If you want to know the definition of "loose cannon", just look at Lincoln Millstein's blog on Hearst newspapers. Millstein, a senior vice president at Hearst, meaning that he's one of the company's top five executives, has repeatedly printed bizarre comments on his blog, "Lincoln's Log", which he features in the online edition of Greenwich Time (he's senior VP for digital media). He's printed weird stuff before, calling Greenwich's Democratic board of education candidates "bobblehead dolls", and the chairman of the Greenwich DTC every name in the book, including "apparatchik". But now he's gone after former Greenwich Democratic first selectman Dick Bergstresser, who served from 2001-2003. Millstein writes on his blog that "Dick Bergstresser
was the Jimmy Carter of Greenwich politics who had no discernible executive skills. He only benefitted from the enmity toward Lolly Prince who was punished for allowing Stamford to successfully penetrate Greenwich Point..."
Hearst Newspaper Company Senior Vice President Lincoln Millstein continues to slime Democrats in his Greewich Time blog, "Lincoln's Log". Let's keep this straight: Millstein is one of just four senior vice presidents in the entire company, and he reports to the company president. He is also the Senior VP responsible for all digital media at Hearst. Yet he promotes his own blog on the online edition of the newspaper for which he's responsible. And he still continues to mislead readers by not clearly identifying himself. The front page of his blog only says, "Lincoln Millstein offers his unique views and insights on Greenwich and its community". No mention on the front page that he's a senior executive, senior, in fact to everyone working at Greenwich Time.
He writes a very twisted version of the truth:
"(In a previous post, I was lambasted for referencing dictator Chang Kai-shek's regime, under which I spent my formative years, because he built both good schools and police stations."
No, I lambasted him for comparing the government and political system of Greenwich to the repressive regime of Chang Kai-Shek. He was not criticized for saying that Chang built good schools and police stations. That speaks volumes about the low standard of journalistic ethics with Millstein and Hearst. His suggesting that our town government in any way was equivalent to Chang's repressive dictatorship was highly insulting. But Millstein doesn't seem to think insulting our town's government in that manner is a problem.
The funny thing is that he is also writing critically about the town's educational system, which their education beat reporter Colin Gustafson refuses to criticize. Now how is it that a senior VP is writing about education in Greenwich Time when the paper has its own education reporter? Talk about making his own employees look bad. Is he sending Gustafson a message? If so, it's a lousy, very public way to embarrass one of the newspaper's reporters.
He writes:
School board issues self-congratulatory report on latest test scores (what's more important is not whether scores go up or down in one year or another. How we compare to the rest of the state is more important. I will follow with a detailed analysis in a separate post ...)
He says that comparison with other towns is most important. But shouldn't that message be conveyed by the GT publisher or editor to Gustafson? Why is Millstein trying to show him up? No class, that's for sure. Colin, get your resume together.
Why Hearst permits a senior executive to write a blog insulting local political leaders, while continuing to mislead readers by not pointing out clearly his position in the organization is inexplicable. The only answer is that the organization has no attachment to journalistic ethics.
First, kudos to billg for providing a link to the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services' February 1, 2008 Estate Tax Study. Let's be clear that the state's study was completely bogus. But we'll come back to that. Take a close look at that study and you see that Republican state senator L. Scott Frantz' (R-36) contention that the estate tax is motivating people to leave the state and hurting our economy is total hogwash. And, though "reporter" Neil Vigdor has responded to billg that he's going to make corrections to his first article about Frantz' submitting a bill recently to eliminate the estate tax, he's got a lot of corrections to make. First the numbers.
Perusing the DRS study's figures, it turns out that over the four year period covered by the study, the state lost 175,700 residents to other states, while 153,094 people moved into Connecticut, a net emigration of 22,606. Now keep that out-migration figure in mind: 175,700 left. Now take a look at the household incomes of each group. Those leaving the state averaged $66,357 in income; those coming into the state averaged $68,124 in household income. So far from the estate tax causing a mass out-migration of wealthy Nutmeggers, in fact (are you reading this, Senator Frantz?), the statistics show that those coming into the state earned higher incomes than those leaving. Furthermore, Senator Frantz concentrates on the emigration of older retirees, while completely ignoring the fact that since 2000 Connecticut has ranked dead last among the fifty states in the percentage of its young people who emigrate to other states, according to a recent study by Central Connecticut State University.
Now another set of data. Emigration to the state of Florida totaled 27,773 people, while 11,603 individuals moved from Florida into Connecticut. That means a net loss of 16,170 people to Florida. Those moving from Florida to Connecticut had household incomes of $45,870, while those leaving for Florida had household incomes of $70,067. Now there is a net outflow of people who are wealthier, but take a look at more numbers. Look which state accounts for the second largest net out-migration from Connecticut: North Carolina. While 3,252 people moved from North Carolina to the Nutmeg State over that period, 6,790 moved to the Tarheel State. And North Carolina- yep! you guessed it!- has an estate tax.
(Outrageous nonsense from a crappiest newspaper in the state. - promoted by ctblogger)
Progresssive columnist Sarah Littman, whose essays are carried in Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate, was fired by publisher John Dunster on Thursday for having written a column critical of Loony Lee Whitnum while having held a "meet-and-greet" for Jim Himes last year. According to Sarah, Dunster said that having criticized Loony Lee while having supported Jim Himes campaign "compromised the integrity of the paper".
What's the truth? This is a right-wing rag that has been shilling for Whitnum for months. In virtually every article about Jim Himes, Greenwich Time's political reporter Neil Vigdor has been boosting Whitnum's candidacy, covering up her whacky utterances and essentially portraying Whitnum as a courageous fighter against the Democratic machine.
But this appears to have been nothing but a pretext. In an appearance before the Greenwich Retired Men's Association about a month ago broadcast on Greenwich Community Television channel 79, Dunster, responding to a complaint about "liberal" Sarah Littman, admitted that he personally "on the conservative side of the spectrum", and said that he was going to make changes in the editorial page.
It is absurd for Dunster to have fired Littman, because she's not a reporter who is required to be objective, but in fact is paid to give her subjective take on political and social issues. Does anyone believe that David Brooks, George F. Will, or the editors of the Wall Street Journal don't contribute to political candidates? Of course they do. And George F. Will has actually served as an advisor to Republican candidates in the past.
MLN is powered by