July 23, 2005
Digg courage
Digg courage
: Glenn Reynolds says:
AN ANTI-TERROR RALLY BY MUSLIMS in Antelope Valley, California.eca vrt 2005 downloadLet's shame them into it with our Digg for terrorist inciters, excusers, and opponents. eca vrt 2005 downloadYou know, if these people had blown something up, they'd be getting more press. Which suggests that if the press wants to help eliminate terrorism, it should adjust its priorities.
July 22, 2005
Baiting Bernie
Baiting Bernie
: James Wolcott, antimatter to Bernie Goldberg's matter, taunts him in promoing an appearance on Al Franken's show:
As many of you are no doubt aware, Al outranks me. He's #37 on Bernard Goldberg's list of the 100 people screwing up America--a book that should be more properly titled, Hey, You Liberals, Get Off My Lawn!--while I place at #64. Yet I'm not envious. If anything, I'm embarrassed that my ranking is as high as it is. I've only been screwing up America for a few paltry years while Oliver Stone and others who placed below me in this feebleminded gimmick of a fake book have spent decades of blood, sweat, and tears trying to undermine everything Goldberg holds dear in the studios of Fox News, where he seems to have set up a cot in the green room so that he can be always on call.And, I know, by merely quoting that, I'll be asked by commenters: "Haven't you learned?" Oh, yes, I have. eca vrt 2005 download
The unstory
The unstory
: What's most impressive about the nomination of John Roberts is how the White House made it into the unstory. eca vrt 2005 download
I don't see the blogs going crazy. There isn't much to say. Atrios very briefly had a moment's hope that Roberts had a connection to Iran-Contra. Oops. Wrong John Roberts. Nevermind. eca vrt 2005 download
We're not hearing scandals or scandalous opinions from the guy. We're not hearing any particular protest that he's the whitest white guy they could find. eca vrt 2005 download
The TV pundits and blathershows and the columnists aren't using their scarce ink and airtime to probe every Roberts angle because there aren't any. eca vrt 2005 download
As I mentioned below, Kos et al were already moving on -- like the good political strategists they are -- to figure out how to find victory in defeat. And they're back to hammering the Rove story. eca vrt 2005 download
In an absolutely bizarre post today, PowerLine defends Roberts against gay gags (because he was once caught in plaid pants). eca vrt 2005 download
It is the unstory. eca vrt 2005 download
Nonetheless, Howard Kurtz' Reliable Sources is talking about Roberts coverage and reaction on CNN this Sunday and I'll be on. Gee, I hope they don't think it's going to be so quiet that they have to invite Bernie.....eca vrt 2005 download
The scarcity killer
The scarcity killer
: One of the slides in my PowerPoint BlogBoy dance calls the internet a scarcity killler and contemplates what that means for media: when advertisers can always find somewhere else to advertise and when access to scarce airtime and presstime is no longer valued. eca vrt 2005 download
It doesn't kill commerce but it changes the rules and the value. So, for example, the scarce commodity might not be paper but may be trust. And so those who establish trust gain value in the future.eca vrt 2005 download
At Always On, George Gilder went on a nice, hyperbolic riff on scarcity:
"TV is dying fast and it will be followed by Hollywood. These industries fed on scarcity. There are only a few channels available. TV was technology of tyrants. It fed this advertising model that has collapsed," Gilder told an audience at the conference. "The thirty-second spot is just going to die. Nobody is going to watch any ads they don't want to see.eca vrt 2005 downloadeca vrt 2005 download"Book culture and blog culture can redeem a civilization," he said.
July 21, 2005
It's ain't Taco Bell
It ain't Taco Bell
: I'm a simple man with simple tastes. I'd be happy going to Taco Bell for lunch every day (grilled stuffed burrito, chicken, please) but today I made a rare, very rare appearance at media canteen Michael's. Apart from my map Elizabeth Spiers (whom I passed by going in, late for lunch, but saw going out) I did not notice a single one of the luminaries listed here. Not even David Hasselhoff! eca vrt 2005 download
Me-Owe!
Me-Owe!
: The NY Post has just about the meanest front page and story I've seen (since the days of Bill Clinton, at least) on Jude Law's nanny. The lede:
Hey, Jude, you burned Sienna for . . . this?eca vrt 2005 downloadeca vrt 2005 downloadEven all tarted up for a photo shoot for London's Mirror newspaper, nanny Daisy Wright looks more like a late-night belt-notch than a top-shelf taste worth scrapping an engagement to a gorgeous A-list actress.
The reviews are in
The reviews are in
: In the comments below, there are plenty of people giving Donny Deutsch's show and me bad reviews and that's fine: A critic is fair game for criticism. And we can all disagree. eca vrt 2005 download
That's what makes America great (and not screwed up).eca vrt 2005 download
I'll answer a few of the points:eca vrt 2005 download
On reading books for TV: I didn't read the book. I said so here before the show. I did go looking for it but on short notice didn't have time to read it if I had. I read articles and posts about it and the summary sent over by the show's producers. And I will also say that I wasn't sure I wanted to add one more notch in the book's bestseller count (see below). eca vrt 2005 download
As some commenters point out, don't think that every time you see Matt Lauer interviewing an author, he has read the book. Authors who get publicity on TV know that their books are rarely read by their interviewers but they take the publicity. If they wanted more than three minutes of stone-skipping, then they should go to C-SPAN, where people read the books but nobody watches the shows. eca vrt 2005 download
And I don't think there is some moral imperative to read the book. There's nothing sacred about a book. When I'm called on to do the point-counterpoint TV dance with, say, someone from the PTC, I don't read their every screed and I don't expect them to read my every screed and we can still discuss and disagree about issues. eca vrt 2005 download
As Linda Stasi said, we were there to discuss the list, which had gotten plenty of publicity: I was prepared to discuss the notion of it, she was there to discuss the names on the list. Which leads to the next point:eca vrt 2005 download
Was it an ambush? I don't know that it was. I was told that Donny liked what Goldberg did, even though he, of course, disagreed with some of the names on the list. Donny started off with a polite discussion of substance about the list but Bernie got hostile quickly. That set the tone: If you disagree with him, you're ambushing him. He attacks other people -- and spends a whole book attacking people -- but yet he can't take the pushback himself. It was a bizarre start to the show. eca vrt 2005 download
When they came back for the next segment, Donny called on Linda Stasi. Keep in mind, she is a columnist for the New York Friggin' Post, one of the top conservative papers in the nation. It's not as if they brought in Jim Wolcott or Eric Alterman and threw it to them. They called on a Postie.eca vrt 2005 download
Linda and I were in the same studio, on the same couch (though we weren't supposed to acknowledge that; we were on separate cameras). I talked to her before the show and saw her notes preparing for the talk. She was going to engage Goldberg on his terms, on his list, and throw out her own nominees. That's how she started: She wanted Rush Limbaugh on the list, which was also her way of pointing out that Bernie had nothing but liberals on his list. That's a perfectly legitimate way to discuss the book. But this quickly devolved into shouting, with Bernie yelling at Linda to "shut up."eca vrt 2005 download
I'd say it was Linda Stasi who was ambushed by Bernie Goldberg: He was hostile and rude and though he kept saying he would answer her question he never in fact tried to (an old TV trick from an old TV hand). He yelled and insulted. He made it personal, as he did with me later. She was disgusted with it and was ready to take off her microphone and walk out and she had every right to. eca vrt 2005 download
I shrugged: It's just a silly discussion about a silly book on a silly TV show.eca vrt 2005 download
But then, I hadn't yet had Bernie talking about my humping. eca vrt 2005 download
And so now to the substance: As I said in my post before the show and as I said on the show, I don't buy his premise:eca vrt 2005 download
America is not screwed up. eca vrt 2005 download
Oh, we have plenty to disagree about and we damed well should be debating about how to solve our problems and face our mutual enemies and issues. But I do not think it is productive to make that personal and act as if some people are out to screw up America. We have met the enemy, Bernie, and it isn't us.eca vrt 2005 download
Oh, there are plenty of people on Goldberg's list he and I would agree to disagree with. But I think that most of them are sincere and are not bad people out to "screw up America". Michael Moore behaves badly but he's sincere. Noam Chomsky has inane opinions but he's every bit as sincere as Bernie Goldberg.. oh, is he. eca vrt 2005 download
They disagree. We can debate their disagreements. That is the very essence, again, of what makes America great. That is why America is not screwed up. eca vrt 2005 download
But turning that debate into an ambush on the 100 people on this list and making it personal and mean is not a productive discussion. And we see too much of that in debates today. We saw it on cable until Jon Stewart killed Crossfire and that tide shifted (until last night, I guess). We see blogs often accused of that (though I do believe that's the exception and that most discussion in this medium -- unlike TV -- has the opportunity to be substantive and to link to all sides). eca vrt 2005 download
To me, the mere exercise of trying to name 100 people on the other side as the bad guys who are screwing up our country is like freeze-drying the worst and most shallow of cable TV shout shows and online flames. It is the worst of making politics personal instead of productive. eca vrt 2005 download
If anything is screwing up America, that attitude is. eca vrt 2005 download
MORE: People in the comments are asking me to say I am wrong. No, we just disagree and I stand by my opinions and my view from being in the thick of it. They ask me to say I made a mistake. No, I didn't set up the event. I will say that I regret being part of it. I don't think anyone who was involved does not regret being part of it. It was not pleasant. It certainly was not informative. It was not good TV (though in its time, people tried to define such moments as good TV; those days are over). eca vrt 2005 download
: LATER: Crooks & Liars has the video up. eca vrt 2005 download
: AND NOW I'M WONDERING.... Who is nastier to me when I piss them off, conservatives or liberals? Hmmmmmm........eca vrt 2005 download
: THIS IS GETTING COMICAL: Bill O'Reilly teases Bernie coming on to whine and waaaaaaaaaaaa about this "harrowing experience" on CNBC; the screen calls it a "TV Nightmare!," complete with exclamation mark. This from O'Reilly, the shut-up king and Goldberg of CBS News, the ambush kings.eca vrt 2005 download
OK. I'm fed up now. I return to my original position: Bernie's bonkers... or a damned good book salesman. eca vrt 2005 download
: Atrios has the appropriate one-word review:"Hilarious.eca vrt 2005 download
: And here's Bernie waaaa-waaaa-waaaaaing his way to Rush Limbaugh:
The big point is that this is what the cultural elite liberals do these days. They can stab you in the back. No problem, because they know what's best. That's the problem. This time, they did it to me. Big deal. Big deal. Insignificant show. Big deal. They did the exact same thing, Rush, to Judge Bork. They did the exact same thing to Judge Pickering, the judge from Mississippi who they made out to be soft on cross burners -- and they're going to do it again, Rush, with Judge Roberts, and that's why Ralph Neas, the head of People for American Way is #10 on the list in this book.He called the people on the show not just liberal but leftist. Can somebody tell Oliver Willis and Kos and Eric Alterman for me? Maybe I'll get my official party membership card back.eca vrt 2005 download
: Now O'Reilly is calling it "TV terrorism."eca vrt 2005 download
Twits.eca vrt 2005 download
: Now I'm getting fag-bashing email from the Bernieacs. Nice bunch, them. It gets better. It's homophobic and racist. Sweethearts.eca vrt 2005 download
: On O'Reilly, Goldberg says "the culture in this country has gotten way too angry and way too nasty." What the hell are you, Bernie?eca vrt 2005 download
Bill is sympathetic on "the shut-up thing." Uh-huh. eca vrt 2005 download
Poor widdle Bernie. Waaaa-waaa-waaaah.
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July 20, 2005
Bizarro Bernie
Bizarro Bernie
: Yesterday, I taped Donny Deutsch's show with Bernie Goldberg about his book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (earlier post here). It's going to be on CNBC tonight at 10:30p and you have to watch, for you will see a bizarre performance that continued after the cameras went off. eca vrt 2005 download
Bernie went bonkers. eca vrt 2005 download
Or Bernie is bonkers. eca vrt 2005 download
We report. You decide. eca vrt 2005 download
The show started with Bernie snarling at Donny for no good reason. Then, in the second segment, Donny came to NY Post TV critic Linda Stasi, who was prepared to discuss Bernie's silly list (giving it more dignity than I would have have). With good humor and energy, she asked why Rush Limbaugh wasn't on it. eca vrt 2005 download
Well, that set Bernie off. And downhill we went. Bernie shouted to Linda to shut up. He got downright mean. Linda and I were in the same studio (though we were on different cameras) and we looked at each other to confirm that we weren't nuts; this was. Bernie growled about how he can't stand being on "panel show." It got so bad that Donny had to scold Bernie for his behavior. eca vrt 2005 download
Later, Bernie insisted that he wasn't a "church lady" (after Donny and I defended one of the names on his list, Howard Stern) but then he went on about people talking about "humping" on TV. When I said he did indeed sound like a church lady, he came back and said less-than-polite things about whom I hump. I said that's a fine way for him to talk. eca vrt 2005 download
You get the flavor. eca vrt 2005 download
And then the madness continued. eca vrt 2005 download
Bernie called a producer at CNBC and reduced her to tears.eca vrt 2005 download
He called media outlets -- starting with the, cough, sympathetic Washington Times -- arguing that he was ambushed. eca vrt 2005 download
He called Fox -- where, according to one of the other guests, he has already appeared eight times to promote his book -- to whine and get on Bill O'Reilly's show. eca vrt 2005 download
One theory is that this is all a publicity ploy. Another is that he's acting wacky. I think it's a combination of the two: This is the behavior of a paranoid who needs enemies to keep his paranoid rantings -- and publicity -- alive. Bernie wanted to be ambushed. He made it into an ambush. And the strategy is working. The book's selling (at time of taping it was No. 3 on Amazon behind only Harry Potter; now it's No. 6). Except we on the show didn't buy the book. And that really pissed him off. eca vrt 2005 download
Here's what appeared in The Washington Times:
"I've been doing this a long, long time, and I have never, ever, ever, never -- I could say never and ever 10 more times -- experienced what I just went through," Mr. Goldberg told Inside the Beltway late yesterday after he taped the show, which is to air tonight, from Miami.And the spin continues. Someone masquerading as an "informed source" contacts the CaptainsQuarters with more whining:
"Deutsch disagreed with everything, and that is just fine," said Mr. Goldberg, the best-selling author of "Bias" who has written the new book "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is No. 37)."
"But then, unbeknownst to me, they brought on a panel of five, plus Donny, all of whom took the other side. And it's not like they just respectfully disagreed; there was name-calling, ganging up; it was unbelievable. And not one of them even read the book. They admitted it.
"It was more than an ambush," he said. "It was the most cynical, dishonest thing I have ever been lassoed into. They misled me."
Immediately after the taping, Mr. Goldberg said, he told the show's producer, Marilyn Cutler, that Mr. Deutsch had been "dishonest."
However, instead of debating cultural issues as the producers had explained the segment to Goldberg, it turned out that the show had stacked the panel with people who disliked Goldberg's book -- and ganged up on him to belittle it.The show issued a statement in response:
Mr. Goldberg was invited on our program to discuss his new book. We asked him if he would be willing to stay and join a panel of print and online journalists to discuss the people and issues he raised in the book and he agreed. At certain points during the segment, Mr. Goldberg, the panelists and Donny did not always agree. We felt that it was a healthy and robust conversation.eca vrt 2005 download: Now here are a few quotes from the show. I don't have a full transcript yet. This quote from me comes after he attacked Stasi and Barbara Walters before that, after the heat was already on high.We treat all of guests, including Mr. Goldberg, with nothing but the utmost respect and courtesy. We encourage people to tune into CNBC tonight at 10:30PM and watch for themselves.
You know, Bernie, you put yourself up on a high pedestal here as if you're above journalism. But you know what? You're just using the oldest trick I know--and I did it myself--in: 'Let's come up with a meaningless list and then a meaningless debate about.' [That's] almost certainly what's happening right now. eca vrt 2005 download: And now a sample of the exchange between Bernie and Linda:Let's start with the premise. America's not screwed up. Let's start there. America is a good place. It's a wonderful place.... eca vrt 2005 download
And to say, `Well, I've got the list, and I have in my hand a list with names.' It's a ridiculous unjournalism, unnews exercise, and you make fun of Barbara Walters and others for blurring the line between news. This isn't news. This isn't journalism. It's a way to get promotion you're getting right now and then complaining about. It's really pretty hard to take, Bernie.
Ms. STASI: Well, I just think it's incredible that he writes a section on vicious celebrities and he's being so vicious. And we're just sitting here discussing it. You don't have to tell me to shut up, you know. It's just—I mean, don't you find that vulgar if you're yelling at somebody to shut up on television? Because I find that really vulgar.eca vrt 2005 downloadeca vrt 2005 downloadDEUTSCH: I couldn't agree more.eca vrt 2005 download
Unidentified Guest: Yeah. Yeah, I don't understand how you could like...eca vrt 2005 download
DEUTSCH: Wait, let him respond to that.eca vrt 2005 download
Mr. GOLDBERG: No, I only did it because you don't shut up.eca vrt 2005 download
Unidentified Guest: I don't understand...eca vrt 2005 download
Mr. STASI: You know what? You see what I mean. It's so ignorant.eca vrt 2005 download
Unidentified Guest: ...how do you tell a woman to shut up?eca vrt 2005 download
Ms. STASI: It's ignorant.eca vrt 2005 download
Unidentified Guest: A woman, tell her to shut up? I mean, come on.eca vrt 2005 download
Ms. STASI: It's just ignorant. It's just ignorant.eca vrt 2005 download
DEUTSCH: What signal is that? You're talking about cultural wars? To any young girl watching out there, you tell a woman to shut up?eca vrt 2005 download
Ms. STASI: It doesn't matter if I'm a woman or not, what he says...eca vrt 2005 download
Mr. GOLDBERG: Donny!eca vrt 2005 download
DEUTSCH: It does matter.eca vrt 2005 download
Ms. STASI: ...is just silly.eca vrt 2005 download
Mr. GOLDBERG: Donny, Donny, that's interesting.eca vrt 2005 download
Ms. STASI: It's vulgar and silly.
Selling your soul
Selling your soul
: I pass by the AM New York freebie paper stand today and see the screaming headline: MOVIE THEATER STUNS AUDIENCES. It doesn't take a minute -- or a genius -- to see that it's an ad for Motorola, Loews, Cingular. The ad takes over the front page. Oh, there's still a real front page inside; this is a wrapper around the real paper. Still, this is the front page you see screaming at you from the valuable space of the newsracks; this is the image AM New York presents to its public. eca vrt 2005 download
Now this is hardly the first paper to put an ad on its front page; that may be holy space, but everybody has his price. Nor is this the first paper to put on a wrapper, though those are usually handed out at events and I've never seen one in a newsstand, because newsstands are all about selling papers -- and news sells papers (doesn't it?). eca vrt 2005 download
But, of course, this paper isn't sold. It's given away. And that changes the rules. Letting an ad take over the front page doesn't depress newsstand sales; there are no newsstand sales. eca vrt 2005 download
And putting an ad with a giveaway on the cover may even help drive free papers out of the rack. All the better if they'd been giving away free sex.eca vrt 2005 download
Why the hell do I care? Because the free-news economy changes the rules and I am always fascinated to see how this happens.eca vrt 2005 download
I saw this happen at People in the '80s, when stars and their flacks realized that their images were being used on covers to sell magazines and they wanted something for it -- if not money then at least control ("picture approval" was their first bid). eca vrt 2005 download
Economics change media. eca vrt 2005 download
Here, AM New York's value is distribution -- greater distribution than the paid papers precisely because it's free. So that makes its front page more valuable to advertisers than it is to AM New York. eca vrt 2005 download
I'm not pulling a holier-than-thou newspaper attitude about this; not making an ethical judgment about this. I'm just noting how the economics affect the product. eca vrt 2005 download
The medium isn't the message. The bottom line is the message. eca vrt 2005 download
So what does that mean for online? Where's our real value? Is it distribution? (No.) Is it audience? (Maybe.) Or is it relationships. (Yes.) And how does that make the product?eca vrt 2005 download
July 19, 2005
The 100 lists I hate
The 100 lists I hate
: I'm supposed to do Donny Deutsch's show (with Linda Stasi) later today regarding Bernie Goldberg's 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. And, yes, I should be ashamed of myself for giving this unimportant exercise in unjournalism more publicity. The nice folks at CNBC spared me reading the thing and sent me a nice summary by email. All Goldberg is doing is taking the most basic trick of soft news editors, unnews editors -- that is, city magazines, feature sections, talk shows: He's making a meaningless list and having a meaningless debate about it. But his list isn't just meaningless. It's just mean. Oh, I also hold some of his choices in less than high esteem. But what Goldberg is doing here is lumping together people who are truly hateful (terrorists) with people who don't agree with him. He's holding his own cable TV shoutfest without having the other side on to shout back. It's silly. But what's even sillier is that he uses this to pontificate about how he thinks America should be run. SpeakSpeak is giving him hell for it. But I like Jon Stewart's response to his pompous prudery best:
Goldberg: Once upon a time, not too many years ago, a drunk in a bar wouldn’t use the f-word. Now-he may be your pal-but Chevy Chase goes to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC at a gala where people are wearing tuxedos-and-gowns and calls the president of the United States a dumb blank.eca vrt 2005 downloadPerspective, people. eca vrt 2005 downloadStewart: Once upon a time, Thomas Jefferson f**ked slaves.
LATER: Well, I hope the appearance goes better than this:
John Davison, editor at 1UP.com, deserves kudos for having the guts to walk off of the set of The Big Idea (CNBC) when it became evident that he'd been tricked into appearing on a show designed to do nothing but bash video games. It takes balls to walk off a show like that when things go sour because of manipulation instead of honest debate. It also takes more than a little self-respect. The nice thing about being a member of the media, though, is that you can still get your opinions out when you're comments are edited from existence by a two-faced TV broadcast.Here's Davison's saga.eca vrt 2005 download
AFTERWARDS: Bernie sure comes off as the angry, nasty, self-important, humorless prig. He went after Linda Stasi, who was very nice, and played the paranoid victim with Donny Deutsch. It's on tonight at 10p, if the Supremes don't preempt it. eca vrt 2005 download
OH, AND: My first point: America isn't screwed up. eca vrt 2005 download
: HUH: Well, now I have no idea what's happening. Deutsch has an entire show on polygamy. eca vrt 2005 download
July 18, 2005
Changes at the top
Changes at the top
: Who says you can't blog about your own office? Steve Baker tells us about changes at Business Week and what they mean:
The most important change (from a blog perspective) is that one managing editor position has been turned into three--count 'em--executive editor posts. Yet only one of these editors will focus on the paper-and-ink magazine. The other two will direct BW Online and new ventures. That means that two-thirds of the top editing team will be focused away from our paper magazine. Gives you an idea of where the growth is.eca vrt 2005 download
He doth protest a heckuva lot
He doth protest a heckuva lot
: Go listen to the latest On The Media to hear a mind-boggling interview with Cleveland Plain Dealer Editor Doug Clilfton about his decision not to publish two stories based on leaked government docs in the aftermath of the Judith Miller jailing (sorry but the link to the segment doesn't work and transcripts aren't up yet but it's in the beginning of the MP3 atop this page). I wish I could quote and characterize it to give you a sense of what happens there but you have to listen because it's just bizarre. Clifton snaps at interview Bob Garfield and at The New York Times for reasons that aren't entirely clear. eca vrt 2005 download
Democracy Guy writes about the interview here. eca vrt 2005 download
News at the front
News at the front
: Good on Reuters for supporting the creation of an Iraqi wire service.
The charitable foundation of the Reuters news agency plans to announce this week that it is turning a grass-roots Iraqi news Web site into that nation's first independent commercial news service.eca vrt 2005 downloadYes, I can anticipate the cracks in the comments: Reuters and the U.N., what a team... we'll never see the word "terrorist" there. But I say give it a chance to prove its journalistic value. eca vrt 2005 downloadFor the last several months, the Web site, Aswat al-Iraq (Voices of Iraq), has relied on a team of 30 stringers and the help of three of Iraq's independent newspapers, as well as feeds from the Reuters Arabic-language service, to publish hundreds of stories a month on politics, culture and even the taboo topic of AIDS in Iraq.eca vrt 2005 download
Now the site, www.aswataliraq.info, will become a full-fledged newswire, managed and staffed by Iraqi journalists in Baghdad and operated independently of Reuters. It will use $800,000 from the United Nations to create a newsroom and post reporters in each Iraqi province. When the service goes live in a few months, it will feed breaking news to both Iraqi and foreign news outlets.
To witness
To witness
: The Guardian's John Naughton -- a blog supporter -- has second thoughts about the citizen reporting that occurred in the London bombings. I disagree. He says in the Observer:
Hmmm ... Can I be alone in having mixed feelings about all this? I think it was Heidegger who said that 'technology is the art of arranging the world so that we don't have to experience it'.eca vrt 2005 downloadWhoa. Isn't that the reflex that every reporter has? What's so wrong with anyone else having the same need to remember and share and report and witness? eca vrt 2005 downloadI find it astonishing - not to say macabre - that virtually the first thing a lay person would do after escaping injury in an explosion in which dozens of other human beings are killed or maimed is to film or photograph the scene and then relay it to a broadcasting organisation.
And what makes fellow citizens lay people next to reporter-priests? eca vrt 2005 download
On September 11th in New York, I didn't know what I was: witness, reporter, survivor. I stayed at the World Trade Center to report after the first jet hit. My wife remains, well, disapproving of that decision, but that's because, as it turned out, the danger was far from over. I, too, disapproved of my decision when I was enveloped by the cloud of destruction. eca vrt 2005 download
But danger apart, I knew I had to report. A few days later, I started this blog to continue remembering and witnessing. I also bought a camera phone to replace the plain phone lost in that cloud, because I often thought how different our view of that day would have been if it had been seen at eye level and not from rooftops miles away. eca vrt 2005 download
As a journalist, you would think that Naughton would welcome more truly eyewitness reporting, more facts, more stories, more humanity. And who better to provide this than witnesses themselves, now equipped not only with cameras but also with the knowledge that they could report what they saw themselves. Isn't that better than second-hand reporting?eca vrt 2005 download
Naughton complains that some of the material they recorded was too graphic to be shown. Well, isn't that true of any photographer's rolls? That is why editors edit. eca vrt 2005 download
I've heard others fret that just-people, lay people, would be too obtrusive -- but that assumes that professional journalists are not. Oh, but we are. eca vrt 2005 download
July 14, 2005
Hear Yost
Hear Yost
: Just got email from Cam Edwards, who says that Mark Yost, center of much journalistic controversy, will be on his Sirius show on Patriot 141 (friendly territory, no doubt) on Friday at 5:20p ET. eca vrt 2005 download
July 13, 2005
Press criticism criticism
Press criticism criticism
: There have been a fair number of pixels devoted to the discussion over St. Paul Pioneer Press editorialist Mark Yost's criticism of media coverage of the Iraq war. Yost wrote:
I know the reporting's bad because I know people in Iraq. A Marine colonel buddy just finished a stint overseeing the power grid. When's the last time you read a story about the progress being made on the power grid? Or the new desalination plant that just came on-line, or the school that just opened, or the Iraqi policeman who died doing something heroic? No, to judge by the dispatches, all the Iraqis do is stand outside markets and government buildings waiting to be blown up.eca vrt 2005 downloadFair criticism, I'd think. eca vrt 2005 downloadI also get unfiltered news from Iraq through an e-mail network of military friends who aren't so blinded by their own politics that they can't see the real good we're doing there. More important, they can see beyond their own navel and see the real good we're doing to promote peace and prosperity in the world. What makes this all the more ironic is the fact that the people who are fighting and dying want to stay and the people who are merely observers want to cut and run....eca vrt 2005 download
Instead, we get Monday's front-page story about a "secret" memo about "emerging U.S. plans" to withdraw troops next year. Why isn't the focus of the story the fact that 14 of 18 Iraqi provinces are stable and the four that aren't are primarily home to the genocidal gang of thugs who terrorized that country for 30 years?eca vrt 2005 download
And reporters wonder why they're despised.
But over in Romensko's letters, Steve Lovelady seethes:
Amazing. Mark Yost, an [editorial page] editor at Knight Ridder, the ONE news outlet which has consistently exposed the lies at the heart of the Iraq invasion and the grim reality of the current occupation, turns on his colleagues.eca vrt 2005 downloadWhat is amazing about this is that Lovelady is the managing editor of the friggin' Columbia Journalism Review Daily. You'd think that he would welcome intelligent, reasoned, two-sided discussion about media's coverage of this controverial story. Instead, he acts like the fat kid on the playground egging on the bullies in a fight. eca vrt 2005 downloadI can't wait to see how the KR Washington bureau and the KR Iraq
contingent reponds to this one!eca vrt 2005 downloadThere he is, guys. Go get him. You owe your readers no less.
And we certainly know where the Columbia Journalism Review stands on war coverage, don't we now?eca vrt 2005 download
But I'd like to see a real discussion on this. So I'll egg on a fight, but one fought without eggs: I would love to see a debate between Yost and Lovelady. I just emailed them both:
Gentlemen:eca vrt 2005 downloadI'll let you know when and if I get responses. Meanwhile, please give your own in the comments. eca vrt 2005 downloadHow about engaging in a debate on Iraq war coverage in American media?eca vrt 2005 download
Steve Lovelady: I found your snipe at Romenesko to be, well, unsatisfying. It did not address the issues raised by Mark Yost.eca vrt 2005 download
Mark Yost: I would like to see you engage Steve and those who believe as he does.eca vrt 2005 download
So how about a debate, sirs? I suggest an email debate. I'll be happy to post your responses on Buzzmachine.eca vrt 2005 download
First question, if you are willing:eca vrt 2005 download
Is American media coverage of the Iraq war balanced? Or do American media harbor an agenda in its coverage -- and if so, what agenda? Do American news media succeed -- or even try -- to present the positive and the negative news coming out of Iraq? Is there an obligation to be balanced? Or do you believe that balance would present an inaccurate picture of the news there?
: LATER: Steve Lovelady emails:
Jeff --: Here's another link to a Yost colleague going after him. The link to which Lovelady refers is here, a bit of the way down. eca vrt 2005 download
I'll have to decline, on several counts.
First, if I were going to debate Yost, I would want to do it at CJR
Daily, not at Buzzmachine, for obvious reasons.
Second, if you think my "snipe" at Romenesko did not address the
issues Mark raised -- when in fact I spent my entire letter
pointing out that the very specific and detailed Iraq coverage of
his OWN newspaper chain puts the lie to his careless accusations --
then you most assuredly would find my stance in any further debate
"well, unsatisfying."
Third, if what I currently read on Romenesko is any indication, poor
Yost already has enough fires to put out within the trade -- and
most especially within his own shop. I think the kindest thing any
of us can do at the moment is to leave the hapless lad to stew in
his own juices.
He's in it deep, and it's going to take a while to wade out.eca vrt 2005 downloadAll best,
Steveeca vrt 2005 downloadps --Another option for you: Try David Cay Johnston, at the Times.
In a rather clinical but systematic manner, he pretty much
disemboweled Yost on Romenesko today after doing three minutes'
research on the Internet.
: And who says journalists are dispassionate? Everybody in this argument is seething and spitting and acting like they're on the playground still. There is a legitimate debate to be had over coverage of the war in Iraq. I don't see it yet. eca vrt 2005 download
: LATER STILL: Mr. Lovelady emails again and I quote in full:
Jeff --So anyone who questions the party line, the orthodoxy, the company way, the union line should be banished to unemployment? Whew. eca vrt 2005 download
There's another reason not to engage in a debate with the most
unfortunate Mr. Yost:
The prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Take a fresh look at Romenesko. This poor bastard has become the
pinata of the day.
Latest to weigh in:
* Charles Laszewski, a Pioneer-Press colleague of Yost;
* Clark Hoyt, KR Washington bureau chief (who addresses his remarks
not only to Yost but to the editors of all 33 KR papers, which
tells you something about Mr. Yost's future);
* and Hannah Allam, KR's eloquent Iraq bureau chief.
All of whom, as it happens, speak with lethal precision about the
matter at hand.
My guess is that by Monday Mr. Yost will be too busy standing in
line outside the St. Paul unemployment office to engage in
leisurely Internet debates.
Which, frankly, is as it should be. He's a right-wing shill who
belittled and betrayed the hundreds of reporters who go into harm's
way every day to tell us what the hell is really going on.
Steve
ps -- Please consider this on the record too. In fact, if you'd
publish it, I'd be grateful
Can American media's coverage of Iraq be questioned and judged? I would have thought that the answer should be, "of course." But the answer is, "of course not."eca vrt 2005 download
What a fine lesson in journalism this is. eca vrt 2005 download
: AND HE KEEPS EMAILING: Another missive from Mr. Lovelady, quoted in full:
Jeff:I still see the kid on the playground, not the experienced, dispassionate journalist and academic open to criticism of journalism; he collects links of those who agree with him in trying to lambast this guy Yost. Keep the email coming, Steve. eca vrt 2005 download
This one takes the cake.
What an intellectually dishonest schmuck you are.
I supply you with
* Charles Laszewski, a Pioneer-Press colleague of Yost, who is
embarrassed at even being in the same building with the guy and who
eloquently explains why;
* Clark Hoyt, KR Washington bureau chief, who has for two years led
KR's groundbreaking coverage of the Iraq lie in Washington;
* Hannah Allam, KR's brave and brilliant Baghdad bureau chief, who
daily lives a life that would turn Mark Yost into a sniveling worm
hiding under his bed.
* David Cay Johnston, your colleague at the New York Times, who
demolishes Yost after 3 minutes on the Internet collecting contrary
information.
And you accuse me of wanting to avoid discussion ?
These four are far more eloquent than I at exposing Mark Yost as the
fraud, safely ensconced (for the moment) in an air-conditioned
office in St. Paul, than I could ever be.
How much "intelligent, reasoned, two-side discussion" do you want?
I gave you enough to last a week, Bubba.
Shame on you.
I am asking whether there is room to question and criticize American media's coverage of the war in Iraq. I believe there is. Lovelady et al appearently believe there is not. Whether or not Yost is the ideal critic, I don't know. But an earnest discussion of the successes and failures and issues and shortcomings of coverage of the war should always be in order. And that's why I find it doubly shocking that the managing editor of the Columbia Journalism School's CJR Daily only seems interested in attacking this critic. Aren't there legitimate issues here to discuss? I think there are. eca vrt 2005 download
July 12, 2005
If only Rather had a blog....
If only Rather had a blog...
: CBS News announced its big new internet strategy after hiring CBS Marketwatch founder Larry Kramer as the head. They invited a bunch of bloggers to the press announcement (but I couldn't attend, being off in my mountain retreat). eca vrt 2005 download
Full disclosures (it's a day for full disclosures): In their early stages of planning, I spoke with Kramer, CBS News President Andrew Heyward, and CBSNews.com editor Dick Meyer offering my two cents. eca vrt 2005 download
Features of the new CBS News strategy include:eca vrt 2005 download
: A new blog that will "create a candid and robust dialogue between CBS News journalists and the public -- a move unprecedented among CBS's peers in broadcast and cable television journalism." It will "serve as the conduit between the public and CBS News to take viewers and users inside the news gathering, production and decision-making process via the use of original video and outtakes, interviews with correspondents and producers, and input from independent experts, among other methods." It's not an ombudsman; it's not an anchor blogging; it is an effort to open up two-way communication with CBS' audience about how CBS News makes its decisions. eca vrt 2005 download
They say it's to be edited -- not sure why they don't say written -- by Vaughn Ververs, the National Journal's editor of The Hotline. eca vrt 2005 download
: A "cable bypass strategy" -- which is to say that CBS News missed the cable train and so now it's trying to catch the internet plane. So they will serve news directly to the internet. Broadcasting & Cable reports that this will include a video player called The EyeBox to show 25,000 news clips and an initiative to get TV staffers to feed news to the web 24 hours a day. Let's hope they have more luck doing this than newspapers have had....eca vrt 2005 download
This is a response to many developments: missing out on cable... the growth of the internet as a primary means of delivering news... the shrinking (and aging and dying) of the network news audience... and, yes, l'affaire Rather. If they'd had that blog when the Rather scandal developed, we would have had a place to look for and demand their response and they would have had to have responded. Things might have turned out differently....eca vrt 2005 download
The story so far
The story so far
: In news, I'm no fan of scandal journalism because I tend to get lost in the games of he-spat-she-spat and I think that most scandals ultimately have very little to do with our lives and distract from issues and stories that do matter. eca vrt 2005 download
In the far less momentous word of so-called personality reporting, I also was no fan of the equivilant, what I came to call bodily fluids journalism: the emphasis on personal scandal over professional products. That is one essential reason why I created Entertainment Weekly: Because of a number of factors in the mid '80s (the remote control and cable and the resultant fragmentation of the audience; the rise of personality and the value of celebrity to market media; the increasing power of flacks as the new gatekeepers to the famous and what came to pass for news...), the stars' movie or TV show or album became far less important in media than the stars' sex scandal or baby or disease or death. So I started a magazine about product over personality, that helped you decide where to spend your money and time. eca vrt 2005 download
I don't mean to stand up above the scandal mongers, all haughty. That's pretty hard for a former gossip columnist and People writer to do. It's just the way I look at things.eca vrt 2005 download
And that's why I tend to pay little attention to scandals until I have to... which means I'm often behind the times. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing for a newsman. I was behind on l'affaire Rather until you, my readers, made me catch up and you were right to do so. eca vrt 2005 download
Yesterday, I got email from a blog friend asking why I haven't been on top of l'affaire Rove (formerly known as l'affaire Plame) and the truth is that I just didn't keep up with all the ins and outs. The implication when people ask a blogger why he's not writing about a story is that there's a political motive: Why are you and Reynolds ignoring Rove? Confess! Apologize! Blog! But, in fact, it's usually just the case that the blogger simply doesn't care about the story and since a blog isn't a newspaper of record -- a blog is personal -- that's perfectly fine. I have not been a devotee of the Niger-Wilson-Plame-Miller-Cooper-Rove game of hot potato from the start. It's a pretty sleazy story of overlapping hidden agendas. I don't get my rocks off digging into scandals. And so I have not written about it. I haven't had anything worthwile to add. eca vrt 2005 download
Still, I will admit it's time to catch up. But I look at the mountain of charges and countercharges with exhaustion. Just today, I read the NY Times story about White House silence (what we used to call stonewalling) on the hit reality show Rove and the Reporters past the jump without getting a summary of what exactly is now known or acknowledged about Rove's involvement. The Times assumes that we're all keeping up on every back-and-forth like good Sisyphusean scandalmongers. I haven't been. But The Times can't edit every story for ignorant dolts like me who haven't been keeping track of a story. Newspapers try; they add background graphs into the middle of tales but in the case of a saga like Rove/Plame, it's impossible to sum it all up in a graph or two. eca vrt 2005 download
About a year ago, I wrote a post (which I can't find right now, being bandwidth challenged in the mountains but here's the same material in a Powerpoint on how technology changes news) arguing that if you created a news product from scratch today, you wouldn't include those background graphs. You'd link to the background instead. News would fork into 'now' and 'then.' The only problem is that news organizations aren't structured to give the news that way. Newspapers especially don't tell you what's happening right now; they tell you what happened a few hours ago, when they're good and ready. Apart from the scattered background graphs, they also aren't good at getting you up to speed on a story you've missed; they don't gather collected wisdom. Newspapers and newsrooms just aren't structured to do that. eca vrt 2005 download
But the web is structured to do just that: to tell you what's happening right now and to gather collected wisdom. eca vrt 2005 download
So I need someone to give me the story so far. Or the scandal so far. eca vrt 2005 download
I went to Wikipedia's entry on Karl Rove and it was pretty good, though this triple negative took me 5 minutes to parse:
It would not have been illegal if Rove was unaware that Plame's CIA employment was classified information.[The only way to make that sentence more befuddling would be to put it this way: "It would not have been illegal if Rove was unaware that Plame's CIA employment was not public information." A quadruple negative. But I digress.] eca vrt 2005 download
Now you can the argument about whether Wikipedia is factual and edited and journalistic and all that. But at least it did help me get up to speed. eca vrt 2005 download
Now the question remains whether I care. Sorry, but if I went to a party and heard one group dissecting Plame/Rove and another group dissecting War of the Worlds, I'd join the latter conversation. In a blog, it's hard to feign interest. eca vrt 2005 download
: LATER: If you subscribe to the content analysis school of you-are-what-you-don't-write-about then Dave Winer finds evidence that NPR is part of the vast right-wing conspiracy. eca vrt 2005 download
What's in a name?
What's in a name?
: Tom Gross, author of an influential newsletter about coverage of Israel, writes a wonderful op-ed in the Jerusalem Post about the BBC's brief rediscovery of the word terrorist, which its ridiculous editorial guidelines all but ban -- except, it appears, within hours after a militant-insurgent-bomber nearly blows up your journalistic ass:
Britain's first bus bombing took place barely half a mile from the BBC's central London headquarters, and for a day or so after last Thursday's multiple bomb attacks the BBC, the influential leftist daily Guardian and even the British-based global news agency Reuters all seemed suddenly to discover the words "terrorism" and "terrorist." In Saturday's Guardian, for example, one or other of these words appeared on each of the first 11 pages.eca vrt 2005 downloadTom points us to Gene's post on Harry's Place with screenshots of the BBC's coverage before and after a crackdown by its PC police. eca vrt 2005 downloadIn marked contrast to BBC reports about bombs on public transport in Israel – bombs which in some cases were even worse than those in London since some were specifically aimed at children and most were packed with nails, screws, glass and specially-sharpened metal shards in order to maximize injuries – terms like "guerrilla," "militant," "activist" or "fighter" were suddenly nowhere to be seen.eca vrt 2005 download
Nor – again in contrast to their coverage of Israel – did BBC correspondents, on either its domestic or international services, provide sympathetic accounts of the likely perpetrators, or explain to viewers that we must "understand" their "grievances."
July 10, 2005
Empower the people
Empower the people
: WKRN TV in Nashville is becoming a -- maybe the -- leader in understanding and exploiting the value of citizens' media (thanks to good advice from Terry Heaton and Michael Rosenblum). They just held a training session for viewers to shoot news video. Now that's the ticket: empower the people and everyone will win. eca vrt 2005 download
July 09, 2005
Novak who?
Novak who?
: Jay Rosen says it's time to give the cold shoulder to Robert Novak:
I, for one, have had it with Robert Novak. And if all the journalists who are talking today about "chilling effects" and individual conscience mean what they say, they will, as a matter of conscience and pride, start giving Novak himself the big chill.: It was Novak yesterday who said that Rhenquist was retiring, setting cable news operations across the land into high alert. He was wrong. I half wonder whether somebody wasn't gaming Novak to game his credibility. eca vrt 2005 download
July 07, 2005
Stupid TV
Stupid TV
: I'm in an office in New York and cut off from the world of TV news because, apart from the BBC -- which is, of course, getting hammered right now -- none of the big networks streams its news live over the internet; they're putting up clips that become stale the moment they're up. Oh, yes, they don't want to piss off the cable companies. But how about pissing off the public they serve? Get online, people. It ain't 1990 anymore. eca vrt 2005 download
: I also tried to listen to the BBC or CNN or Fox via Sirius on the internet, since I pay for it. But, apparently, licensing deals cut that off. I tuned into a left talk station and they said they didn't know what was going on. Now, at last, I'm listening to the BBC via WNYC.eca vrt 2005 download
Millions of people are now cut off from the news these organizations are serving. eca vrt 2005 download
July 06, 2005
On shields
On shields
: I don't have a simple, 1-D opinion about what Judith Miller and Norman Pearlstine did in the Plame case, nor about shield laws. eca vrt 2005 download
I'll likely be drummed out of the corps of journalism (if I haven't been already and, if I have, what the hell, I'm not a joiner) but I've come to see that Time Inc. Editor in Chief Pearlstine did the hard thing, probably the right thing. The easy thing for him to do would have been to defy the court, stand by the journalistic orthodoxy, refuse to hand over the subpoened documents, lump fines that wouldn't mean diddly to Time Warner, and go into the J-Hall of Fame on the back of his jailed reporter, Matthew Cooper. The hard thing to do was to defy the orthodoxy and conclude that, indeed, news organizations are not above the law. If the law is an ass, then change the law; that's what we do in this country. eca vrt 2005 download
Meanwhile, Judith Miller is taking the brave move of protecting her source and I have to respect that even if others do not. eca vrt 2005 download
And I am relieved for Matthew Cooper, getting his get-out-of-jail card at the last minute in the form of a dispensation to testify from his source. To quote a more charitable blog than the last one linked:
The First Amendment may suffer for Cooper's decision, but telling your six year old son that you may not come back for 180 days to uphold press freedoms not granted under the scope of a federal investigation makes the decision easy.I've confessed that I'm not sure I would have the courage to go to jail and say goodbye to my children over professional privilege; I might be tempted to open an ice-cream stand instead. eca vrt 2005 download
As for shield laws: I'll repeat what I said before:
I firmly believe that anyone and everyone can do journalism; I am a blog triumphalist, a proponent of citizens' media. So there should not be a special privilege for people who are somehow officially accredited as journalists -- not only because that excludes citizens who do journalism but also because it puts those credentialed at risk of having their credentials pulled by authorities. We do not want to find ourselves in that position.eca vrt 2005 downloadThis onion has more layers:eca vrt 2005 downloadShould there be a privilege? When everyone has it, there is also the danger that someone will claim privilege to hide criminal behavior: Someone will claim via a blog that they are doing journalism and have privilege and thus refuse to reveal a source of what they wrote in civil or criminal matters.eca vrt 2005 download
This had led many to say that privilege should not extend to criminal activities: that it is an obligation of citizens who know of criminal activity to reveal that. If that were the standard, then Miller would still not have privilege.eca vrt 2005 download
Frankly, I'm not sure where I come down. Ying-yangs:eca vrt 2005 download
I do believe in the necessity of privilege to enable the watchdogging of the powerful.eca vrt 2005 download
At the same time, I think we have grossly abused confidential sources in media and perhaps ruined privilege in the process.eca vrt 2005 download
I do think that if journalists have privilege then all citizens have privilege when they practice journalism, which now anyone can do: Anyone can publish.eca vrt 2005 download
I also believe there need to be limits -- for example, regarding criminal activity. But then that, too, defangs privilege.
On the one hand, not having protection for confidential sources means that they will be less likely to blow the whistle on power and that is bad for democracy.eca vrt 2005 download
Let's not forget that the prevailing issue here isn't just journalistic secrecy but government secrecy and what should and should not be kept from us in our alleged interest. And who's going to determine what that interest is?eca vrt 2005 download
On the other hand, for journalists to claim "privilege" is for them to separate themselves from the public they serve and we've had too much of that. Journalists used to be citizens with a press. But now all citizens can have the press. Now we all can be journalists with sources and secrets and the public's interest at heart. So where does that leave us?eca vrt 2005 download
I said before -- and suffered the scorn of one particularly snooty, nasty, old-fashioned journalist as a result -- that if Watergate happened today, Deep Throat would get a blog. That was seen as another moment of blog triumphalism. But I already have more than enough of those. eca vrt 2005 download
What this really means is that the state of anonymity and secrets changes. Now someone with a secret to reveal can do it and does not need to hide behind a reporter's shield to do it -- and, in many cases, cannot hide behind that shield: The source can go to the internet and reveal the secret directly, and anonymously. The internet becomes the anonymizer that reporters have been. So then no one knows who the source is. And no one knows how credible the revelation of the secret is. But that is where we head when we kill the middlemen. eca vrt 2005 download
Of course, as we get to the stinky middle of this onion, we will find all kinds of smelly motives of people using people to push their own agendas. It's not just about principle. It's about politics. eca vrt 2005 download
: Full disclosures: I consult for About.com, owned by The New York Times Company. I know Norman Pearlstine and used to work for Time Inc. I used to work for Matt Cooper's late father-in-law, Henry Grunwald. eca vrt 2005 download
July 05, 2005
Filtered coffee
Filtered coffee
: Chris Anderson has a nice riff on the role of the filter vs. the friend (that is, the middleman/editor vs. the recommender/neighbor) in the post-scarcity, mass-of-niches era of media and products.
In the existing Short Tail markets, where distribution is expensive and shelf space is at a premium, the supply side of the market has to be exceedingly discriminating in what it lets through. These producers, retailers and marketers have made a science of trying to guess what people will want, to improve their odds of picking winners. They don't always guess right--there are surely as many things that deserved to make it market but were overlooked as there are things that made it to market and then flopped--but the survivors get a reputation for some sort of mystical insight into the consumer psyche.eca vrt 2005 downloadHis chart:But in Long Tail markets, where distribution is cheap and shelf space is plentiful, the safe bet is to assume that everything is eventually going to be available. The role of filter then shifts from gatekeeper to advisor. Rather than predicting taste, post-filters such as Google measure it. Rather than lumping consumer into pre-determined demographic and psychographic categories, post-filters such as Amazon's custom recommendations treat them like individuals who reveal their likes and dislikes through their behavior. Rather than keeping things off the market, post-filters such as MP3 blogs create a markets for things that are already available by stimulating demand for them.
eca vrt 2005 download
It can also be expressed as first-person vs. third-person markets. eca vrt 2005 download
An industry, befuddled
An industry, befuddled
: This post on the Editors' Weblog sums up the state of the collective vision and strategy in the worldwide newspaper business:
Who has the best business model? Associated New Media announced recently that it was to scale back its Evening Standard website because it was cannibalizing sales of its print edition. Today, the news is that Mirror Group Newspapers, parent company of the tabloid The Daily Mirror, plans on expanding its online ventures in order to increase online revenue and readers.eca vrt 2005 download
July 01, 2005
Armed and on-air
Armed and on-air
: So I get email from Move Forward America making the beginning of a right-wing radio talk-show host tour if Iraq starting next week. I never thought I'd say this about a bunch of right-wing radio talk-show hosts but... I hope they're armed. eca vrt 2005 download
June 30, 2005
Money, meet mouth
Money, meet mouth
: There is a crapsquall brewing over Time Inc.'s decision (underplayed on their own site) to hand over reporter's notes in the Plame case to the court. See Tom Watson and Chris Geidner and Staci Kramer's thoughtful post here. eca vrt 2005 download
I want to add one thing: When I saw a picture of Time reporter Matthew Cooper with his wife, Mandy Grunwald (whom I met maybe once when I was at Time Inc.) and child, I thought of my own scene at the hearth and wondered: Would I have the courage to go to jail to protect a source? After watching Oz (not meant flippantly), I honestly wonder. I support the war in Iraq, but when I see pictures of the violence there or the fatherless families back home, I also have to wonder whether I would have the courage to go or, worse, to allow my son to. The only honest answer is that I don't know. eca vrt 2005 download
Did Time cave or did Time try to protect its reporter? I have no idea. eca vrt 2005 download
Last night, I got email from a show to come on and talk about this and I said I couldn't because, now that I'm working as a consultant for The Times, I think I'm in a conflict of interest. I'm also in a conflict of opinion; I don't know what I think about shield laws now. This is what I said to the show's producer: eca vrt 2005 download
I firmly believe that anyone and everyone can do journalism; I am a blog triumphalist, a proponent of citizens' media. So there should not be a special privilege for people who are somehow officially accredited as journalists -- not only because that excludes citizens who do journalism but also because it puts those credentialed at risk of having their credentials pulled by authorities. We do not want to find ourselves in that position.eca vrt 2005 download
Should there be a privilege? When everyone has it, there is also the danger that someone will claim privilege to hide criminal behavior: Someone will claim via a blog that they are doing journalism and have privilege and thus refuse to reveal a source of what they wrote in civil or criminal matters.eca vrt 2005 download
This had led many to say that privilege should not extend to criminal activities: that it is an obligation of citizens who know of criminal activity to reveal that. If that were the standard, then Miller would still not have privilege.eca vrt 2005 download
Frankly, I'm not sure where I come down. Ying-yangs:eca vrt 2005 download
I do believe in the necessity of privilege to enable the watchdogging of the powerful.eca vrt 2005 download
At the same time, I think we have grossly abused confidential sources in media and perhaps ruined privilege in the process.eca vrt 2005 download
I do think that if journalists have privilege then all citizens have privilege when they practice journalism, which now anyone can do: Anyone can publish.eca vrt 2005 download
I also believe there need to be limits -- for example, regarding criminal activity. But then that, too, defangs privilege.eca vrt 2005 download
So the long and the short of it is is... and this is rare for a blogger or a TV guest to say: I don't know.
eca vrt 2005 download
June 29, 2005
Look beyond the headlines, continued
Look beyond the headlines, continued
: In today's Times, John Burns and Edward Wong write a piece reported by Iraqi reporters under the headline Some Iraqis Optimistic About Sovereignty. I think I'm seeing a trend here, following Jennifer Eccleston's story on CNN last night finding the progress that is occurring in Iraq. But just as in that story, they could not report good news as balance to all the bad -- or as an attempt to find the clearer picture of what is happening -- without throwing in more bad.eca vrt 2005 download
Here is Burns' lead:
When Shaker Assal was approached in his butcher's shop on Tuesday and asked what he thought about life in Iraq a year after it resumed formal sovereignty, he responded with a blast of invective as heated as the sunbaked sidewalks in his Baghdad neighborhood of Ghazaliya.But read down six paragraphs and you'll find this:
But in an informal survey of opinions across Baghdad conducted on Tuesday by Iraqi reporters on the staff of The New York Times, the butcher's outburst was a relatively rare case of untempered hostility for the Americans and the Iraqi governments they have worked with in the past year....And read down two graphs more:
But perhaps more striking, considering the huge gap between the hopes stirred when American troops captured Baghdad in April 2003 and the grim realities now, were the number of Iraqis who expressed a more patient view. Among those people, the disappointments and privations have been offset by an appreciation of both the progress toward supplanting the dictatorship of Mr. Hussein with a nascent democratic system and the need for American troops to remain here in sufficient numbers to allow the system to mature.And if that was the essence of the story, why wasn't it the lead?eca vrt 2005 download
Take these two episodes together with Bush's speech last night (which I didn't get to watch live thanks to a business call; I read it in the paper this morning) and we continue to see that the war at home is a war of PR. Now I know that many couldn't stand when I cast the Bush execution of his policy and the Downing Street Memo in the light of PR. Fine. But the impression of the war in Iraq -- the bad news and good news, the perception of progress or lack of progress, the enmity or optimism of the Iraqis themselves -- obviously has a very direct impact on the support for the war here, witness the polls, and thus the execution of it in Iraq. What we see in these two stories is an inability to report progress -- which itself is a form of balance to all the car-bombing stories -- without balancing the balancing with more dark clouds. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. eca vrt 2005 download
June 28, 2005
Look beyond the headlines
Look beyond the headlines
: On tonight's Anderson Cooper 360, he urged us to "look beyond the headlines" and you will see that "some things have improved on the ground in Iraq." Well, yes, considering that the headlines are all bad, you'd have to look beyond them. He hands over to CNN's Jennifer Eccleston for "that side of the story."
Well, bravo, at long last, major media concedes that the agenda it has set in Iraq -- of unrelenting doom -- has another side. But they can't leave it at that. She returns to say:
JENNIFER ECCLESTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The big day has arrived for Piras Odisho and ---. Despite the daily disruptions to life in Baghdad, a rising number of young couples like them are taking the plunge.eca vrt 2005 downloadPIRAS ODISHO, GROOM (translator): Life must go on. There must be marriages and happiness.eca vrt 2005 download
ECCLESTON: Marriages are up 30 percent since Saddam's overthrow and the judge signing their wedding contract thinks he knows why.eca vrt 2005 download
GHANI AL-ISAA, JUDGE (translator): There is an increase since the income of all sectors of Iraqi people has gone up.eca vrt 2005 download
ECCLESTON: Measuring Iraq's economic health is not an exact science, but those in work, like the 350 judges trained in the past two years, are better paid, thanks to U.S. subsidies.eca vrt 2005 download
The Iraqi dinar holds its value. Gone is the rampant inflation of the '90's. There are more goods in the shops, in part, thanks to low import duties and a thriving black market.eca vrt 2005 download
It's estimated that there's five times more traffic on Baghdad's roads than there was pre-war and then, there is, what some call, the freedom index. In January, nearly 60 percent of Iraqis voted, choosing from a wide variety of parties. The assembly they voted for is meeting and is beginning to frame a new constitution for Iraq and 25 Sunni delegates are participating.eca vrt 2005 download
Internet cafes, unknown under Saddam, have sprung up in Baghdad. There are more than three million telephone subscribers, compared to fewer than a million before the war and many of them are on cell phones. Some 170 independent newspapers and magazines offer competing opinions and there are 80 commercial radio stations.eca vrt 2005 download
Wealthier Iraqis have satellite dishes and watch channels from around the world, a luxury unthinkable three years ago. Much of the country away from the Sunni dominated north and west is not racked by sectarian violence and some 150,000 Iraqi security forces are trained, equipped, and playing a larger role in battling the insurgents.
Now, despite the undeniable progress in Iraq, one year after the handover of sovereignty, the grinding violence, the lack of personal security, the hardships of day-to-day living, not enough power, not enough water, inadequate sanitation, this limits most Iraqis ability to believe their governments and American assertion that life is indeed improving...Yes, we couldn't just balance months of dire coverage with a moment's good news without returning to the dire. eca vrt 2005 download
Bad taste on bad taste
Bad taste on bad taste
: I was nonplussed (yes, it's possible) when I listened to this week's On The Media and heard a parody of cable networks devoting themselves to missing white women. In a bit borrowed from thePoorMan.net, they create a new network called Where the White Women At. Now that would have been funny after the attack of bridevision but right now when the missing white woman of the week is a teenager presumed murdered on an island... well, this was in uncharacterically bad taste, I'd say. eca vrt 2005 download
Film at 11... and 12... and 1... and 2...
Film at 11... and 12... and 1... and 2...
: Every TV news outlets played and replayed the tapes of the BTK killer coldly recounting his crimes yesterday. I watched it on MSNBC. After I left there last night, I listened to it in my car (via Sirius) on Fox and CNN, where Anderson Cooper devoted his entire show to the confession, saying that we would learn something. eca vrt 2005 download
But would we? What do we learn from the sick and evil? eca vrt 2005 download
I had the same reaction when I first watched Oz and as a result gave it a bad review in TV Guide... though I confess that I did end up watching the series, became riveted by it, couldn't stay away. eca vrt 2005 download
Not to trivialize them by comparison, but we do the same with the perpetrators of massive crimes. eca vrt 2005 download
What is it about watching the worst in us? Is it merely sensationalistic voyeurism? Is is relief that we're sane? Is it bad taste?eca vrt 2005 download
So I'm not sure what I think of last night's instant obsession with the BTK video. I certainly don't think it was educational. I did think there was something wrong about intruding on this last moment of truth for the victims and their families. I was a little bit ashamed of us all for showing and watching the tapes. But I can't help but be chilled by the dead-cold soul of this man.eca vrt 2005 download
Did I listen to his words passively as producers packed them into the shows I tuned into? Yes.eca vrt 2005 download
Did I understand the judgment that went into playing these sickly compelling scenes? Of course. I'm a tab editor myself. I preach "impact."eca vrt 2005 download
But here's the new question: In a new world of get-the-news-I-want-when-I-want-it, would I have clicked on a link to watch the confession if I knew what I would hear? No, I don't know why I would have. eca vrt 2005 download
So when we become our own editors and producers and pick the news we really want instead of the news others think we want, will we still be voyeurs? Or will we reveal the tabloid editors and producers to have been right about us all along? Who will end up having better or more sensational news judgment: the people or the press? eca vrt 2005 download
June 27, 2005
Finite
Finite
: It's inside media-baseball, but go read David Carr's hilariously snarky column today about former Conde Nast President Steve Florio's unbook. Great lead line, calling Florio "a knockabout guy from Jamaica, Queens, blessed with a very finite set of skills - a knack for selling advertising pages and a facility for slicing the conversational baloney..."eca vrt 2005 download
: Oh, how I wish a birdie would put Florio's entire proposal online or ship it to someone who would. eca vrt 2005 download
We lose
We lose
: Grokster loses. Thus so do toolmakers and enablers of any sort ... which, after all, is the very definition of the internet. The decision is terribly out of sync with the future. eca vrt 2005 download
: Susan Crawford, who knows whereof she blogs, is awaiting the decisions to say more but offers this:
And the content industry's victory in Grokster means that inducement is officially recognized as part of contributory infringement. I'm hopeful that the test for inducement is straightforward enough that technology innovators have some certainty.eca vrt 2005 download
: The Wall St. Journal has a panel of legal brains discussing the import; free linkn here. Q&A with background here. eca vrt 2005 download
: Scotusblog has great ongoing discussion of both cases. eca vrt 2005 download
: Ernie Miller is way on top of the news here. Copyfight will, of course, be on top of the case. eca vrt 2005 download
The exploding newsroom
The exploding newsroom
: The Lenslinger contemplates the future -- in a week or two -- when everyone in a newsroom has a camera and a pencil: Specialties merge, egos deflate.
Now, Young Broadcasting, KRON’s owner, is announcing that another of their stations, WKRN of Nashville, is jumping aboard the solo train. Not only that, WKRN is doing it NOW. Having already purchased 30 Sony Z1 cameras (at a mere 3 pounds apiece) along with 16 Dell laptop editors, KRN management announced an eight week training course that will transform 13 traditional news crews into 30 video journalists....eca vrt 2005 downloadeca vrt 2005 downloadJill Reporter-Bunny might shoot her own stuff, but chances are Chet Graytemples won’t pack his own lens when he saunters off the set long enough for a series shoot.eca vrt 2005 download
If he does, then that would be a revolution, one in which the star-making nature of your local news factory might indeed crumble. Imagine a TV newsroom where even the top anchor schleps gear, thus tarnishing the artifice of suave superiority inherent in the dapper newsreader model. While that’s not likely to happen, one aspect of the changing times does excite me: the gradual transformation of local correspondents from overdressed poseurs to blue-collar news gatherers.
June 26, 2005
Supporting news
Supporting news
: The latest Pew Research Center survey on the press is out. Kit Seelye's take from The Times:
The latest survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has found overwhelming American dissatisfaction with the news media, with a rising number of people saying that the press is "too critical of America."But the Pew Research report says it's not all bad:
And while Democrats have generally been more supportive of the press than Republicans, the survey found a marked increase in the number of Democrats who say reporters are too soft on the Bush administration....
"Republicans increasingly express the view that the press is excessively critical of the United States," the survey said, with 67 percent agreeing with that statement, compared with 42 percent in July 2002.
About one-quarter of Democrats say the press is too critical, the same level as three years ago.
Any good will that the press earned after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, appears to have eroded.
In November 2001, 69 percent of all respondents said that the press stood up for America. Only 17 percent found it too critical. At the same time, 60 percent said the press did a good job of protecting democracy while only 19 percent said it was hurting democracy.
Now, only 47 percent say the press protects democracy and 33 percent say it hurts.
Yet despite these criticisms, most Americans continue to say that they like mainstream news outlets. By wide margins, more Americans give favorable than unfavorable ratings to their daily newspaper (80%-20%), local TV news (79%-21%), and cable TV news networks (79%-21%), among those able to rate these organizations. The margin is only slightly smaller for network TV news (75%-25%).eca vrt 2005 downloadNow that's a case of damning with faint praise if I've ever heard it....eca vrt 2005 downloadIn fact, the favorable ratings for most categories of news organizations surpass positive ratings for President Bush and major political institutions the Supreme Court, Congress, and the two major political parties.
But here's the really bad news: The public believes the press less and less:
The gap is most striking between the public's evaluations of the credibility, and favorability, of their daily newspapers. The percentage saying they can believe most of what they read in their daily newspaper dropped from 84% in 1985 to 54% in 2004. But the number expressing a favorable opinion of their daily newspaper, based on those familiar enough to give a rating, declined just eight points over the same period (from 88% to 80%).And, not surprisingly, younger Americans are getting more of their news from the internet:
One-in-four (24%) list the internet as a main source of news. Roughly the same number (23%) say they go online for news every day, up from 15% in 2000; the percentage checking the web for news at least once a week has grown from 33% to 44% over the same time period.eca vrt 2005 downloadLots more interesting stats there. eca vrt 2005 downloadWhile online news consumption is highest among young people (those under age 30), it is not an activity that is limited to the very young. Three-in-ten Americans ages 30-49 cite the internet as a main source of news....eca vrt 2005 download
Fully 62% of internet news consumers say they read the websites of local or national newspapers....eca vrt 2005 download
People who read the newspaper online have a far less favorable opinion of network and local TV news programming than do people who read the print version, and also have a somewhat less favorable view of the daily newspaper they are most familiar with. But consumers of online newspapers feel far more favorably toward large nationally influential newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.
June 24, 2005
The victims have no problem calling them terrorists
The victims have no problem calling them terrorists
: The BBC -- which just went out of its way to call "terrorist" a bad word -- reports that Arab media is (finally) seeing Iraqi "insurgents" for what they are: murderers. Meanwhile, the witnesses and victims know what they really are: terrorists.
Al Jazeera - often accused by the Americans of stirring anti-US feeling - has adopted less of an "Us and Them" approach.eca vrt 2005 downloadeca vrt 2005 downloadThe militants are no longer referred to as the "resistance" but as gunmen or suicide bombers.eca vrt 2005 download
Eyewitnesses are shown denouncing them as "terrorists" - condemnations that are echoed by a parade of Iraqi officials and religious authorities.
Can't see the forrest for the papers
Can't see the forrest for the papers
: Jon Fine, ex Ad Age and now covering media at Biz Week, hears the bells tolling for newspapers:
Newspapers are cockroaches. No matter what is introduced into the media ecosystem, the oldest of the Big Media survives. Despite decades of doomsayers, newspapers prospered through radio, through TV and cable, through video games, through the Internet....eca vrt 2005 downloadYes, the economics of news have changed, fundamentally. Now the business of news has to change. eca vrt 2005 downloadNot so fast. Suddenly, even sober Wall Street analysts think something new is afoot.eca vrt 2005 download
What looms now "is different from all other threats," says Lauren Rich Fine (no relation), a Merrill Lynch & Co. (MER ) analyst who has covered the industry since the 1980s. Consumers are shifting decisively to online information, says Fine, especially the young, and are no longer yoked to the local newspaper. "Ads are following the eyeballs to where they make transactional decisions." Fine recently forecast that newspapers' profit margins are set to enter a long period of decline.eca vrt 2005 download
The new and troubling reality for newspapers is that even if they excel as purveyors of information to appreciative audiences, they still face tough business terrain. "They can try to be the destination where you go online and [can] be really successful with citizen journalism and blogs," says Fine. But such innovations are "not going to pay a lot of bills."
: See earlier post on business models for new here and follow the links at the bottom for more. eca vrt 2005 download
Nanny news
Nanny news
: In this country, the nannies are using time delays to protect our sensitive selves from breasts and four-letter words.eca vrt 2005 download
In Britain, the news nannies are using delays to protect the people from... news! The new BBC ethics policy dictates that:
The corporation will also introduce a time delay on its live coverage of sensitive news events such as September 11 and the school massacre in Beslan.eca vrt 2005 downloadIncredible. What do they think they're protecting the public from? The acts of evil terrorists? What is served by softening that? Softening the terrorists? eca vrt 2005 downloadThe time delay will last several seconds and will allow editors to cut any scenes they believe are too shocking for viewers.
Since when did you think it was your job to protect the people from the truth? eca vrt 2005 download
: Here is the BBC's policy. Here they say they don't want to report the demands of, say, hostage takers and influence the outcome of their actions. OK. But they also say:
we install a delay when broadcasting live material of sensitive stories, for example a school siege or plane hijack. This is particularly important when the outcome is unpredictable and we may record distressing material that is unsuitable for broadcast without careful editing.What's suitable and for whom?eca vrt 2005 download
: There's enough in these guidelines -- a "book," they call it -- to keep a Kremlinologist busy for years. For example:eca vrt 2005 download
: On war reporting: "The tone of our reporting is as important as the reliability of our reporting." And just what does that mean? What did that mean in their reporting of the latest war?eca vrt 2005 download
: And also under war: "We will ensure our online message boards are hosted to maintain a full debate and avoid offensive postings by switching to pre-moderation if necessary." What, so they don't turn into war? eca vrt 2005 download
: And here we have the boogey applied to the word "terrorist:"
The word "terrorist" itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should try to avoid the term, without attribution. We should let other people characterise while we report the facts as we know them.eca vrt 2005 downloadOh, so insurgent, and militant, and bomber are ok but terrorist is not? Well, I'm offended not calling a terrorist a terrorist. The refusal to use that word carries a value judgment, or lack of judgment, in itself. eca vrt 2005 downloadWe should not adopt other people's language as our own. It is also usually inappropriate to use words like "liberate", "court martial" or "execute" in the absence of a clear judicial process. We should convey to our audience the full consequences of the act by describing what happened. We should use words which specifically describe the perpetrator such as "bomber", "attacker", "gunman", "kidnapper", "insurgent, and "militant".
: I was having such a good time, I flipped back to read the beginning. Here, the BBC thinks it can do nothing less than get the truth.
We strive to be accurate and establish the truth of what has happened. Accuracy is more important than speed and it is often more than a question of getting the facts right. We will weigh all relevant facts and information to get at the truth.Others would say it's their job to report the facts and ours to judge the truth.eca vrt 2005 download
: Under "Harm and Offence," it advises this:
We aim to reflect the world as it is, including all aspects of the human experience and the realities of the natural world. But we balance our right to broadcast and publish innovative and challenging content with our responsibility to protect the vulnerable.What the hell does that mean?eca vrt 2005 download
: On sources: "We should be reluctant to rely on a single source. If we do rely on a single source, a named on the record source is always preferable." And: "We should normally identify on air and online sources of information and significant contributors, as well as providing their credentials, so that our audiences can judge their status." And on anonymous sources.eca vrt 2005 download
: Surely this is a parody. First, the guidelines say: "We should not distort known facts, present invented material as fact, or knowingly do anything to mislead our audiences." And I'm wondering, did they really have to say that? But then they add "We may need to label material to avoid doing so." And just when do you need to distort facts, invent facts, or mislead audiences? eca vrt 2005 download
: And on the old objectivity thing:
our journalists and presenters, including those in news and current affairs, may provide professional judgments but may not express personal opinions on matters of public policy or political or industrial controversy. Our audiences should not be able to tell from BBC programmes or other BBC output the personal views of our journalists and presenters on such matters.In other words, do a really good job of hiding what you think. eca vrt 2005 download
: No hypnosis, no exorcism, no subliminal programming. eca vrt 2005 download
: On weblogs:
: We will exercise the same level of editorial care with weblogs as we do with other forms of content. This policy will also apply to associated external links and user generated comments.eca vrt 2005 downloadWhy under Harm and Offence do they have a picture of two naked men?eca vrt 2005 downloadMembers of staff who write and publish weblogs should refer to their line manager. See Guidelines on Conflict of Interest
: Nasty words are nastier online:
Offensive language can give rise to widespread offence. The use of certain, mainly four letter, words in text on the Internet may be far more offensive than a fleeting expression on radio or television. Such words may be used only in exceptional circumstances, there must be a clear editorial justification for their use and express approval must be obtained.: LATER: On the time-delay from the NY Times story:
Some journalists questioned, though, whether removing some scenes might mislead viewers.eca vrt 2005 download: FOR A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE on TV showing violence, read the Lenslinger. eca vrt 2005 download"It could be a dangerous precedent," said Jean-François Julliard, an editor at Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group based in Paris, which campaigns for the protection of journalists and their freedoms.eca vrt 2005 download
"In some cases I could understand that some editors might want to use it," he said in an interview. "But they must say they are using it. It should be a very transparent process. If they say it is live when it is not, that is a lie."
June 23, 2005
She is not a crook
She is not a crook
: The half-hearted apology that includes such phrases as, "If I made a mistake..." usually precedes the resignation under continued fire by only a few days. Tick. Tick. [via Glenn Reynolds]eca vrt 2005 download
French trees shout: Vive l'online!
French trees shout: Vive l'online!
: Editors Weblog tells us (who don't speak French) about a report from a French government think tank predicting the demise of daily, printed newspapers. eca vrt 2005 download
The reaction to this is typically French/EU: Spend some government money to swim against that tide. eca vrt 2005 download
Says John Burke at the weblog:
A report just released by a French government think tank that analyzes present situations and predicts the future of various public and private organizations paints a bleak picture for the future of the French printed press. The threat from the Internet and foreign news sources will, according to the think tank, transform all French news organizations into multimedia companies, of which only 2 or 3 will be left standing by 2011. Result: " a majority of newspapers will disappear by 2011... if nothing is done".eca vrt 2005 downloadDid they create a tax to feed the horses when the car came along?eca vrt 2005 downloadThe report cites the need of French government aid to journals that undergo innovative reforms and that improve their public service. To further involve young readers, French government subsidies should be used to provide free temporary subscriptions for 18 year-olds. For the French media in general, the report calls for improved training for journalists, a radical reform of Agence France Presse, and a reform of news distribution.
Here and here I swatted at the notion of government helping journalism for then it can be used to influence journalism. Just ask PBS. eca vrt 2005 download
Beyond that, though, if the people want to get their news online why not give it to them there? If the French government wants to support something, wouldn't it be better to support the future than the past? Wouldn't it be better to underwrite development of online? Or are they afraid it will steal marketshare from the Minitel? eca vrt 2005 download
Chief clueless sod
Chief clueless sod
: Simon Waldman quotes Gavin O’Reilly, incoming chair of the World Association of Newspapers, and COO of Independent News and Media, saying at the recent world newspaper confab in Korea:
I think participative journalism is a dangerous precedent for our industry. People forget that newspapers have always been an interactive medium, people have always been able to interact with us through the mailbag.eca vrt 2005 download
June 22, 2005
Career a clef
Career a clef
: This is awfully inside baseball, but I have to report that everyone I know in media was giggling and gaffawing today over the news that former Conde Nast head Steve Florio is going to write a book about management. The perfect media oxymoron. eca vrt 2005 download
Declassified
Declassified
: We are seeing signs of the new distributed world of classified ads:eca vrt 2005 download
: Lost Remote reports that Monster is now providing jobs to TV sites from ABC and Worldnow. Except for a brief time in the boom when I heard job ads on radio, classifieds have never been right for broadcast because it's, well, broad; it's more expensive and inefficient than newspapers. But once broadcast brands came online, they could start snarfing up some of the classified marketshare they've long lusted after. eca vrt 2005 download
: Scott Anderson points to a Bambi Francisco column arguing that the big news from Google won't be a new PayPal but will be an entry into classifieds:
In fact, I'd go as far as to say that if Google really wanted to get at the heart of eBay's business, it would simply turn on a classifieds or listings business.eca vrt 2005 downloadI'm not sure she has that exactly right but I do think that if it can target, Google will grab local retail and merchandise advertising and compete not only with eBay but with papers' sites. And then others will come along and compete with Google in an ever-more-efficient (and thus, ever-less lucrative) market. eca vrt 2005 downloadAfter all, it wouldn't be a big leap for Google to let users list an item for sale much as they post an advertisement....eca vrt 2005 download
By a listings or classifieds service, I mean listings by individuals of their one-off items, or listings of items from small or medium sized merchants. I don't believe it matters if Google chooses not to get into auctions. EBay would still feel the pain from a Google listings business in a fixed-price format. That's because 30% of eBay's gross merchandise sales are done in fixed-price formats....eca vrt 2005 download
A classified/listings business would also be a smart and easy way to fill up Google's Local search-results pages with advertisements from local merchants, and listings of goods from residents. For now, Google's Local page says, "Find local businesses and services on the Web." It would be easy to add a line saying: "place your items for sale here."
I've said here before that the future of classified is decentralized and distributed. What we're seeing happen in content today -- as it spreads out like dandelion seeds in the wind -- will come to classifieds. How anybody makes money -- or at least, as much money as they used to -- in such a new, declassified world, I'm not sure. But I do believe tat the future is distributed. eca vrt 2005 download
: YET MORE: More on the distributed future: eBay is finding people establishing businesses on its platform and then leaving because they can do better on their own. Middlemen are falling like flies. The WSJ reports (not a free link):
In 2002, John Wieber started worrying about his business, which sold refurbished computers through Internet auctioneer eBay Inc. Although he was earning $1 million a year in revenue, profits had started to slip as competitors flocked to the site. EBay also raised its fees, further cutting margins, and fraud was becoming a problem.eca vrt 2005 downloadeca vrt 2005 downloadSo Mr. Wieber revamped his Web site and began selling through other online companies, such as Amazon.com Inc. and Yahoo Inc. Last year, his sales neared $5 million, but his eBay revenue grew at a much slower pace, making up only a quarter of the total. ...eca vrt 2005 download
EBay, with more than 147 million users world-wide, has long been regarded as the dot-com survivor that could do no wrong. Mr. Wieber's story shows why the company may be losing some of that luster. Setting up an online store is so easy these days that sellers needn't rely on eBay as a source of customers. Advertising is simple and inexpensive, thanks to new technology from companies such as Google Inc. And multiple competitors, including Amazon and Yahoo, are pulling once-loyal eBay sellers into their orbit.
June 21, 2005
The sound of trees clapping
The sound of trees clapping
: My friend Dave Morgan, head of Tacoda, writes a devasting analysis of the quicksand newspapers are in. eca vrt 2005 download
He begins saying that newspapers are not only losing tremendous classified ad volume to the likes of Craig but, more importantly, are also control of their rate card: That is, without a monopoly, they can't control prices anymore. This, he says, is what used to happen to the second paper in towns, when there were second papers. But now the surviving papers are second to the internet:
But unfortunately for newspapers, these Internet companies are presenting a competitive profile that is much more threatening than just having another local newspaper to contend with. Google et al. have dramatically lower cost structures. They have larger and more attractive audiences. Their pricing models are more advertiser-friendly--selling qualified leads, not just space. And, they have nicer dispositions.eca vrt 2005 downloadWill newspapers die? Morgan hopes that it doesn't take dead dead-paper to wake up the news business as the ends of Eastern and Pan Am woke up airlines... and look how healthy they are today. eca vrt 2005 downloadThis dynamic, as it accelerates, will present a serious threat to the viability of a number of newspapers. Given the enormous cost structures attendant to newspaper publishing, from buying newsprint and operating printing presses to paying the salaries of editors and reporters, these companies can sustain price destruction for only so long....eca vrt 2005 download
This means that local ad pricing will drop, and competitively driven pricing schemes, like performance-based pricing and auction-based sales, will take hold. Most likely, this means that newspapers' revenue from their current advertisers and ad products will drop... precipitously. This means trouble, because while revenue from existing operations will likely be cut, there is almost no way to make comparable cuts in cost structures. Too much of newspapers' cost structures are fixed.
: A few of my earlier posts on the need for new business models for news here, here, here, here. eca vrt 2005 download
June 20, 2005
Saving public broadcasting
Saving public broadcasting
: I have a humble suggestion for how to save public broadcasting: eca vrt 2005 download
Make it truly public broadcasting, supported by its public instead of by government. eca vrt 2005 download
The hooha going on over the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is precisely the danger of taking government money: It's taking political money. It is a worse compromise than taking advertisers' money, for advertisers' agendas are clear -- selling things, making money -- while politicians' agendas are far more slippery. So I say it's time to take the bull by the horns:eca vrt 2005 download
1. Get Howard Dean's fundraising geniuses to get out a bat and start a combative fundraising campaign: For every dollar the politicians try to cut, you vow to raise two dollars (as when, in the Dean blog, every troll attack brought in more contributions). eca vrt 2005 download
2. Use that money to underwrite just the kinds of programs the conservative opponents of public broadcasting will hate most: Alan Alda narrating a five-part series on the wonders of stem-cell research.... Sex education, the series.... Probing televangelists.... An investigation of America's health-care crisis....eca vrt 2005 download
3. Get celebrities signed up. Guarantees free publicity. Might even get you in their wills.eca vrt 2005 download
4. Send the stars -- and Jesse Jackson -- into companies to get them to pay up, concentrating on the companies of new media that are upsetting the old. Hey, Google, if you're getting into the news business, why not start supporting the content you so love to link to? Hey, Apple, if you really want to support education, pay for Sesame Street? Hey, Bill Gates, if you want to improve public health, throw some money to PBS for an informative series on AIDS? Yahoo, you want content for online, why not underwrite a broadcast series and tie it to online presentation? eca vrt 2005 download
5. As the money is raised, get PBS supporters in Congress to go along with the cuts in CBP budgeting on one condition: Every dollar that leaves public broadcasting goes into education. eca vrt 2005 download
In addition, PBS especially needs to get smarter about new media. Follow the BBC's example and start putting all programming up online for free distribution (with underwrwiters' and pledge messages included): If your mission is to serve the public, then serve them where and how they want to be served. And:eca vrt 2005 download
: Involve the public more in the creation of programming. I won't replay that sermon here. eca vrt 2005 download
: Reexamine the mission of public broadcasting in an era when the public can broadcast.eca vrt 2005 download
: Reexamine the mission of public broadcasting and when cable provides so much more value, like historical and educational programming (and I'm sorry that 11 percent of the country don't get TV via cable but, hey, eca vrt 2005 download
: Here's the tough one: Try to raise money based on quality programming, not on John Tesh specials. Get rid of those named touchy-feely cultish self-improvement bullshit shows. Have some pride in quality again. eca vrt 2005 download
This is the long-term strategy public broadcasting must follow if it is going to avoid complete politicization. Yes, we can argue that it's a shame that the government does not support public broadcasting. But taking money from politicians gets you politics. eca vrt 2005 download
: AMEN: See Doc Searls.eca vrt 2005 download
: Ernie Miller says:
We really should reexamine the mission of public broadcasting, not only in the context of cable, but in the context of the internet and the coming of broadcatching. Perhaps we may want to figure out how to democratize distribution, rather than subsidize flawed distribution schemes.eca vrt 2005 download
June 16, 2005
Used (and abused?)
Used (and abused?)
: Jonah Peretti at Eyebeam ran another brilliant experiment in contagious media and Marc Glaser has all the details about how Forget-Me-Not Panties, Crying While Eating, and Blogebrity racked up traffic, links, and publicity in a timed contest. Great stuff and most entertaining. eca vrt 2005 download
But be honest: Sometimes, once you find out that these things are hoaxes, don't you feel duped and used? eca vrt 2005 download
In the case of Blogebrity, the straight lines were neon-obvious. And that's why I didn't link to it (and didn't get duped by it): I didn't want to be used. The poor fools in the press who reported on it as if it were real -- and the readers who believed them -- surely felt used and abused. eca vrt 2005 download
So I'm wondering, just wondering: What's the line between a joke, a hoax, and a lie? What's the line between a contagious media experiment and a phoney phone call? Does it matter? Is there an ethnical responsibility to duping people and duping the press and affecting the credibility of a reporter or a publication or an entire medium: the internet? Or is this a nonfret?eca vrt 2005 download
Of course, half the responsibility for getting a joke lies with the jokester and the other half rests with the audience. Some poor souls are just born humorless. A few weeks ago, Howard Stern had on his Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator vowing to blow up the moon to end PMS and idiots in a British paper and an American cable show reported this, even huffily editorialized about it, as if it were news. It was a joke. Any fool could see that. Well, most any. eca vrt 2005 download
So what's the difference between that and a phoney phone caller who gets himself onto a news show in a crisis by impersonating a county official with news on a crime? eca vrt 2005 download
Motive matters, I think. The Schwarzenegger bit was a joke those shlubs didn't get. The phoney phone call was meant to deceive and succeeded with news schlubs. Is there a difference? Is one meant to amuse and one meant to humiliate? Does that matter?eca vrt 2005 download
And where does a contagious media experiment fall on that scale? If it's just a joke, it's just a joke and it's up to the beholder to figure that out. But this experiment, in particular, was designed to get links and attention. Does that mean it was mean to deceive or that it was just a damned good joke?eca vrt 2005 download
I really don't know my own answer to these questions. I think they're worth asking just because some serious souls use these episodes to question the credibility of the press or the good will of the people. Or maybe they're just being too serious. Maybe it's time to go get a drink.eca vrt 2005 download
: LATER: Yes, break out the beer. eca vrt 2005 download
I wrote that and then I read Stacy Shiff's column in The Times yesterday wringing hands about the state of truth.
More than 60 percent of the American people don't trust the press. Why should they? They've been reading "The Da Vinci Code" and marveling at its historical insights.Well, that itself is a ridiculous stretching of truth. One has nothing to do with the other except that Shiff doesn't trust the sense of the public. eca vrt 2005 download
The eternal truth is that truth is in the eye of the beholder. It's up to each of us to judge whether we will believe a newspaper or a hoaxter or a novelist or a columnist or a blogger. It's up to them to maintain the credibility in the face of doubt and punchlines. eca vrt 2005 download
Still, if I had been taken in by Blogebrity, I would have felt used and abused. I suppose because I didn't, I'm supposed to feel smart. But I only feel lucky. eca vrt 2005 download
A mass of class
A mass of class
: The BBC is wowed at 650,000 Beethovan downloads in a week. Repeat after me: John Stewart on Crossfire got 150,000 viewers on CNN but likely more than 10 million downloads. What's more powerful: The networks that Time Warner and the BBC own or the networks no one owns? Obvious lesson to all broadcasters: Let there be downloads. All the folks who are bragging about their streams would be blown away by floods of downloads. Distribution is so yesterday. eca vrt 2005 download
Distribution is so yesterday
Distribution is so yesterday
: Amazon is producing and airing a concert with Nora Jones, Bill Maher, and Bob Dylan for its 10th anniversary. eca vrt 2005 download
I'll just bet this marks the start of Amazon 2.0: the content company. eca vrt 2005 download
Amazon was in the distribution business and it did a great job of finding new efficiencies and market shares and customer needs in it. eca vrt 2005 download
But distribution has been dethroned as a business. Owning the broadcast tower still makes you money -- but as your audience departs for limitless new competition, it won't grow. Owning a cable franchise is a great monopoly -- but growth is there mostly because you can sell new services, broadband and VOIP, and before you know it, you'll be nothing but the pipe: the next telco. Owning a monopoly newspaper used to be a great business -- until more efficient marketplaces replaced yours and your presses and trucks and Teamsters suddenly looked not like a strength but like a cost. When I went to work for the Newhouses, I got excited at the prospect of working with Random House, which they then owned, but my boss wisely told me it wasn't what a thought -- "it's just a distribution business," he said.eca vrt 2005 download
Amazon was in the distribution business. But now it has relationships with millions of customers and a network of sales people -- that is, its own customers writing reviews and creating valuable data about likes and dislikes. Now it has a brand that is trusted for content. Now it can enter the content business. Why not produce a show or a book directly for Amazon and sell it there? Why not turn Amazon into a powerhouse of advertising targeted to both content and consumer? eca vrt 2005 download
When that concert is performed, I'll be watching the Amazon Channel. eca vrt 2005 download
: Ernie Miller says it's not a channel. He's right. In fact, I put this the wrong way: Amazon isn't a content company, then, producing content itself. Amazon is not a network. But Amazon is a networking company, putting together buyers and sellers, readers and writers (and vice versa). So what I meant to say is that sometime soon, someone will chose to publish via Amazon directly to the public and skip the middleman formerly known as the publisher. That makes Amazon merely a conduit. One could say that it's about distribution but in the case of digital content, the distribution is meaningless. It's just a place that helps A find B. It's a maven. eca vrt 2005 download
Share the knowledge
Share the knowledge
: The BBC has put up a comprehensive and free course in shooting better video (see Journalism.co.uk for more). eca vrt 2005 download
How smart of them. This is what the future of news is about: sharing. eca vrt 2005 download
By teaching those who care to learn, the BBC is building an army of news-gatherers in the world. One of them could be there when the huge story happens. One of them will be inspired to go out and report a story. And that video will end up on the air -- on the BBC or on the internet or elsewhere -- and we're all better informed. eca vrt 2005 download
You could argue that the BBC, which has also talked about starting a journalism school for citizen reporters, can do this because it has a different mission than a commercial network: It is supported by license fees to inform the public, period (which would make you think, by the way, that NPR, PRI, and PBS should be doing exactly the same thing here). eca vrt 2005 download
But I'll argue that the wise commercial station -- and newspaper -- should be doing this, too, because it will produce more news and improve the reporting of that news reporting at a lower cost, while also taking down the barriers that have been built up between the press and its public. It's good journalism. It's good citizenship. And it's good business. eca vrt 2005 download
June 15, 2005
Is real estate real?
Is real estate real?
: Over at On The Media, Bob Garfield interviewed Daniel Gross about the purported real-state bubble. I have two quibbles:eca vrt 2005 download
First, Gross says (and Romenesko quotes) that real-estate editors won't say bad things about real estate as if this is new:
Garfield: ... At the risk of tossing you a softball, Dan, gee, why aren't these stories on the real estate pages? eca vrt 2005 downloadUh, except, guys, in most newspapers the real estate "editor" isn't an editor at all. Most real-estate sections -- like most jobs and autos sections -- are pure advertising sections not run by the newsroom or the paper's editor and the content them is bought fluff. One can argue whether that's right or wrong.... and come to a conclusion about the time print classifieds die anyway.eca vrt 2005 downloadGROSS: Whether it's subconscious or conscious on the part of the editors who run those sections, it doesn't behoove you to speak ill of the product that your section is there to sell....
Second, in a show in which Garfield talks abouut the observer's paradox -- the observer having an impact on the observed -- isn't that true of bubble blather? Market prices are all about confidence and even mood and if you keep reporting that the mood is exhuberant and wrong and soon to burst, don't you think that has an impact on that mood? Isn't the cliched bubble-soon-to-burst story self-fulfilling reporting? eca vrt 2005 download
State of the art
State of the art
: So I just returned from a few days at the Annenberg confab on journalism, democracy, and all that, in a room fillled with smart and experienced people, journalists and academics, who care deeply about the country and the craft. eca vrt 2005 download
As usual at these things these days, I feel a bit like the stranger in the strange land -- probably because I am strange -- but it's also worth noting that blogs are no longer treated like meteors from outer space at such gatherings. eca vrt 2005 download
A few random observations at the end:eca vrt 2005 download
: Our new world of weblogs and citizens' media is all about possibilities -- many of them unrealized, I grant -- while the world of the big, old media is increasingly about worry: fretting over declining revenue, resources, audience, quality, trust. That is one good reason for big media to embrace the small, rather than trying to recapture the old: It's optimistic, energetic, new, open, growing, and fun; it's the medium in the better mood and that's catching. In short: Bloggers make better barmates. eca vrt 2005 download
: Related: I sometimes hear a defeatism in journalism today -- mixed with anger and defiance: We're shrinking and can't make money so we need to take charity or, worse, government help (which I certainly believe is dangerous). eca vrt 2005 download
What we should be doing instead is finding new business models for news. Those models can include nonprofit or public-supported journalism but they also should include new, profitable news businesses. But see the next related item:eca vrt 2005 download
: I mentioned it before, but I am shocked at the hostility to profit I often hear in some quarters at such gatherings. Perhaps we did ourselves a disserve taking the necessary wall between church and state and putting barbed wire on top, for it made journalists too purposely ignorant of business and the marketplace. eca vrt 2005 download
Just because we journalists don't let ourselves be influenced by the advertisers and certainly don't sell the ads, that doesn't mean that we should be ignorant or, worse, disdainful of the business realities that pay the checks and support the journalism... or hurt it. eca vrt 2005 download
This institutional attitude has separated journalists not only from power over their products but also -- more importantly -- from the market, which is to say the voice of the public. eca vrt 2005 download
I've been there. When I launched Entertainment Weekly, I didn't have the biz cred sufficient to argue how the circulation department was the one making $30-million mistakes and I vowed I wouldn't be in that position again, even when editors lectured me that I should let the business guys worry about the business. Learning the business side is necessary to give us influence in the business side, in the creation (or saving) or our own products. eca vrt 2005 download
But it's about more than money. It's also about learning to trust the marketplace and thus the public. If we dismiss the will of the marketplace, we show a lack of respect for the wisdom and will of the public we are supposedly here to serve; we start to believe that "we" are smarter than "them" when "we" are "them." And if you truly think that the public is stupid, then you should quit media and become a monk.eca vrt 2005 download
All this is why -- especially now, as the industry changes -- j-schools should be sure to teach courses in the business of journalism. eca vrt 2005 download
: I waited until the last hour to say what I thought might get me shot: that media consolidation is not necessarily a bad thing at all. Anger at big companies may, indeed, be a product of the journalistic nose-holding about business (above). But the economic, marketplace reality of it is that in many cases, consolidation is the act of dinosaurs huddling to stay warm in the face of their coming ice age. Without consolidation and the savings that come with it, I said, it's quite possible that some news outlets could die. And how is that better? But nobody threw a pie at me. In fact, some acknowledged that big companies still have the resources and sometimes even the guts to try new things. We should remember that and remind them of that. eca vrt 2005 download
: Related: Some spoke of the need to strengthen government regulation, not only regarding ownership but also to revive the notion of the public trust in broadcast licenses. But I said that the best TV is coming out of unregulated cable today. Regulation is dangerous. Period. The last thing we of all people should want or need is government involvement in speech.eca vrt 2005 download
: You will be glad to hear that many people in the room at Annenberg, like me, swatted at notions about credentialing journalists. Some people want to credential those who are trained or adhere to a code of behavior. But, of course, that can also be used to try to exclude others from an alleged elite. It can be used against the credentialed when someone in power withdraws the certification and the rights that go with them. It can be used against the uncredentialed when, to paraphrase one participant in the room, a lawyer in a libel case can say, "what makes you think you can practice journalism when you're not a real journalist." And besides, who's a journalist when anyone can commit acts of journalism? In a world where we want to try to expand by taking advantage of what the public knows, why close down the definition of journalist? Why not expand it by sharing our knowledge and training and experience generously? eca vrt 2005 download
: I sat there and wondered whether, 20 or 50 years from now, there will be similar confabs of citizens' journalism with organizations and reports and academic counterparts and worries. I hope not. I hope that citizens' media stays loose like fireflies that get away. eca vrt 2005 download
: But if you had sat there with me, I know that you would have been impressed with how much these people care. They care about the good of the nation, about informing the people, about quality journalism, about rebuilding trust, about educating children to empower them to run the world. eca vrt 2005 download
So I wish you had been there. Future journalism confabs should invite bloggers as proxies for the public both so the journalists can hear their perspective, but also so the bloggers can see the earnest desire to serve that you'll see in these good and smart people. eca vrt 2005 download
Similarly, blogging confabs should make it a point to invite journalists to show how much bloggers care about the medium and the nation and about news.... and also to show how much fun we have (and so we can have somebody who can expense-account the drinks at the bar). eca vrt 2005 download
Speaking of which, I think both groups should also invite business people because if we don't bring them along in trying to create new products and business models, we won't support these new and better endeavors. Business people don't have cooties. But they do have wallets. eca vrt 2005 download
Investigate this
Investigate this
: Accepted wisdom in journalism is that investigative reporting is its highest calling and perhaps highest art. I just returned from two days at an Annenberg confab at which journalism educators lamented declining resource and dedication for investigative reporting. And last night, I appeared on MSNBC's Connected, where two guests and the two hosts similarly lauded this kind of reporting and complained that not enough is being done (each end of the political spectrum wishing for more watchdogging of the other, naturally). eca vrt 2005 download
Of course, when feeling paranoid or pissed, you want somebody to probe the guy you don't like and bring him down. And the prize economy in journalism is all about awarding big, expensive, long, and self-righteous indictments of the corrupt and nasty. eca vrt 2005 download
But I'll be heretical enough to ask whether investigative journalism is what the public most wants from the press, whether chronic suspicion -- as opposed to skepticism -- can breed chronic cynicism, whether ever-sparer journalistic resources are best put to bringing down the bad guy or to helping us in our daily lives. What is the proper calling of journalism?eca vrt 2005 download
The Archbishop of Canterbury probes the probers today:
The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will tonight launch an attack on the media, berating the "adversarial and suspicious" nature of modern journalism, which he says holds people "guilty until proved innocent".eca vrt 2005 downloadWe love that line. Ironically, though, investigative reporting is one element of journalism that resists commodification and that's why journalists love it: They get scoops, they get bylines, they get the thing the other guy doesn't have.Dr Williams, who won an apology from the Sunday Telegraph in December after the paper erroneously said the Asian tsunami had led him to question his own faith, will say a far-reaching reassessment of the press is needed to raise "embarrassingly low levels of trust" in the journalistic profession....eca vrt 2005 download
While stressing that a thriving media is vital to a "mature democracy", Dr Williams will also tell his audience the way news is packaged inhibits the public from becoming engaged with issues and understanding them fully.eca vrt 2005 download
"There is a tension at the heart of the journalistic enterprise. Its justification is that it promises to deliver what other sources can't - information that is needed to equip the reader or viewer or listener for a more free and significant role as a human agent.eca vrt 2005 download
"But at the same time it is bound to a method and a rhetoric that treats its public as consumers and the information it purveys as a commodity."
Dr Williams will say the central task of the media is to "nourish the common good" of society, and praises the courage and commitment of many journalists.Is that the task? There was a lot of talk at Annenberg about how journalism's duty is to create an informed democracy. Is that more about education ... or investigation ... or communication?
However, he will add that "some aspects of current practice" are "lethally damaging" to the profession.eca vrt 2005 downloadThere, too, I'm not sure Williams is on the right track. Concealment does not equal guilt. But it does yield suspicion. Or to put it another way: Transparency, we now hold, is a virtue. eca vrt 2005 download"High levels of adversarial and suspicious probing send the clear message that any kind of concealment is guilty until proved innocent. That is a case that needs more than just assumptions to be morally persuasive." ...
Still, Williams has a point. eca vrt 2005 download
The cliche is true: The watchdog role of the press is a vital check on the powerful in a democracy. But does every investigation serve the public interest or is it a gotcha moment that serves the ego of the reporter and his institution? Is it good to bring down the powerful or does the constant dogging of the powerful only divide us and sour us? Is it better to trap a lying politician or to bang the heads of our leaders to make them stop yelling at each other -- on our cue -- and start working together to make them fix health care? eca vrt 2005 download
And what role can citizen journalists play in this? Are we unleashing watchdogs on the unwatched -- our local school boards, our heads of public works -- or are we starting an epidemic of rabies? Are we the watchdogs on the watchdogs or merely growlers who don't understand or appreciate the value of shoe leather?eca vrt 2005 download
These are not idle questions as the news business faces its economic crisis and restructuring, as they ask where to put their resources (task force or hyperlocal), as they grapple with the lack of trust in journalists (could it because we fostered that by trusting no one?). So what are your answers? Is investigative reporting journalism's highest calling and highest art?eca vrt 2005 download
June 14, 2005
Gov giveth and gov taketh away
Gov giveth and gov taketh away
: Continuing the day at the Annenberg event, Tim Cook, an impressive LSU professor, made a case for government helping media. He was supposed to be provocative and I was predictably provoked. I said I'm not a libertarian but I'd sound like one as I shared the lessons Susan Crawford has taught me, that asking for government help in one cause only invites government interference in another, whether in spam or indecency or freedom of speech and the press. Various ideas were raised by respondents that made my spine shake: taxing ads to support publications with fewer ads, giving postal subsidies only to publications below a circulation threshold, government search engines. Arrrgh. Oh, plenty of ticklish issues are raised -- shield laws, spectrum regulation... -- but I suggested three principles:eca vrt 2005 download
1. Journalists are citizens and citizens are journalists and deserve the same rights under the constitution. eca vrt 2005 download
2. The press is supposed to distrust, or at least watch and be skeptical about, the government, and so it must not set itself up in a position to be beholden to government. eca vrt 2005 download
3. We should invite no compromise to the protection of the First Amendment Congress shall make no law.
eca vrt 2005 download
Journalism's warped mirror
Journalism's warped mirror
: The Annenberg Foundation, at whose event I'm sitting right now, released a survey of journalists and members of the public, often about the same questions but with very different views. Some highlights:eca vrt 2005 download
: "To what extent do journalists who report the news try to do so objectively and fairly, without regard to their own political views?..."
56 percent of journalists said they do to a great extent and 38 percent to a moderate extent, adding up to 94 percent
But only 18 percent of the public say to a great extent and 47 percent to a moderate extent, adding up to 65 percent.
One could argue that 65 percent is still a good majority, but it's a rather wide gulf. eca vrt 2005 download
: Journalists were asked the reason why journalists "unintentionally let bias into their reporting."
38 percent say they accept information without checking, 29 say they have strong personal views on a subject, 18 percent blame tight deadlines, 7 percent blame writing for editors' approval.eca vrt 2005 download
: On Dan Rather, the two groups were not far apart on three questions: A sizable majority of both groups said that a major or minor reason for running the Bush story included that CBS and Rather "believed the story was accurate" and they were "in too much of a rush" and that they "were lied to by their sources." A split came on this theory: "CBS News and Dan Rather are liberals who dislike President Bush." 41 percent of journalists said this was a reason, major or minor, but 69 percent of the public believed this reason. eca vrt 2005 download
: Here's a fun one: Both groups were asked whether people on a list were journalists or not. I'll list the number from journalists the public's number for each name with my comments: Peter Jennings 91/88; Mike Wallace 92/80; Brian Williams 80/69; Bob Woodward (question asked before Deep Throat's PR) 96/64; George Will 64/50; Katie Couric (note the shift) 49/62; Chris Matthews 49/55; Larry King 26/43; Bill O'Reilly 12/55 (now there is a disconnect); Rush Limbaugh 3/32.eca vrt 2005 download
: The two groups certainly disagree about whether journalists get the facts straight.
86 percent of journalists think they get the facts straight while only 45 percent of the public agree; 11 percent of journalists say they are "often innacurate" while 48 percent of the public say that is the case. eca vrt 2005 download
: They also disagree about whether mistakes are corrected.
74 percent of journalists say they quickly report they have made a mistake vs. 30 percent of the public.eca vrt 2005 download
: The public thinks most journlists are liberal but most American aren't.
Asked to describe the majority of journalists, the public said 42 percent are liberal, 29 moderate, 16 conservative. As to the majority of Americans: 17 percent liberal, 39 moderate, 33 conservative.eca vrt 2005 download
: Journalists are asked the same question on many job descriptions. I'll quote just the liberal number: 54 percent say the majority of newspaper journalists are liberal, 34 percent for TV and radio journalists, 34 for editors and producers, 5 for media owners, and 6 for radio talk show hosts. And the public? Only 1 percent of journalists say the majority of Americans is liberal. eca vrt 2005 download
: 30 percent of journalists say news media have been more critical of the Bush administration, 64 percent of journalists say they were more critical of Clinton.eca vrt 2005 download
: On the idea of news organizations having "a decidedly political point of view in their coverage of the news," the two groups split... but I think the question is not properly put. The issue in the minds of many is not whether journalists have a bias but whether they reveal it. In any case, 16 percent of journalists say it's very or somewhat good to have a decedily political point of view in coverage while 80 percent say it's very or somewhat bad vs. a split public: 43 percent say it's very or somewhat good and 53 says it's very or somewhat bad. eca vrt 2005 download
: Asked about watching "shows such as the O'Reilly Factor or Hardball," I find it interesting that the public argues against the echo-chamber theory: 80 percent say they watch because they "like to listen to people who have a different point of view than me."eca vrt 2005 download
: Asked whom they believe in all or most matters, here's the public's ranking: Local TV news ranks first at 72 percent followed by CNN, 65; Jennings and ABC, 64; Williams and NBC, 60; the local daily paper, 59; Fox, Time, and CBS tied at 56; People at 23; Limbaugh at 20. Some are amazed by that local TV news number but I think it makes sense because (a) it's local and local is what matters in our lives, (b) it's easy and doesn't try to, in the words of one participant here, treat news as porridge, (c) it's human and has a personality, vs. impersonal and institutional newspapers. eca vrt 2005 download
: 85 percent of journalists think it's not easy for the public to distinguish journalists from nonjournalists. (Whatever the hell a journalist is....)eca vrt 2005 download
: On blogs, 45 percent of journalists say they have a very or somewhat positive effect on the quality of news; 38 percent sasy very or somewhat negative.eca vrt 2005 download
: As for eading blogs, 20 percent of journalists do it every day, 17 percent a few times a week, 15 percent a few times a month, 5 percent once a month, 18 percent less than monthly, 24 percent never. eca vrt 2005 download
June 13, 2005
Brother, can you spare a scoop?
Brother, can you spare a scoop?
: Updating this post as the day goes on, below. eca vrt 2005 download
: I'm at an Annenberg event in Philadelphia bringing together mostly journalism academics and others to talk about the role of the press in a democracy. I'll blog it occasionally. eca vrt 2005 download
Tonight, Chuck Lewis, who founded the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit source for investigative journalism, argued in favor of a nonprofit model for reporting, saying that an organization such as the CPI can dog stories and spend money news companies often can't. eca vrt 2005 download
I do believe that nonprofit reporting will have a growing role. NPR is invoked by many, with contributions and foundations supporting quality and growing journalism (though it's interesting to me that many newspapers have larger staffs covering one town than NPR has covering the nation and the world, according to the numbers I heard tonight) eca vrt 2005 download
The questions after his talk raised interesting issues. A few (I among them) cautioned that foundations, too, have agendas and when they pay for reporting that's just another means of using money to control journalism. eca vrt 2005 download
Others pushed for hybrid models. One academic suggested the need for an Associated Press of investigative journalism and I like that: such an AP doesn't handle commodity news but real reporting... if news organizations can give up their addictions to scoops. Someone who has run a nonprofit journalistic organization for years said that when alternative newspapers goosed the news business a few decades ago, none of them thought for a second of running their businesses on contributions; they supported themselves the old-fashioned way -- with profits -- and ethnic journalism is doing the same thing today. I also, predictably, raised the prospect of individually supported reporting: witness Hoder going to Iran, Josh Marshall going to New Hampshire. eca vrt 2005 download
: After the wine and before the food, the room introduced itself and there were some interesting moments in that: One academic said, "get rid of objectivity"(I stopped myself from applauding). Another academic argued for the British model of journalism. One TV producer said, "the economic models are hopeless broken." An alternative journalism vet says there should be profit caps on media companies (I stopped myself from hooting). A dean said we need to stop serving "the porridge of journalism, forcing it down people's throats." A newspaperman said we must "stop thinking of our readers as stupid because they don't want us... We must abandon our core products." These were the soundbites I want to hear more about. eca vrt 2005 download
: LATER: Jim Naughton, former head of Poynter and a nostalgic former editor on the Philadelphia Inquirer, just pushed a proposition that newspapers should advertise the value of journalism to the public: Wearing a Darth mask, he said, "We must go to the dark side, we must market." eca vrt 2005 download
Arrrrgh. Merrill Brown said what needed to be said (and what I wanted to say) -- that that is moving the deck chairs, that this is a dying industry that should be spending money on changing the product and then we should advertise that. eca vrt 2005 download
: I'm surprised -- but shouldn't be -- at how much I hear in this crowd of academics and editors disdain for corporations and profits. eca vrt 2005 download
I, on the other hand, believe that the marketplace is journalism's best hope. eca vrt 2005 download
: Case in point: Claude-Jean Bertrand, professor emeritus from the University of Paris, says: "A free market is indispensible but it cannot create good media as is evidenced right now in this country."eca vrt 2005 download
Arrrgh II. This displays an essential mistrust of the public the press tries to serve. What are we all but the marketplace?eca vrt 2005 download
He puts forward a list of more than 80 "media accountability systems." eca vrt 2005 download
I'd counter that with three notions that cover it as far as I'm concerned: conscience, good sense, and transparency. eca vrt 2005 download
: They talk about news councils and such. I blurt out that we have a million press critics and they are our readers and former readers. We have to read them. eca vrt 2005 download
: Dave Winer would have a screaming fit at an event such as this: One person takes the mike for 40 minutes; one person responds; a few people get to raise their hands in what passes for discussion. In this kind of crowd, the Bloggercon nonconference model would work best: capture the wisdom of the crowd via discussion and a meritocracy of ideas. Rather than have people present papers and propositions, it would be better to present, read, and react to them beforehand online so we can arrive for the center of the discussion rather than the prelude. eca vrt 2005 download
And, yes, I wish Winer were here. What these journalism confabs always miss on the invitation list is the public they should be serving and hearing. eca vrt 2005 download
Sex sells, news doesn't
Sex sells, news doesn't
: Steve Baker of Business Week has a theory explaining why I didn't get many comments on the new newsroom post:
Either commenters are taking the weekend off, or they're far more interested in airbrushed nipples than the future of journalism.eca vrt 2005 download
Where in the world
Where in the world
: Poynter's Larry Larsen wants news orgs to post GPS coordinates for their stories. Yes, that'd be great, along with tags and more metadata. But I can tell you, having spent years trying to get newsrooms to put stories online, that it's hard enough to get a sports story in the sports section. eca vrt 2005 download
June 12, 2005
The latest
The latest
: Lost Remote reports that a Miami TV station is making good use of mobile alerts (and the same use could be made of RSS): hurricane alerts. eca vrt 2005 download
June 11, 2005
Whom do you trust? Not us.
Whom do you trust? Not us.
: Confidence in news media -- newspaper and TV -- has reached an all-time low in Gallup's survey of trust in institutions.
Those having a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers dipped from 30% to 28% in one year, the same total for television. The previous low for newspapers was 29% in 1994. Since 2000, confidence in newspapers has declined from 37% to 28%, and TV from 36% to 28%, according to the poll.eca vrt 2005 downloadOr it could suggest that they're all just doing a piss-poor job. eca vrt 2005 downloadHowever, some other institutions fared far worse this year, suggesting a broad level of distrust, cynicism or malaise.eca vrt 2005 download
Confidence in the presidency plunged from 52% to 44%, with Congress and the criminal-justice system also suffering 8% drops. Confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court fell from 46% to 41%. The 22% confidence rating for Congress is its lowest in eight years, and self-identified Republicans have only a slightly more positive view of the institution than do Democrats.
Note also that the new pondscum of public institutions with the lowest trust of all are... drum roll and fart sound-effect at the ready, please... HMOs.
eca vrt 2005 download
What's wrong with news
What's wrong with news
: This one headline from the AP says it all:
2,200 Journalists Await Jackson VerdictIt's wrong not because the story is tacky but because the news is a commodity: eca vrt 2005 download
There will be one bit of news that comes out of the end of this trial: Guilty or not guilty. It takes one person to report that and today that word can spread around the world in no time and every news site and every TV and radio station and every blog can know it without sending 2,199 journalists to sit there and wait and repeat the exact same news. eca vrt 2005 download
Oh, you want to see how ridiculous Jackson looks under his umbrella as he gloats or mopes? Fine, give that one person a camera and hook it up to the internet. We'll all see it. We'll all be able to comment on it just like the chippies before the camera. eca vrt 2005 download
Guilty or not guilty. eca vrt 2005 download
You certainly don't need legal analysts to explain that verdict to you. But you'll have them. eca vrt 2005 download
Why are those 2,200 journalists there? Ego, pure institutional ego. The Daily Blatt thinks its readers give two hoots that its own reporter is there instead of running the AP's story. MSCNNFOX news worry that without their own reporter and camera there, you'll watch the other guy. But which one you watch is really just a multiple choice question in which all the answers are wrong: You'll hear no newer, better, extra news on this story on one channel or another. eca vrt 2005 download
Those 2,199 extra journalists could be off reporting real stories we don't all already know about. Or they could be fired, saving their employers money and saving us their moaning about the state of the news business today. eca vrt 2005 download
: 1115.org finds quotes from CNN head Jon Klein regretting the volume of Jackson coverage (can't get to the original story becausae of a registration block):
“If I had one decision to take back, it would be the extent of our coverage,” says CNN/U.S. chief Jon Klein, six months on the job. “Looking back, we should have just covered the beginning and the end.” ...eca vrt 2005 download“We committed to a reporter and crew there every single day,” Klein says. “I have not found it to be a very satisfying meal. CNN ought to do stories nobody else has. We did what everybody else did. It was the safe thing to do.”eca vrt 2005 download
In terms of news value, the case “wasn’t even close to being the biggest priority,” Klein says. In the future, “we will be a lot more careful about committing to ongoing coverage.”
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A new newsroom
A new newsroom
: I'm going to link again to my post about reinventing the newsroom because I was hoping for more comments like this one from Business Week's Steve Baker, riffing after a comment by Blogads' Henry Copeland:
Funny that Henry should mention "only the paranoid survive." Because I think that the key to success in whatever we end up calling this new age is overcoming fear. Paranoids build walls. They keep secrets. They stitch together back-channel alliances. All of these maneuvers are designed to defend them. But they all limit connections with the rest of the world. I think that people who figure out how to share secrets, consort with the enemy, and camp out on foreign soil stand to win these days. I think the blog world is a laboratory for this.And, no, he's not saying bloggers are the enemy. He is one. eca vrt 2005 download
Mark Tapscott says on his blog:
One of the biggest challenges for MSMers is getting out of the Old Media way of thinking that is anchored around the concepts of the single hard-copy or broadcast being the basic news product and the daily deadline cycle required to produce that product. Thinking in those terms is a prescription for death these days, but that fact doesn't make it any less difficult for folks who have operated in traditional newsrooms throughout their careers to start thinking in completely new ways.: Dwight Silverman, tech blogger on the Houston Chronicle, quotes part of my post and says:
Yeah. I'd love to work in a newsroom that operated like that. Bring it on.Well, Dwight, it may not be as far off as you think, considering that the good conversation I had this week on this topic was with a bunch of editors, including yours. eca vrt 2005 download
: Laurence Simon remixes my post quite nicely and bluntly:
On 1. Input, stop chewing and vomiting back AP and Reuters. Report on original and local material in your backyard. I see an attack on the herd mentality of media, sending crews and reporters to stories already well-covered by partners and other outlets. Also, an attack on "vanity crews" just so you can say you sent a crew there and are reporting live from the scene far far away....eca vrt 2005 downloadCouldn't have said it better myself, Laurence, though I tried.eca vrt 2005 download3. Jarvis' Mantra - Newspapers aren't the source. They are the amplifier and mixer for many sources. "Houston's Leading Information Source" isn't right in that regard... it's not a source but a conduit. Does it reproduce the signal faithfully? Is it mixed without much error or loss?...eca vrt 2005 download
Blogging as Metaphor - massive IT investment and reworking of the newsroom workflow. Everything goes into a MASSIVE DATABASE with enough tags to make it easy to store, find, crosslink, reference, edit, share, and publish. As the lifecycle of a story progresses, the public has the ability to watch it form, like a man tossing pizza dough in the air....eca vrt 2005 download
4. Train the reader - The reader is no logner a reader, but a participant...
: Mark Tosczak says:
To me, as a working journalist, it's becoming increasingly clear that the old skill sets most reporters and editors were trained with are simply inadequate. Now we have to not only be writers, but also broadcasters, designers, programmers, moderators. We have to be multimedia savvy. Used to be you could have a good career (at least in newspapers) with basically just writing, interviewing and editing skills. Now we all need to know something about design, about photography, about sound recording, about video, about speaking and appearing on camera. More skills, broader skills. It's a brave new world, and exciting.Note he says "exciting," not "frightening." See Baker, above. eca vrt 2005 download
: And thanks, Craig, for the link. eca vrt 2005 download
At the temple
At the temple
: Jay Rosen, my rabbi, continues his lessons about the religion of the press with a fine parable about a CNN reporter who thinks you can't wear a flag and be a reporter at once and also about a prodigal son of journalism who chose not to worship at the big, one-size-fits-all temple but instead to go to another on the right edge of town. Go read his sermon first and then come back for coffee hour....eca vrt 2005 download
The problem in the religion of big journalism is that you're not supposed to have opinions. You're not supposed to be American. You're not supposed to be human. You're a reporter. eca vrt 2005 download
And that, of course, is just so much hubristic hogwash. eca vrt 2005 download
I found myself in a discussion about blogs and newspapers recently -- I feel as if I never leave that discussion -- one of them asked the inevitable question about reporters blogging: Should they have opinions? I said I'd give them my blogboy answer: Of course. eca vrt 2005 download
One of the editors gave the example of an ongoing smoking ban story. Should the reporter express an opinion for or against in her blog? It took me a minute before I came up with the right answer: It's not so much about an opinion on that story as it is about transparency. So, like a good New Yorker, I answered the question with a question: If the reporter were a smoker, wouldn't that be relevant? Doesn't the audience deserve to know that? If the audience caught the reporter grabbing a smoke, wouldn't they properly see it as a scandal? If the reporter doesn't reveal that, isn't that a lie of omission, a hidden agenda? So if the reporter has an attitude about that smoking ban, might that be relevant, too? eca vrt 2005 download
The problem with this objectivity doctrine is that reporters and editors didn't just make themselves adherants of a religion, they made themselves monks, even gods: higher beings who do not suffer from the human foibles of opinions and viewpoints and who think having open conversations with those who do is below them. eca vrt 2005 download
But the truth is that they are Americans covering an American war and smokers covering a smoking ban and Catholics covering church sex scandals and Jews covering Israel and citizens covering politics. They are not above or apart from us. They are us. eca vrt 2005 download
: See also Ernest Miller. eca vrt 2005 download
June 10, 2005
Who's news
Who's news
: PrivateRadio started tracking the news sources on GoogleNews because they're not transparent about it; the tracking started when I started complaining, with others, about a neonazi "news" site soome Googler let in. Well, PrivateRadio has done amazing things to the tracking, now analyzing top stories and top sources by topic. Go take a look. eca vrt 2005 download
A new newsroom
A new newsroom
: Over recent months, I've had many conversations with news executives in various media and various companies about how to adapt the newsroom of yesterday for the realities of today: People want news anytime, anywhere, specific to their interests and needs. People want to gain control over the news and be heard. Newsrooms are hard to change. In that dangerous intersection, I lived until recently. eca vrt 2005 download
I chose not to be the change agent in a newsroom and instead to pursue change from without just because that's the kind of guy I am: difficult. But having had so many of these discussions with so many smart people who are grappling with a strategic imperative to change -- and because I just spoke with a roomful of editors and will be in another roomful of them again next week -- I decided to try to put my money where my mouth is (well, I guess I did that when I changed careers... and I can tell you how much that damned mouth of mine cost me, to the penny). So I will explore some of the issues and ideas on changing newsrooms here. eca vrt 2005 download
I was going to post this yesterday morning, before I sat in that first roomful of editors, but didn't because I wasn't quite ready and because I thought to rather hubristic -- even for me -- to make such suggestions to people who actually run newsrooms. But they are trying to figure out new ways to do their business; it was an impressively open discussion and so, at the end, I pretty much read this post and didn't find myself hooted out of the room (at least not until after I left). So...eca vrt 2005 download
The first part summarizes earlier blatherings of mine (pardon the repetition) to try to frame the strategic imperative for change in the newsroom. And, by the way, I'm always confused about which first-person hat I wear; in this case, I'll wear my mediaman instead of my blogboy beret (but I'll switch back). Please join in....eca vrt 2005 download
As I see it, there are three imperatives for change in newsrooms:eca vrt 2005 download
1. The input: New news gathering: Newsrooms need to redefine news and news gathering. They need to be open to new sources of news, including the reporting of the people they used to view as the audience: yes, even bloggers. To use our parlance today, newsrooms need to think of themselves -- again -- as aggregators, gathering -- and sometimes packaging, sometimes not -- the news their communities create. eca vrt 2005 download
They also need to waste less effort, talent, and money on commodity news, the news we already know, the news we could write ourselves if we watched CSpan or CNN. If you can link to it, if the audience already knows it, why spend ever-more-precious resources redoing it? Instead, it is better to concentrate on a newsroom's real value, reporting: journalists' ability to ask the questions people in power don't want asked, to be an advocate for the public to power, to get to the bottom of debates, to add perspective, to be local. Journalists aren't the only ones who can do that, but that is still their primary value. eca vrt 2005 download
2. The output: New dissemination on new schedules: We've said it a million times: We no longer wait for the news -- for the paper to land on the doorstep or for the show to start. Now the news waits for us -- when we want it (when it happens or when we are curious), where we want it (online, on mobile, or on yet-uninvented toys), and how we want (just our topics, just what we don't know). eca vrt 2005 download
But I've learned just how difficult it is to get newsrooms to shift to serve these needs. They operate on a once-a-day clock with just one number on it: closing time or showtime. So how does that change -- if you can't afford a continuous news desk like The New York Times and The Washington Post have? I'm not sure, but I'll make a suggestion in a minute. eca vrt 2005 download
3. The back-and-forth: Join the conversation: And we've said this a million times, too: News is a conversation and that conversation is going on with or without us. We used to think the news was done, baked, finished when and only when we published it. But that's when the news starts, when the public -- who, as Dan Gilmor has repeatedly said, knows more than we do -- adds its questions and facts and perspectives. The news doesn't belong to us; we just gather and disseminate it in a world that abhors middlemen. We need to enable the conversation or get out of the way. eca vrt 2005 download
OK, so how to change this? I don't know. But I'll throw out a few ideas:eca vrt 2005 download
1. Compensation: Editors should be compensated on total audience and audience satisfaction across all media, not just the old one. And they should be compensated for growth in the new media. Yes, the new media produce a lower margin than the old, but wishing that not to be true won't make it false. There's no growth in old media. The growth is in new media and those who aren't growing there will die.eca vrt 2005 download
2. Blogging as a metaphor and as a new publishing tool: Of course, you could count on me to find a way to make blogging the cure for all ills. But stick with me for a minute: The way newsrooms operate today, it's hard to capture and share the news as soon as we know it. It's also hard to capture the value of a reporter's voice and perspective. And it's hard to make news conversational when it's all fed into a one-way pipe. So imagine if blogging software became the publishing system of the newsroom. Imagine if reporters were told to put everything into that system: They come back from reporting a story and write up the pitch or skedline, as we say, with the essence of the story. That reporter or an editor could with one button publish that to the internet. They could link to the AP story that has more details until the reporter writes the bigger piece, if that's even necessary. The public could weigh in and ask the reporter questions or share knowledge to improve the story before it is "finished" and published. They could do this even before it is reported, when reporters ask for help. The reporter could post the transcript of her interviews, in case anyone wants to see that. The reporter could post audio interviews, photos, video scenes. The reporter and editors could ask the public to add their photos and stories. And after the story is published -- or, as we like to say, posted -- the public can still join in and add facts or viewpoints or links. And the reporter and the public can find themselves in a conversation about the story. In short: Anything can be posted and made public anytime. eca vrt 2005 download
3. Aggregate: In the old days, completeness was judged by what we wrote. Now it should be judged by what we gather. A town reporter should be reading the blogs and reports of citizens and even competitors and linking to it all -- or else he is providing an incomplete service, isn't he? This can be automated with RSS aggregation. It can be improved with judgments about quality and trust of each source made by the reporters and editors and public, too (you don't have to link to everything but you should link to the good stuff). eca vrt 2005 download
4. Share: If we're going to rely -- yes, rely -- on citizen journalists to help us expand -- yes, expand -- our news coverage even as our revenue dwindles, then we need to share with them: We can share knowledge by training those who want to learn how to get access to information and how to avoid being sued and how to check facts. Not everyone will want or need that training but those who do will become better partners. We should share news, whether that is our headlines or our interviews. We should share promotion (now known as links). We should share trust, helping to identify those reporters whom the public believes. And we should share revenue to support their efforts (which will end up being less expensive than hiring staff we can't afford).eca vrt 2005 download
5. Meet, greet: When I was a reporter on small, local papers, I loved meeting the readers. By the time I hit the big papers, I lost that affinity, perhaps because I became a snot or perhaps because half the folks who bothered to write letters to the papers wrote them in crayon. But blogging reformed me; it has taught me to value the quality of the relationship over the size of the numbers. I suggest that reporters and editors get out and hold MeetUps and talk with the public we serve, not behind focus-group mirrors but over coffee or beer, at eye level. eca vrt 2005 download
6. Transparency: We must open the sausage factory to regain trust and respect from the public we serve. Most of us deserve that trust and respect but not as a birthright, only if earned. eca vrt 2005 download
7. Any media anytime: Reporters and photographers should carry the tools of multimedia -- a voice recorder, a video/still camera, a keyboard -- and use them all. They need to be trained. They need to be encouraged. Then they should tell the story however it is best told. If I can record a podcast, anyone can.eca vrt 2005 download
8. Burn the business cards: No one in a newsroom should think of himself or herself as "print" or "online." That has turned news into an us-vs-them battle in the newsroom when it should be joint battle to survive and grow. This is not to say that there aren't still specialties: a graphic artist knows graphics, an online producer knows RSS. But we're all in this together. eca vrt 2005 download
9. Burn the org chart: The second-biggest issue in all this is control. Everybody wants to control every medium but then nobody will have anything to control because outsiders are running away with the content and the business. I'd play 52-card-pickup with job descriptions and move people -- starting with managers -- all around the news operationeca vrt 2005 download
10. Culture: Now here's the biggest issue, the elusive newsroom culture that resists change. Well, that's a crock, of course; it's just a job, but in the palace to passive-aggression that is the newsroom, resistance to change is made into a religion. But don't let anyone fool you that such culture is really so rampant in newsrooms; it's really just an excuse. eca vrt 2005 download
Faced with the strategic imperative to change -- the moment of restructuring that has come to most American industries and now is coming to news -- the smart and sensible will change. The only question is how. But that's a big question. eca vrt 2005 download
June 09, 2005
Every tyrant's 15 minutes of fame
Every tyrant's 15 minutes of fame
: Do we smell a trend: A week ago, Tom Brokaw got into Iran for a series of reports and now ABC News is getting into North Korea. [via MediaBistro]eca vrt 2005 download
The lady doth protest a heckuva lot
The lady doth protest a heckuva lot
: CNN rounds up all the big-buck advertising campaigns old media are undertaking to try to change their image. Methinks that changes in the products will say more than any ad campaign.
To be sure, newspapers, radio and magazines still control roughly half of the $180 billion-plus U.S. advertising market. But their growth rates are among the slowest of all major media, causing concerns that they will lose out to the faster-growing Internet and cable television in the long run. eca vrt 2005 downloadeca vrt 2005 downloadKimball and his radio and magazine counterparts see the image makeovers as a way to shed their industries' reputation for stodginess and to refute the impression that their industries are doomed by new technologies. eca vrt 2005 download
Radio, for instance, is touting its move toward high-definition radio. The industry is also embracing a popular new practice called "podcasting," in which users can download popular radio shows onto their computer hard drives or a portable device. eca vrt 2005 download
Newspaper and magazine publishers are looking to tap digital technologies for new revenues streams, including providing content to cell phones and other wireless devices. eca vrt 2005 download
Newspapers, criticized for failing to see the revenue potential of online job searches and other forms of classified advertising, are taking business risks now that they never did before, said Kimball.
June 06, 2005
10 million Luthers
10 million Luthers
: Jay Rosen -- who's never half-baked but who's always eager for conversation -- took his sweet time to formulate his responses to Deep Throat's unveiling and to the announcement of a big-money effort to fix journalism education and he put them together in a post that examines the religion journalism has become and the conclave of cardinals that the Carnegie-Knight initiative is. eca vrt 2005 download
The commonly accepted tenets and practices of our religion are due for questioning and one would hope that journalists -- so proud of being skeptics -- would be the questioners and that journalism schools -- where academics are so proud of questioning -- would be the place for this to occur. But, of course, journalism and journalism education are institutions that attempt to preserve their religion. So Jay's response to the big load of cash that landed in the collection plate last week is this:
Maybe what we need is not funding for a new church, but a breakaway church, or two, or three of them. (And what is Fox News Channel, but that?)And what are bloggers but 10 million Luthers pounding on the door?eca vrt 2005 download
This is not to say that I reject the instititutions of journalism and I don't think Jay rejects the institutions of journalism education or we wouldn't both be men of the paper. But we do believe that the breakaways, the challengers, the heretics are good for these institutions, which should be questioning their ways to find betters ones. eca vrt 2005 download
Among the religious tenets that should be questioned, in Jay's post: Did Woodward and Bernstein and Bradlee bring down the emperor Nixon... or -- to make a bad metaphor unbearable -- did Mark Felt as Brutus bring down this Caesar, did agencies of government do the job more than institutions of journalism? And are we really so skeptical, we reporters, are do we too often report what the powerful want us to report? Is it right and necessary that journalists pay their dues working their way up the institutional ladder when others are walking around that ladder to do the same work? Are the products of journalism's two holy sacraments -- investigative reporting and good, old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting -- what the public really wants or what journalists want?
Watergate has been treated by journalists as a consensus narrative, with an agreed-upon lesson for all Americans. The Fourth Estate model not only works, it can save us. The press shall know the truth and the truth shall check the powers that be, whether Democrat or Republican. Chasing stories, exposing corruption, giving voice to the downtrodden: that's what we in journalism do, the myth says. We do it for the American people.That's what we want to believe in journalism, but is it true? eca vrt 2005 download
: MORE: Laura Washington writes in the Sun-Times that journalism's mirror is cracked:
When the journalism profession looks in the mirror, it doesn't like what it sees.eca vrt 2005 downloadWhoa about there. I was fine until she turned this into a quota thing... and that's not just because I am a white man over 50 (not that there's anything wrong with that, right?). She falls into newsroom-think: that diversity is about the colors of the people you see inside the newsroom. No, diversity is about the voices and views outside and whether they are heard. They are beginning to be heard online, because they can be, so why do they need to go inside the newsroom? No, it's up to the newsroom to listen to what is happening outside its walls. [Thanks to Paladin in the comments for the link!]eca vrt 2005 downloadIt sees a public turned off by the news -- news of a never-ending succession of our journalistic crimes from plagiarism to fabrication; squabbles over anonymous sources; half-hearted mea culpas, and just-plain-old screw-ups. It sees a profession in crisis....eca vrt 2005 download
When readers and viewers look into the mirror that is our media, they don't see themselves. A recent report by Columbia's own Project for Excellence in Journalism found that in the last 17 years, Americans have "come to see the press as less professional, less moral, more inaccurate, and less caring about the interests of the country." Surveys taken between 1985 and 2002 reveal the proportion of Americans who view news organizations as "highly professional" declined from 72 percent to 49 percent. Those who considered news organizations "moral" fell from 54 percent to 39 percent. And news consumers who "thought the press got the facts straight" fell from 55 percent to 35 percent.eca vrt 2005 download
Joe Six-Pack doesn't read the newspaper over his morning eggs and coffee anymore. The couch potatoes are furiously clicking off the nightly news. Readers and viewers see the media as an elitist bunch that neither live nor reflect their reality. The news honchos who have the most sway over writing and producing the news are mostly white men over 50....
June 04, 2005
Question the money
Question the money
: John Tierney questions one of the sacred tenants of journalism: Thou shalt not pay sources. eca vrt 2005 download
The question is: Why shouldn't Deep Throat, aka W. Mark Felt, make money from Watergate? Woodward and Bernstein certainly did. The scandal -- and Felt's information that helped them expose it -- made them famous and made them a fortune and established their careers as journalistic heroes. eca vrt 2005 download
But when Felt's family tried to get some money for his story, they were treated like money-grubbers. People and Vanity Fair wouldn't pay them. Against journalistic ethics, they say. eca vrt 2005 download
Now there is some reason for this, a practical ethical reason: If people reveal the truth for money, they may make up lies to make money. eca vrt 2005 download
But there's another reason, an economic reason: Journalism cannot afford to share the money it makes off the truth. What if everyone wanted their cut? What if your competitor could pay more? What if George Steinbrenner were a publisher? He'd get all the scoops. eca vrt 2005 download
As Tierney points out, the way to manage this in the past -- the way to launder the money -- was to publish a book; the public decides whether to buy your truth. There, it's OK to make money for your own story. In newspapers and magazines, you can't make money for your own story -- the publishers do; they sell their truth. eca vrt 2005 download
I wonder whether the new age of distributed media that might change. I joked the other day that if Watergate occurred today, Deep Throat would have a blog. He might well, for it would give him control of his story and his identity. It's hard to imagine making enough money off Google AdSense to make whistleblowing pay. It's also hard to imagine a whistleblower able to get the verification and attention that journalists bring. But I have to believe that the next Deep Throat will want to control the fate of his story.... and its value. And is that so wrong?eca vrt 2005 download
June 02, 2005
The Epic continues
The Epic continues
: Epic is a clever Flash saga about the future of news that every newsperson alive emails to fellow newspeople as if he or she were the first to discover it -- and quickly, all those newspeople announce that they discovered it first. Well, let me be the first, second, or third to tell you that there's now an epilogue in 2015 in which people start sharing GPS-tagged neighborhood broadcasts and after a nuclear digital winter of news, new reporting sprouts up. eca vrt 2005 download
: I didn't know that the original Epic -- by Robin Sloan, now web genius blogger at Current.TV, and Matt Thompson -- was inspired by an argument over the oft-emailed Pong speech by my friend and now colleague Martin Nisenholtz. If you haven't read that, do. eca vrt 2005 download
Outboxed
Outboxed
: Robert Greenwald, who made Outfoxed, is now going after Walmart and is asking the public for contributions of video and photo and stories and is recruiting people to be field producers and even to host screenings of the finished flick... and also, of course, he's asking for money. Some way say it's citizen journalism blowing the lid off the box with a smart mob, others may call it a new-media lynch mob. In any case, it's a clever means of recruiting the audience to get behind the camera. To paraphrase Jay Rosen: Now the writers are readers, the readers are producers. [via Bill Doskoch]eca vrt 2005 download
: By the way, I hate shopping in Walmart -- the place scares me viscerally -- but I don't think it's evil just because it's big. I also have -- stupidly, perhaps -- avoided buying Walmart stock because I believe that in the history of retail -- see department store chains of the past and see most any consumer electronics chain -- there has always been a tipping point when a chain gets too big. Will that day come for Walmart? I think it will tip of its own weight. That's just a guess but that's why I don't think Walmart (or Clear Channel or Microsoft) is an evil empire that needs to be toppled. The market takes care of that. eca vrt 2005 download
Books are back
Books are back
: Tied to the start of BookExpo, the publishing convention (where I'm doing the blogboy dance today) The NY Times says that books are back with sales increasing (while movie ticket sales are declining). Could it be that the internet is making people read again (for now). Or could it just be that movies suck? Or could it be divine intervention:
In fact, for all the talk about the death of "old media" - that is, printed material like books - and the ascendancy of the new, digitally fueled media that rule the airwaves and cyberspace, Americans still spend more buying books than they do going to movies or buying recorded music, video games or DVD's.eca vrt 2005 downloadeca vrt 2005 downloadConsumer spending on books rose 8 percent, to nearly $21 billion, in the three years that ended in December....eca vrt 2005 download
The rebound has been fueled largely by the expanding popularity of religious-themed books like "The Purpose-Driven Life" and the "Left Behind" series of novels, as well as a new breed of mega-best-selling novels, some with religious overtones, like "The Da Vinci Code" and "The Five People You Meet in Heaven."
June 01, 2005
One page closes, another opens
One page closes, another opens
: At the World Newspaper Congress in Korea, NY Times President and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger had this quotable thought:
Some mention the crisis of newspapers saying young readers no longer read print newspapers in the Internet era, but it's not that the Internet is eroding the newspaper market but that newspapers have gained a new medium to deliver information.Amen. It's not about attracting the young or preserving the old but about expanding into the new. [Full disclosure -- which I'll make a time or two: I now work part-time for The Times Company.]eca vrt 2005 download
May 31, 2005
The scoop
The scoop
: The Post reports on the story behind the story in Vanity Fair and how The Post got scooped: because Woodward kept his promise not to reveal Deep Throat's identity until he was released from the pledge. The Vanity Fair story was edited by my colleague and friend, David Friend. eca vrt 2005 download
Vanity Fair, too, was late to the story but moments after it broke on the internet, the text came online. eca vrt 2005 download
: Also in the Post, Hank Steuver contemplates life after the secret:
What could be more of a letdown than finding out who Deep Throat is? Finding it out in Vanity Fair? And not really finding it out in Vanity Fair so much as feeling it crash-land across the Internet and the cable news networks, days before the magazine even hits the stands? Finding out that you don't care anymore? Watching it not resonate among people younger than 30?...eca vrt 2005 download: And on anoymous sources, from Kit Seelye's NY Times media report:Perhaps Deep Throat's lovely (and daring) parting gift to Washington, especially to reporters, is simple: He actually exists. He is not fabrication or composite. He is one man, a fact not easily proved had he taken his secret to the grave. That in itself, in an era where trust has been shredded beyond recognition, is something to behold.
The emergence of the ultimate anonymous source comes at a time when newsrooms are struggling with questions about the use of such sources.eca vrt 2005 downloadeca vrt 2005 download"We've had all this stuff about anonymous sources and God knows yes, we all know anonymous sources are overused," said Lou Cannon, a former reporter for The Post. "But this really shows you, this story would have never come out if we had a rule against anonymous sources."
Ombud too many?
Ombud too many?
: Why does ESPN need an ombudsman? For Cubs fans to complain about Cubs jokes? What's next: A FoodTV ombudsman to deal with garlic issues? Has this trend gone too far?eca vrt 2005 download
Grow up
Grow up
: I've come to believe that newspapers and network news are barking up the wrong tree trying to attract young people, holding their conferences and issuing reports and fretting about what they want so we can give it to them. eca vrt 2005 download
The problem is that such a strategy is inherently condescending and pandering and that's why I don't think it will work. eca vrt 2005 download
As a wise colleague of mine, Joan Feeney -- my editorial partner at the founding of Entertainment Weekly -- once wisely said, if you build a new product based on a demographic, you will lose. If you build a new product based on a great idea with passion behind it, you just might win. eca vrt 2005 download
Time Inc. -- where Joan and I worked at the time -- had tried for years to create magazines for women and consistently failed, because it was men who were trying to figure out what they -- women -- wanted. Freud couldn't have successfully edited some of the tripe the regimes then published. As another colleague of ours famously said, the men at Time Inc. saw women "only from neck to knees." It took Time Inc. years to learn that magazines aimed at women would fail, but magazines women like will succeed (witness People, InStyle, and others). eca vrt 2005 download
The problem with the youth strategy is that it treats young people as if they are alien beings. But they're just people, like you or even white-bearded me. They're not "they." They're "us." eca vrt 2005 download
You don't have to be young to use RSS or an iPod or mobile digital networks or wi-fi. You don't have to be young to appreciate the conversation the internet enables. You don't have to be young to question authority or distrust the press. eca vrt 2005 download
When we hear research about how young people treat news differently it could just be that they are the generation freed to think differently, unencumbered by our old-fart habits. If we old farts would free ourselves, we'd think differently, too. eca vrt 2005 download
So what's the right strategy? eca vrt 2005 download
Serve news to anytime anywhere because anyone should want that. Join in a conversation because no one wants to be lectured to. Be honest and transparent because no one has to trust you. eca vrt 2005 download
It's not about age. It's about change. eca vrt 2005 download
May 27, 2005
News exec blogs
News exec blogs
: Scott Anderson, an online exec at Tribune (and a Howard Stern fan.... we have so much in common) has been blogging inside the venerable Tribune Tower but now his blog is public and it's on my RSS feed now. eca vrt 2005 download
Future
Future
: Yesterday, at a press conference to announce a new initiative to improve journalism education, Hodding Carter, head of the Knight Foundation, said:
The great dirty secret in journalism and journalism education is that we are inherently conservative in the way we do things.Preach it, brother. Yes, change is feared and resisted. He also said:
What has struck me is not that things are changing but that the change is cascading... We are in the midst of an absolute revolution.Amen. eca vrt 2005 download
The initiative is funded by Carnegie and Knight and involves five universities: Northwestern, USC, Berkeley, Harvard, and Columbia. It will place journalism students at news organizations to work on reporting projects without the pressure of deadline or bottom lines -- this to be led by my friend, Merrill Brown. It will help establish programs in specialized journalism (e.g., science and engineering journalism at USC). And it will create a task force to speak out on issues in journalism. eca vrt 2005 download
The future of newsgathering
The future of newsgathering
: Ernie Miller sends us to a really wonderful post by Lenslinger, a TV cameraman who is watching himself be replaced by... us. He covers a media event (planned implosion of building; film at 11) and sees that "a new breed of onlooker rose up to record it":
I speak not of the swarthy camera pirate with his heavy lens and professional press pass, but of the mild mannered college professor with the brand new camera-phone, the smiley housewife with the shiny Sure-Shot, the cocksure columnist with a thesis already brewing in the laptop. They are more than erstwhile tourists. They are the rabid bloggers, the plugged-in pundits, the citizen press corps - whip-smart individuals whose very nature drives them to post pictures, links and commentary on the sudden collapse before the dust even finishes settling over once fertile ground.eca vrt 2005 downloadI could quote the whole post but instead go over to his site and read the rest. eca vrt 2005 downloadFrom Tripod Row, the view’s indeed a little scary. Squinting civilians peering into tiny lenses, breaking bedrock principles of camera-handling with every unnecessary sweep and pan. No one expected the democratization of media to be pretty, but the attendant lens abuse is enough to break this cinematographer’s heart. But that ship has sailed, a nautical phrase as apparently outdated as Wide-Medium-Tight and Steady Sequenced Video. What use are lofty production values to the herky-jerky nature of today’s internet footage? Does proper composition really matter when the end product is viewed on a one inch screen? Of course it does - but only to us broadcast dinosaurs. This new hybrid breed of digital scribe gives little thought to such matters, instead relying on quick image uploads and push-button publishing to make up for his lack of camera acumen.eca vrt 2005 download
It’s enough to make those of us in the media scrum to talk of the End Times....
Of course, this isn't just about TV video. This is about photography and audio and text and reporting. He's going through the ding-ding moment I went through, as a print guy, a few years ago. eca vrt 2005 download
I always said that when I was a critic, the only thing that separated me from the audience was that I got the stuff early (and couldn't skip over the bad parts). But now bloggers get books and tapes for review before release. So nothing would separate me as a critic from them as an audience; we're all us. eca vrt 2005 download
What separates a professional journalist from a journalist? Oh, that's what journalists of all stripes are fretting over. Training? Maybe. But if we could learn how to hold a camera steady or get a quote right, anybody could. EThics? Oh, I dislike that one; we all have ethics, even if don't have them enshrined in codes, and often those with the codes are the first to forget the essence of their ethics. Money? That's starting to flow to the just-plain people. eca vrt 2005 download
We all have the tools now. Ding, dong, the priests are dead. Jittery video at 11. eca vrt 2005 download
: MORE: Matthew in Australia watches the coverage of a woman charged with drugs in Bali and notes, similarly:
I mean, how many consumer-level video cameras and flipped-out LCD screens did you see hovering above the sea of journalists alongside the bulkier, broadcast-quality stuff? A lot! There was one Indonesian guy in a red shirt who, not weighed down by carry bags, lenses and boom mikes, was running after the police car with a video camera no larger than the size of his palm. And he was the only one keeping up! That's pretty full-on.eca vrt 2005 download
May 26, 2005
Another damned conference
Another damned conference
: I might have had conference envy with all the power gathered at the D confab but after reading this numbingly repetitive blather from panels about media and blogs, I'm glad I missed it. What these big guys need is an unconference where, as Dave Winer says, there is no panel, everyone is the panel, and the smart people in the room get to speak and not just listen.eca vrt 2005 download
: LATER: Bob Cox is properly pissed at Ana Marie Cox for biting the hand that fed her fame with blanket snarking at bloggers, of which she was one -- the most notorious one, in fact. eca vrt 2005 download
May 25, 2005
Moving
Moving
: Dean Wright, Merrill Brown's successor as editor of MSNBC.com (who has done a good job there), is moving over to Reuters to head up development of its consumer services -- that is, news directly to us, not through client media outlets. As we ask how we're going to get commodity news in the future, this is one answer. The AP will have a different answer -- pulling together the news of its correspondents and members. I'm not sure which model will be better business. eca vrt 2005 download
The future of magazines?
The future of magazines?
: Mark Glaser has a roundtable discussion about the future of magazines with Jay Rosen, Joan Walsh, Nina Link, Samir Husni, David Abrahamson and me. eca vrt 2005 download
: Also, Heather Green called this weekend for a chat that ends up on her Business Week blog. I rambled (not thinking it'd end up as a transcript) but rambling is nothing unusual for me!eca vrt 2005 download
May 23, 2005
On the air
On the air
: On MSNBC's Connected at 5p re Newsweek's new unnamed sources policy. eca vrt 2005 download
: Imagine my surprise to see SF Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein sitting with Monica Crowley going over scripts; he's subbing for Ron Reagan tonight. eca vrt 2005 download
New business models for news
New business models for news
: The discussion that the news industry -- print, broadcast, online -- needs most today is not more blather about who and isn't a journalist but instead about how to pay for journalism. eca vrt 2005 download
I was lucky enough to go to a roundtable about the future of news last week at the Museum of Television & Radio. It was off-the-record, so I'm not supposed to quote anyone. But I was making notes for a catalogue of new business models for news. Some of this is about saving money -- for audience and ad revenue to big media are falling and will continue to fall. But some of this is about opening up and taking advantage of what's happening in technology and media to expand, to explode. Here's are a few buckets, each broad and abstract; please add more and fill them up with specifics: eca vrt 2005 download
: New sources: See the post below about gathering news from many sources, including those outside the newsroom. Whether it's hyperlocal news around the corner or news in far-off places where reporters can't go or assigning the entire audience to help with news (tell us your stories of waste about health insurance), there is tremendous untapped knowledge and energy "out there." News organizations cannot afford to expand staff but this is how they can expand coverage. Or to look at it another way: This process of the people publishing news will go on anyway; the question is whether the news organizations can get involved and add value with content, promotion, and education. eca vrt 2005 download
: Replacing anchors with authentic voices: Is it still worth the money to have expensive anchors on TV? They supposedly added trust to the news, though Dan Rather burst that balloon. They also supposedly put a human face on the news -- a voice. But they became so homogenized that they added no voice at all; they became background noise, Newsak. So imagine instead having various people giving us news with various perspectives. I don't know whether that would work; we still like consistency and this, too, can create expensive stars (see: Bill O'Reilly). But I believe that the explosion of news will lead to a lessened dependence on high-priced faces.eca vrt 2005 download
Look at it another way: Does every newspaper across the country need its own movie critic? The movies are the same coast-to-coast. The information we need to decide whether to go is the same. So why not plop in Roger Ebert? Or why not plop in reviews by your funny neighbor who knows the good stuff? eca vrt 2005 download
Ditto sports columnists. Ditto political columnists. Get rid of the voices on high and get more voices from down on the ground and you'll improve the conversation and save money.eca vrt 2005 download
: Death to commodified news: As an industry, we waste a fortune manhandling the same commodified news everybody already knows. But it's more than just a waste; it drags us down into an oppressive sameness. We all got overdosed on Schaivovision and Popevision and Bridevision. The programmers behind the cable news networks were afraid not to blanket those stories because their competitors were blanketing them. But by that act, they made themselves the same as their competitors, they turned themselves into commodities. Breaking away from the pack is extremely difficult and risky, but every news outlet needs to have a unique voice and value or it will get lost in a crowd. eca vrt 2005 download
Similarly, newspapers and their audiences would be best served concentrating on what they do best: local, local, local. If they gave us the local news that no one else could gather and report, they'd be worth more to us. But this, too, is a hard habit to break: not sending the 15,001st correspondent to the political conventions, not editing the already edited AP report, not printing the stock tables....eca vrt 2005 download
: Death to the masses: One-size-fits-all news was a product of the mass market and the mass market was an aberration brought on by a scarcity and thus hegemony of broadcast channels which, in turn, led to a scarcity of newspaper choices. The internet explodes the mass market and brings the press back to its natural state of choice. So does it still make sense to print those stock tables -- costing, say, $1 million a year in paper and ink -- when only a small portion of the audience still uses them? Can you afford to let those readers go -- on the off chance that they do cancel their subscriptions; can you afford not to? In the old mass-market days, you put a little of this and a little of that in your product to serve everyone, in little ways. Now maybe it makes more sense to have separate products -- news, sports, entertainment, lifestyle, business -- to serve those audiences in big ways... and serve targeted and efficient advertising as a result. The transition would be painful, in some cases fatal, but this is where the audience is now heading online. eca vrt 2005 download
: Anytime, anywhere, anyhow: There is no such thing as a medium anymore; it's all media, it's all multi. The public demands its news -- rather than waiting for it to be served -- anytime, anywhere, to serve any interest or need. So news organizations must do just that. Thus a newspaper needs to gather and share the news it knows anytime (which, I have learned, is far more difficult than it appears) via online and audio and video and the internet and phones (also not easy). Thus TV networks have had to hire people to write and package text online. And they need to be able attach sponsorship (or payment) to all this (and that's not easy, either: just try selling sponsorship of BitTorrent or ad on RSS). eca vrt 2005 download
: Charity: NPR is growing on the strength of its news and its audience contributions. I do believe the audience will pay for news in certain (limited) circumstances. And, yes, that does present a new bucket of church-v-state issues (e.g., how come we can get money only to report on why there isn't global warming vs. why there is?). But the same issues of journalistic integrity prevail (the answer is that you can pay to support reporting but not conclusions). eca vrt 2005 download
: Quality will out: One way or another -- with their eyeballs or their checkbooks -- the public will support quality, unique reporting. See 60 Minutes. See NPR. I have to believe that the best way to find news business models is to give people unique value and quality. Sounds obvious, doesn't it?eca vrt 2005 download
: Join the conversation: This is the most important one. The conversation that is news will be going on with or without you -- so better to be withit: Better to find the ways to stand in a position to gather and share news. So, for example, look at RSS feeds as a way to get your content out there and not only drive traffic back to your site and brand but also to be consumed and sponsored in a distributed manner. eca vrt 2005 download
: MORE: It so happens that The Wall Street Journal asks a bunch of smart media people about new business models for media today: free links here and here. Comments later.eca vrt 2005 download
My favorite line from the first Journal story:
"The newspaper of the future is going to be a coalition of niche products," says consultant S.W. "Sammy" Papert III.eca vrt 2005 download
Editor as news gatherer
Editor as news gatherer
: I think we're getting ready to define a new job description of the journalist. eca vrt 2005 download
One of my favorite soundbites -- oh, I got a million of 'em -- is that we in the press need to think of ourselves not just as news creators but also as news gatherers, collecting news from inside and outside our newsrooms and sharing it wherever, whenever, and however people want. eca vrt 2005 download
Or to say it in another obnoxious soundbite: We need to stop being controllers and start being enablers. eca vrt 2005 download
I read Stephen Baker's post on the Businessweek Blogspotting blog recounting lunch at a Korean restaurant (note outsourcing irony) with a media exec who argued that we will soon the rise of a new kind of newsperson. They see it as a new kind of reporter. eca vrt 2005 download
I think it's a new kind of editor who gathers and sifts and vets and shares and guides and goads -- and does all that not just with beat reporters but with beat citizens: readers turned writers. eca vrt 2005 download
Baker and lunchmate think these people will be higher paid because of their multimedia skills. As editors, that may be true (though multimedia skills are today the birthright of the young: no big deal). As reporters, I think, however, that there will not be a scarcity of talent and eagerness out there -- witness the blogs -- and so payment for reporting could decline. From their lunch:
He said that the day of the classic "beat reporter," is coming to an end. Replacing the legions of beat reporters banging out their stories in newsrooms, he predicts, will be a far smaller group of so-called multimedia journalists. These people will be higher paid. They will know how to harvest the knowledge of experts and citizen reporters alike, and will fashion new journalistic products out of various media. They will have entrepreneurial skills and many will create their own brands....eca vrt 2005 download(Cue quotes from Tom Friedman's The World Is Flat.)eca vrt 2005 downloadIn many ways, the trend he described to me (as we struggled with metallic chop sticks in a Korean eatery) mirrors what is happening in the software industry. There, many of the commodity jobs are moving offshore. The winners are those who can put together entire projects, who know how to manage cross-cultural teams, who understand the business and can deal with customers.eca vrt 2005 download
More and more, the winners in the industries I'm seeing are those who--inside or outside a company--can run their own show.
: So imagine the job description of a real city editor of the near future. Duties include:eca vrt 2005 download
1. Aggregate, organize, and highlight the best of newsroom and citizen media: good reporting, good story ideas, new viewpoints, public pulse points. eca vrt 2005 download
2. Make assignments inside and outside the newsroom: You need someone to cover a school-board meeting where there's a controversy brewing, you might allocate one of your staff reporters. For another meeting, you might go out to bid with citizen information entrepreneurs, picking someone who has your trust because she has training and a track record. For another meeting, you know that the event will be covered by citizens anyway -- some with a stated viewpoint -- and you'll aggregate those. But you'll make sure that what needs to be covered gets covered. The insiders will be on salary. The outsiders may get a payment or may be part of your company's ad network or may just get promotion that benefits them when they sell the ads. eca vrt 2005 download
3. Identify, train, and support reporting talent: What you have done in the newsroom, you will need to do outside. You will find promising and motivated citizen reporters and put the best into a company training program -- or take the best from journalism schools that now serve the industry and the public with citizen training. On an ongoing basis, you will work with this distibuted reporting base to improve their work. You won't be able to edit every line of every report to which you link, but you will try to educate them -- and earn their respect as they earn yours. eca vrt 2005 download
4. Share news anywhere, anytime, in any medium: You will package and enable news gatherers to share news as it happens in and through any appropriate medium -- text, photo, audio, video, conversation, shared resources. eca vrt 2005 download
5. Converse: It's important to stay in conversation with the community: Get out, meet people, read their blogs, read their comments, respond to them, be a member of the community. eca vrt 2005 download
Come to think of it, I know such a journalist. She's called the Barista. eca vrt 2005 download
May 22, 2005
Some lesson in free speech and responsibility
Some lesson in free speech and responsibility
: A high-school principal in Georgia has gone after the school's paper and now the students have blog telling their story. An AP story reports:
This school year's final edition of a high school student newspaper was killed and the school's journalism class was eliminated after the principal said the paper highlighted negative stories and a lack of thorough reporting. Randolph Bynum, principal of Pebblebrook High School in Cobb County, cut the class citing a teacher shortage and the need to keep more popular courses like cosmetology. But he also criticized the paper for negative stories at the expense of articles more favorable to the school's image, and for a lack of thoroughness in its reporting of stories on teen pregnancy and vandalism in the school parking lot.Go to these PDF links and you will see that this is an impressive newspaper that, indeed, covers hard issues like teen pregnancy and gambling and even anti-evolution textbook stickers. eca vrt 2005 download
The principal, like any bureaucrat, is apparently allergic to transparency -- which is all the more reason why the student body and the community are well-served by this very good newspaper. eca vrt 2005 download
There could be no better lesson in the need for journalism. eca vrt 2005 download
But there's some hope: The school got a new principal last week. Here is her email address: Regina.Montgomery@cobbk12.org. eca vrt 2005 download
Journalists and bloggers alike should come to the aid of these good students and their teacher -- and free speech -- and send email to Ms. Montgomery. I have. eca vrt 2005 download
May 21, 2005
'What you call serendipity, we call links'
'What you call serendipity, we call links'
: Rafat Ali and I were at the same high-powered but off-the-record roundtable on the future of news media yesterday. It was a great session, I thought. And Rafat had one of the best lines of the day, which -- because he just blogged it himself -- I can now quote. The news people were voicing a commonly expressed concern that in this world of ours, without packaged, edited front pages and news-show rundowns, and home pages, for that matter, the reader/viewer/user loses serendipity: that is, the story you won't look for but an editor will tell you. Rafat's wonderful reply:
what you people call serendipity, we call links. What you people call the homepage, we call Bloglines. What you call indepth-reporting, we call blogging a story to death.eca vrt 2005 download
May 19, 2005
Media links
Media links
: I'm at a media talkfest Friday and often get asked for blogg links; here's a link to some. Plus my media category. eca vrt 2005 download
News without newspapers?
News without newspapers?
: Doc Searls comes out with on-the-spot insights that abstract and summarize big trends with the clarity a new pair of glasses brings and he does it with the ease and frequency with which Howard Stern farts. eca vrt 2005 download
At the Syndicate conference this week, I was standing next to Doc and a fellow media executive who was saying what all us media executives say all the time: We need to find the business models that will support quality journalism. eca vrt 2005 download
Without missing a beat, Doc says, "You need to come up with business models that support news without newspapers."eca vrt 2005 download
Exactly. You needn't take that as a literal prediction -- though some will -- to find truth and value in that. We need to look at a world in which support from classified, retail, and national advertising will leak or pour out and in which the audience goes wherever it wants to go. eca vrt 2005 download
We need to rethink about newsrooms as news-gathering (not just news-creating) operations that bring together the community's news and share it wherever, however, and whenever the community wants. And, yes, we need to think of new business models to support this.eca vrt 2005 download
The story is the story
The story is the story
: Amazing how anything can split and anyone can spit along party and ideological lines, even about Newsweek's incompetent and dangerous journalistic mistake. I was talking about that with Jay Rosen just last night: about how his criticism of Newsweek's error has earned him attacks from the left. eca vrt 2005 download
Isn't this story about journalism, not ideology? For some, though, nothing is not about ideology. eca vrt 2005 download
David Brooks does well summarizing the ideological perspectives and pissing on the Newsweek affair.
...Every faction up and down the political spectrum has used the magazine's blunder as a chance to open fire on its favorite targets, turning this into a fevered hunting season for the straw men.eca vrt 2005 downloadWhining media bashers? How about dissatisifed media consumers? How about disappointed fellow journalists? How about unhappy fellow Americans?eca vrt 2005 downloadMany of my friends on the right have decided that the Newsweek episode exposes the rotten core of the liberal media....eca vrt 2005 download
Meanwhile, the left side of the blogosphere has erupted with fury over the possibility that American interrogators might not have flushed a Koran down the toilet....eca vrt 2005 download
This, too, is unhinged. Would it be illegal for more people on the left to actually be happy that a story slurring Americans may turn out to be unproven?...eca vrt 2005 download
Then I click my mouse over to the transcripts of administration statements and I can't believe what I'm seeing. We're in the middle of an ideological war against people who want to destroy us, and what have the most powerful people on earth become? Whining media bashers.
Brooks is right to say that it's silly and offensive to bash Newsweek and not bash the fanatical murderers who used this report as an excuse to kill. eca vrt 2005 download
But I think he's wrong not to bash Newsweek himself, not to also criticize the magazine for making such an irresponsible error. eca vrt 2005 download
Brooks spends a paragraph saying that he used to work at Newsweek and he likes those guys and doesn't believe they're commies and that's very nice. eca vrt 2005 download
But by not criticizing the report, the net message of this otherwise spot-on column is that press people defend press people, that we circle our wagons around our screw-ups, that we stick together first. Especially today, with the press' trust in tatters, that is the wrong message. eca vrt 2005 download
What we should be saying is that we criticize each other first and we accept those criticisms first because we want to get to the truth together. eca vrt 2005 download
When the still-surprisingly-employed Dan Rather screwed up with his memoes -- and after my readers here forced me to comment on that as a media story not a political one -- Rosen and I were pointed to as liberals who criticized Rather along with the conservatives. That may have been apparently factual but it was the wrong conclusion: We were journalists criticizing journalists because we should.eca vrt 2005 download
May 18, 2005
Dan Rather dodges bullet
Dan Rather dodges bullet
: When he left his anchor chair -- or rather was pushed overboard -- CBS said that Dan Rather would continue as correspondent for 60 Minutes Wednesday. Now that's canceled. Is Dan canceled? Nope. He'll contribute to 60 Minutes Sunday. eca vrt 2005 download
May 17, 2005
Bad timing
Bad timing
: What a rotten week Jon Stewart picked to take off. What he could do with Newsweek....eca vrt 2005 download
The real stories
The real stories
: Tom Evslin, one of the smartest guys I met in a decade online, branches out from his blogging on telecom and business and writes about the news and how news media often miss the real story:
UN oil-for-food Programeca vrt 2005 downloadTom needs to spin this off into a blog of its own. eca vrt 2005 downloadPress Take: This is a story about whether Kofi Annan’s son improperly used his influence to benefit from the program. Story is over when Volker Commission apparently can’t find proof of this.eca vrt 2005 download
The Real Story: An enormous and extremely important program was mismanaged in a way which let Saddam Hussein divert billions meant to feed his people into arms and palaces (apparently more of the latter than the former) and bribes for government officials worldwide. This may be the biggest case of misdiverted resources in the history of the world. Incompetent management of this program was certainly a contributing cause to the Iraq War. The same people are still “managing” the UN and all of its could-be-important programs today.eca vrt 2005 download
My Rant: The issue of Annan Jr.’s venality is irrelevant compared to the issue of gross mismanagement. Somehow Annan Sr. got a hall pass for mismanaging on an historic scale because his son wasn’t caught with his hand all the way into the cookie jar. He needs to be fired for incompetence....eca vrt 2005 download
Disrespecting The Koraneca vrt 2005 download
Press Take (BBC): The most important news in the world on Wednesday were the charges that an American at Guantanamo Bay desecrated a copy of the Koran. This was reported as sufficient cause for violent outbreaks throughout the Muslim world.eca vrt 2005 download
The Real Story: The Koran is being desecrated by those who carry out terrorism in its name.eca vrt 2005 download
My Rant: Symbolic tolerance is important but punishing some pieces of paper is not on the same scale as beheading hostages.....
Newsweek, continued
Newsweek, continued
: Jay Rosen says the only source we had in the Newsweek story was Newsweek itself. And that was not a reliable source, as it turns out.
Under these conditions, it is imperative that journalists in the United States raise their standards for reliability, because the consequences of being wrong--for themselves, for their profession as a whole, and for others far removed--are graver. The most difficult part of raising standards is not to figure out what to do that might improve reliability, but to admit that standards weren't as high as they could have been in the first place.eca vrt 2005 downloadA good analysis.eca vrt 2005 downloadFor professionals who have achieved a certain standing this is hard because it requires some humbling first: We aren't as good as we need to be. But the alternatives are worse. Instead of improving reliability, the press can simply become more timid, reducing risk by increasing its own toothlessness. It can fall back into formalisms of the "he said, she said" variety, and never really try to figure out the truth. It can switch the mission to entertainment, and select news that way. There is always denial that anything is different today, a favorite among the crumudgeon class.eca vrt 2005 download
The Periscope item in the May 9th issue of Newsweek is a creature from an earlier climate of credibility: when a single-source story was good enough; when anonymous was okay as long as you trusted "your guy" at the Pentagon or the DA; when the consequences of being wrong were not as great, as instant, or as global; when the game of being first--which always meant more to journalists than anyone else--could go on as if it had intrinsic value to the public.
May 16, 2005
On Connected
On Connected
: I'll be on MSNBC's Connected at noon on the Newsweek mess. eca vrt 2005 download
: LaShawn Barber has a fresh batch of Newsweek links.
: Nick Gillespie is steamed.
: Austin Bay says this is the press' Abu Ghraib.
: Conor Friedersdorf says this is a tipping point for press coverage of the war on terrorism: the tip being that coverage has an impact on the world and on lives. eca vrt 2005 download
: Here's Reuters (my emphases):
Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan were skeptical Monday about an apparent retraction by Newsweek magazine of a report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran and said U.S. pressure was behind the climb-down....eca vrt 2005 downloadThat's why Newsweek's nonretraction-retraction is going to continue to cause problems and is just as bad as CBS's nonretraction-retraction in the Rather story, except this one is dangerous. They should have said that they retract the story because they do not have any reason to know that it is true. We are not in the business of reporting what might be true, what could be true if only we know more. We are in the business of reporting what we know is true. Aren't we?eca vrt 2005 downloadNewsweek said Sunday the report might not be true.
:Ankle Biting Pundits are asking you to name the scandal.eca vrt 2005 download
New truths of new media
New truths of new media
: Steve Safran at Lost Remote lists his 10 truths of new media. I agree with most of them. eca vrt 2005 download
May 15, 2005
When the story gets in the way of the truth
When the story gets in the way of the truth
: What a terrible lesson in journalism: about the danger of unnamed sources, about the risk of rushing a story, about the cynicism of gotcha journalism, about the damage a wrong story can do.eca vrt 2005 download
Newsweek quotes an unnamed source alleging that the Koran was desecrated at Guantanamo Bay and anti-American riots break out in Afghanistan, causing at least 15 deaths and other damage not so easy to add up. eca vrt 2005 download
Now Newsweek says, oops, nevermind, oh so sorry, it appears we could be wrong: Their source now isn't so sure he saw that report in documents that Newsweek apparently did not confirm. Joe Gandelman has a good summary; Michelle Malkin has many links.eca vrt 2005 download
This mistake cost people their lives, put the lives of our soldiers in the Mideast at risk, damaged the American position in the effort to defend itself and spread democracy, and damaged the already tattered reputation of journalism. eca vrt 2005 download
And to what end? eca vrt 2005 download
If the report had come from a source who had the balls to stand by what he said, if the alleged event had been witnessed, if it had been confirmed by independent authorities, I'm not sure what the imperative to report would have been: Why did we need to urgently know this? What public good is served? If it were absolutely true, that might be one matter but...eca vrt 2005 download
Given that none of those if's was true -- the informant did not have the balls, the event was not witnessed by a source, the event was not confirmed independently -- and given the knowledge that such a report could only be incendiary, then why report it except to play one of two games: eca vrt 2005 download
Show-off -- in which the journalist delights in knowing something no one else knows and wants to tell the world before everyone else does, even if it's not assuredly true. eca vrt 2005 download
Gotcha -- in which the reporter think he has exposed something somebody wanted to hide. eca vrt 2005 download
An incident such as this should force us to ask what the end result of journalism should be. Is it to expose anything we can expose? Is it to beat the other guy to tell you something you didn't know?eca vrt 2005 download
Or is it to tell the truth?eca vrt 2005 download
And if you don't know it to be true, is it reporting? If you rely on unnamed sources and unconfirmed reports, is it journalism? eca vrt 2005 download
To sum up journalism as "tell the truth" sounds so damned simplistic. But that is what journalism is about, isn't it? Or shouldn't it be?eca vrt 2005 download
I'm not saying that Newsweek lied. But they didn't know the truth before they said what they said. They put the gotcha scoop ahead of the truth and ahead of nothing less than the good of mankind. eca vrt 2005 download
: See also these posts about journalism and truth: here, here, and here. eca vrt 2005 download
And Dan Okrent on anonymous sources. I agree with him that sometimes, anonymous sources are necessary to report that which you know to be true.eca vrt 2005 download
: Here's a GoogleNews search for "sources."eca vrt 2005 download
: UPDATE: In The Times, Kit Seelye says that Newsweek is not retracting:
But Mr. Whitaker said in an interview later: "We're not retracting anything. We don't know for certain what we got wrong."And neither do you know for certain what, if anything, you got right. That's the problem. eca vrt 2005 download
: LATER: Alan in the comments raises an important consideration. He says that the deaths are not themselves Newsweek's fault but the fault of -- my words -- fanatics who would kill in the name of religion. eca vrt 2005 download
The double negative
The double negative
: Armando at Daily Kos gets all bitchy at Jay Rosen for praising Dan Okrent. Dan's sin, as near as I can tell, is that he dared to see the side of the critics of the liberal newspaper and criticize the paper too much -- except as it refers to coverage of the runup to Iraq, in which he didn't criticize the paper enough (note that he didn't try; he didn't deal with things that came before his time). eca vrt 2005 download
Kos is true to form and true to its own mission: It is an advocacy site that sees the world through it's blue lenses. Rosen, on the other hand, is a media criticism site and he sees the world through his green eyeshade. eca vrt 2005 download
There's also this little gem:
And Rosen has a lot to say about Jayson Blair. But this line was particularly stupid to me:Well, Jayson Blair caused the firing of the two top editors at The New York Times and the hiring of aforementioned public editor and two major, profession-changing reports from The Times on improving the professionalism and trust of journalism. I won't stoop to Armando's level and call what he says "particularly stupid," but I will call it clueless. eca vrt 2005 downloadUltimately Daniel Okrent will have had more influence on the New York Times than the notorious Jayson Blair.I mean really. Jayson Blair was a third string reporter, how much influence did Jayson Blair have on the Times?
Two words: naked vlogs
Two words: naked vlogs
: From PaidContent.org's job listings: Playboy Enterprises: Director, Program Acquisitions & Commissionseca vrt 2005 download
May 14, 2005
I second that motion
I second that motion
: Jay Rosen writes to praise Dan Okrent not only for the way he did his job but for the way he created the job of public editor at The New York Times. I second everything he says. eca vrt 2005 download
Dan did more than change The Times, he changed journalism. He reversed the flow in the pipe and showed the good journalism that can come from conversation. eca vrt 2005 download
What made him different from other ombudsman was that he did not just try to represent or explain or slap the paper; he made the public an equal in the conversation and he pushed both sides to do better.eca vrt 2005 download
His will be a tough act to follow. eca vrt 2005 download
Read Jay's tribute. eca vrt 2005 download
(Dan and I were colleagues and pals at Time Inc. and afterwards.)eca vrt 2005 download
Not your grandmother's PBS
Not your grandmother's PBS
: A PaidContent job listing for PBS is surprising on two levels: "The Director, Premium Online Games & Content must be both an artist and an entrepreneur." First surprise: Games can be good for you. Second surprise: Premium means making money. Third surprise: Entrepreneurial means making money is not evil. eca vrt 2005 download
May 13, 2005
A blog without the links
A blog without the links
: Forgot to mention that The Week magazine has a new site with more content. I still wish that they'd add links. eca vrt 2005 download
Measured
Measured
: I've been at the Aspen Institute for a day and a half sitting with smart people figuring out ways to get ethnic media its due with advertisers. There are some issues in common with online and citizens' media: trying to navigate advertising agencies as "gatekeepers of risk," as one of the participants called them, and agencies' fetish for measurement and performance. Kevin Riley, a marketing exec at IBM, gave advertisers a caution I love:
The less measurable it is, the more valuable it is.Clark emphasized that he's not against measurement; who can be in his biz? But the point is that if advertisers and agencies wait for something new -- blogs, vlogs, podcasts, RSS, and whatever's next -- to be fully measurable, they'll miss the opportunity to get in on the buzz of something new while it's still new and still cheap. eca vrt 2005 download
May 12, 2005
Breaking the codes
Breaking the codes
: In his very good coverage of l'affaire Spokane at PressThink, Len Witt points to a plethora of codes of journalistic ethics. eca vrt 2005 download
Methinks the volume of codes of ethics is, itself, a symptom of a problem. Doth we protest too much? Are we overcomplicating it? Are we overcompensating? eca vrt 2005 download
Doesn't it pretty much add up to this: Don't lie. Don't sell out. eca vrt 2005 download
The satire tag
The satire tag
: Big, old media needs to get a sense of humor. Straight out satires have been taken as real by the big guys twice recently:eca vrt 2005 download
: When a fake Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared on Howard Stern's show and proposed blowing up the moon -- with the fringe benefit of ending women's PMS and bitchiness -- Joe Scarborough on MSNBC took it seriously and lectured Arnold about sexism. Now, the guy's a good Schwarzenegger impersonator but still, there were scores of clues in the bit that it was a bit. eca vrt 2005 download
: The Swift Report -- a good and often very funny satire site -- put out a press release from the Coalition for Traditional Values upset over Laura Bush's off-color jokes and TV-watching habits. Now, of course, what makes that so funny is that it's so close to the truth. But it was just a joke. Nonetheless, Rush Limbaugh, MSNBC, and Drudge fell for it.
[via Lost Remote]eca vrt 2005 download
Alex Beam says: "Poor dears. Don't they know the Golden Rule of the digital age? On the Internet, no one can hear you lying."eca vrt 2005 download
Lying? How about joking, Alex? Nobody was trying to lie. They were trying to tell a joke. But big, old media just didn't get it. eca vrt 2005 download
Maybe we need to add courses in remedial humor to journalism schools. eca vrt 2005 download
Or maybe big, old media just needs to lighten up. Big, old media apparently has been too depressed lately from falling audience and advertising. Big, old media needs to get a big drink. Or big, old media needs to get laid. Something. eca vrt 2005 download
Take over the news
Take over the news
: Now this is the right attitude: The BBC issues essentially an API to the news. At Backstage, you can take feeds of BBC news and remake and remix it into new applications and products and share them with the world. [via Lost Remote]eca vrt 2005 download
May 11, 2005
How to speak
How to speak
: Kit Seelye reports Harvard's Nieman Center is teaching the Chinese government how to deal with the press and this caused burps among Neiman alums appalled at the notion of working for a repressive regime. If they're teaching the Chinese how to spin, that's bad. If they're teaching them that transparency must come even to China, that's good. eca vrt 2005 download
Exploding TV: one-man bands
Exploding TV: one-man bands
: Lost Remote reports that KRON-TV in San Francisco is the first major market news operation to switch to one-person TV crews (following some local cable news operations). The Remoters then wonder about what the audience will think of less-than-perfect video. A few observations:eca vrt 2005 download
: As audiences shrink, the way to maintain profitability -- for now -- will be to cut costs. Expect to see a lot more of this. eca vrt 2005 download
: I believe the audience cares more about a good story than a rock-steady camera. I've told the story already how I tried to convince a FoxNews exec that webcams would come to cable news and he got all huffy about backhaul quality and all that... and then I started broadcasting via webcam on MSNBC and they love it. It's real, they said, it's immediate. Rougher video will turn from being an economic move to a news fad. eca vrt 2005 download
: At one of the Harvard confabs, podcasters said that NPR gets obsessive about audio quality and that's a way to keep the people off the airwaves. The same is true of TV -- and, for that matter, print journalism: It's overcomplicated to keep the club closed and exclusive. But we all know how easy it is to write and publish if you have something to say. It's getting just as easy to broadcast and distribute. eca vrt 2005 download
: I'll be we'll quickly see local TV news -- and radio and newspapers -- follow the leads of Current.TV, blogcasts on MSNBC, YOURadio, and the podcast show on Sirius: You'll see just folks recording and reporting in any medium. eca vrt 2005 download
Stung
Stung
: A few weeks ago, I slapped down a journalism student who tried to sting Gawker with a false report. I said this violated the prime directive of journalism: Tell the truth. Don't lie. eca vrt 2005 download
Now that the Spokane Spokesman-Review has stung the town's mayor with someone acting like a studlette online to entrap the politiican. And Editor & Publisher asked a lot of newspapaper editors whether they approve of such deception. They don't. eca vrt 2005 download
In this age of transparency, acting like someone you're not and lying is not the way to get the news. eca vrt 2005 download
Imagine if every blogger out there tried to run a sting operation on anyone else and published it on the internet. It's wrong and it's dangerous. eca vrt 2005 download
Is it ever OK to be less than transparent at every stage? Sure. A restaurant critic doesn't reveal her identity when making a reservation. A consumer reporter can report an experience as a consumer without wearing a press badge. I don't tell everyone that I'm going to blog what I blog. eca vrt 2005 download
In a legendary investigation by the Sun-Times in Chicago, reporters opened a bar called the Mirage and waited for city officials to demand bribes, which they did, of course. What's the difference between that and what the Spokane sting? Well, the Mirage really was a bar, with real booze and real drunks. Is it different from what Spokane did? I'm still not sure. If they'd merely recorded everything that happened at someone else's bar, would that have been different?eca vrt 2005 download
The lines get a bit fuzzy. But I do believe that entrapment, deception, and lying are not the best ways to get the news. eca vrt 2005 download
: UPDATE: Len Witt, subbing on PressThink, has an IM interview with Spokesman-Review Editor Steve Smith:
Witt: Okay. So let’s put the journalists and ethicists aside for a moment. Do you think a story like this, and the way you did it, builds or hurts the public’s trust in the media?eca vrt 2005 downloadeca vrt 2005 downloadSmith: Based on what we're hearing from readers, it has built trust in our readers and Spokane citizens. They know what we wrote is true. Feedback is running 10- maybe 15-1 in our favor and those who don't like what we did rarely reference the computer expert.eca vrt 2005 download
I think our credibility with journalists is hurt. But I think this may be a sign of how disconnected some editors are from the sensibilities of citizens who want their newspapers to watchdog government and do it aggressively.eca vrt 2005 download
Let me add quickly. I think the knee jerk reaction of journalists is "we don't lie." I agree. But all of our ethics codes, SPJ for example, and even the Poynter's ethics specialists, allow for exceptions when there is no other way to get the info and the story is important enough. The feds are going after our mayor on official corruption charges as a result of our work.
May 10, 2005
You're fired up
You're fired up
: The Guardian finds the solution to circulation woes: It hires a fired Apprentice wannabe to sell the paper. eca vrt 2005 download
The man-blows-up-man story
The man-blows-up-man story
: John Tierney has a super column in The Times today with long-needed journalistic self-examination of our coverage of "suicide bombers," as we've dubbed these insane murders. Tierney says he doesn't read these stories anymore, except the ones he had to report and write:
When the other reporters and I finished filling our notebooks, we wondered morosely if we could have done a service to everyone - victims, mourners, readers - by reducing the story to a box score. We all knew the template: number of victims, size of the crater, distance debris had been hurled, height of smoke plume, range at which explosion was heard.eca vrt 2005 downloadThere was no larger lesson except that some insurgents were willing and able to kill civilians, which was not news. We were dutifully presenting as accurate an image as we could of one atrocity, but we knew we were contributing to a distorted picture of life for Iraqis....eca vrt 2005 download
Correspondents complained that they'd essentially become cop reporters, and that the suicide bombings took so much of their time that they couldn't report on the rest of the country. They were more interested in other stories, but as long as the rest of the press corps kept covering the bombing du jour, that was where their editors and producers expected them to be, too....eca vrt 2005 download
I'm not advocating official censorship, but there's no reason the news media can't reconsider their own fondness for covering suicide bombings. A little restraint would give the public a more realistic view of the world's dangers...eca vrt 2005 download
Terrorists know the numbers are against them and realize that daily bombings will not win the war. All along, their hope has been to inspire recruits and spread general fear with another tactic, the bombing as photo opportunity. For some reason, their media strategy still works.
eca vrt 2005 download
May 09, 2005
The value of free
The value of free
: The LA Times has rescinded its irritating and obviously unsuccessful decision to charge for its online Calendar. eca vrt 2005 download
On MSNBC's Connected
On MSNBC's Connected
: I'll be on MSNBC's Connected shortly after 5p to talk about blaming the media messenger (or not) -- or, I'd say, improving the media's message -- with Craig Crawford and Bill McGowan. eca vrt 2005 download
How to improve credibility: The Times report
How to improve credibility: The Times report
: Today The Times is issuing a report from a committee charged by Executive Editor Bill Keller with finding ways to improve the credibility of the paper -- and the industry, really. The report and Keller's response will be online here later today but from the story about it in today's paper by Kit Seelye, the recommendations look to be spot on. eca vrt 2005 download
What I like most about it is that the committee recommends moves that will bring the paper and its readers into more of a conversation. I said yesterday that journalists blathering on at ethereal heights about journalistic ethics can be too self-centered. But journalists talking with citizens about the news and how it is covered in present tense can be useful and compelling. It's not just about defending the paper -- though I agree that's proper and necessary. And it's not just about journalistic standards. It's about bringing out different perspectives and more information about the news we cover and care about. eca vrt 2005 download
The summary that appears on the paper (but not online) lists these steps:
1. Encourage the executive editor and two managing editors to share responsibility for writing a regular column that deals with matters concerning the paper.I'd be eager to see them deal with matters concerning news and its coverage as well.
2. Make reporters and editors more easily available through email.That's not a bad idea at all. But I would say that those reporters and editors cannot be expected to answer all that email (hell, I don't and all I have is a blog). I was going to suggest that they could reply to the ideas and issues raised in email in a public forum such as a blog... but hold on a minute...
3. Use the Web to provide readers with complete documents used in stories as well as transcripts of interviews.Exactly right. It's not that people want more but when they do, we make our process transparent. And I believe that will only bolster the quality of that work. If some disagree with a reporter's decisions, then they now get the tools to decide for themselves.
4. Consider creating a Times blog that promotes interaction with readers.Stop the unpresses! A Times blog! Can't wait! (See Keller's earlier musings on the notion here.)
5. Further curtail the use of anonymous sources.Dan Okrent wrote about this at length and well yesterday.
6. Encourage reporters to confirm the accuracy of articles with sources before publication and to solicit feedback from sources after publication.I'll admit that as a reporter, that wasn't always easy but it is good. The favorite class session I included in the new-media curriclulum for CUNY's new Graduate School of Journalism is inviting the sources and subjects of the students' stories to come to class and get their perspective on what had been written.
7. Set up an error-tracking system to detect patterns and trends.Good idea. I wonder whether that could be a distributed system... I wonder whether it could be used to track errors (or allegations of errors) in blogs and wikis and other news sources.
8. Encourage the development of software to detect plagiarism when accusations arise. 9. Increase coverage of middle America, rural areas and religion.I know that one will be a straightline to wags aplenty. But it's a good suggestion. When I started EW, I put a piece of paper in a frame in my office reminding me and the staff how many Americans do not live in New York. The New York Times is the national newspaper and so covering the nation better is without doubt a good goal.
10. Establish a system for evaluating public attacks on The Times' work and determining whether and how to respond.In some ways, this is the most surprising and best suggestion of the committee. And it's not because The Times is a victim and needs to defend itself, though I'm sure reporters often feel that way (and I'll say I felt bad going after the reporter who wrote this very story). But what's important here is that when the paper or other news institutions (read: Dan Rather) do not respond to such attacks, they seem to be above, apart, and separate from the public they serve. By responding, they enter into a conversation. And when The Times responds, I have confidence they'll do so with civility and facts and that will not only mean joining the converation but also raising the level of it. And that's good. When attacked, the response won't always be, 'oops, we were wrong,' or even 'you were wrong and here are the facts that back us up' but also 'thanks, we'll look into that.' eca vrt 2005 download
I'm going to be offline when the report goes online today but I'll read it with eager interest. I'll also be eager to read your comments and posts. eca vrt 2005 download
: LATER: Matt Duffy comments. eca vrt 2005 download
: UPDATE: The full report is up now.eca vrt 2005 download
: UPDATE: Here is Bill Keller's announcement of the report, with well-justified praise for the committee's head, Al Siegel. eca vrt 2005 download
May 08, 2005
Navel boring
Navel boring
: On today's Times editorial page, Adam Cohen questions the ethics of bloggers. eca vrt 2005 download
What he's really doing is trying to fit round-peg individual bloggers into his square-hole institution of journalism. eca vrt 2005 download
For there's nothing journalists like better, it sometimes seems, than dissecting their professional ethics. Of course, it's right and necessary for them to examine themselves and their ethics, practices, standards, and credibility -- especially today, when all are being questioned. But what they can lose sight of the fact that it's quite simple, really: Do people trust you to tell the truth? eca vrt 2005 download
But they overcomplicate the discussion and that raises problems: eca vrt 2005 download
First, the discussion of journalistic ethics is so obsessively self-centered. I often hear newspaper editors talk about online interactivity only as a way to get readers to talk about newspapers and the issues they raise: 'Enough about you, how about us?' Instead, the internet should be opening up new ways for them to listen to the public they serve. eca vrt 2005 download
Second, the discussion gets so nitpicky it can easily miss the larger picture: all trees, no forest. Take the case of USA Today ousting respected correspondent Tom Squitieri over use of quotes. He didn't steal them. The quotes appeared in another paper's story; he called the sources and asked them for quotes and they said the quotes that had appeared already were best, so he used them. His mortal sin was not mentioning that the quotes had appeared in another paper as well. Absurd. So the paper set itself another rule and precedent and lost a respected journalist who, in fact, had held the paper's feet to the fire over ethical issues involving another reporter. This is about ethical appearances more than credible reality. eca vrt 2005 download
Third, journalists and their conventioneering organizations like to make many lists of rules about ethics, which make some lose sight of the more fundamental notion that ethics are really a matter of individual conscience and trust: You can follow every rule in the book but still slant a story or a paper's coverage by the news you select and how you write it; you can still squander your trust. eca vrt 2005 download
Fourth, in all of this, journalists come to believe that what's good for journalism is good for America, that what applies to them applies to everyone. eca vrt 2005 download
So now I take you Cohen's column:
But more bloggers, and blog readers, are starting to ask whether at least the most prominent blogs with the highest traffic shouldn't hold themselves to the same high standards to which they hold other media.Which assumes that they don't. Who says they don't? Who are these bloggers and what are their alleged lapses? And why do you think the behavior of any one blogger reflects on the ethics of all bloggers? Why do you think that all bloggers have to act the same?eca vrt 2005 download
In this, Cohen is saying a lot:eca vrt 2005 download
He is, again, trying to turn blogs into an institution, like journalism. But they are not. Blogs are all individual. At the end of my email exchange with Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, that became, I think, the distillation of our difference in worldviews: Journalism is institutional, blogs are personal. Journalism has become dispassionate, blogs are passionate. Bloggers are just people, citizens, readers. But Cohen is viewing them through the journalist's green eyeshade and he expects these people he sees -- the same ones who've always been out there complaining, only now they have the means to speak and he is forced to listen -- to operate as he is supposed to operate. eca vrt 2005 download
Next, he's saying that readers need a code of ethics before they can hold journalists accountable for theirs. But readers are bringing their own individual sense of ethics and credibility to the discussion. Listen to what some of them are saying, Mr. Cohen: 'We are (or were) your readers and we don't trust you.' That's what young people told the Carnegie Foundation. Clearly, they have their own ethical standards and they are saying that journalists don't meet them. eca vrt 2005 download
Then he's implying that without a code of ethics you don't have ethics. That, of course, is wrong and grossly insulting to these people, these citizens, these readers. Every one of those readers has a sense of ethics, whether or not it is codified as a group. Every blogger has an ethic, but you may disagree with it.eca vrt 2005 download
Do bloggers need a corporate code of ethics? I don't think so, because, once more, bloggers are not an institution. Wonkette is not Buzzmachine is not Fark is not Drudge is not Instapundit is not Kos is not Powerline is not.....eca vrt 2005 download
But that's not to say that bloggers cannot lapse as journalists do. The difference as I see it is that bloggers are quicker to admit it or get caught. I remember one blogger -- whose name I now forget -- who was caught copying posts without credit. He was called out and dismissed by the blogosphere in short order and his traffic died. If I make a mistake, I often say, readers descend upon me like white blood cells on a germ to make me correct it. If a blogger is found to be on the take to a campaign (well, a few have), that sets off a discussion of ethnics and standards as robust as any J-school seminar. eca vrt 2005 download
For bloggers, just like journalists and their institutions, our key asset is trust. Break that trust and you may never repair it. That, again, is the essence of journalistic and blogging ethics. eca vrt 2005 download
I do believe that some education can be in order. The useful thing for Cohen or me, as journalists, to do might be to share what we've learned about professional ethics and let bloggers decide whether they accept those standards. Cohen makes a start:
Information should be verified before it is printed, and people who are involved in a story should be given a chance to air their viewpoints, especially if they are under attack. Reporters should avoid conflicts of interest, even significant appearances of conflicts, and disclose any significant ones. Often, a conflict means being disqualified to cover a story or a subject. When errors are discovered or pointed out by internal or external sources, they must be corrected. And there should be a clear wall between editorial content and advertising.I'd say that most bloggers I read and trust follow such rules. Or I trust them to. eca vrt 2005 download
This is also why, when I first wrote a new-media curriculum for the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism, I included the notion that the courses should be webcast so learning could travel two ways: If they wished, citizen journalists could learn the standards presented in class and could also challenge those standards and teach the class their own view. Out of that, better standards will evolve. eca vrt 2005 download
Cohen goes on to -- with no sense of irony -- accuse bloggers of not reporting on their accusations even as he does not report on his accusations. My notes in brackets:
Many bloggers make little effort to check their information [name two, please], and think nothing of posting a personal attack without calling the target first - or calling the target at all. [And how many bloggers did you call before you made this blanket attack? How many did you allow to respond in your column? Does your paper call everyone who is criticized on its editorial and op-ed pages? I doubt it.] They rarely have procedures for running a correction. [Who says? Glenn Reynolds, for one, has set forth a very clear statement that many follow.] The wall between their editorial content and advertising is often nonexistent. (Wonkette, a witty and well-read Washington blog, posts a weekly shout-out inside its editorial text to its advertisers, including partisan ones like Democrats.org.) [See the business section of your very own paper for an explanation of that, which you are free to chose not to accept, but it is a policy.] And bloggers rarely disclose whether they are receiving money from the people or causes they write about. [Rarely? How do you know? Again, name two.]He hints that bloggers don't reveal when they are on campaign staffs when, in fact, at every opportunity, such bloggers are outed by other bloggers and there have been very heated exchanges about this issue in the blogosphere (which I choose not to reignite right now). eca vrt 2005 download
Cohen concludes:
Many bloggers who criticize the MSM's ethics, however, are in the anomalous position of holding themselves to lower standards, or no standards at all.Or higher standards: not the borrowed standards of an industry committee, but their own standards, their own conscience. That, in the end, is the only standard that matters. eca vrt 2005 download
: ALSO: At the same time, I'm not saying that journalistic institutions should not have codes of ethics. Of course, they should. And in today's column by Times public editor Dan Okrent, you see the wrangling over such a code continue as the paper and the industry grapples with the opaque habit of newsmakers and news reporters to rely on unnamed sources. eca vrt 2005 download
: AND: You want to see the ethic of blogs? eca vrt 2005 download
Try this post out of the Nashville confab: Transparency, accountability, creativity, passion , personality, disagreement (without being disagreeable), listen, link, forgive, and more. eca vrt 2005 download
And here's my list of the ethics of blogging prior to a Harvard confab:
: The ethic of transparency: We believe that our public deserves to know about us and our perspective to better judge what we say. eca vrt 2005 download: Ann Althouse adds:: The ethic of conversation: We do not believe in one-sided lectures. We believe conversation leads to better understanding.eca vrt 2005 download
: The ethic of humanity: We believe this medium lives at a human level while old media lives at an institutional level. eca vrt 2005 download
: The ethic of the link: We believe one of our key jobs is to link our public to other voices and to source material so they may judge themselves. eca vrt 2005 download
: The ethic of correction: We believe it is vital to correct errors quickly and openly. eca vrt 2005 download
: The ethic of immediacy: We believe that the fast spread of information is will yield better information.
Please. The journalistic code didn't keep Jordan and Rather in line. It was the bloggers, invoking their own standards -- not a code but an evolving culture -- that called them to account. Any bloggers with any kind of high profile will be similarly called to account if they violate the blogosphere's cultural norms. And Jordan and Rather can take up blogging any minute they want. Our practice is open to anyone who wants to join.: More from Citizen Z and Tim Worstall and Mudville and Instapundit and LGF and Pejman and Patterico, who tries to send a letter to Cohen. eca vrt 2005 download
: Now James Wolcott piles on. eca vrt 2005 download
May 07, 2005
Craig's community
Craig's community
: Craig Newmark talks to the AP about supporting journalism. Craig will be in town for the Personal Democracy Forum and I look forward to braininstorming then. eca vrt 2005 download
(By the way, anyone who'd like to attend PDF can get a $70 discount with this code: buzz225.)eca vrt 2005 download
: LATER: Craig blogs on the need for newsrooms as an appendix to the AP story:
With all the excitement about citizens' media, it's easy to forget how important current news operations are. We have a lot of journalists there, but also, fact checkers, editors, and so on, and they perform an indispensable function.eca vrt 2005 download: And he adds more here. eca vrt 2005 downloadI feel that citizens' media complements that, and that professional and citizen journalists will blur together in networks of collaboration.
Runaway (bride) story, still running
Runaway (Bride) story, still running
: Dave Winer says that Aaron Brown was the last real news on (I can hear arguments on both side of that view) but when the show devoted itself to the runaway bride, that was the last straw for Dave. CNN goes on his pay-no-nevermind list. eca vrt 2005 download
It so happens that On the Media interviewed CNN head Jonathan Klein on this week's show and hammered him on the runaway bride, asking whether having the bride run away with every show was an example of his vow to get in depth with more stories. I would have thought he'd have chuckled and said, hey, sometimes ya gotta do what your competition's doing. But, no, he said that, indeed, the runaway bride was an example of his vow for in-depth coverage. They covered the bride in depth. He then bragged about going heavy on the Schiavo story and making it part of the national agenda. Gee, thanks. (Listen to the segment here; download the show here.)eca vrt 2005 download
Here's my earlier post on the runaway story. eca vrt 2005 download
And while we're on the topic of tacky cultural trends (that is the topic, isn't it?), go to eBay and find active bidding for Jennifer Wilbanks wedding invitations and many copycat efforts at inane humor with Wilbanks toast. eca vrt 2005 download
Fark says: "Runaway bride offers apology. CNN yet to apologize for deeming this newsworthy"eca vrt 2005 download
One Farker says: "I hate celebrities. I hate makeshift celebrities even more."eca vrt 2005 download
May 06, 2005
Tree fell. Anybody hear it?
Tree fell. Anybody hear it?
: Tina Brown's show is canceled. As Gomer (or was it Guber?) used to say: Surprise, surprise, surprise. eca vrt 2005 download
Broadcast flag at half-staff
Broadcast flag at half-staff
: An appellate court turns down the broadcast flag:
...the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the Federal Communications Commission had overstepped its authority in trying to regulate how consumers can use their TV sets after they receive broadcasts.Ernie Miller's on top of the story and quotes the decision:
The FCC argues that the Commission has "discretion” to exercise “broad authority” over equipment used in connection with radio and wire transmissions, “when the need arises, even if it has not previously regulated in a particular area.” FCC Br. at 17. This is an extraordinary proposition. “The [Commission’s] position in this case amounts to the bare suggestion that it possesses plenary authority to act within a given area simply because Congress has endowed it with some authority to act in that area. We categorically reject that suggestion. Agencies owe their capacity to act to the delegation of authority” from Congress. See Ry. Labor Executives’ Ass’n, 29 F.3d at 670. The FCC, like other federal agencies, “literally has no power to act . . . unless and until Congress confers power upon it.” La. Pub. Serv. Comm’n v. FCC, 476 U.S. 355, 374 (1986). In this case, all relevant materials concerning the FCC’s jurisdiction – including the words of the Communications Act of 1934, its legislative history, subsequent legislation, relevant case law, and Commission practice – confirm that the FCC has no authority to regulate consumer electronic devices that can be used for receipt of wire or radio communication when those devices are not engaged in the process of radio or wire transmission.Earlier, FCC Commissioner Adelstein said they'd need to start from scratch on protecting broadcast content. eca vrt 2005 download
: No, no, no: The far smarter thing to do would be to turn around and ask how the entertainment industry can take advantage of this opportunity: You support free broadcast TV with advertising. You should find the way to support free distributed TV with advertising. That will be a lot easier -- and more lucrative -- than playing legal wack-a-mole.eca vrt 2005 download
: Wikipedia background here. CNET's story here. eca vrt 2005 download
: I was waiting to hear what Susan Crawford said about the case. She says it has bigger implications for regulation:
Although the DC Circuit didn't have to reach this question, my view is that when the FCC starts making rules about a VoIP application that doesn't terminate calls using a traditional telephone number, or an email application, or PCs, or anything else it hasn't traditionally made rules about, it will be acting beyond the powers given it by Congress. This means we will have to have a sustained national conversation about the scope of the FCC's authority over the internet before the Commission can act.eca vrt 2005 download: I would argue that the FCC has also overstepped its statutory authority in indecency, but that's another subject. eca vrt 2005 downloadFrom what I've been hearing, it's going to take several years for any rewrite of the Communications Act to happen. In the meantime, today's opinion signals that the FCC should act with self-restraint.
May 05, 2005
Crystal ball
Crystal ball
: Alex Beam, who sometimes chooses not to get the future, tries to write a cute column about the future, when Nick Denton buys The New York Times. Tries way, way too hard. Too cute by half. And essentially wrong-headed, arguing that only in newspapers are serious issues like Social Security discussed -- when, in fact, if you look up Social Security online you'll find, often, more discussion and better depth. eca vrt 2005 download
Jumping the shark for Jesus, continued
Jumping the shark for Jesus, continued
: George Will has a good start to a column today about George Bush apparently trying to pull back from the follies of the religious fringe. But Will doesn't pull back quite far enough, in my view, for he contrasts only the religious fringe with the godless and leaves out the vast religious majority inbetween.
The state of America's political discourse is such that the president has felt it necessary to declare that unbelievers can be good Americans. In last week's prime-time news conference, he said: "If you choose not to worship, you're equally as patriotic as somebody who does worship."eca vrt 2005 downloadHe then goes on to praise Pat Robertson -- "who is fervid but also shrewd" -- for tolerating the idea of a Guiliani run for President and says: "Some Christians should practice the magnanimity of the strong rather than cultivate the grievances of the weak." eca vrt 2005 downloadSo Mark Twain, Oliver Wendell Holmes and a long, luminous list of other skeptics can be spared the posthumous ignominy of being stricken from the rolls of exemplary Americans. And almost 30 million living Americans welcomed that presidential benediction.
According to the American Religious Identification Survey, Americans who answer "none" when asked to identify their religion numbered 29.4 million in 2001, more than double the 14.3 million in 1990. If unbelievers had their own state -- the state of None -- its population would be more than twice that of New England's six states, and None would be the nation's second-largest state:eca vrt 2005 downloadCalifornia, 34.5 million.eca vrt 2005 download
None, 29.4 million.eca vrt 2005 download
Texas, 21.3 million.eca vrt 2005 download
The president, whose political instincts, at least, are no longer so misunderestimated by his despisers, may have hoped his remarks about unbelievers would undo some of the damage done by the Terri Schiavo case. During that Florida controversy, he made a late-night flight from his Texas ranch to Washington to dramatize his signing of imprudent legislation that his party was primarily responsible for passing. He and his party seemed to have subcontracted governance to certain especially fervid religious supporters.
As if Robertson is a model. He neglects to mention Robertson's other recent media appearance contending that loose judges are the most serious threat to America in 400 years of history -- more serious than the Nazis and slavery and explicitly more serious than al Qaeda. A fine model of political reasonableness.eca vrt 2005 download
Will then goes on to argue that the religious right should stop trying to play victim and he uses Passion of the Christ and best-selling religious books and more as his evidence. "But their persecution complex is unbecoming because it is unrealistic." I agree with that.eca vrt 2005 download
But I have a problem with making Robertson, Passion, and the Left Behind books the milestones of religion in America. Will puts people in that camp or in the unbelieving camp. But there is a vast religious middle that would not qualify as religious by the definition of some, that may not be the most loyal churchgoers or churchgoers at all, that may hold opinions that are antithetical to the beliefs of this group... but they are religious Americans nonetheless. I am in that middle, that mainstream. But that's the subject of another post another day.eca vrt 2005 download
: At the same time, in The Times, David Brooks writes about religion and Abraham Lincoln:
On Sept. 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln gathered his cabinet to tell them he was going to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He said he had made a solemn vow to the Almighty that if God gave him victory at Antietam, Lincoln would issue the decree.eca vrt 2005 downloadWell, I'd be stunned, too. So what if the battle had gone the other way: Would Lincoln have left the slaves imprisoned? Does this mean he believes that God joins in a battle? Yes, stunning. I don't think that's a mark of sane religion in government any more than Pat Robertson is. eca vrt 2005 downloadLincoln's colleagues were stunned. They were not used to his basing policy on promises made to the Lord. They asked him to repeat what he'd just said. Lincoln conceded that "this might seem strange," but "God had decided the question in favor of the slaves."eca vrt 2005 download
I like to think about this episode when I hear militant secularists argue that faith should be kept out of politics.
Deciding that slavery is wrong and must be stopped should not require a signal from God; it should be evident from studying God's word and from examining one's own conscience. Brooks would call that relativism -- "the bland relativism of the militant secularists." But that is not relativism. That is morality. That is what religion is about. eca vrt 2005 download
But Brooks would call me a "militant secularist." I think those are fighting words. eca vrt 2005 download
Exploding media: local
Exploding media: local
: See Fred Wilson's post about Backfence and 101 and other efforts to bring media to its proper local level. eca vrt 2005 download
Exploding media: creativity
Exploding media: creativity
: For me, the lesson I learn from the announcements last week that podcasts are coming to Infinity Radio and Sirius is that big media is adopting citizens' media faster than I ever would have predicted. eca vrt 2005 download
I've said that what would make big media pay attention to citizens' media, in the end, would be economics: We, the people, are creating compelling, valuable, addictive, fresh content at a lower cost than the big boys with all their big ways and big costs. And as the big boys' audience and revenue shrink, they will turn to new ways to make content and save money. eca vrt 2005 download
I thought this would take time to happen -- as it has taken time for mainstream media to decide that they wouldn't get cooties reading blogs. But I was operating in the wrong world, on the wrong timetable. Mainstream media journalists have been slow to accept or at least acknowledge citizens' media because they operate in a priesthood, a club closed in by its standards and rules, and they don't want to change any of that and allow new members in. eca vrt 2005 download
But radio is entertainment. It is a business. There's no hooha about professionalism and higher standards. Hell, just look at prime time. Listen to radio.eca vrt 2005 download
So along comes content that is new and getting an audience and -- best of all -- cheap or even free, and you'll see guys in suits slap on iPods and webcams faster than you can spell EBITDA. eca vrt 2005 download
But this raises two issues, two cautions:eca vrt 2005 download
The first is podcasts and vlogs are new, really new. Their potential is limitless. But at a year old, even Mozart couldn't play chopsticks. They have not begun to reach their potential. So I worry that Infinity and Sirius will slap on lots of podcasts and we'll immediately read the reviews from big media snobs that it's all tedious crap. Or a lot of it may actually be tedious crap. And then it will all be dismissed as a fad, a bubble, a nothing. And I don't want to see that happen. And the fate of this media merger is in the hands of Adam Curry and whoever is programming YOURadio and Current.TV and I have hope that they will do more than just slap up any old multimedia blather. I know they will pick the best they can find. I also know that the people will make great stuff to try to impress them and get the attention. But the programming directors here -- inserting themselves into a new medium where programming directors are an oxymoron -- need to do more: They need to encourage and support the best. And that leads to the other issue...eca vrt 2005 download
The big guys can't just exploit the citizen-producers and take the stuff for free. They need to find value in what they create and pay that value not just because it's fair but also as the way to support the creation of great new stuff. The creators need to realize, in turn, that they're not going to get rich overnight doing this, not until someone proves that audience and advertisers will make it profitable. And there are new ventures being started by not-so-big-boys that aren't making any money yet. But this has to be seen as a partnership or it won't work. eca vrt 2005 download
If it is seen as a partnership and if it does work, I'll now bet you'll be hearing your neighbor on some form of radio and seeing your coworker on some form of TV just as you are reading your friends in this, some form of publishing, sooner than you can imagine. eca vrt 2005 download
Exploding media: distribution
Exploding media: distribution
: I have seen the prototype for the future of TV and it is my son's PSP (bought with his own hard-earned money, I might add).eca vrt 2005 download
Doc Searls said that the iPod is a prototype for the future of radio. As the transistor led to the transistor radio and that led to rock 'n' roll, so the iPod is a prototype for a future when we get any programming we want anywhere anytime (now it's downloaded but soon enough it will be on-demand via ubiquitious broadband). eca vrt 2005 download
That made sense for me with radio. I was willing to preach the same sermon about TV but didn't fully believe that gospel because I hadn't seen a hybrid device that would make TV worth watching (that is, there's little value to watching TV on a phone; you might as well just listen). eca vrt 2005 download
Well, the PSP screen is magnificent and now, already, content is being distributred to it. Here's a NY Times story about this and here are two PaidContent links about it. eca vrt 2005 download
Exploding media: advertising
Exploding media: advertising
: Forrester says that 64 percent of advertisers are looking at advertising on blogs. eca vrt 2005 download
Now we have to make it easy for them. (Insert plug for open-source ad calls here.)eca vrt 2005 download
The clear conclusion of the Forrester survey is that much, much, much more money is going to go online and leave other media:
"Despite significant changes in consumer behavior, there is a large disparity between the amount of time consumers are spending online and the money marketers are spending trying to reach them online," says Forrester Research Principal Analyst Charlene Li. "When at-work Internet use is taken into consideration, online consumers spend more than one-third of their time online -- roughly the same amount of time they spend watching TV. Yet marketers spend only 4 percent of ad budgets online versus 25 percent on TV." ...eca vrt 2005 downloadSee also Mary Meeker's crystal ball. eca vrt 2005 download* Search engine marketing will grow by 33 percent in 2005, reaching $11.6 billion by 2010. Display advertising, which includes traditional banners and sponsorships, will grow at the average rate of 11 percent over the next five years to $8 billion by 2010.eca vrt 2005 download
* New advertising channels will draw interest and spending from marketers. Sixty-four percent of respondents are interested in advertising on blogs, 57 percent through RSS and 52 percent on mobile devices, including phones and PDAs.eca vrt 2005 download
* Marketers are quickly losing confidence in the effectiveness of traditional advertising channels and feel that online channels will become more effective over the next three years. Seventy-eight percent of survey respondents said they think search engine marketing will be more effective, compared with 53 percent of respondents who said TV advertising would become less effective.
May 04, 2005
Prime Time Jive
Prime Time Jive
: The tawdriest angle in Prime Time Live's tawdry story about American Idol and Paula Abdul tonight was that ABC thought this was a news story worth an hour of prime time. eca vrt 2005 download
The next reality show: The Jilted Lovers Hour. eca vrt 2005 download
The deck chair beat
The deck chair beat
: Terry Heaton's getting lots of well-deserved links for his open rant to TV news people whoa re not paying attention to the future.
Where is the passion to get out in front of where the industry is going? TV newspeople are generally curious and intelligent, so this puzzles me. If you're not moving in that direction, you're moving in the opposite direction, for there is no standing still in this rapidly changing environment. I'm reminded of the FedEx commercial where the woman informs the new worker that his help is needed. Upon learning that the problem is in shipping, he says, "But I have an MBA."eca vrt 2005 downloadIt's not just local TV news, Terry. eca vrt 2005 downloadSecondly, TV newspeople are reluctant to assist in the economic well-being of the companies for which they work. This is a very dangerous time for broadcasting. 2005 is the nervous-breakdown year, and yet you are concerned with your resume tape and growing your broadcasting career while the foundation upon which it's built is crumbling. Again, you are supposedly intelligent people. Why would you do that?
Radio made the video star
Radio made the video star
: Tonight Brian Lehrer, one of the best interviewers on radio, started a new TV show with the City University of New York on NYC cable and the internet. I always like being on Brian's WNYC radio show because he pushes me with his questions and doesn't just listen to blather; he thinks about the stories he's telling; and he's good with callers, which isn't easy. So I was delighted to be one of the first guests on the TV show. I was part of a segment about the videos that got hundreds of Republican National Convention protesters (and bystanders) freed: The power of citizens' media. You can watch the first show here. His first season lasts another eight week, every Wednesday at 7p. eca vrt 2005 download
: Oh, and the Lehrer show put out a call for you to send them video that illustrates the real New York. Calling all vloggers. Hey Rocketboom and Unmediated.org: Send in your videos!eca vrt 2005 download
Pussycat press
Pussycat press
: Matt at 1115.org (a good blog with which I intermittently agree and not) has a worthwhile discussion about the tactics of a press corps that goes for getting in its questions more than getting answers, a press corps that doesn't keep pushing until it gets answers. eca vrt 2005 download
May 03, 2005
Atoms suck
Atoms suck
: Yesterday, I linked to posts that drew parallels among the rust in newspapers and autos and education and here's a column that draws another parallel: theme parks. eca vrt 2005 download
Bottom line: In our new flat world, you want to work in digits. Atoms suck.
eca vrt 2005 download
May 02, 2005
Presses rust, too
Presses rust, too
: A few posts ago, Jay Rosen wrote a provocative essay about newspaper management laying newspapers gently down to die. Last week, Ad Age had a guest column (not online, damn them) about General Motors as caretaker management that is essentially doing the same thing by not investing in the future. And today, Jenny DeMonte blogs and brings this together, seeing parallels among GM, journalism, and education. eca vrt 2005 download
Trees rejoice
Trees rejoice
: The Wall Street Journal (free link) says newspaper circulation is taking a dive:
Circulation numbers to be released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations probably will show industrywide declines of 1% to 3%, according to people familiar with the situation -- possibly the highest for daily newspapers since the industry shed 2.6% of subscribers in 1990-91.If they depend just on the old, big, one-size-fits-all product then, yes, that's bad news. And if, in the case of one of at least one of the companies listed in the story, a big drop comes from cleaning up circ fraud, well, that's very bad news. eca vrt 2005 download
But if print media spread out across new media -- online, mobile, multimedia -- and new, niche products -- ethnic, entertainment, handout -- then that's good news: the mass market becomes the mass of niches; the audience is served where and when it wants to be served. And if that happens, circulation in the big, one-size-fits-all print products will decline and it will not be bad news. Lot of if's there. eca vrt 2005 download
: The Journal also has an online poll asking: "What is the main reason for declines in newspaper circulation?: Diminished quality; Online alternatives; Hassle of recycling; Biased reporting; Something else." Online is the clear winner at this hour. eca vrt 2005 download
April 29, 2005
American (Ad) Idol
American (Ad) Idol
: Craig Newmark has a change-the-rules idea the new Current.TV: Let the audience vote off the worst commercials. eca vrt 2005 download
I like that: Sponsors would know the rules when they advertise and would operate under fear of being voted off, so they would improve their commercials. eca vrt 2005 download
But it's so, well, negative. How about a more aggressive scheme:eca vrt 2005 download
How about having a contest for the best commercials, products, and brands on the network. Make it a game. Hire the Simon Cowell (or Bob Garfield) of the people to slam the spam. Have the sponsors compete for our affection. eca vrt 2005 download
Everybody wins:eca vrt 2005 download
: Suddenly, consumers have a reason to pay attention to commercials. Wow, that is revolutionary. So if the sponsors have decent commercials, they win.eca vrt 2005 download
: The network becomes a better environment for advertising. Advertisers will line up to give them money. The network wins. eca vrt 2005 download
: The sponsors improve their commercials and consumers can get rid of the worst of them and encourage better ones. The audience wins. eca vrt 2005 download
The audience is in control.eca vrt 2005 download
This follows my first law of media (and life): Give people control of media and they will use it. Don't give the people control and you will lose them. eca vrt 2005 download
That's all Craig is doing. That's all Craig ever does: He empowers the people. Good thinking, Craig. eca vrt 2005 download
: This also deals with a problem of marketing and media in this era when media is paid on performance: That is, if you are a publisher or blogger, you get paid only when the consumer clicks on an ad you run. But if the ad is crappy (or the ad targeting is off) then no one will click and you lose; you used up your space, your ad avail, to no avail. eca vrt 2005 download
So what if you got to pick the ad creative you put on your site or network... or recreate it? That scares ad agencies that make money on making that creative. But, hey, it's a new era: You win when you give up control, not keep it. So the wise advertiser and ad agency would take Craig's idea (and my add) and run with it. eca vrt 2005 download
[Bad link to Craig fixed. Sorry.]eca vrt 2005 download
April 28, 2005
Talk OD
Talk OD
: Radio ratings in Washington indicate an OD on political talk radio. eca vrt 2005 download
Now: YOURadio... Next: OURadio
Now: YOURadio... Next: OURadio
: Infinity Broadcasting's announcement that it is turning over a transmitter to the people is big, big news: great news, gratifying news, inevitable news. But it's still just one milemarker on the road to the future of citizens' media. And no, kids, we're not there yet.eca vrt 2005 download
This is still a big company handing over its time and using the second-person plural: YOURadio.eca vrt 2005 download
We'll know we've arrived when the people take over that station for real and change the name to OURadio. eca vrt 2005 download
At YOURadio, there are still executives picking what goes onto THEIR air. eca vrt 2005 download
At OURadio, WE the audience will pick what goes on OUR radio from what WE the producers make; there will be no difference between audience and producer, there will be no THEM: It's all OURs. eca vrt 2005 download
That is where this road is going. And we're still driving. eca vrt 2005 download
Still, I'm delighted by YOURadio. eca vrt 2005 download
Now we have a newspaper made totally from citizens' content: NorthwestVoice. We will have a radio station made totally from citizens' content: YOURadio.com. We will have a TV network made almost completely from citizens' content: Al Gore's Current.tv. (And last night on MSNBC's Connected, I joked that blog TV is next and when we get there, I said, we'll invite Ron and Monica on.) eca vrt 2005 download
But ultimately, they're all still networks. They're all still one-way pipes (but with a new way to dive into the pool that feeds them). They're media. eca vrt 2005 download
This is why -- I think -- Doc Searls and David Weinberger and the other visionaries behind this thing we have here refuse to call it media. Doc says it's speech. This, I believe, is why David got cold sweats at becoming part of media at MSNBC (see here and here as well): He said, 'I'm not media, I'm something else.' I call it conversation. (But I also am of the old "media." And I call this new thing "citizens' media" because this is like the English language and "snow:" We don't have as many words for that fozen stuff as the Inuit have. We don't have a word for this thing we're doing. So until sombody invents a new word -- something more sonorous than "blog," please -- I'll keep calling it citizens' media.)eca vrt 2005 download
So anyway, we're creating new things: eca vrt 2005 download
Google is the new library... and network... and ad agency (see the post below). eca vrt 2005 download
Blogs are new newspapers, right?eca vrt 2005 download
Podcasts are new radio then.eca vrt 2005 download
Vlogs will be the new TV, yes? eca vrt 2005 download
But then again, no, they're not. They're none of that. They're new, they're different, and they're not done yet. eca vrt 2005 download
And for that matter, old media aren't done yet, either... if they know what's good for them. eca vrt 2005 download
So each is trying to figure out the other, how to dance and who's leading -- and that's good. That's what the blog segments on MSNBC are about. That's what YOURadio is about. They are process. eca vrt 2005 download
Now having said all that, I'll repeat that YOURadio is big news and good news for a few reasons: eca vrt 2005 download
First, it is big media recognizing that it's time to listen -- and do more than listen: Let the people speak. It is big media recognizing the value of citizens' media. eca vrt 2005 download
Second, it is an admission that the old, one-size-fits-all, top-down, one-way models of programming are broken and the audience can do it better. eca vrt 2005 download
Third, it an admission that the old business models are soon to break and that the people can provide more talent for less than the old talent could. It's nothing less than the economic salvation of old media... if old media is smart enough to financially support citizens' media and not just exploit it. eca vrt 2005 download
What's important is that a big media company knew it was time to stick some dynamite up the alimentary canal and push the plunger. eca vrt 2005 download
It is the tipping point. eca vrt 2005 download
: I've been saying that we're at the tipping point. Glenn Reynolds is tipping, too. eca vrt 2005 download
Jay Rosen says:
It has been pointed out that tipping point talk is cheap. But Infinity Broadcasting actually tipped over today.: See Rex Hammock on top of YOURadio. That's the frequency, Kenneth. eca vrt 2005 download
: Now let's tune in for a big, honking reality check from young MasterMaq, whom I last quoted on why he can't stand newspapers. Now here's his reaction to YOURadio:
You'd think I would be excited about the launch of the world's first "all-podcast radio station," but instead I'm disappointed. San Francisco's 1550 KYCY will now become KYOURadio and will feature content submitted by listeners. The problem? It's not podcasting at all:He's a tough master, Maq. eca vrt 2005 downloadIn part because of licensing requirements, which usually cover only broadcast and streaming, the company has no plans to provide downloadable program archives.More and more, individuals and organizations are attaching the term "podcast" to their audio endeavours, trying to jump on the bandwagon. This is very clearly one such example, and it's disappointing. KYOURadio is not a podcast radio station - they simply play content submitted by listeners.
Engadget agrees.eca vrt 2005 download
: Doc, the original radio geek, geeks out on the signal. eca vrt 2005 download
: LATER: Mark Glaser sums up the efforts of new services serving our video (and audio).eca vrt 2005 download
April 26, 2005
It takes a village to be a newspaper
It takes a village to be a newspaper
: In a wonderful comment under a post below, Bala Pillai of Maylasia.net pointed to an interview that has an eloquent expression of what news should be -- a parallel to Hugh McLeod's oft-quoted (by me) contention that newspapers must stop thinking of themselves as things but as places where people come together to do good things. Bala Pillai:
I remember in my village where I grew up in Malaysia. When there was no media there. When we needed to find out what was happening in the neighboring village. We’d send one of us over. He’d go over. And talk to the headman. Get the party platform from him. And on his way back he'd go have a haircut at that village's barber. And there he'd get the grapevine. And between the two versions he narrates to us...See that was media for us that were news....eca vrt 2005 downloadBeautifully put. eca vrt 2005 downloadSee what matters most to the village = media ok the reason is this... media used to be equal to community... because what mattered most to community equaled to the community... and what mattered most = media = community, as time went on, specialists creeped in... And in time the agency phenomena took over. Agency phenomena = agents become principals (another e.g. --> govt servants become masters) and thus media diverged from community. Media no more represented community. Nature abhors these divergences. It pushes towards equilibrium. So there was pressure to have facilities to enable this convergence and thus social software and citizen journalism
Tipping point... or melting point?
Tipping point... or melting point?
: Just got the Wilson Quarterly with its cover story on "The Collapse of Big Media." Getaloada the intro:
Collapse is not too strong a word to describe what has happened to America's major news media. Stripped of their old economic and technological advantages, befuddled by the changing character of their audiences, and beset by new competitors, they are reeling from the blows recent scandals have dealt to their credibility and presige. Their old authority is one, and with it, perhaps their ability to define for Americans a shared realm of information, ideas and debate."Youch. That pretty much summarizes the melting point. eca vrt 2005 download
: Stats from WQ compliled from many sources:
: See also Chris Anderson's many stats on the media meltdown here.
* Daily newspaper circ from 1990 to 2003: 62.3 to 55.2 million
* Number of daily U.S. papers from 1990 to 2003: 1,611 to 1,456
* By age group, percentage of Americans who read a paper yesterday: 18-29 - 23, 30-49 - 39, 50-64 - 52, 60+ - 60
* Time spent by 8-19 year olds on all media: 6 hours, 21 minutes; time spent on print media: 43 minutes
* Combined viewership of network evening news: 1980 - 52 million, 2004 - 28.8 million
* Median age of network news viewer: 60
* Percentage of people who believe all or most of what's on: network news - 24, CNN - 32, FoxNews - 25, C-Span - 27, PBS NewsHour - 23
* Music: sales last year were down 21% from their peak in 1999: See tipping-point posts here, here, and here. And much media here. eca vrt 2005 download
* Television: network TV's audience share has fallen by a third since 1985
* Radio: listenership is at a 27-year low
* Newspapers: circulation peaked in 1987, and the decline is accelerating
* Magazines: total circulation peaked in 2000 and is now back to 1994 levels (but a few premier titles are bucking the trend!)
* Books: sales growth is lagging the economy as whole
: And from PaidContent, see links to the Deloitte report on the not-so-bright future of network TV and Mary Meeker's powerpoint on the ad challenges. See this amazing chart from Meeker's presentation. Compare the ad dollars spent per household in each medium and guess where this is going:
And see this on classifieds in papers vs. eBay (and this doesn't include CraigsList!):
(Unfortunately in-)frequently asked questions
(Unfortunately in-)frequently asked questions
: The Media Center -- the real forward thinkers and nudgers in the news business -- asks a few great questions in their latest brief tome (a pdf):
OLD QUESTION: What is the future of newspapers?eca vrt 2005 download
REALLY ASKING: Will editors and reporters have jobs in five years?
SHOULD ASK: How is a connected society informed? What’s paper got to do with it? What future are newspapers and TV networks creating? What story do they represent?eca vrt 2005 downloadOLD QUESTION: What’s the no-kidding business model for newspaper companies?
REALLY ASKING: Do we really trust this Internet thing?
SHOULD ASK: Which business models enabled by the Internet and mobile, digital technologies best serve an informed, connected society? Can news enterprises reimagine their businesses?eca vrt 2005 downloadOLD QUESTION: How do we make money?
REALLY ASKING: How do we continue doing what we’ve always done, maintain high margins, and control markets?
SHOULD ASK: What are alternatives to the advertising subsidy? What business models can capitalize journalism-based businesses? What is the value proposition for new forms of journalism?eca vrt 2005 downloadOLD QUESTION: From where will journalism come?
REALLY ASKING: Do we really trust other citizens with journalism?
SHOULD ASK: How will a generation of talented storytellers use multiple forms of media to create and share stories that are relevant to the citizens of an always-on world?
April 25, 2005
The prime directive: Do not lie
The prime directive: Do not lie
: I got pretty shocking email from a journalism student at NYU, who also sent it to Steven Levy at Newsweek. I'll not give the student's name in hopes that he or she will learn the lesson and not be Googled with it forever. But I will quote the email because there is an important lesson here:
Hi, I'm a student of ... eca vrt 2005 downloadI had a very simple response to this student: "You are responsible." Ethically and otherwise. eca vrt 2005 downloadI am writing an article on fact-checking in blogs.eca vrt 2005 download
I have two questions.eca vrt 2005 download
Recently, sent Gawker.com a fake tip (said I heard Moby say to a little girl, "Don't ever say that Teany [Moby's tea store] is Shitty"). They posted it in their "Reader Sitings" section. I e-mailed them and said it was fake. But they posted no correction and the fake tip is still on their site.eca vrt 2005 download
Do you think Gawker should be held responsible for any damages against Moby? Do they have a responsibility to fact-check reader tips, do you think?eca vrt 2005 download
Thanks!
Gawker puts up notes from readers and clearly labels it: "Sightings are sent in by readers." Any reader with a two-digit IQ and any experience with this medium and the internet knows that readers can publish anything anywhere and so, caveat reader.eca vrt 2005 download
If this would-be journalist simply asked Gawker, I'll bet they would have given an answer. Ask me about the comments here or the posts in a forum and I'll tell you quite clearly: Nothing is vetted or edited. That's obvious. But if you were a good reporter, you'd ask the question. And if you did not get an answer, you still should not resort to what you did. You lied. eca vrt 2005 download
And that, correspondent, is the most basic journalism lesson you will ever receive. That is your prime directive as a journalist. That is Rule No. 1:eca vrt 2005 download
Do not lie. eca vrt 2005 download
Trust is our only asset. Truth is its only measure. Ask Jayson Blair.eca vrt 2005 download
Do not lie. eca vrt 2005 download
As a reporter, would you call the Fire Department with a false alarm just to see how fast they came? If you did, you'd go to jail and deserve it. Would you lie about a stock online to see what happened to its price? If you did, you'd go to jail and get sued and deserve it. eca vrt 2005 download
You make it even worse, then, by emailing your lie to two journalists. So you defamed not only Moby but Gawker. In fact, I don't think any harm is done here. But with different players, you could, indeed, do harm to your subjects and your own reputation and the credibility of the journalists you ensare. eca vrt 2005 download
You also lied about your own identity: You did not reveal yourself as a would-be journalist. In an age of transparency, that, too, is becoming ethical lapse. eca vrt 2005 download
So, dear student, if you were in my class, I'd give you an F on this assignment (at least). I would assign you to apologize to those you tried to smear with your little lie. And I would hope that you would learn the most important lesson in journalism: Telling the truth is hard enough without lying. eca vrt 2005 download
(Oh, and by the way, it might help if you copy-edited your emails before sending them.)eca vrt 2005 download
: UPDATE: See in the comments, Lockhart Steele, editorial director of Gawker Media, says that they didn't receive notice of the "correction" but have since X'ed it out. The same person hit Lockhart's own Curbed.eca vrt 2005 download
Also, I neglected to add the full disclosure that most know but that should have been added specifically to this post: I am friends with Gawker Media and its founder, Nick Denton. eca vrt 2005 download
The future of journalism is not its past II
The future of journalism is not its past (continued)
: Tim Porter suggests his fixes for what ails news (see the post below). I'll pull up to higher altitude (and lower oxygen) and suggest these steps:eca vrt 2005 download
1. Set a strategic imperative for change. From both the top down and the bottom up, there has to be an agreement -- an urgent passion -- for change: for updating, improving, finding new ways. eca vrt 2005 download
2. Listen to the public. Don't just go to another focus group about the paper. Go listen to the people who don't read the paper but want news. Learn how they're getting it now: They no longer have the patience to wait for the news; the news waits for them to search for it, click on it, have it recommended. Ask them about trust and brace yourself. Read Merrill Brown's Carnegie report.eca vrt 2005 download
3. Perform a business reality check. Read Tim's post: The solution is still presumed to be adding more bodies. But when revenue is declining, that's obviously not realistic. Classified and retail are in decline; there are new inexpensive and free competitors; audience is declining. So new business models must be invented. eca vrt 2005 download
4. Catalogue the opportunities for delivering news. No longer constrained to a printing press and truck route, list all the wonderful new ways that you can deliver news. If you want the public to get its news from you then you'd better give it to them wherever and however they want. eca vrt 2005 download
5. Catalogue the opportunities for gathering news. Insert hyperlocal citizens' media spiel here. The public knows more than we ever can. How do we enable them to share that with others -- with content, promotion, training, trust, money? eca vrt 2005 download
6. Reinvent the product. After doing that homework, after dynamiting old assumptions, after starting a conversation with the public -- a converstion that should never end -- now, it's time to reinvent the product and the business and the industry of news. eca vrt 2005 download
7. Reinvent the relationship with the public. Now you can change the way the public views news. Hugh McLeod said, and I often quote it, that we need to stop thinking of newspapers (and their sites) as things but rather as places where help bring people together. eca vrt 2005 download
The future of journalism is not its past
The future of journalism is not its past
: Tim Porter writes his best post ever -- Jay Rosen beat me to calling it that -- about pathological resistance to change in newsrooms and journalism. It's probably a good portrait of fear of change in any industry undergoing restructuring, only the situation is even tougher in journalism because it is an industry inflated with hubris as well as true principle -- an industry that doesn't even like to think of itself as an industry. eca vrt 2005 download
I've spent more than a third of my career trying to bring change to news media and I've been amazed hearing the notion that news should not change. Why not? The world is changing. The public and its needs and wants are changing. The technology is changing. The opportunities are changing. The competition is changing. The economics are changing. Why shouldn't newsrooms change? eca vrt 2005 download
As Tim reports, the discussion is usually not about moving forward -- and taking advantage of this change, embracing it -- but, instead, about wanting to move back: back to when there were more people, there was less competition, the insiders had more power, and we had better bars (well, actually, that last one is mine... but it might help with the bad mood Tim finds):
The amount of anger and hostility, of distrust and suspicion, of inertia and ennui that pollutes the journalistic environment in these newsrooms at first surprised me....eca vrt 2005 downloadThere's much more. Read it all. eca vrt 2005 downloadIt is a venom whose toxicity, fed by the same sort of outwardly-directed anger and suspicion that floods the waning days of all diminishing industries, weakens all hope these reporters and editors and photographers have of imagining a future in which journalism survives but its form is vastly different....eca vrt 2005 download
The obdurance and avoidance endemic in newsrooms rests on a bedrock belief that the "problems" at their newspapers are best solved with more bodies or a return to a more "traditional" form of journalism....eca vrt 2005 download
In these same newsrooms where the nattering nabobs of nostalgia pine for days of yore, there are also forward-thinking reporters and editors and photographers who envision and are working to create a journalistic future built on new story forms, deeper community connections and more truth-telling and watch-dogging....eca vrt 2005 download
We are in a time of great transition in journalism. The tectonics of technology, demographics, economics and lifestyle are disrupting the ground on which newspaper journalism stood for half a century. Survival requires nimbleness, openness and a sense of the possible. The intransigent and the angry and the incurably nostalgic will fall into the cracks....
April 24, 2005
News on news
News on news
: Pegasus has a good roundup of news on changing newseca vrt 2005 download
It's like making a vegetarian the CEO of McDonald's
It's like making a vegetarian the CEO of McDonald's
: The NY Times mag has an interview that's as astonishing as it is amusing with the new Corporation for Public Broadcasting chief executive, Ken Ferree [sent to me by Jonathan Miller]:
What PBS shows do you like?eca vrt 2005 downloadeca vrt 2005 downloadI'm not much of a TV consumer. I like ''Masterpiece Theater'' and some of the ''Frontline'' shows. I like ''Antiques Roadshow'' and ''Nova.'' I don't know. What's your favorite show?eca vrt 2005 download
It would probably be the ''NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.''eca vrt 2005 download
Yes, Lehrer is good, but I don't watch a lot of broadcast news. The problem for me is that I do the Internet news stuff all day long, so by the time I get to the Lehrer thing . . . it's slow. I don't always want to sit down and read Shakespeare, and Lehrer is akin to Shakespeare. Sometimes I really just want a People magazine, and often that is in the evening, after a hard day.eca vrt 2005 download
For the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, you don't sound like much of a PBS viewer. Perhaps you prefer NPR, which your organization also finances?eca vrt 2005 download
No. I do not get a lot of public radio for one simple reason. I commute to work on my motorcycle, and there is no radio access.
April 23, 2005
Tipping point (continued)
Tipping point (continued)
: More evidence that we're at the tipping point in media (see earlier posts here and here):eca vrt 2005 download
: The Economist marvels at Rupert Murdoch's speech to newspaper editors:
The speech—astonishing not so much for what it said as for who said it—may go down in history as the day that the stodgy newspaper business officially woke up to the new realities of the internet age. Talking at times more like a pony-tailed, new-age technophile than a septuagenarian old-media god-like figure, Mr Murdoch said that news “providers” such as his own organisation had better get web-savvy, stop lecturing their audiences, “become places for conversation” and “destinations” where “bloggers” and “podcasters” congregate to “engage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions.” He also criticised editors and reporters who often “think their readers are stupid”.I, too, said the speech will be seen as a tipping point. eca vrt 2005 download
: Ruth sends me a link to George Will's column tomorrow:
If you awake before dawn you probably hear a daily sound that may become as anachronistic as the clatter of horses' hooves on urban cobblestones. The sound is the slap of the morning paper on the sidewalk.eca vrt 2005 downloadNo, I think we're entering a new journalism age. eca vrt 2005 downloadThe circulation of daily U.S. newspapers is 55.2 million, down from 62.3 million in 1990. The percentages of adults who say they read a paper "yesterday" are ominous...eca vrt 2005 download
Perhaps we are entering what David T.Z. Mindich, formerly of CNN, calls "a post-journalism age."
: Will quotes the latest issue of the Wilson Quarterly, which I'm headed to a newsstand to buy now. The cover story: The Collapse of Big Media.eca vrt 2005 download
April 22, 2005
Vote for Tony
Vote for Tony
: I agree with every word of Tom Friedman's column endorsing Tony Blair... and I laughed at this:
Remember, in the darkest hours of the Iraq drama, when things were looking disastrous (and there have been many such hours), Mr. Bush could always count on the embrace of his own party and the U.S. conservative media machine and think tanks.eca vrt 2005 downloadeca vrt 2005 downloadTony Blair, by contrast, dined alone. He had no real support group to fall back on. I'm not even sure his wife supported him on the Iraq war. (I know the feeling!)
Henceforce known as Wilson's Rule of Online
Henceforce known as Wilson's Rule of Online
: And I quote: "Online does not canibalize offline, it turbocharges it."eca vrt 2005 download
Down the pole
Down the pole
: I was wandering around GoogleNews and found the strangest "news" site: all fires all the time. The joy of local TV news reporters everywhere. eca vrt 2005 download
April 21, 2005
The real change in the news business
The real change in the news business
: AdAge reports on a McKinsey study on falling newspaper classified revenue:
[The study] warned that newspapers could lose $4 billion of "highly profitable" classified revenue by 2007 -- or around 20% of newspapers' 2004 classifieds revenue and just under 9% of the $46.6 billion in total newspaper ad revenue last year -- if trends that afflict help-wanted classifieds spread to automotive and real-estate classifieds.This is why it is necessary to find new models to support reporting (see Gillmor; and I've heard some other revolutionary ideas lately) and new ways to save money (for example) and new ways to get more news (repeat after me: citizen journalists). eca vrt 2005 download