Kirsten Gillibrand and Big Tobacco or What Happens When Newspapers Die?

It was more than a month ago that I first learned of Kirsten Gillibrand's ties to Big Tobacco. Gillibrand, who was appointed by Governor David Patterson to fill Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, had numerous ties to Phillip Morris and Altria (Phillip Morris' attempt at creating a less controversial name). Tom Robbins, of the Village Voice, wrote an extensive article about Gillibrand and her time as an attorney working for Phillip Morris on February 10, 2009.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-02-11/columns/gillibrand-learned-how-to-defend-tobacco-s-dirtiest-secrets-as-a-young-lawyer/1

Robbins cites an earlier article published in the Albany paper, Times Union, by reporter James Odato. Odato's piece ran while Gillibrand was running to defend her congressional seat against Republican Sandy Treadwell, on October 16, 2008.

http://timesunion.com/ASPStories/Story.asp?StoryID=729940&LinkFrom=RSS&TextPage=2

The New York Times finally reported on the issue last week in an extensive article written by Raymond Hernandez and David Kocieniewski.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/nyregion/27gillibrand.html?pagewanted=1&sq=gillibrand%20tobacco&st=cse&scp=2


Now, the three articles basically outline the same basic facts: Kirsten Gillibrand worked at a law firm from 1991-2000, while there one of her main assignments was defending Phillip Morris. All the articles try to determine just how important a player she was on that assignment or was she, as her campaign insists, just doing her job as a lowly associate, going through files.

All three articles contacted Gillibrand's staff. Odato and Robbins were able to get more candid responses while the Times got mostly non-answers. The Times article, however, is by far the longest and contains the most in-depth coverage and research. It is clear that the Times was able to capitalize on its resources and produce a thorough and exhaustive piece.

The question is, what took them so long and also, would they have even done an article if the Voice and Times Union had not?

What if the Times Union and the Voice were forced to shut down like so many other newspapers around the country? The work that James Odato did on this issue was the catalyst for the other articles. Some media analysts are saying that it is quite possible that many major cities will be without a hometown daily paper in the years to come. Seattle lost one of its two dailies on March 17th, when the Post-Intelligencer (owned by Hearst Corp., parent company of Albany Times Union) shut down its print edition. And just today Chicago Sun Times filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200903310918DOWJONESDJONLINE000405_FORTUNE5.htm


In Michael Hirschorn's Atlantic Monthly piece, "End Times", about the death of print journalism, he states:

"The collapse of daily print journalism will mean many things. It will mean the end of a certain kind of quasi-bohemian urban existence for the thousands of smart middle-class writers, journalists, and public intellectuals who have, until now, lived semi-charmed kinds of lives of the mind. And it will seriously damage the press’s ability to serve as a bulwark of democracy. There’s no online substitute for institutions that can marshal years of well-developed sourcing and reporting experience."

This is very true. In switching to an on-line as opposed to print newspaper, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer went from a staff of 165 to a staff of 20! If the Albany Times Union made the same transition would James Odato have a job? Would his piece ever have been written? Who would fill the void? Scary thought; almost as scary as Gillibrand's work for Big Tobacco.