and online, have been turned around due, at least in part, to an effort to move ad side from strictly advertising into the realm of marketing services.
#14 Posted by Perry Gaskill, CJR on Fri 21 Jun 2013 at 05:26 PM
Perry,
Sorry, but I don't agree. Your last graf is the same blogger meme we've been hearing for almost ten years; resistance is futile all you buggy-whipped dinosaurs, you will be assimilated. So far, it hasn't happened, and the fact that it will happen in the way you predict is not a given.
I suspect you didn't read my earlier comment in this thread, which mentioned that paid blogging will be the dominant model, something the "blogger meme" usually doesn't contain. If you want to know what I think the newspapers should be doing, I suggest you read my second and third comments in this thread. Nothing is "given," but considering not many people are trying my paid blogger route yet and the few who are trying a similar paywall model are succeeding, there are at least indications that it might be the best idea. :)
A primary problem with the free-as-in-beer blogger community is that it tends to break down into either dilettantes, or people with an agenda.
I agree. There will be no real change till bloggers get paid directly by their readers.
And I'm not using the word dilettante as a pejorative; it's simply used to describe someone who wants to work on a certain kind of thing at a time of his choosing. A process that has not demonstrated the ability to include an adequate range of discourse particularly down at a granular local level.
On the other hand, I'd argue that professional journalists often weren't that great at this either. I suspect that in the coming world of paid blogging, very few people will be full-time journalists in the traditional model, reporting on a broad array of topics even if within a large category like business or local. I suspect that there will be much narrower specialization and much more part-time work as a result. So the world is moving towards the "dilettantes," whether you like it or not. ;)
Here's an example by way of illustration:
A couple of years ago, Dave Winer, considered by many to be the godfather of RSS, was working on some coding in his apartment in New York when he looked out the window and spotted smoke coming out of a building a few blocks away. Sensing a news scoop in progress, Winer snatches up a smartphone and takes a picture which he then posts to his weblog with a self-congratulatory comment about how this was the future of news.
Nowhere in the post was there any information about the fire in the sense of the who, what, where, etc. information bundle normally considered as a minimum for a story.
I'm not trying to beat up on Winer by pointing this out. He's a gifted coder, just not a very good journalist.
I've read some Winer, seems like a guy with some interesting opinions, but RSS is a joke. I haven't used an RSS feed in years, not even for the podcasts I listen to, and I find it funny that it was ever considered to be anything more than an incremental technology. :)
Without having read his post, I bet Winer's point was that anyone could contribute to the story, not that he was providing the full story. For example, some blogger who gathers all the details for your "information bundle" could source Winer's photo for his blog post, since he may not have been there when it happened. But none of this will be done till you can get paid for it, which is why I'm a big proponent of micropayments.
Nobody knows how this is going to shake out. It wouldn't surprise me if newspapers in smaller markets stayed healthy for the next 20 years. Those expensive presses, after all, may already be paid for. Such a time frame also adds breathing space to work out a digital transition.
I beg to disagree. There will be no newspapers in 10 years, let alone 20. It is a joke that this hasn't happened already, which means that when it happens, the change will be rapid and seismic.
#15 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Sat 22 Jun 2013 at 07:34 AM
Yikes, my comment was "auto-truncated," here's the rest:
Two other things interesting to watch are how online local pureplays are working out, and what happens as an end game for consolidated entities such as Advance in the event they fail.
Both are irrelevant, at least if the former aren't blogs run by non-corporate entities.
One example of the kind of thing that might happen, sorry if the evidence is anecdotal, goes like this:
In a effort to shed some of its unprofitable properties, the New York Times decided a couple of years ago to dump its regional newspaper group, which was picked up by the PE firm Halifax in Florida. Halifax then proceeded to break up the group and sell the papers individually.
One of those papers, the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat in California, was bought by a consortium of local investors. Accounts so far indicate that the financials of the paper, both print and online, have been turned around due, at least in part, to an effort to move ad side from strictly advertising into the realm of marketing services.
And what exactly does "marketing services" consist of? News providers are making a big mistake if they think aping privacy-invading services like google or facebook are their way out of this hole, whether through "native ads" or more data collection. The answer is to ditch ads and marketing and double down on "circulation," ie getting your readers to pay for your content, preferably in the distributed and atomic way I sketched out in my linked comments.
#16 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Sat 22 Jun 2013 at 07:37 AM
@Ajay
I'm only seeing two of your comments prior to the last one, and the only seeming touch point within those was the contradictory statement about newspaper publishers being too dumb to understand "We are getting killed by free bloggers who are using 'new technology' called the internet..."
It's also hard to agree with your prediction that newspapers will end in a non-transitory seismic-event collapse. Recent empirical evidence has shown otherwise. A couple of years ago that might have been a good guess based on the fact that newspaper advertising revenue in the aggregate has dropped by more than 50 percent since 2005. What seems evident now is that what's going on at a macro level is not really a clear indicator of what's happening at the micro level.
Although almost everyone agrees that the days of 30 percent profit margins for newspapers are long gone, there are still a number of papers which remain profitable at a reduced level. The ones in the deepest trouble, often big-city metros, are those which were buyouts using leveraged debt with the assumption that 30 percent margins would last forever.
Personally, I have no problem with bloggers getting paid, but would point out that there needs to be a distinction made between topic-based and locale-based market verticals. In general, what seems to be mostly working in the blogger community is a writer carving out a specific topic niche, and then using both writing talent and expertise in the topic to build a personal brand.
Exceptions to this, although you can get into semantic tangles, are efforts such as The Batavian or West Seattle Blog which provide an online version of the locale-based focus a newspaper normally has. Something interesting is that Howard Owens, for example, at The Batavian has made some strong arguments in the past on CJR about why he is not a fan of paywalls. One reason is because The Batavian's advertising is not based on a CPM model.
Marketing services are not the same as native ads or data mining, although those can be subsets. A criticism of newspapers in the past has been that the ad sales staff has functioned mostly as order takers. A merchant comes in, drops off quarter-page camera-ready art and gets invoiced. One of the key differences marketing services brings into play is that a marketing, not just advertising, spend is no longer restricted to just the newspaper.
A tavern owner, say, might be best served with both a paper/online display for week-end bands combined with the production of an audio spot that runs on third-party radio. Smilin' Bob, down at the used car lot, might get his best ROI with classifieds for direct response, and third-party bus stop benches for brand building. And those are strictly advertising examples that don't include things such as market research.
That's the theory, anyway. It's also not a particularly radical concept; ad agency holding companies such as WPP have been going in this direction for awhile at an enterprise level.
Since this comment might appear off topic, I'll bring it full circle. What Advance is doing appears to be a templated formula for an assumption of failure in the near term. On the other hand, it's their prerogative to work the side of the street they choose.
#17 Posted by Perry Gaskill, CJR on Sat 22 Jun 2013 at 04:51 PM
Perry,
I'm only seeing two of your comments prior to the last one, and the only seeming touch point within those was the contradictory statement about newspaper publishers being too dumb to understand "We are getting killed by free bloggers who are using 'new technology' called the internet..."
I'm obviously not taking about that comment, which contained the paragraph you referenced. I was talking about the previous comment, with this line, "Those journalists who have any talent- not many, I'd guess- will rise from the ashes in the world of paid blogging that will eventually emerge and do great." My linked comments from the previous thread lay out what that world will look like, particularly if the newspapers implemented it first.
Not sure what you find "contradictory" about free bloggers killing off newspapers, but that is what's happening. Free bloggers can't ever produce the quality of output that paid bloggers would, but that doesn't mean free can't kill off the newspapers anyway. ;)
It's also hard to agree with your prediction that newspapers will end in a non-transitory seismic-event collapse. Recent empirical evidence has shown otherwise.
Recent empirical evidence, shown in my AEI link above, portrays an industry in freefall, with ad revenue collapsing for 7 years straight, going back to the same inflation-adjusted level as 1950! Extrapolating the empirical evidence clearly suggests collapse.
A couple of years ago that might have been a good guess based on the fact that newspaper advertising revenue in the aggregate has dropped by more than 50 percent since 2005. What seems evident now is that what's going on at a macro level is not really a clear indicator of what's happening at the micro level.
Although almost everyone agrees that the days of 30 percent profit margins for newspapers are long gone, there are still a number of papers which remain profitable at a reduced level. The ones in the deepest trouble, often big-city metros, are those which were buyouts using leveraged debt with the assumption that 30 percent margins would last forever.
For the reasons given previously, I argue that there is no respite, all the newspapers will die.
#18 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Sun 23 Jun 2013 at 07:41 AM
Personally, I have no problem with bloggers getting paid, but would point out that there needs to be a distinction made between topic-based and locale-based market verticals. In general, what seems to be mostly working in the blogger community is a writer carving out a specific topic niche, and then using both writing talent and expertise in the topic to build a personal brand.
Exceptions to this, although you can get into semantic tangles, are efforts such as The Batavian or West Seattle Blog which provide an online version of the locale-based focus a newspaper normally has. Something interesting is that Howard Owens, for example, at The Batavian has made some strong arguments in the past on CJR about why he is not a fan of paywalls. One reason is because The Batavian's advertising is not based on a CPM model.
Current trends are completely irrelevant because they aren't using micropayments. Only the trends that develop using micropayments will matter, anything that happens in the interim can be thrown out as junk data.
Marketing services are not the same as native ads or data mining, although those can be subsets. A criticism of newspapers in the past has been that the ad sales staff has functioned mostly as order takers. A merchant comes in, drops off quarter-page camera-ready art and gets invoiced. One of the key differences marketing services brings into play is that a marketing, not just advertising, spend is no longer restricted to just the newspaper. A tavern owner, say, might be best served with both a paper/online display for week-end bands combined with the production of an audio spot that runs on third-party radio. Smilin' Bob, down at the used car lot, might get his best ROI with classifieds for direct response, and third-party bus stop benches for brand building. And those are strictly advertising examples that don't include things such as market research. That's the theory, anyway. It's also not a particularly radical concept; ad agency holding companies such as WPP have been going in this direction for awhile at an enterprise level.
I don't see why newspapers would be competent at providing any of these new multimedia "marketing services." My advice is to double down on what they supposedly do best, news, and charge for it, at the right price. I suspect they are too stupid to realize this.
Since this comment might appear off topic, I'll bring it full circle. What Advance is doing appears to be a templated formula for an assumption of failure in the near term. On the other hand, it's their prerogative to work the side of the street they choose.
I don't think they're assuming failure. I suspect that they are simply copying what they imagine to be the successful model online, some sort of HuffPo model, ie a majority of content being searchbait with a little real news thrown in. Of course, this HuffPo model is not really successful but they're too dumb to know it. Perhaps they are also planning for the contingency of failure though. As you say, it's their business to run as they like.
#19 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Sun 23 Jun 2013 at 07:44 AM
Well, If you believe in what you write here, lets agree for an IMPARTIAL INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATION as a sane person rather than BIASED BASHING on the Freedom Fighters Tamil Tigers wothout blaming the racist Srilanka who did the Genocide and deny access to any Independent media let alone an independent investigation.
#20 Posted by guptil, CJR on Wed 26 Jun 2013 at 12:21 PM