BuzzMachine

I can’t find anything about this online, but on the local NBC news this morning, they reporrted that Comedy Central was not asking YouTube to pull all the clips from its show, only full episodes — a reasonable and wise position. It seems that cooler heads prevailed. YouTube is a magnificent new means of distribution and promotion. Now the key will be for Comedy Central to also make money on those clips; once that happens, the networks will fall over themselves to put their own stuff up.

: MediaBistro did some reporting on this.

The Daily Express decides to outsource its business section to the Press Association, the UK wire service (its Associated Press), cutting a tenth of the paper’s 350-strong staff.

It makes sense, as far as it goes. When I was Sunday editor of the New York Daily News, I worked to outsource our TV grids and book. Papers have long since done this with financial tables. Why not whole sections? If I ran a chain like Gannett or McClatchy (no thanks), I’d consolidate or outsource all kinds of editing. Yes, it makes sense on paper.

But what about off paper and online? There, if you don’t want to go to the expense of having a business section, if it’s not core to what you do, then you can link to one. And that forces you to decide what is core. What is it that just you can do and that can’t be outsourced?

When you’ve answered that question, then, finally, you’ve decided what your news organization is really all about.

Some followup on the kerfuffle about Nielsen closing a conference about “consumer generated media” to blogging: See a very reasonable suggestion from Greg Verdino, whose post started all this. This was what I’d hoped we’d hear from the Nielsen folks, instead of back-up-against-the-wall argument.

But as a CGM Summit attendee, I still believe that there was plenty of non-proprietary content that could be shared by bloggers without adversely impacting BuzzMetrics, its clients or other event participants. And it is possible to balance on-the-record and off — it didn’t have to be all or nothing. . . .

Blogging (like all forms of consumer generated media) truly is a dialogue and while we don’t all need to agree, we are all better off if we discuss. And discuss we did.

Nielsen also needs to understand that this isn’t just another business conference. It’s a conference about us and the wisdom of our crowd; we are the “consumers” who are “generating” that “media.” To act as if you own our wisdom gets us a bit cranky (and so does calling us consumers). This is why many of us resent the mere existence of a WOMMA. If, instead, you continue the conversation, we can be quite generous. But generosity is a two-way street.

After Howard Kurtz issued what I characterized as the common, kneejerk newsroom response to threats of cutbacks — oh, woe is journalism; ah, what will become of investigative reporting? — many of us piled on to say that newsrooms are bloated and need cutting — or more to the point, need to cut the crap so they can focus on what matters. Kurtz responds , quoting Jack Shafer and me and saying:

Not to spoil a good food fight, but I don’t disagree with any of that. Some newspapers are overstaffed. Not all budget cuts are bad. Not every newspaper in America needs to have a reporter covering the White House, or London, or attending political conventions and writing the same pap as everyone else. What’s more, lest they suffer the fate of General Motors by churning out gas-guzzlers, they need to move more boldly into the digital age, which probably requires smaller newsrooms than in the past as print circulations decline.

Here comes the ‘but’ . . .

But many of the corporate executives ordering these cuts don’t care about finding innovative ways to cover the news; they just want to please Wall Street by getting the payroll down.

But shouldn’t it be up to the editors of these newspapers to find those innovative ways to cover the news and to help the institution and its value survive the transition to the new world? Instead, we see editors stomping their feet, refusing to cut back as if there is no need to, as if it’s just some big, bad, greedy biz guys — instead of a post-monopoly market reality — forcing them to fire. Kurtz continues:

Investigative reporting doesn’t just mean maintaining separate SWAT teams. Beat reporters do important digging all the time, but that requires having a few extra days or weeks to pursue leads and pore over records. If, in depleted newsrooms, they have to churn out copy every other hour, the chances that they’ll look into the mayor’s land deal or the congressman’s favors for big contributors are greatly diminished.

But who says that kind of reporting is what should be depleted? If editors have the good sense and foresight to get rid of what’s not needed, they can put their resources where they matter: into reporting. And they can also find new ways to report. Kurtz:

Newspapers — good ones, at least — do two things that, if their staffs shrivel, no TV station, Web site or blogger will be able to match. One is to provide detailed local coverage of schools, hospitals, zoning battles and town councils. The other is holding public officials and business executives accountable with aggressive investigative work.

No one is saying that bloggers will replace journalists; let’s eliminate that red herring from the playbook. But bloggers can help. And the truth is that most metro papers and many local papers do a terrible job covering local schools and town councils; bloggers and other cooperative efforts in networked journalism could, indeed, increase a paper’s coverage as never before possible. And as for investigative efforts: Yes, we need more. Yes, we need reporters doing more. But here, again, when you open up to help, you may be able to report in new ways. Witness the Porkbusters, et al outing of Senators Byrd’s and Stevens’ secret hold on Congressional accountability legislation. I’m not saying that will replace investigative staffs but it can help, if you let it. Kurtz concludes:

They are also tradition-encrusted places that need to become less cautious, less stuffy and less arrogant. But if the critics think that a starvation diet will somehow produce healthier reporting, they are fantasizing.

The fantasizing we see in in newsrooms that believe newspapers can and should continue with business-as-usual, that newsrooms need to be as big as they are to get their real job done, and that they are doing a good job now.

I continue to believe that cutbacks will force newspapers to decide what they really are. The brave, wise, and strategic editors will get rid of the crap and invest more in the kind of reporting Kurtz properly celebrates. The wussy, job-protecting editors will do just what we see them doing: whining.

: At the end of Kurtz’ response, a bold headline said, “End of discussion.” That took me aback. Cheeky, I thought until I saw that it was the subhead over the next item. This discussion is far from over.

: See also the response of Jeff Crigler of Voxant.

Last chance to give me advice about facing Richard Edelman over Walmartgate and more at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association confab. I need to tell them yea or nay Tuesday. Right now, I’m leaning against doing it. I don’t think it’s our job to tell flacks how to flack us. And I think my position would be a no-win: I’m either the asshole or the wuss, depending on my performance and where you come in on this. Weigh in. Earlier advice here.

: LATER: My current thought is that I would at least insist on the ability to start by saying why I think their organization should not exist. I’ll outline those reasons later.

: UPDATE: I’ve decided not to do it. More on why later.

Michael Arrington and Scott Karp dissect the absurdity of PayPerPost’s latest effort to slap lipstick on its pig with a disclosure policy that equates advertising and “paid insertions.” That sounds like something you get on the Bunny Ranch.

The Newspaper Association of America reports a surge in online traffic and audience to newspaper online sites.

On average, over 56.9 million people visited newspaper sites each month in Q3 2006, up almost 24 percent since Q3 2005. . . . The group earlier this month reported unique visitors to newspaper sites rose 31 percent during the first half of 2006 over the same period in ‘05. Unique visitors to paper sites averaged more than 55.5 million per month during the first six months of ‘06, up almost a third from the 42.4 million during the first half of last year. Newspaper sites generated 2.7 billion pageviews in the third quarter, and visitors spent more than 41.5 minutes each month on the sites, according to the report. During that period last year, visitors viewed around 1.9 billion paper pages, spending 40.4 minutes on the sites on average monthly.

I think this further feeds the idea that newspapers are in “free fall,” as The Times said last week: The rush online is getting faster and faster and if media execs and ad execs don’t catch up, they will be left behind… sooner than they think.

: I call out ad execs for a reason: They are holding back the progress in media. Oh, it’s the fault of media execs as well. But get a load of these stats from today’s Times:

Indeed, the Internet draws only a sliver of the total spent on advertisements. Last year, Internet ads accounted for just 4.7 percent, or $12.5 billion, of the $267 billion spent on advertising, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade association of online publishers. And the top 50 advertisers spent just 3.8 percent of their budgets in the first half of this year on online ads, excluding search, TNS Media Intelligence data shows. For all other advertisers, the average spent online was 6.8 percent of the budget.

Procter & Gamble, the nation’s biggest advertiser last year, spent $33.5 million — less than 1 percent of its $4.6 billion ad budget — on online ads in 2005. General Motors, the second-biggest advertiser, spent $110.5 million online, or 2.5 percent of its $4.35 billion total, according to TNS, which does not include search ads in its figures.

The essential change in media is that we, the people, won’t go to where you are anymore. You have to come to us. And you’re not.

: LATER: The latest circulation stats for newspapers continue to back up the notion of free fall. Romenesko’s summary:

* Los Angeles Times daily circulation dropped 8%; down 6% on Sunday.
* San Francisco Chronicle dropped 5.3% daily; down 7.3% on Sunday.
* New York Times dropped 3.5% daily; down 3.5% on Sunday.
* Boston Globe dropped 6.7% daily; down 9.9% on Sunday.
* Washington Post dropped 3.3% daily; down 2.6% on Sunday.
* Wall Street Journal dropped 1.9% daily; WSJ Weekend Edition down 6.7%.
* Chicago Tribune dropped 1.7% daily; down 1.3% on Sunday.
* USA Today dropped 1.3%.

Yesterday afternoon as I was working for my wife (damn, I hate hanging drapes), the doorbell rang and it was the Republican mayor and his running mate from our very, very Republican town at the door. I practically licked my lips. “I’m a Democrat,” I said and they started to pull away even at that. “But I have to say that you people spend like drunken Democrats.” They started to leave. I said, “You don’t want to listen to your constituent?” They stood there, unhappy as I told them that they shamefully waste money on fancy cars for town employees, Taj Mahal treatment of public works, and more. I enjoyed that. The problem is that they have been unopposed for so long that they don’t act like Republicans; they act like a junta with expensive taste. Power corrupts. But the Republican pushback reportedly sweeping America is even coming to my little red town. There’s a Democrat running and even my hyper-Republican attorney and friend — who can’t say the word “Democrat” without a visible lurch — is voting for the guy.

Against my better judgment, I installed Parallels on my new school MacBook Pro. I just uninstalled it. The machine was running slower than I do on a cold morning and getting slower faster than I am with age. The hard drive was running constantly. My available space got down to 116KB (from 14 gigs). Something in Parallels or Windows was running on its own and filling up space; I’ve seen on the forums that I’m not alone. It’s gone. My machine is back to normal, I hope. Windows is a virus.

* Amnesty International asks bloggers to show their support for freedom of speech and fellow bloggers who are denied it.

* Reporters Without Borders asks us to join a demonstration: “Everyone is invited to support this struggle by connecting to the Reporters Without Borders website (www.rsf.org) between 11 a.m. (Paris time) on Tuesday, 7 November, and 11 a.m. on Wednesday, 8 November. Each click will help to change the “Internet Black Holes” map and help to combat censorship.”

* Chris Anderson of Columbia emails that his friend Will Bradley Roland was killed by paramilitaries in Mexico. Chris writes: “Brad was a friend and colleague of mine. He was a true citizen journalist. He did more than sit behind a laptop all day and pontificate about what he thought the news meant. He wasn’t an “official” member of any news organization, but he took his video camera and his notebook and traveled all over Latin America, providing passionate reporting about events and places few Americans knew (or cared) much about. In the past five years, he has committed more acts of journalism than many paid, “professional” journalists. He was killed today, as a journalist.”

Nielsen holds a conference on “consumer-generated media” but won’t allow blogging. Can Nielsen perhaps measure the high irony and low IQ in that? [via Rubel]

Nick Tanner, a British comic and critic, laments that fellow comics and even the newsmakers they joke about have had to take over the role of calling bullshit because the press has stopped. Of course, we know that well in the U.S., where Jon Stewart becomes a trusted voice in news precisely because he does call bullshit. Says Tanner:

But the serious question raised by the growth of comic news is whether the traditional source of investigative news journalism, the independent press, hasn’t been doing its job properly. In a recent lecture Armando Iannucci attacked the need for comics to criticise the abuse of power, remarking ‘this is not the sort of thing it should have been left to a comedian to say’. . . . The message seems clear: until the independent media becomes more robust in its treatment of those in power, it looks likely that much of the responsibility for analysing the news will rest in the hands of the comedians.

Now see Iannucci’s lecture, where he complains that the newsmakers themselves have taken to expressing themselves through humor and parody. He says::

This has come about for three reasons: politicians have stopped speaking to us properly, the media has stopped examining their actions in anything like a forensic way, and broadcast culture has become so watered down, so scared of fact, that people are less inclined to turn to anything other than entertainment for information.

Broadcast journalism today promotes itself not so much on what it talks about but on the method it uses: “Broadcasting 24 hours a day, correspondents in over 50 capital cities, giving you all the headlines every 15 minutes, up to six generations of journalists gathered in one newsroom, making you feel all the news you want to feel, even on Christmas Day.” Hi-tech software and speedy transmission makes everything instant news, but we lose sight of the skilled individuals who can process this random unstoppable flow of information and somehow construct a meaningful examination of it. We need narrative. . . .

My favourite quotation from the eminently quotable George Bush is a remark he made last year about the constant attacks on US troops in Iraq: “The insurgents are being defeated; that’s why they’re continuing to fight.” It’s a stunning reversal of all logic. Measuring success in terms of how far you are from success. An even stranger utterance came from Tony Blair at Labour’s 2004 Conference when he defended his actions by saying: “Judgments aren’t the same as facts. Instinct is not science. I only know what I believe.”

I only know what I believe. I find that one of the most chilling statements uttered by a seemingly rational politician. Apart from the fact that it overturns about 16 centuries of western philosophy and questions the entire principle of scientific inquiry, it’s also, surely, how the Taliban get through their day. . . .

There is an emptiness in public argument waiting to be filled. That’s where my lot come in again. If politicians fail to supply politics with content, is it any wonder people turn to other, more entertaining sources?

Or at least more honest.

About a year ago, I was at another Harvard roundtable wondering, whither news? And when