Stories I’d like to see

Gingrich’s list, presidential book contracts, and job accounting

1. Gingrich’s Profits From His “Personal” Mailing List:

The Washington Post’s Dan Eggen did a terrific story last week detailing how former House Speaker Newt Gingrich accumulated large debts early on in his presidential campaign by, among other things, staying in pricey hotels and using hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of private jets. Much of the debt has still not been repaid, Eggen reported. One great nugget that caught my eye could use some follow-up. The Post found that $42,000 of the debt had already been paid – to “Gingrich himself” – for the purchase by his campaign of his “personal” donor and friends mailing list. Handing over a copy of a mailing list involves zero cost, which means that Gingrich – who could legally have given the list to his campaign as an in-kind contribution, according to the Post – apparently pocketed $42,000 in profit from his campaign donors and did so before paying off third-party creditors. I’d love to see a follow-up in which voters, not to mention donors, are asked how they feel about Gingrich pocketing the equivalent of more than 80 percent of the average household income of the voters he is courting.

Oh, and another thing: It has to have been one of Gingrich’s political organizations that paid for the solicitations and other work involved in compiling and maintaining the list, not the former Speaker himself. So, assuming the Post is correct that the money was paid to him personally, how did he get personal ownership of a list that is worth $42,000 every time it is loaned out – and, when he did, did he pay income tax on his receipt of this valuable asset?

2. The Candidates’ Book Deals:

I wonder if any of the Republican presidential candidates who have current books on the market – Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney – have any provisions in their publishing contracts giving them higher advances provided that they stay in the race for a certain period of time. It seems especially possible that this could be a factor in why Cain only suspended his campaign and why Bachmann is hanging on.

3. Inside Standard & Poor’s:

The New York Times becomes a video force

The opinions expressed are his own.

1. The New York Times Goes Video:

Three different story ideas are prompted by the hours of interviews former Penn State assistant football coach and accused child molester Jerry Sandusky gave to the New York Times’ Jo Becker that resulted in a front-page Times story on Saturday.

First, by Saturday night I was seeing video clips of Becker’s interview on NBC, which credited the Times. This means Becker, a highly-regarded, hard-nosed print reporter, brought a video crew with her to make her Times report a multimedia event – which it was, with great impact, on the Times’ website. This left NBC’s Michael Isikoff, himself a print refuge from Newsweek, narrating a story on the Evening News on Saturday night using audio from Becker’s interview and the Times’ branded video package.

This, in itself, is a big media story. The Times‘ website, which now charges non-subscribers and is attracting hundreds of thousands of paying customers, is becoming an increasingly robust 24/7 multimedia platform. What are the prospects of the Times dispatching video crews more regularly to tape important on-the-record interviews? How will that change the reporter’s interview style and methods? (It sure would change mine, because it shifts the atmosphere and rhythm of an interview.) How might this affect the media chase to corral hard-to-get, high-profile figures for interviews? Might some feel better making their TV debut with a Times reporter than a conventional TV reporter? Leaving aside questions about their decision to talk to the press at all, it could be that Sandusky and his lawyer believed that by agreeing to this forum, they were minimizing the dangers of “gotcha” questions or of having sound bites taken out of context.

The Times report on the website was a strange mix of audio/video and audio-only. In some places, we saw and heard Sandusky, but more often we only saw still pictures of Sandusky and Becker while we listened to them. This suggests that the Times and reporters like Becker are still getting their feet wet in multimedia while they iron out issues such as limited budgets (this was clearly a one-camera shot) and interview ground rules. Nonetheless, this multimedia scoop for the paper of record is a transcendent media story.

Second, I’d like to read a story about Sandusky’s lawyer, at whose home the interview was conducted. Why does he think this interview, considered by most defense lawyers to be suicidal in advance of a trial, made sense? What other big cases has he done? Is this his usual approach to publicity? How has it worked in the past? Or is this his first big time case?

Obamacare word games, Arianna’s real deal, and Spanish power

By Steven Brill

This is the second entry in a new regular column, “Stories I’d Like To See.” It’s the notebook of someone who still thinks like an editor but is over the thrill of managing a reporting staff – or the hassle of dealing with “great” story ideas that crash and burn when someone actually goes out and reports them and learns anew that even the best editors can’t hit much better than the best ballplayers (meaning three or four out of ten story ideas will actually work).

1. Obamacare’s Word Game Screw-Up:

As the debate over the constitutionality of Obamacare’s individual mandate moves toward an election-year climax in the Supreme Court, I’m surprised that I haven’t read a story recounting the deliberate but boneheaded decision by Administration officials to call the fine imposed on those not buying health insurance a “penalty” instead of labeling it a “tax.” Someone in the White House counsel’s office or the Justice Department must have spoken up and told everyone else what most constitutional lawyers who have looked at the current litigation now readily acknowledge: that there would be almost zero chance of opponents mounting a credible attack on the provision if it was called a tax. In fact, in one of the lower court skirmishes over the constitutionality of the law, conservative D.C. Appeals Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh seemed to enjoy tweaking the Obama people by readily conceding that the law would be okay had they simply called it a tax. Congress has a well-established right to tax anything or anyone.

Apparently afraid of burying the word tax somewhere in the 974-page bill, the Administration insisted on calling the fine – which, ironically will be assessed on tax returns and collected by the IRS – a “penalty” for not buying insurance. Did any of the President’s lawyers warn the former constitutional law professor about this?

2. Arianna’s Real Deal

The long, gauzy profile of Arianna Huffington in New York magazine raised more questions than it answered. While we read continually of how she is shaping an empire at AOL, I’d like to know how much control over editorial content and budgets Arianna Huffington’s AOL buy-out deal actually allowed her to retain (assuming she had such control in the first place under her original investors).  And what percent of the giant purchase price was she able to cash out on Day One versus having to wait and presumably be at the mercy of AOL’s declining prospects? Although it’s been reported that virtually all of the deal was in cash, as opposed to AOL stock, I’ve never seen the details published anywhere, let alone anything about what independent power she actually has. Does her employment contract with AOL have a non-disparagement clause that would see her risk any remaining payout if she gets into a public fight with CEO Tim Armstrong as the water continues to circle the drain at AOL?

Romney, Sully, Steve Jobs and The Boss

By Steven Brill

This is the first entry in a new regular column, “Stories I’d Like To See.” It’s the notebook of someone who still thinks like an editor but is over the thrill of managing a reporting staff – or the hassle of dealing with “great” story ideas that crash and burn when someone actually goes out and reports them and learns anew that even the best editors can’t hit much better than the best ballplayers (meaning three or four out of ten story ideas will actually work).

1. Mitt the philanthropist:

If the excellent New York Times story last month about Mitt Romney’s Mormon Church involvement is correct, he is required to tithe 10 percent of his income to the Church or church activities each year. This would amount to an enormous amount of money when he was running Bain Capital during its highly-successful years. It might even make him the most charitable person ever to run for President (or be President). Is this true? Or did he tithe 10 percent of his “taxable income,” which would have been a lot less, given all the deductions and favorable tax-rate-treatment available to a high-income private-equity earner?

2. Mitt the taxpayer:

On the other hand, this raises the issue of what percentage of his gross earnings Romney paid in taxes during his best years, or even last year, when presumably all of his earnings were capital gains and might also have been subject to all kinds of investment tax credit and other deductions. I know he hasn’t released his tax returns (yet), but can’t someone get access to Bain’s investor reports and an estimate of his gross income, and then extrapolate that into what he actually might have paid, given favorable tax treatment of capital gains and of carried interest payouts to private equity fund managers? Or, at least, can’t some pesky reporter simply pick Bain’s best two or three years when he was running it and ask Romney what percent of federal income tax he paid on his gross income?

3. Yankees’ empty seats: