Robert Rivard, who has received criticism by many as leading the San Antonio Express-News (EN) toward a liberal bias, resigned today as editor.
According to sources inside the newspaper, Rivard’s resignation was announced to them at a surprise meeting this afternoon.
Rumors ran rampant throughout the Alamo City while officially, publisher Tom Stephenson indicated Rivard was going to pursue other endeavors.
Readership circulation for the EN has been declining for years during Rivard’s tenure.
NEWSPAPER READERSHIP DECLINING
Recent EN circulation counts for Monday-Thursday readership was 133,480. This is down from 225,233 in 2007 and 239,000 in 2000, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
“I don’t sit around sucking my thumb about why the public doesn’t like us more,” Rivard, a native of Petoskey, Mich. once told journalism watcher Ellen Hume. “We’re contrarians. That’s why we got into this business.”
“Rivard seemed to be set on a liberal agenda at the Express and News right smack in the middle of the home of Ft. Sam Houston, Randolph, Lackland, and Brooks,” said observer Richard Jordan. “San Antonio is referred to by many as Military City, USA and is not really a hot-bed for the most liberal minded readers.”
“I got the feeling he was much better at trying to control the opinion of San Antonio readers than he was at just reporting news,” Scott Bedford commented. “It got to the point the talk at the water cooler was not about the news, but about what liberal slant they (EN) were going to slap us up the side the head with next.”
Readers became accustomed to EN endorsements to more liberal political candidates and causes, some note, “but it seemed to be escalating,” noted Bedford.
INCOMPENTENCY, BIAS, BAD ETHICS, CENSORSHIP ACCUSED
Recently, in his May 29, 2011 EN column Rivard wrote “President Rick Perry? In all likelihood I will never again string those three words together ...”
Retired U.S. Army colonel Ken Allard, who holds a Ph.D. from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, once outlined the causes of Rivard’s EN dwindling readership.
The EN managed to lose touch with both workers and customers, Allard said. “They lost their competence.”
“The fact is that liberals either run things poorly - or run them into the ground,” Allard wrote in The San Antonio Lightening website. The EN “is no exception, having managed to lose both readers and money despite an effective monopoly over a large metropolitan area. How do you manage that, except by progressively alienating your own community?”
Allard contends the column he wrote at the EN was a casualty of Rivard’s “exquisitely fine-tuned self-interest that disses or dismisses everyone else. Case in point: my column was canceled with no warning and a tardy phone call.”
“No insincere accolades, false protestations of regret, or even a scintilla of understanding that - week in, week out - the paper had kept a readership who appreciated my writing,” Allard recalled. Part of their demise is pure “bad ethics.”
'I WAS NEVER CENSORED SO ROUTINELY'
Allard also wrote in the San Antonio Lightening that EN practiced censorship.
When readers asked Allard about the subject, his response was “after serving nearly thirty years as an intelligence officer, I was never censored so routinely, so off-handedly or with such inherent clumsiness as the last two years while writing for your editorial page.”
“To be fair, not all the editing was bad because every writer makes mistakes that a competent editorial staff should catch,” Allard wrote. “But they should NEVER make new ones, alter meanings or even delete entire sentences…. I was over-ruled without explanation or apology and am told that this is a common experience for others as well.”
Allard accused EN of being bias.
“You will need to explain to your readers rather than to me why "budget cuts" necessitated my departure rather than my considerably more left-wing UTSA colleague, Mansour Al-Kikhia, whose Friday column characteristically slandered the Republican Convention,” he stated.
“The irony is that I even offered to keep writing for free,” Allard wrote. “You refused, a choice of which your readers should be made fully aware.”
Allard charged that Rivard and other editors favored liberal reporting and opinions.
In an Aug. 16, column, O. Ricardo Pimentel criticized Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s position on state’s right by writing Perry “doesn't sound exactly presidential.”
EXPRESS NEWS: OBAMA HEALTHCARE AFFORDABLE TO EVERYONE; INDIVIDUAL SIGN UP
When the EN presented their endorsement for President in 2008, they praised Barack Obama’s position on healthcare: “Obama proposes a system that is affordable for everyone, leaving it up to the individuals to decide whether they want to sign up.”
The liberal bias had become so bad by the summer of 2011 that Texas Senator Jeff Wentworth had to resort to spending thousands of dollars to actually buy EN advertising space to ensure his side of the story was told whenstate Sen. Leticia Van de Putte was allowed to criticize Gov. Perry in a guest column.
Wentworth, with eight Republican colleagues, pointed out that Van de Putte was “race-baiting” and supported by EN editors.
SENATOR JEFF WENTWORTH FIGHTS BACK AT EN
Wentworth went after EN’s Pimentel, Victor Landa, and Rivard who were writing articles against Republicans.
“They edit things and take out comments,” said Wentworth. “I didn’t want them to do that to me.”
In a second ad in the EN Sunday edition, Wentworth said if “you’re a Republican and criticize race-baiting, and decry conduct that encourages racial strife, you are attacked in print by three newspaper columnists.”
In fairness, Rivard and the EN's bias, is not the only reason the EN has lost readership. Monster.com, Craigslist and other Internet sources has replaced newspapers as the most popular place for classified advertising.
In San Antonio, the advertising landscape has changed considerably over the years. Joske’s, Montgomery Ward, K-Mart, Kroger, Foley’s and other retailers have diminished or no longer exist in San Antonio.
The bad economy has also hurt the auto dealerships, new homes and other industries EN’s historically relied on for income.
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