TUESDAY'S LINKS: Tribune War About Power and Status, Investigations as Press' Best Hope, 'Pharm Parties'

By: E&P Staff In today's links, MySpace eyes Europe and Asia for expanding its operations, Tribune CEO Dennis FitzSimons comes under fire, and a report that New York Times editors knew of a freelance art critic's possible conflict of interest.


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Tribune CEO Facing Public Criticism
Los Angeles Times: People who admire Dennis J. FitzSimons say he works like an ox, is dead honest, inspires deep loyalty in the people around him and, when pushed, will fight. His critics say that, in addition, the chairman and chief executive of Tribune Co. can be self-confident to the point of arrogance and touchy about being challenged. Some doubt his strategic vision and, as the first Tribune chief to rise through the broadcast division, his "feel" for newspapers.

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MySpace Outlines European Expansion
Financial Times: MySpace, the social networking site, is to use the UK as a beachhead for a push into Europe that will see it link up with ?old media? companies and mobile phone operators to attract more users. Chris DeWolfe, co-founder and chief executive of MySpace, told the Financial Times on Monday that he had earmarked 11 countries for its international expansion, among them France and Germany, and was looking at China and India over the longer term.


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Times Editors Knew Of Critic's Board Seat
New York Sun: Freelance New York Times art critic Grace Glueck, who resigned from her seat on the Clark Art Institute's board of trustees last week, had informed her editors of her role at the museum in 1995, according to the newspaper's standards editor, Craig Whitney. The editors at the time, which included culture editor Daniel Lewis, decided the situation did not pose a problem, Mr. Whitney told the Sun, as long as Ms. Glueck did not write about the Clark.


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Phar-Fetched 'Pharm Parties'
Slate: "It goes without saying that pharm parties may be very real and very everywhere," wriites Jack Shafer. "It's a big country. But it looks to me like pharm party is just a new label the drug-abuse industrial complex has adopted to describe the decades-old tradition of pill parties."


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'King County (Wash.) Journal' To Be Sold
Seattle Times: Horvitz Newspapers, owner of the Kent-based King County Journal, today announced that it is putting the suburban daily and several affiliated publications up for sale. "Horvitz Newspapers doesn't have the financial resources to achieve the potential of these newspapers ?and they have great potential," Peter Horvitz, president and chief executive officer of the company, said in a prepared statement.


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IRE Chief on Saving the Press
Dallas Morning News: "For too long, the news industry has regarded investigative reporting as too time-consuming and costly," writes Brant Houston. "Media owners also have seen investigative reporting as a "niche" kind of reporting: nice for the sake of public service and awards-gathering, but not really a daily concern. But it's becoming increasingly clear that investigative reporting may be the beleaguered newspaper industry's best franchise for the future."


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Wit and Wisdom of a Newspapering Legend
Akron Beacon-Journal: "The year was 1978. Then, as now, the newspaper company established here in 1903 by C.L. Knight, the father of John S. Knight, was in flux," recalls Dan Neuharth. "Until the 1970s, most newspapers were owned locally, not as part of a group, and owned privately, often passed down from generation to generation. By the mid-1970s, several newspaper companies had gone public. For the first time, more newspapers were owned by groups, both private and public, than were singly held by a local publisher. This interview, conducted two days before John S. Knight's 84th birthday, was part of a research project on how industrywide changes in newspaper ownership were affecting the quality of local journalism."


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Waging Chicago's New Newspaper War
Washington Post: "On the surface, this dispute is about the best way to get Tribune's stock price up," writes Allan Sloan. "But if you look at the fine print, study the Chandlers' history of tax avoidance and consult parties knowledgeable about the situation (who would talk about sensitive matters only if they weren't identified), you see this is a typical corporate battle: It's about money, power and status, not necessarily in that order."


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Chipping Away at the Story of Guantanamo
CJR Daily: "With the apparent suicides of three detainees followed by the Pentagon's clampdown on reporting at Guantanamo Bay last week, the United States' war-on-terror detention facility in Cuba is again in the spotlight," writes edward colby. "In its lead story Sunday, the Boston Globe approached the legal black hole that is Guantanamo from an important fresh angle, reporting that "The U.S. government routinely failed to give detainees at Guantanamo Bay access to witnesses who might have helped them prove their assertions of innocence, saying it could not locate the vast majority of the witnesses the terror suspects requested at special military hearings" held in late 2004 and early 2005."