Worst corporate drivel ever as the newspaper's parent company plans a garage sale.

Leave it to a chain newspaper entity to unleash dolt-speak in announcing almost nothing at all apart from a desire for corporate bigwigs to make even more money.

People who write this badly should be in prison camps -- not children. Passages highlighted in bold scarlet represent particularly egregious spoutings of nonsensical gibberish.

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CNHI explores sale of newspaper company, by a robot at the CNHI NEWS SERVICE, live from the sand trap of a Bobby Jones golf course somewhere in sweet home Alabama

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – CNHI, LLC, one of the country’s leading providers of local news and information, said Monday it is exploring the sale of its newspaper properties in 22 states.

The announcement was made after its parent company, Raycom Media Inc., reported it has signed an agreement to be acquired by Gray Television group, a public company headquartered in Atlanta.

The News and Tribune is owned by CNHI, a subsidiary of Raycom.

Donna Barrett, CNHI’s president and chief executive office, said the company has retained the newspaper brokerage firm of Dirks, Van Essen, Murray and April to handle the sale of its newspapers.

“We’re excited to open the next chapter in our commitment to top-flight community journalism,” said Barrett. “We are looking for a transaction or transactions that will carry on CNHI’s rich tradition of public service through award-winning journalism.”

CNHI is a 20-year-old newspaper company that has grown from a few community newspapers at the outset to more than 100 papers today. They are located in the Midwest, Southwest, Southeast and Northeast.

Raycom Media Inc., which owns or operates television stations in 65 markets, acquired CNHI nine months ago.

“As we undertake this exploration process, we cannot say that any particular transaction will or will not take place,” said Barrett. “What we can say is that we will consider various options as we work to find a partner or partners that share our dedication to community newspapers and the vital journalism they produce to serve local audiences.”

A bold statement in corporate nothingness: "When Bad Policy Makes An Entire Country Sick, Business Must Lead," unless the Chamber says otherwise.

For perhaps the first time in this blog's storied history, LinkedIn (say what?) provides an interesting ... er, "link."

Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the musing is interesting primarily because of what it cannot bring itself to say.

Relying on the CEO of a major-corporate-anything to produce a coherent argument seems destined for the heartache of underachievement. It's about making money, damn it -- why all this self-defeating ethical chatter?

It's as though Battelle found himself close to an insight before feeling the gentle tug of the US Chamber of Commerce on his sleeve:

"Look, guys and gals and fellow robber barons, I can see the enemy and He is Us ... wait, what's that?"

(Wendy Dant Chesser's umbrella tip pierces his skin, and a relaxed expression comes over him. There are billowing clouds, fields of flowers and record profits)

"On second thought, it's the system -- that's it, the system, not the willing producers of poison."

Right on. We're proud of you. A plaque's in the mail.

Even so, a perusal of the hundreds of comments affixed to this muddled expression of Disney envy yields sheer terror -- first, that LinkedIn is valued at all as a social media outlet (disclosure: I have an account because of the NABC sales experience, and go there seldom precisely because I'm no longer a sales person, and the site is largely insipid), and second, that corporate America toes the zombie-speak chamber line this firmly, to the exclusion of all human reason.

In short: When you're busy serving as a paid apologist for the 1%, you don't want to be troubled by introspection.

It doesn't pay, does it?

When Bad Policy Makes An Entire Country Sick, Business Must Lead, by John Battelle

Walking around Disneyland with my daughter the other night, I found myself face to face with one of our country’s most intractable taboos.

(Disneyland is still awesome for me, as a kid from 1970s LA. Truly magical.)

If you’re an observer of crowds, one of the more prominent features of the Disneyland crowd is how generally overweight our country has become (I live in the Bay area, and readily admit my interaction with folks on most days is not representative of a broad cross section of our population). I’d estimate at least a third of the folks at Disney are seeing Mike and Molly-level images in the mirror — and about 2–3% or so have more weight than they can carry around, and have therefore graduated to “mobility scooters.”

These industrial strength scooters have become commonplace at the Happiest Place on Earth. I’m guessing from the name that they were initially created for disabled and elderly folks, but clearly they’ve been reinforced for more rigorous duty. For every one of them we saw piloted by a fellow with a knee brace or an elderly grandmother, there were ten requisitioned for moving Big People around.

For a spell, I sat on a bench with my daughter and watched them wheel by ...

Coming around again: Matters of principle at LEO.

I think it is highly instructive that LEO's Sarah Kelley has chosen to "take a bullet" rather than acquiesce to a directive she cannot abide. Good for her. I recall a similar story back in 2010.

It had to do with my column for LEO, and Sarah Kelley's protectionist view of Budweiser's place therein,as documented at the time in A Tale of Two Columns, followed shortly thereafter by This round goes to the Liteweights, as Mr. Mug Shot is no more.

Recently I was approached by a pleasant LEO advertising sales person and her boss. They pitched the idea of an ongoing, half-page ad/column to be sponsored by NABC, on the topic of cooking with beer and food-beer pairings.

The rate? Reasonable by the standards of the genre.

I asked who'd be providing the actual content, and clarified that it would be NABC (read: me) and not a LEO staffer. After all, isn't the fact that I once wrote a column for LEO sufficient proof that I'm a writer?

Having established that as a writing ad buyer, I'd have control over the content, I told them the story about my experience as a LEO columnist, the tiff over ever-sensitive megabuck monoliths like AB-InBev not abiding insults, and the fact that I encouraged the door to hit me in the ass while exiting.

So, as advertising purchaser, would I still be censored as to anti-Budweiser polemics in the same way as before?

They said they'd get back to me. It's been a few weeks now, and I've heard nothing.

Now it strikes me as ironic. Sarah Kelley's principled departure from LEO, and the uncertainty surrounding the alt weekly's future, perhaps offer an even better reason to be wary of advertising there ... but it wasn't clear that truth-telling would have been allowed even if I paid to place it.

Matters of principle. Funny damned things, indeed.

WFPL: LEO Editor Sarah Kelley leaves rather than cut staffers, by Staff (Insider Louisville)

In late July we told you SouthComm CEO Chris Ferrell was in Louisville to meet with LEO Weekly staffers.

At that time, we asked Ferrell both in phone conversations and in emails about information we had from LEO insiders about pending cuts. He declined to discuss the changes on the record, and, as we say, off the record is off the record.

We also contacted LEO staffers about the cuts, but no one would go on the record.

Today, WFPL’s Gabe Bullard reported LEO Editor Sarah Kelley has chosen to take a bullet rather than to layoff colleagues.

Is there someone or something we can sue for false advertising?

I know that it's lazy of me to cross-post, but just the same ... let's have a brief educational moment.


Certainly this is the best recent example of corporate cluelessness in plain sight that I've seen. Note that just because a beer differs from the flavorless norm in the sense of light-this or that, it doesn't necessarily imply that it is "craft" or "specialty."

Thanks to Clay (via John) for this vision of conceptual futility, courtesy of the Buffalo Wild Wings branch by the Mall St. Matthews in Louisville, Kentucky. Remind me not to go there any time soo, will ya?