Frank Somerville Suspended From KTVU – Rich Lieberman Blasts Media Outlets Who Stole His Story

Oakland News Now – Frank Somerville Suspended From KTVU – Rich Lieberman Blasts Media Outlets Who Stole His Story – vlog by Zennie62 YouTube. OaklandNewsNow.com is the original blog post for this content.

Frank Somerville Suspended From KTVU – Rich Lieberman Blasts Media Outlets Who Stole His Story

Richard, as I know him, and Rich, as he goes by, issued this tweet Saturday evening:

This is in response to the fact that he broke the story of KTVU Anchor Frank Somerville’s suspension on Friday, and had been blogging about the long-time popular SF Bay Area Media personality’s problems for some time, yet the San Francisco Chronicle and the Bay Area News Group failed to mention him as the source of the news as of this writing.

Indeed, only one news organization, ZENNIE62MEDIA, INC., the Delaware c-corporation of which I own 68 percent and that owns the Oakland-focused blog you’re reading and called Oakland News Now or OaklandNewsNow.com, did.

So, in order to really keep up with the story on KTVU Anchor Frank Somerville’s suspension, and what should lead to a resolution and return to KTVU, read Richard’s blog.

Now, before you get into why those news organizations fail to credit Richard, let me explain that they have done the same thing to me and ZENNIE62MEDIA, INC. in the past.  I will give the San Francisco Chronicle credit in that the author of their travel topic did link to Oakland News Now as a news source on United Airlines’ new food box offerings on its flights.   But when it came to the matter of the Oakland Raiders move to Las Vegas or the Oakland A’s Howard Terminal Topic, there was a lot of unethical behavior and from an organization that knows nothing about tax increment financing, of which I am an expert and plays a key role in the Howard Terminal Ballpark matter.

But, I digress.

Richard is right.  And he used Twitter, owned by Jack Dorsey, to issue his latest take on the Frank Somerville situation:

So, read Rich Lieberman’s blog he calls 415 MEDIA for all there is to know about the Frank Somerville suspension.  And remember folks that blogs, bloggers, and vloggers and video-blogs are far more effective forms of news presentation and commentary than the standard and so-called “objective” mainstream media.  The mainstream media is not objective and never has been.  The fact is that, in the American context, the mainstream media represents the interests of a majority-white population and because it perceives that’s where the money is; it’s takes on any subject, let alone the choice to cover that topic, is an expression of the fact that they work to serve the interests of white people in America.  That’s not me saying that – that’s Nieman Research, the non-profit that keeps tabs on what journalists and the organizations that hire them do.  You should check out the report Nieman issued on that finding.

On top of that, Hearst Communications, which owns the San Francisco Chronicle, has a staff that’s 66,000 strong, and overwhelmingly white to the tune of 78 percent. (Have doubts? Read for yourself.)

Heast Is Overwhelmingly White
Heast Is Overwhelmingly White

I wonder if Hearst CEO Stephen Swartz never followed up on his offer to take me to dinner in New York after he discovered at I was the largest traffic generator of all sections of the San Francisco Chronicle when I was a City Brights Blogger from 2009 to 2011 because i am black? I generated an estimated 26 million page views and $100,000 in ad revenue for the organization. Yet, all they did was hire someone ahead of me to run SFGate.com, and then that person blocked me from posting for completely bullcrap reasons. That led me to create what eventually became the blogs Zennie62.com and Oakland News Now, and then the firm ZENNIE62MEDIA, INC. – which is designed with a startup structure to go public.

Watch….

The lesson? Never make a black media tech (or just tech) person angry. (And what feels worse is Alana is someone I really thought would be an ally.).

Again, I digress.

Is Richard’s Claim About Billionaires Owning SF Bay Area Media Companies Correct?

Before I close, you may be wondering if Rich Lieberman’s claim about billionaires owning media is right.  Well, the short answer is yes, but let’s go further, shall we?

The San Francisco Chronicle is owned by Hearst Corporation which many know by “Hearst_Communications” or just “Hearst”.

The firm was founded by William Randolph Hearst, the well-known (or should be known to you) as the American businessman, newspaper publisher, and politician who was worth $30 billion (the family’s current wealth is estimated at $24 billion), and the focus of the legendary Orson Wells movie Citizen Kane.

And here I will resist a desire to blog more about that movie, and just tell you that Hearst fought to stop the movie from being shown.  Why?  Well, see Citizen Kane.

The point is, Hearst Communications was started by a billionaire, and was and still is a billionaire company worth many billions of dollars, and controls what you read and watch via what it owns either in part or whole.  So, Rich is right about the organization that bought the San Francisco Chronicle is 2000 from the deYoung family.  But what about the Bay Area News Group?

Well, the Bay Area News Group is really a digital marketing company and is owned by a firm with a name I love called Digital First Media and also called MNG Enterprises.  And why do I love the name?  Because media, today, really is “digital first”.

Anyway, what became in a complicated way Digital First Media was founded by newspaper publisher William Dean Singleton, who then managed to sell many of its shares to New York-based hedge fund Alden Global Capital as a part of a deal when what was once called Singleton’s MediaNews emerged from bankruptcy.   While Digital First Media and Alden Global Capital have worked to acquire media organization’s like the $1.4 billion ask for Ganett, but failed, at present neither firm is worth over a billion dollars.  So, technically, Rich is wrong.

But while Rich may not be accurate in the case of Digital First Media, the fact is the company is a cost-cutting media machine known for lean staff practices.  And it has moved into digital market and online reputation management, which places it in direct competition with my firm, ZENNIE62MEDIA.  In fact, Hearst Corporation also owns its own digital market and online reputation management firm called Hearst Media Services, which uses its website to show that it involves the use of the San Francisco Chronicle, the Houston Chronicle and other publications it owns in its digital service.  Again, in direct competition to ZENNIE62MEDIA.

The point of all of this is that in the chase for dollars and eyeball control, these organizations do not want you to read a small publication like Richard’s or any of the ZENNIE62MEDIA blogs (we own 100 of them).  So, content theft by not attributing the source is sadly common.  In the case of the Frank Somerville KTVU story, they have taken from Rich shamelessly.   There’s a technical response, but it’s outside of Rich’s ability to do it – but not ZENNIE62MEDIA’s.

Stay tuned.

via IFTTT

Note from Zennie62Media’s Zennie62 YouTube and Oakland News Now Today Blog SF Bay Area: this video-blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest updated version of an experimental Zennie62Media , Inc. mobile media video-blogging system network that was launched June 2018. This is a major part of Zennie62Media , Inc.’s new and innovative approach to the production of news media. What we call “The Third Wave of Media”. The uploaded video is from a vlogger with the Zennie62 on YouTube Partner Channel, then uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now site and Zennie62-created and owned social media pages. The overall objective is smartphone-enabled, real-time, on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. Now, news is reported with a smartphone: no heavy and expensive cameras or even a laptop are necessary. The secondary objective is faster, and very inexpensive media content news production and distribution. We have found there is a disconnect between post length and time to product and revenue generated. With this, the problem is far less, though by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system network coding and seeks interested content and media technology partners.