I met Phil Donahue

Saturday I attended a lecture sponsored by the Foolproof performing arts organization as part of its American Voices series. The panel, "All the News That's Fit to Own: Who Controls the Media and Why We Should Care," featured Robert McChesney, Phil Donahue, Amy Goodman and Frank Blethen. The talk, facilitated by Nancy Maynard, lasted about 90 minutes and focused on how the consolidation of media ownership is bad for our democracy. I wish it had lasted longer.

Frank Blethen, the publisher of The Seattle Times, was a bit hard to listen to. At the same time he was cursing the chain ownership that is causing family newspapers like his to be gobbled up by large companies such as Gannett and Hearst, you can't ignore that he's looking out for his own butt first. I mean, The Times' competition, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, is owned by Hearst. And The Times is working really hard at putting the P-I out of business. Add to that the fact that the Blethens themselves are owners of a chain -- the family owns papers in Maine as well as the daily papers in Yakima and Walla Walla, Washington. Of course he's against the inheritance tax -- the so-called "death tax" -- which would make it difficult to pass on his jewel to his own heirs. Admittedly, that is a contributing factor to allowing large companies to swoop in and grab up a paper that heirs can't afford anymore, but Blethen should be taken with a grain of salt.

Doahue and Goodman, in particular, were great. I have to check out Goodman's Democracy Now! program. And it;s good to know Donahue is still alive and kicking -- why is he not given a new platform after MSNBC unceremoniously canned him?

After the show, my friend the CIB wanted to meet one of her heroes, Donahue. So we staked out a spot by the aisle we suspected he would use to come out to the lobby atthe Paramount Theatre. Soone enough here he came, she walked up and said what an influence he had been, a slightly bewildered Donahue shook both our hands and that was that. For CIB, it was much more significant than for me, but it was cool nonetheless. The lecture organizer looked a bit peeved that we had injected ourselves in a kind of ambush, but isn't that how a good journalist does it? Donahue himself should have been proud.

-- Wenatchee, Wash.