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September 25, 2003

Meeting of the minds

: Just last week I finally got to meet Jay Rosen, head of the journalism department at NYU, patron saint of blogging with his students, and now a blogger himself with PressThink. We met over blogs, then over lunch. And we found journalist kismet because we both have aggressive respect for the audience and its power and potential in both media and politics. Jay comes at this via civic journalism; I come at it from pop cultural criticism and the web; we landed at the same public square.
So Jay thought it would be fun to interview each other via email -- call it a New York interview, for every question was met with a question. We've each posted the results of Part I:

Rosen: In your career as a writer and editor and journalist, pre-Web, did you ever think about empowering the audience? Indeed, did you think deeply, searchingly about the audience at all? And in your Net life, when did it occur to you that the people "out there" are gaining power relative to the journalist?

Jarvis: I've always liked the mass audience but I didn't come to fully respect them until I became a TV critic and found that I was defending their taste and intelligence as I defended the shows they -- no, we -- liked to watch. Even so, I still didn't much want to talk to the audience (their letters often came in Crayon script) until I went online. That is what made me a rabid populist. The Internet is the first medium to give its audience a voice. And when I started to listen, I was amazed. In forums, users have compelling opinions; they share news and information; they are eager to help each other. In weblogs, they put their names behind what they write and their links bring the cream to the top. So now the audience has a printing press -- history's easiest publishing tool connected to history's best distribution network -- and the power that goes with it. They are using this to influence and judge media (reporters now read and quote them), government (there's a reason Howard Dean is blogging), and each other. I believe that audience content is the most important, the most revolutionary development in media since broadcast. The foolish journalist will dismiss it; the wise one will embrace it.

Rosen: Now the audience has a printing press is a good way to put it. But my guess is that you thought you were in touch with the audience before the Net started changing things around, that you had a feel, kinda knew what people wanted, etc. This tells us that in journalism what counts as knowledge of the people "out there" reflects available technology for reaching those people -- and for being reached by them. But equally critical is the available vocabulary for picturing those people, the words we use for them. I note that even you, Jeff, the populist, used the term "mass audience" in talking about earlier eras in your editorial life. It's an accurate way of putting the attitudes that reigned then. But today online, the image of "masses" out there has gone into anti-existence; it's melting away. Why? Because now the audience has a printing press.

Jarvis: Busted. You're right: "mass audience" is essentially a "we-they" way to see this when it should be all "we" But then, "audience" and "populist" carry their own baggage of disconnection. So what do we call this new relationship? That's for the next Q&A exchange, First, let me ask you: What is the impact of audience content on journalism education? If the audience can report, write commentary, and exhibit their news judgment (via their links), does that diminish the priesthood of the journalist? Or is there a greater need to set standards and to learn fundamental skills (and which skills are they)?

Rosen: Well, it makes me wonder about J-schools: who needs them? Who else, I mean. I know the proprietor of a business called DVDojo on the Bowery in New York. He's Michael Rosenblum, who preaches the citizen revolution in TV and also makes it happen. Digital cameras and cheap, desktop editing systems have come within reach. Rosenblum attracts paying customers to workshops on how to shoot, edit, and prepare video documentaries, and he varies the course depth: four weeks, one week, just a weekend. He may be creating a new public for journalism education, the extension of our teaching to other audiences. Once people start acquiring knowledge of how to shoot, catalogue, and edit a piece of video, some are going to stumble into doing basic journalism, and we in the J-schools of America are supposed to know how to teach basic journalism. I don't know what this all means yet, (we may stumble) but Rosenblum teaches courses for us, so we'll be able to find out. Is the press priesthood diminished when audience empowerment gets in gear? I would say no, not diminished or demolished, but the terms of its authority are changing, as I argued in CJR this month. By the way, were you ever part of the priesthood of journalism? And what do you think it happening to it?

Jarvis: The danger is thinking you are in a priesthood. As more and more people learn how to do this -- or simply how it's done -- the only thing that will separate the media priests from the commoners will be their collars -- that is, the press passes around their necks that give them access everyone can't have. But I'll bet we'll see more bloggers on campaign busses and at the conventions. But more important, we'll see bloggers covering town meetings newspapers can't afford to cover. And that will be good. More information is good. Isn't that what we believe? Will they be better bloggers -- and their audiences better served -- if we can teach them some of the skills and tricks of our trade? I think so. But that's a bigger topic; that's worth lunch. Last question today: How do you think the priests of high media should relate to weblogs? Should they just read them or do them and why?

Rosen: I never tell the priests of high media what they should do. They get grouchy if you try that. In fact, one of them just said so this week, Jack Shafer in Slate: "The journalistic priesthood abhors advice." What a grouch. But I can tell you what my hopes are. I would hope they would keep a careful eye on this experiment in journalism that keeps happening online, and learn something from it. Elite journalism is very much needed in this country. After all, it's a country with an elite. It's not clear (yet) how the New York Times should deal with the weblog form, and I would not expect a rapid plunge. But this week, the Los Angeles Times had cause to report that it currently has no weblogs, in an article about the Sacramento Bee, which does. I found that intriguing... for the priesthood.

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Comments on comments
: I've had some discussions with folks about comments lately and so I thought I should give you my policy. It's quite simple: This is my house and I do as I please. I tend to let discussions go -- I like interactivity -- and rarely kill a comment. But I will kill comments that are brazen personal attacks on anyone (and I'm shocked at those sites that don't do this). I will kill comments that are wildly off topic. I will kill comments about my work, because this is a personal site (I sometimes mention my work but that's my prerogative; otherwise, I won't drag my colleagues into this parallel universe). And I will kill a comment if I really don't like it just because I don't like it. Dont' give me any crap about "censorship." That's not censorship. That's judgment, editing, choice, dictatorship. Censorship is something a government does. Killing comments is something a power-hungry editor does. That's me. Just so you know.

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Wired, unwired
: I'm trapped in meetings and conference calls all day at the office -- chained, no wired to my desk -- and so I don' t have time to get out to a 'bucks to experience Intel's Unwired Day (free access damned near everywhere with free stuff). You can go and get the free stuff here, even if you are wired.

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Fame, fortune
: I'm late to this but it's good news worth spreading: Julie Powell of the wonderful Julie/Julia project just got a sweet book deal. Bravo.

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The post-Internet newspaper
: I was wondering the other day how I'd design a newspaper -- functionally, not aesthetically -- if I were creating one today, in the post-Internet era.
And yes, before you ask your snide question... Of course, there's a need for newspapers. That need is changing, though. Some are responding to that change by coming out with newspapers aimed at young people. But I say you never succeed just targeting a demographic because you inevitably end up pandering to that demographic. You succeed instead with a vision for a product and then you find your audience if you deserve it. (The vision I had for Entertainment Weekly is unchanged but the demographic is not at all what my business colleagues thought it would be -- it's much younger.)
So what's a vision for a post-Internet paper?
Here's Al Neuharth today talking about how he designed a newspaper, USA Today, in the post-television era. [via IWantMedia]

There is no mistaking, Neuharth said, the public's thirst for knowledge. The question is what source is going to provide that. With new media forms like the Internet moving in, those in print journalism definitely have their work cut out for them.
He recalled when TV cut into the news pie, and "the television generation was not reading newspapers," Neuharth said. "Now I think the Internet generation is not reading newspapers."
One of the reasons he founded the USA Today was out of the observation "that the television generation will not fight its way through dull, gray newspapers."
"What we did, we got a lot of credit for doing a lot of new things," he said. "Very little was new in USA Today. We stole most of it from the tube or magazines, and made it colorful and graphic and aimed it at the television generation. It caught on." Now the biggest USA Today readers are in their 30s and 40s, a group coveted by advertisers.

So what has changed with the Internet? What can print steal from the Internet? Well...

: We can get breaking news faster than ever before thanks to online (see the post below). Thus, you have to assume that there are no more surprises (unless you break them yourselves) and you have to stop believing that you are still announcing the news. Maybe your Page One should become a better summary of the news. If you're the Times, the Post, or the Guardian, maybe it should lead with commentary on that news.
: We can look up background and source material on any story we want via Google. That means that perhaps papers shouldn't waste so much paper on the standard background graphs, or at least separate them into a box I can ignore if I know the story already. Take that out; get to the point; tell me what's new... and stories get a lot shorter (and more informative).
: We can get our news from great sources all over the world online.So perhaps a paper should also look at and summarize those sources -- like a weblog (or The Week).
: We get commodity news from all those sources online plus, of course, TV and radio. So a newspaper has to focus on its unique value, which, in most cases, is that it's local. In the longrun, online will be good at giving you the news in your backyard (we're trying) but that will, by its nature, be a bit disjointed. A local paper's packaging of local news -- its news judgment -- will still be uniquely valuable.
: We, the audience, get a voice online. That audience needs a voice in print. A paper should find and print new, surprising, compelling, controversial voices of the people. Sure, we try that with letters and op-ed pieces, but that is too limiting and that was before the web and particularly weblogs gave the audience a voice. Now we have to listen. We have to highlight that voice. We have to make the audience a star.
: We get opinion online (and on FoxNews) and its' successful. Moral to the story: News has to be more compelling, to admit its perspective, to embrace debate.
: We search online. So we browse in print. Isn't that ironic? The Internet was going to be the browsing medium but if you've sat in any focus group about online in the last two years, you've heard loud and clear that surfing is dead; people search for what they want to get, get it, and move on. So a newspaper's strength is that it can surprise us -- not, perhaps, with breaking news but with great recipes or other useful information or, of course, fresh reporting.
: We seek out the advertising we want and need online. Browsing in print means browsing through ads, of course. Print remains a great way to look at ads; magazines are bought more often then we know for their ads; newspapers, too. (When I was Sunday editor of the NY Daily News, we lost our coupons through a strike and a press-baron feud; when we got them back, our circulation went up about 100k that Sunday. People buy newspapers for ads, too.) There's nothing wrong with starting sections that attract useful ads.
: We demand a clear user interface online. We should look at the user interface of print. Content is often not well-labeled or well-organized and it takes too long to dig to find what you want. Caroline Miller, the editor of New York magazine, said a few weeks ago that when she redesigned recently she realized that her table of contents is her home page. That's the right way to look at print now.
: We expect utility online. So we expect it in print. At the Sunday Daily News, I started a section with only one mission: Everything in it had to be useful. No political thumbsuckers. No crack-baby tearjerkers. Useful. Media in general have become too useless. Online should teach us that the audience expects value and utility.
: We don't waste time online. So the worst thing to do is waste my time in print. Can the show-off leads. Edit all stories down; they can take it. Make leads and headlines clear. Make it quick; I'm busy!

: Whew, I didn't mean to launch into all that. It just happened.

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Roll the presses... er, servers!
: Steve Outing celebrates the importance of online news in last nght's West Wing: The big-time reporter demands a comments from the White House before putting the blockbuster story online. And (here's the part Steve left out; he must have been in the kitchen getting a snack) when the dastardly Republican tempresident tries to scoop the reporter on the blockbuster story, his big-time paper slaps it up online first. Yes, online matters. Online is the best place to put breaking news.

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No news is bad news II
: Peter Johnson in USA Today continues his theme on the quality of reporting in Iraq. Today, he talks to former Pentagon spokescivilian Torrie Clarke, who says the military is trying to get more reporters back to Iraq to report on more stories.

There's a link between fewer reporters and the barrage of bad news, says Torie Clarke, the former Pentagon spokeswoman and architect of the embedding program.
''It's a problem,'' says Clarke, 44, who has joined CNN as a public policy analyst for Paula Zahn Now. ''We went from hundreds of journalists all over Iraq covering every aspect of the war. I don't know what the number is now, but it's a fraction of that now, and I think that is too bad. There are some really important things going on in that country. Many are good, some are bad, but if there was more coverage and more comprehensive coverage, people would get a clearer picture.''
The Pentagon is ''encouraging news organizations to send journalists'' back to Iraq, she says.

Bombing network news operations won't help. But, of course, that's just the point.

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