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James Ledbetter and Katharine Mieszkowski

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Times Hits, Runs

By James Ledbetter
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 10, 1999, at 10:23 AM ET

Dear Katharine,

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Before you do anything else today, grab the Wall Street Journal and read the front-page profile of the new Jerry Brown, mayor of Oakland. It's a masterpiece on Brown's transformation from reform-driven eco-visionary into pragmatic city pol. In an overly felicitous phrase that I nonetheless wish I'd written, Peter Waldman says: "Gov. Moonbeam has become Mayor Pothole." Gone is the $100 limit on campaign contributions, gone are the denunciations of the prison-industrial complex. Now Brown boasts of his crackdown on crime, and says: "I don't talk about sustainable development. I talk about downtown development." I confess to harboring some soft sentiments for Brown, though my West Coast friends have always said he's easier to admire from 3,000 miles away.

And now for a rant, combining my old energy as Village Voice press critic with my new Industry Standard obsessions. The New York Times prominently published a story yesterday suggesting that AT&T was playing footsie with America Online. This is important because as faster, so-called broadband Internet access becomes more widespread, there will be a fierce battle to control both the data pipes that come into our homes and the content that goes through them. Excite@Home--which is now largely owned by AT&T--is sort of an early experiment in what companies might look like if they combine an Internet company (Excite) with a broadband service (@Home). Trouble is, both companies are kind of small potatoes compared to AOL's 17 million users. Hence, many people believe that AT&T will want to ease out of its deal with Excite, and move toward the masses represented by AOL. (I didn't bring this story up yesterday in part out of modesty: a Standard colleague of mine published a story months ago suggesting that an AT&T/AOL alliance was practically inevitable.)

So OK: The Times prints the story Monday saying these talks are under way and, not surprisingly, Excite@Home's stock price drops like Liddy Dole's poll numbers; investors figure that Excite@Home will be the unwanted third wheel. Midway through the day, both AT&T and Excite@Home issue statements saying that the companies will honor their exclusive agreements through 2002.

If you're the New York Times, you're ideally suited--and journalistically obligated--to publish a second day story. You've moved markets, and forced denials from two major communications companies. But in today's Times ... there's nothing at all. It's as if the whole thing never happened. Even though these are huge companies, there seems to be the attitude that "it's just the Internet." I'll bet you'd never get this kind of sketchy coverage if the businesses in question were GM or Citibank. And while of course we know that institutional jealousy is never a factor, it's interesting to note that Excite@Home has a market capitalization of about $9.5 billion, which contrasts intriguingly with the New York Times' $6.5 billion.

Yours,
Jim