"Do what you do best. Link to the rest..."

In this thoughtful essay, published on the net in advance of the winter edition of Neiman Reports, John A. Byrne, executive editor of Business Week, explores where we should go -- and where we shouldn't -- as the news media transition from analog to digital. (The entire issue is devoted to essays on the future of journalism.)

Byrne ends the essay with what he hopes never to see, but in the where-we-should-go category, he outlines a digital venture launched by Business Week last fall that not only takes advantage of all technology has to offer, but also keeps the title current. He writes:

"In early September, we launched one of the most ambitious efforts ever to both stretch the BusinessWeek brand and to reinvent ourselves. We call it the Business Exchange. It allows our readers to create and organize around their own topics of interest, from active investors to youth advertising. The moment a topic is created by any user at bx.businessweek.com, a Web page pops up with links to stories and blog posts on that subject from all over the Web. No preference is given to BusinessWeek editorials. A story by one of our journalists is treated no differently than one from Forbes, Fortune, or The Economist or, for that matter, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, or The Washington Post. A blog post by a BusinessWeek blogger, moreover, gets the same treatment as one from Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider or John Battelle at Federated Media.

"The 'front page' or 'cover' of each of these topic sites is not determined by an editor but by the community of readers. Whenever a user adds, reads, saves, shares or comments on a story or blog post, that activity is noted by a software algorithm that then places the content on what is essentially the front page. That way, only stories and blogs deemed the most active or useful are shown to the reader, who benefits from the wisdom of the crowd.

"All the members of each topic community are recognized—by photo, profile and their contributions to the network. Indeed, if you admire a member of your community, you can peer over his shoulder to see what stories he is reading, saving, adding or commenting on—if he chooses to keep that activity public.

"Our reporters and editors do not report, write and edit for the Exchange. But they do help to curate the content, adding relevant stories, blog posts, white papers, academic reports, and other reference materials to each topic. If you cover the stock market and an important story breaks on the New York Stock Exchange, you’re expected to immediately search the Web for the best coverage and add it to our topic on Wall Street. A journalist might pose a question or make a comment to help fuel a conversation on the latest news and analysis rather than pick up the phone and start calling his or her sources.

"Of course, this is no replacement for original explanatory journalism that remains at the core of what we do at BusinessWeek. It follows the dictum by Jeff Jarvis, the CUNY journalism professor and blogger, who advises media to 'Do what you do best. Link to the rest.' In a world where time-constrained professionals are trying to keep up with an overabundance of information in their specific fields, the Exchange serves a highly valuable purpose. No less important, it connects like-minded people from every corner of the world in an online community that enriches the journalism at the center."

rekindling the news biz?

This, according to Mediabistro's Mobile Blog Network: USA Today will soon be available via Amazon's Kindle for download, at a monthly price of $11.99.

Other newspapers that are Kindle-ready include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

I'm not sure how to think about this. Will this help to keep newspapers in business? Hasten their demise? I guess it all depends on how many readers -- ostensibly commuters? -- would pay to read the news on a Kindle when they can read it online on a considerably larger flat screen for free.

Intriguing. bk

choices, redux

This time to do with j-school. The timing of which may be appropriate since many of you are considering applications that are due, uh, next month?

Mayka forwarded this post from The Editorialiste that contains many pro/con linx. If you are seriously debating, read them all, especially the post itself. And click on the linx on the linx. and read the comments.

Among the best points by the anonymous author, who indeed went to j-school at Columbia, and who may inspire a deluge of last minute letter of rec requests for yours truly (but whatever...):

"...If there are things you want to do journalistically that you haven't had time to do elsewhere -- write a 3,000-word magazine feature, or craft a book proposal, or spend time practicing at pitching freelance pieces -- j-school is that safety net. It's a safety net made of your tuition dollars, of course, but the way I look at it, those tends of thousands of dollars are you buying yourself time to learn what you didn't know before.

Journalism school might teach you a little, but those who succeed in it are the ones that teach themselves even more. In other words: what you directly learn from classes is 33 percent of your journalism education.

The other 66 percent is getting a freelance pitch accepted or rejected, working all night against deadline, blowing a deadline, misquoting a source, quoting a source correctly and having that person remain unhappy with what they said, blowing past a word limit, being assigned the task of editing your own story, working with another reporter as green as you are on an assignment, and so on. J-school is one or two years of you buying yourself the time to do all of this. You're effectively putting a price tag on that experience, and last time I checked, it can run as high as $65,000."

should i(t) stay or should i(t) go...

Maybe you can discern a pattern here, re the magazine industry. I can't. Nonetheless, here's a bit of good news, bad news and something in-between:

Go to Magazinedeathpool.com to wallow in the dark side of the magazine industry.

Go here for some predictions from Folio Magazine.

And finally, to bask in a little bit of a rosy glow, go here to find out what "Mr. Magazine" (University of Mississippi journalism-department chairman Samir Husni) has to say about magazine launches through November of 2008: only two fewer new titles than last year with the second half of the year, when the economy was in the tank, the strongest.

Devilishly delicious

My nephew Michael Kelley, who may be itching for a gig at The Onion, made his first foray into journalism yesterday by penning the following devilishly sardonic news article:

Clinton Global Initiative Donor List Sparks Controversy
by Michael D. Kelley

The release of the list of donors to former President Bill Clinton's latest philanthropic effort is proving problematic to the incoming Obama Administration.

Among the major contributors is Mephistopheles, the infamous protagonist of Goethe's greatest literary work. The immortal demon has developed a poor reputation, as the driving force behind every human calamity since the dawn of time.

Still, the former president stands behind his philanthropic partner. "Mephisto's a good guy," says Clinton, "just misunderstood. He and I go way back."

Those in Obama's transition team are debating whether the intensely unpopular Ruler of the Underworld might negatively influence the decisions of the incoming administration. Obama addressed the issue Friday, speaking of a recent meeting with Secretary of State Clinton and her husband.

"I have spoken with Hillary and Bill, and I am now confident that Mr. Beelzebub will not be a problem."

Still, doubts linger as to whether That Old Serpent will have an insidious effect on domestic policy, perhaps leading to societal problems such as dancing or the breaking of the Sabbath.

two linx

Jack Shafer got it right on Slate yesterday, outlining in quick form why digital news is eating the heart out of news papers. He also has a long list of all the jobs -- from pimps to travel agents -- that have been rendered obsolete by the growing ability to do just about everything online. He calls it a "digital slay-ride."

But just because print is terminally ill -- he doesn't give up on news. Nor should we.

Which leads to number two: Politico's Michael Calderone reports that the ASNE (The American Society of Newspaper Editors) is debating taking "paper" out of its name. Which puts the focus where it should be -- on the news itself, rather than the way it's delivered. It's a symbolic move, but optimistic in its own way, possibly shifting the debate to what really matters: journalism, in all its many forms.

Whaddya think? bk

slash and burn optimism

Jack forwarded this piece from the NYT on Dean Singleton, owner of MediaNews, which bought our hometown Mercury News from Knight Ridder a few years back. The results have been disastrous for local news junkies -- but a boon for local PR firms, local university journalism programs and Stanford University, all of which have been flooded with solid-gold resumes from veteran staffers who were either bought out or laid off.

But I digress. You've read about Singleton on jlinx before.

In the story, Richard Perez-Pena writes that while MediaNews' timing in buying the Merc and several other dailies couldn't have been worse, Singleton remains optimistic, predicting that "the Mercury News’s revenue base will perform better when things turn around than almost any newspaper in the country.”

Really?! Let's hope that when "things turn around" there will more than a few pages of newsprint left. Counter point from the story:

"Others are not so sure. 'The Bay Area has been the canary in the newspaper coal mine, and that was recognized a long time ago by a lot of people,' said Ken Doctor, a newspaper analyst at the firm Outsell. “The impact of the Internet has been heavier here and earlier here than anywhere else in the country.”

"Sites like Craigslist and eBay, which have long fueled the migration of advertising to the Internet, began in the Bay Area, and are more entrenched there than in any other part of the country.

"Already known for squeezing costs as hard as anyone in the industry, Mr. Singleton and his team have cut spending at a furious pace, trying to keep pace with tumbling revenue. His detractors among analysts and journalists concede that in this market, any owner would have to make deep cuts. But they say that he was already inclined to a slash-and-burn approach that is little more than a prescription for having the papers do steadily less, and do it less well.

“'There’s no newspaper in the country that I know of that’s not suffering,'” said John McManus, a journalism professor at San Jose State University. “'But Dean Singleton has hollowed out The Mercury News.'”

"The Mercury News, the Silicon Valley paper that was long considered one of the nation’s best, began shrinking years before MediaNews took over, under the now-dissolved Knight Ridder chain. The news staff, from a high of more than 400 people early in this decade, has fallen below 150, producing a much slimmer, more locally focused paper.

"It no longer has a movie reviewer. The science and book sections are gone. Most national and international news comes from wire services.

"A business section that was one of the nation’s biggest has shrunk by about two-thirds in the face of competition in its bread-and-butter field — technology — from Web sites like CNet and TechCrunch. Matt Marshall, a reporter covering Silicon Valley’s venture capital scene, left The Mercury News and has his own Web site, VentureBeat, covering much the same ground.

“'My philosophy on pretty much everything these days is born of pure necessity,'” said Bud Geracie, the acting sports editor. “'There’s no grand plan; it’s how we get through today.'”

"Dave Butler, the executive editor, acknowledged that the paper no longer had the ambitions it once did. Now, he said, “'we’re protecting the core mission, which is good, hard local news and information.'”

"Ownership changes and disputes over the direction of the paper have contributed to rapid turnover in the top ranks. The Mercury News has had six publishers and four executive editors in this decade."

There's more. Read it and weep. We do every morning. bk

shoe-leather democracy

By now we've all heard about the notorious shoe-throwing incident on Monday when Iraqi reporter Muntadar al-Zeidi hurled his size 10 at America's lame duck president at a news conference in Baghdad.

As we assuredly know by now as well, a shoe is considered the lowest of the low in Iraq, as the NYT reports, "calling someone the “son of a shoe” is one of the worst insults in Iraq." Here in the U.S., many of us think the whole incident was pretty funny. Cartoonists, late-nighters, and digital funnymen have had a field day. (Check out this series of doctored videos from HuffPo)

But as that same article in the Times reports, al-Zeidi is now being regarded by some as a hero, whose act has unleashed a torrent of sentiment against the U.S. presence in Iraq. From the Times:

"In street-corner conversations, on television and in Internet chat rooms, the subject of shoes was inescapable throughout much of the Middle East on Monday, as was the defiant act that inspired the interest: a huge and spontaneous eruption of anger at President Bush on Sunday in his final visit here. Some deplored Mr. Zaidi’s act as a breach of respect or of traditional Arab hospitality toward guests, even if they shared the sentiment. (Mr. Bush, having demonstrated his quick reflexes, then brushed it off as an expression of democracy.)

“Although that action was not expressed in a civilized manner, it showed the Iraqi feelings, which is to object to the American occupation,” said Qutaiba Rajaa, a 58-year-old physician in Samarra, a Sunni stronghold north of Baghdad.

But many more expressed undiluted pleasure. “I swear by God that all Iraqis with their different nationalities are glad about this act,” said Yaareb Yousif Matti, a 45-year-old teacher from Mosul, in northern Iraq."

But the lowly shoe and the Iraqi who threw both of his at President Bush, with widely admired aim, were embraced around the Arab world on Monday as symbols of rage at a still unpopular war."

Most relevant to me, however -- despite the entertainment factor of it all -- is this piece by Mark Sandalow, formerly Washington bureau chief for the San Francisco Chronicle, who reminds us why reporters need to keep their shoes on their feet and their opinions to themselves.

He writes: "There is a reason for the "no cheering in the press box" axiom. The public is entitled to information, and journalists have a responsibility to both elicit and broadcast it. Displays of anger, repulsion or even devotion - no matter how righteous - deny the public that information."

He continues later in the piece: "What did al-Zeidi accomplish? Bush ducked, made a few jokes, and said nothing of substance on the atrocities in Iraq. Access to political figures is a gift that should not be squandered.

"What if al-Zeidi had kept his shoes on, and instead lobbed verbally pointed questions about how Bush reconciles the agony of millions of Iraqis with the upbeat assessment of the war he had just given to American troops? Putting the ball in play does not mean asking softball questions. An earnest response would have made news, and a nonanswer would have been illuminating.

"Instead, Bush was asked what he thought about having shoes thrown at him.

"Al-Zeidi is no hero - certainly not as a journalist. Disgust is a satisfying and often entertaining emotion (ever watched Geraldo Rivera or Bill O'Reilly?). But a journalist's job is to educate, not pontificate."

bad day for detroit

On top of everything else, the WSJ is reporting that the Detroit Free Press and its partner paper, The Detroit News, may stop home delivery everyday but Thursday, Friday and Saturday. An abbreviated print edition would be available at newsstands on the other days. Readers would be directed to an expanded digital version.

The Free Press is owned by Gannett. The News, by MediaNews. Possibly the shape of things to come in other cities across the nation? I get it that saving paper and delivery costs would save money for a strapped news org. But not sure it would necessarily build an audience for the paper's website. For example, if you were to go directly online to read the paper while you eat your Cheerios, with all the options out there, would you really log onto the hometown press for anything other than a quick hit of local stories? Don't think I would.

From the article:

"The Free Press and News would be the first dailies in a major metropolitan market to curtail home delivery and drastically scale back the print edition. More newspapers are contemplating similar moves as the erosion of advertising and rising costs of print and delivery have brought publishers to their knees. In October, the Christian Science Monitor said it will stop printing a daily newspaper in April and move instead to an online version with a weekly print product.

Newspaper groups have taken drastic steps lately to align costs with shrinking revenues, including massive staff cuts as well as efforts to consolidate functions through partnerships like the JOA in Detroit. As many of those measures have proven insufficient, publishers have taken a harder look at shifting away from print or abandoning it altogether to save on printing and distribution."

Newsweek: soon just a clever name?

The WSJ reports that Newsweek will soon be a slimmer, less-read version of its former self. It will also be less newsy.

Apparently -- perhaps an attempt to appease readers conditioned by cable TV and the web to expect their news to come with a heavy dose of editorializing as well as color visuals -- the weekly will devote more of the scaled down book to photos and opinion.

It's also a way to save money. Going out and finding the news costs much more than yakking about it -- or for that matter, linking to it. It also takes far more time.

According to the WSJ: "Newsweek is seeking in part to mirror publications like the Economist, which has thrived in a tough market by focusing less on costly news gathering than on driving discussion of the day's issues.

"Mr. Meacham said recently that Newsweek has never been an objective summarizer of the week's events, or 'AP on nicer paper,' though he acknowledged a greater emphasis lately on editorializing. 'We are trying to be more provocative,' he said."

Provocative, good. Fewer pages devoted to actual news, not so much.

In addition to shedding pages, Newsweek may also try to shed readers, which seems counterproductive, but is not necessarily. Again from the WSJ: "Newsweek could benefit from targeting a smaller group of readers for reasons beyond reducing its printing and delivery costs. Some industry veterans think news weeklies must shed even more readers -- and charge more for remaining copies -- to garner an audience for which advertisers will pay a premium."

The magazine will also announce this afternoon that it is cutting staff. bk

you can't afford the ticket

In the face of all the bad news lately: a little something to rev up the engines. Don't try to find a connection. There is none.

I just like the song. Have a good holiday and enjoy your break! bk

not this business model, either

At least, not in this economy.

Washington Post, and others, report that NPR is facing the same fiscal woes as its for-profit brethren. According to the piece, 64 employees will be laid off this afternoon. In addition, two shows, aimed at younger listeners, will be killed. The layoffs (7 percent of the workforce) are in response to a recent $23 million shortfall.

NPR was doing fine financially until recently. But the economy finally caught up with the network as the recession began to hammer all its funding sources.

Apparently, this business model isn't the fix we need, either. bk

tribune co. fall-out

According to LA Observed, among those who are likely to suffer from the Trib's file for bankruptcy are freelancers and those who recently got severance packages. Read all about it here. bk

News 2.0: what journalism isn't

Josh Korr of Publishing 2.0 offers this advice on deciding what NOT to write when it comes to digital journalism or what Jeff Jarvis calls the "link economy."

In addition to telling stories in new ways that take advantage of all the bells and whistles out there on the web, Korr suggests that we should also avoid fillers.

He writes:

Once newsrooms better define their idea of filler, it’ll be easier to stop those stories before they start. It’ll also make it easier to come up with better ways of treating certain subjects.

For example, “scrapbook news” — county fairs, local events, awards — could be a place to start experimenting with crowdsourcing. National or world news that has become filler because of the nature of wire coverage could be made relevant through linking. Local political coverage could focus more on how policies will affect readers and less on news-free campaign events. And crime coverage could become more data-driven and be integrated “into a health & safety site, because violence is a public health issue,” as Jane Stevens suggests.

more looks forward?

A few bright spots on a black day:

During the week that some of us were in a tryptophan and beaujolais noveau coma (okay, just our family), I collected a few spots of hope re journalism as we may know it. Click and learn:

From Jeremy:

From Alice:

From Chad:

Meanwhile, got this email from Jack today, who wrote: " Just wanted to pass along a link of an investigation my fellow database colleague was working on for 8 months, a project that runs today and tomorrow. Lots of data to pinpoint specific problems. Makes me wonder if partnering with universities to assist with high-level data would be good for newspapers as they find their post-modern Internet niche.

Which is interesting, considering this.

And finally, let's look at this about politico.

Yes, I'm making you work. Linx: not just a clever name. bk

a look forward?

On a bad day for journalism:

CNet's Greg Sandoval reports today that the Pullitzer committee has decided to consider entries from online-only publications for the 14 journalism categories.

Sandoval writes:

Why the change of heart? The board has turned up its nose at online journalism for a decade, but not even the guardians of newspaper-journalism's highest honor can ignore that many readers now favor getting information from online sources more than newspapers.

Thanks, Andrea. bk

it began

Update from this morning: According to the WSJ and many others, The Tribune Co. has just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. bk

the medium: once again, the message?

The founder of an online writer's group that i belong to forwarded a link to this article by Virginia Heffernan in yesterday's NYT Magazine on the disconnect between the work of traditional media folks and the new digital forms of delivery.

She writes:

"We have to develop content that metamorphoses in sync with new ways of experiencing it, disseminating it and monetizing it. This argument concedes that it’s not possible to translate or extend traditional analog content like news reports and soap operas into pixels without fundamentally changing them. So we have to invent new forms. All of the fascinating, particular, sometimes beautiful and already quaint ways of organizing words and images that evolved in the previous centuries — music reviews, fashion spreads, page-one news reports, action movies, late-night talk shows — are designed for a world that no longer exists. They fail to address existing desires, while conscientiously responding to desires people no longer have."

Some interesting ideas in the 1000-word piece (which in itself is not exactly a digital-friendly presentation), most especially in the comments that follow. What I wonder is if these new modes of delivery will enhance the values that make journalism relevant -- or distract from them. Or whether in the land of Web 3.0, too much of the burden of keeping current will fall on the backs of the news consumers themselves. We will become our own watchdogs?

And what about the emergence of product-oriented "content" on company websites? I am grown-up enough to know that cosmetics ads support much of the content in women's magazines. Still, I'd rather read about the best under-eye cream in Vogue than on Oil of Olay's website. I think. bk

now it begins?

Multiple sources are reporting this morning that the Tribune Co. -- which owns the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, two of the largest newspapers in the country -- is considering filing for bankruptcy. Read all abut it here, here and here.

Whether or not owner Sam Zell, a real estate magnate who also owns the Chicago Cubs, can pull his company through his current financial crisis is not as important in the big picture as what the impending Chapter 11 says about the future of daily journalism. If nothing else, it points to the urgency of coming up with a new financial model for supporting the daily press -- whether it comes to us on paper, the net or Blackberry.

Maybe the journalism industry needs a hit of that bail-out money. Seriously. At the very least, we could use a cash infusion to support some smart folks to think through a new way of doing business -- before the whole business implodes.

This quarter, I had my intro students come up with blueprints for the news organization of the future, based on the principles outlined in Kovach and Rosenstiel's Elements of Journalism. One group came up with an idealistic financial model: support the news organization through something similar to a university endowment, based on donations from the community itself, which has the most interest in a vital daily press, and keeping the funds in a blind trust so that the donors could not influence the news.

I was once asked by a student what it would take to encourage more students to go into journalism rather than, say, public relations -- given the disparities of starting salaries. Caught off-guard, I shot off my mouth, suggesting that maybe there should be some sort of government program that offers student loan forgiveness (similar to the Peace Corps) to those kids who are willing move to the the middle of the country to work for small papers for slave wages.

Mark I. Pinsky, writing in The New Republic, has this idea: Barack Obama should resurrect the Federal Writers Project (one of FDR's programs during the Great Depression) and bail out laid-off journalists, paying them to document, among other things, "the ground-level impact of the Great Recession; chronicling the transition to a green economy; or capturing the experiences of the thousands of immigrants who are changing the American complexion. Like the original FWP, the new version would focus in particular on those segments of society largely ignored by commercial and even public media. At the same time, the multimedia fruits of this research would be open-sourced to all media, as well as to academics."

He also writes: "Like Detroit's troubled Big Three automakers, federal intervention to save the newspaper and magazine industries are highly problematic, at best. Ink-on-paper periodicals are never coming back, and it may be some time before the web can provide well-paying jobs with health benefits--if it ever will. Until then, providing some way to provide young journalists a way to get started, or displaced media workers a way to transition to new occupations, or to retirement, might help--and serve the nation in the process."

More ideas later. (Maybe the first one ought to be to delete "newspaper" from the discussion and use "press" as a generic, rather than a specific, so the conversation can focus on journalism rather than modes of delivery.) Stay tuned. bk

P.S. More dismal news. According to the New York Times, McClatchy has put the Miami Herald, once Knight-Ridder's flagship paper, up for sale.

CNN - AP = X

So there's this. CNN is in the process of setting up a wire service to compete with AP and is currently courting newspapers to sign on.

Interesting on many levels, not the least of which is the fact that, for those papers that are successfully wooed, CNN would morph from competitor to partner. What's more, CNN would be a cheaper alternative to AP, which can cost midsize newspapers up to a million a year to receive everything that's on the AP wire.

In a piece in Saturday's SF Chronicle, Joe Garofoli suggests the fact that several newspapers attended a meet-and-greet in Atlanta this week to consider switching to CNN's service once it is up and running is yet another sign of the deepening financial crisis that is hastening the death of newspaper journalism across the country.

(According to Editor and Publisher, Fitch ratings, a Chicago based credit-rating firm, reports that several cities could have no daily newspaper by 2010.)

From Garofoli's piece:

While the Atlanta gathering was largely a low-key, get-to-know-you affair according to some who attended, it illustrates how dwindling revenues - and shrinking staffs - are forcing many newspapers to forget longtime allegiances and competitors as they confront their own limits.

"Readers should be concerned about the deterioration of the American newspaper," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. "Most of what they read - be it on blogs or aggregators or elsewhere - comes from newspaper or newspaper wire services.

"There is no way that citizen media, online media or TV can compensate for those losses. If the number of reporters continues to shrink, it would add to the lengthening shadow that falls over American culture," he said. "What is not covered is not known."

Like AP, CNN's service will offer wire access to national and international reports, something fewer and fewer newspapers can sport on their own. And because CNN's service will cost less than AP's, the switch might free up more resources for local reporting.

But there's also this: As more and more dailies give up reporting outside their city limits, you have to wonder if those folks who don't have the time to troll the web each day for alternate, and sometimes obscure, sources of information will be left with the sights from a single watchdog when it comes to national and international affairs. Scary stuff, especially if Fido gets it wrong. bk

so not news

In case you missed it, read this piece by Maureen Dowd on James Macpherson, who puts out Pasadena Now -- an online daily -- that is completely outsourced, as in reported and written, by writers in India. FYI: Pasadena is in California.

Words fail.

Writes Dowd:

He said he got the idea to outsource about a year ago, sitting in his Pasadena home, where he puts out Pasadena Now with his wife, Candice Merrill. Macpherson had worked in the ’90s for designers like Richard Tyler and Alan Flusser, and had outsourced some of his clothing manufacturing to Vietnam.

So, he thought, “Where can I get people who can write the word for less?” In a move that sounded so preposterous it became a Stephen Colbert skit, he put an ad on Craigslist for Indian reporters and got a flood of responses.

He fired his seven Pasadena staffers — including five reporters — who were making $600 to $800 a week, and now he and his wife direct six employees all over India on how to write news and features, using telephones, e-mail, press releases, Web harvesting and live video streaming from a cellphone at City Hall. “I pay per piece, just the way it was in the garment business,” he says. “A thousand words pays $7.50.”

does the exception prove the rule?

Or does it refute it?

The conventional wisdom when it comes to journalism is that corporate-owned media is the great Satan. Certainly, you can find some truth there.

But the dirty little secret is that independent, or family-owned, media is not always the antidote.

One case in point: Wendy McCaw, uber-rich owner and publisher of the Santa Barbara News Press, who has proven yet again that a news organization that is owned by someone who answers to no one can be its own version of journalism hell.

Back in 2006, McCaw drew the wrath of journalists all over the world when she breached the church-state wall by, among other things, interfering in editorial decisions and showing the door to folks who disagreed with her. Many others simply walked.

Read all about in American Journalism Review.

And now, three weeks before Christmas, she has summarily shut down the Goleta Valley Voice, a sattelite paper that covered the nearby town of Goleta, as well as Valley Living, which covered the Santa Ynez Valley, another nearby community. It was a cost-cutting move. In a piece for the Santa Barbara Independent, Matt Kettman writes: "By closing the two papers, the News-Press was able to lay off 17 employees. The two papers will be 'incorporated and expanded' into the daily newspaper under this 'new operational structure.'”

Those 17 employees, however, will not be part of it. bk

life follows capstone ... again

Back in spring of 2006, capstoner Katie Dooling (clearly, a playwright in journalist's clothing) chose to do her capstone as a narrative piece on the folks who live in mobile home communities in the Bay Area.

Who thinks of that?

It was well-reported and beautifully written, loaded with detail, a sense of place, and fascinating characters. More importantly, she uncovered a lot of the inherent insecurity of residents who owned their homes -- but not the patch of land they sat on.

Apparently she jumped the Merc -- and life itself -- by a couple of years. Mercury News photograher Dai Sugano won an Emmy Award Monday for his video of mobile home residents in Sunnyvale, who had been uprooted when their mobile home park recently closed.

You can see Sugano's piece here: thoroughly compelling video that immediately engages you and reminds you why visuals are an important piece of news websites. Still, Katie was able to achieve that same sense of engagement -- with words on paper. bk

write that on the blackboard

Some 200 hours of former president Richard Nixon's tapes were released yesterday, revealing even more examples of the creepy paranoia that marked his presidency. Case in point, this admonition to his staff after he had won his second election, by a landslide:

"Never forget, the press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Write that on the blackboard 100 times and never forget it."

A badge of honor, times two. bk

youtube politics

In an attempt to do I-don't-know-what, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom decided to go directly to the masses with his State of the City speech this week. Read all about it right here.

Was the point to feed democracy? Provide direct access to constituents? Bypass the press?

His speech logged in at some seven-and-a-half hours, kid you not, and has been posted in webisodes on his own youtube channel in blocks of up to an hour. Sounds like a fun way to spend the day, yeah?

Is anyone watching? Not really, when you compare the number of hits he has gotten so far with the circulation, measly as it has become, of the hometown newspaper, which has spent more ink on his manner of delivery than on what he actually said.

Columnist C.W. Nevius, for example, wrote about the whole exercise in today's Chronicle, bringing up a bunch of questions that echo my own, some of which I noted here a few weeks ago when I posted a link to the WaPo article on president-elect Obama's plan to use the web to communicate directly with his supporters, again bypassing the press. Nevius, of course, was funny. You can read his piece here.

And so you gotta wonder. Is this the way of the future? Has the news media not only lost its readers -- but its talking heads? In theory, speaking directly to the people, with access for all, is good. But then there's that little nag, even if that politician happens to be your guy. Don't we want someone to vet what s/he has to say? The journalists' job is to provide the whole pix, and sometimes speechification doesn't quite get it done.

Pallin' around with a terrorist, for example, might be nothing more than serving on a committee with a college professor. bk

Quick! Send me an editor!

Send me a hatchet!

Blogger Jason Linkins blogs on HuffPo today about a piece on Time.com by Michael Kinsley who (kind of) blogs about too many blogs. Read Linkins', uh, blog here.

Faced with much too much information out here in webland, the only sane thing for a sensible person to do is step away from the keyboard and exit the net.

As Linkins writes: "So the glut of content may continue to grow and grow, unabated, but it's existence does not necessitate our enslavement to it. Tomorrow, a tree shall fall in a forest somewhere, and this occasion shall pass, un-Twittered."

Or un-linked. bk

Celebrity "journalism"?

Or further adventures in the oxymoronic.

On which I don't even know where to begin. Read this NYT piece on the manipulation of the celebrity press by Brangelina's female half.

* Sources dictating the way they are covered -- and assuming they have the right to do so?

* Magazines paying for the privilege?

* Media companies throwing out serious cash for staged celebrity photos with one hand -- and laying off real journalists with the other?

Really?!

None of this comes as a surprise. But yet. Read it and weep. Then trade in your subscription to People for a newspaper or magazine that could use your support. bk

do you hear that sucking sound?

Rumor has it that Sarah Palin may be looking at a $7 milion dollar book deal.

In an era when money is tight, and word-on-paper is becoming an endangered species, you have to wonder: How much money is that deal siphoning from all those books that could be published -- but aren't? sigh. bk

the dark underbelly ... or what not to do

So yeah, there's no such thing as true objectivity and most stories, if well-reported emerge with a point of view. But here's a great example of absolutely what NOT to do: first assert a point of view and THEN cherry-pick the facts and images that support it, regardless of reality.

Today's HuffPo offers up this piece on Bill O'Reilly who, clearly in a fit of pique about the conservatives having their butts kicked in the election, broadcast this moronic video about the depravity you find on every corner of the city by the Bay. And then took it deadly seriously. Are you kidding me?!

I originally thought the so-called "documentary" had to be a joke. But no. Can someone please get this guy off the air -- or at least make it clear that journalist he is not.

Thanks, Colleen. Watch the video below. bk

a two-fer

In case you missed it, here's the last segment of the first-family-elect's interview on 60 Minutes last week. It's a slow-paced, comfortable and charming interview that reveals a lot about Michelle and Barack, not because of what they say -- but how they respond to the questions, and to each other. Watch how the interviewer controls the conversation while remaining in the background. Also, look at the list of questions on his lap: good prep.

And at the end of the piece, an ode to newspapers from Andy Rooney, who points out that there is "no decline in the faith people put in their newspapers." Yeah, you could dismiss what he has to say as the ranting of an old curmudgeon. But don't.

Thanks, Shannon! bk

fast break

Thirty years ago, the city of San Francisco underwent ten days of unfathomable tragedy, bookended by the Jonestown mass suicide of 900 members of the People's Temple (many of them with family in San Francisco) -- and the murders of S.F. Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by Dan White, a former member of the Board of Supes.

The SF Chronicle has run a three-day series on those "Ten Days That Shook the City". Today's final piece is written by the reporter who dashed to City Hall to cover a police action, not knowing that the mayor had been shot.

Read closely and you will feel the adrenaline rush that comes with covering fast-breaking news. You'll also catch a glimpse of police beat reporting at a pretty horrific moment in time. bk

going dark

So last week we got into a discussion about digital news, cable TV and traditional journalism -- all pegged to this story on Martin Eisenstadt, the anonymous McCain staffer who was reported to have leaked the much-told tale that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Cable chatterers, from both sides of the dial, ate it up. We all did.

Except.

There is no Eisenstadt. He never worked on McCain's campaign. Even if he did, he doesn't know Palin from six bits. And his blog? Yeah, it's a hoax.

The question was how could journalists report anything like that without checking it out, and whether blogs and youtube tend to enable sloppyy reporting.

Chitchat evolved into a debate about political reporting, cable news itself, and whether any original journalism goes on there at all -- with one student, who may have been channeling Chris Matthews, finally saying that by the time night falls, everyone already knows what's happened anyway, so if folks tune in at all, all they are looking for is spin.

Really? In other words, people are so news hungry, they update themselves throughout the day? To test the theory, I looked at the clock (2:45 p.m.) and said to the class in general: okay, so tell me what's happened so far today. Sheepish looks, total silence. All of which led, in turn, to a serious discussion (okay, a rant) about whether the general (okay, appalling) lack of interest in current events -- even among journalism students, for the love of God -- is partly responsible for the implosion of the news media. We get what we ask for?

So the question became what do we do to support good journalism -- and how do we get people across the board to understand how vital it is to our communities, to our democracy.

Katie Powers, Editor-in-Chief of our campus newspaper, had brought up the original question about Eisenstadt. Her suggestion: maybe journalists across the country should go on strike for 24 hours. No news. Nothing for fatuous blogs to link to. No fodder for cable spin.

Just go dark. Kinda like it. bk

social media for the rest of us

Former capstoner Andrea Ragni forwarded this link to a listing on Mashable of the ten best social media tools for reporters and PR folks alike.

She writes: "As a PR professional, I find these resources to be helpful - at least the HARO one and it's incredibly reputable. I often wish I had such a resource when I was writing my capstone...but then again I'm sure I wouldn't have learned as much :)

"In any event, I think proposing the question about whether or not journalists have it "easy" now with such ways to tap vast masses of people would be good food for thought."

Good question. I do think in a way it IS easier for reporters to find sources, thanks to social media and other online tools. (And, of course, PR folks to find us.) On the other hand, there is also a caveat. As Alberto Manguel suggested at the Sun Valley Writers Conference, "A library that contains everything becomes a library that contains anything."

Ascertaining whether those sources we easily find are credible still requires, well, reporting.

But back to Andrea. Two years ago, she wrote her capstone on Second Life, which was not only new to me but to virtually (pun intentional) everyone else in the course. Each class she would regale us with the in-world tales of her avatar, who was hanging with everyone from a wannabe gangster to a Brit fashion designer. Couldn't help thinking about Andrea yesterday when I heard that an online affair in Second Life had led to a real-world divorce in the UK. bk

Phoenix rising?

Like just about everything else in this economy, women's (and men's) magazines are hurting, too. WWDMedia reports that ad pages in fashion magazines have taken a 10 percent hit. (Be sure to check out the chart at the bottom of the page.)

What strikes me is that when ad pages disappear, the dark side should be taking as big a hit as editorial, yeah?

As media continues to contract across the boards, you have to wonder what will be left standing and in what form. (The old-school high-tech term was shake-out.) Maybe we (that's the collective "we") will come to terms with the essentials when it comes to media and pour our limited resources in that direction, resulting in a stronger, more responsible news media, magazine and otherwise.

And maybe we will also eventually see the job opps flip so that bright, young well-trained media types will gravitate toward news rather than spin if only because that's where the paychecks are.

Fantasyland? Possibly. Still, you gotta hope. bk

another opportunity

CampusProgress.org is looking for student journalists to write news articles, features and op-eds. Go here to find out how to pitch.

According to its mission statement:
"Campus Progress, part of the Center for American Progress, works to help young people -- advocates, activists, journalists, artists -- make their voices heard on issues that matter. Through an online magazine and student publications, public events, multimedia projects, and grassroots issue campaigns, Campus Progress acts to empower new progressive leaders nationwide as they develop fresh ideas, communicate in new ways, push policy outcomes in a progressive direction, and build a strong progressive movement."

WIRED magazine internships

Good opportunity: Paid. Full-time. For recent grads.

Read the ad here.

postscript

One last riff on objectivity, at least for today, from Fine on Media in Business Week. Read it here.

This graf on the Wall Street Journal gets right to the point:

"I’ve defended, even very recently, against the notion that a News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal has been slowly tilting rightward, a notion that more than a couple of Journal readers have floated past me in recent weeks. I still stand by this. Although what’s more to the point is that I frankly don’t care, as long as the Journal reports actual facts and I can still access hundreds of other news sources as a counterweight."

I noticed something similar last week, on an early flight back from PA. We grabbed a WST from the hotel lobby on our dash to the airport, and I was pleasantly surprised at how even-handed, comprehensive and credible the reporting on the last weekend of the campaign seemed to be. I found no agenda whatsoever -- until i turned to the op-ed page.

As for the bias I found there, frankly, I didn't care. bk

objectivity, redefined. again

Editor and Publisher columnist Joe Stupp poses an interesting question today about how, when new media is folded into old, we are forced to reevaluate what we mean by objectivity. He thinks that may be a good thing.

What we now consider journalism has morphed into a digital hybrid of straight reporting, blogging, commentary, and personality journalism -- complete with the dreaded first person -- often on the same webpage. And with one reporter often wearing several of those hats, lines blur.

It's not that the core values of journalism -- honesty, accuracy, fairness -- don't still hold, even when it comes to blogging and commentary, Stupp's piece suggests. But maybe now that one form is bleeding into the other, it's time to throw the old definition of objectivity as a 50/50 balance straight out the window.

And acknowledge that it never really existed anyway.

From the column:
Andrew Malcolm, who has covered politics since 1968 and blogs at the Los Angeles Times' "Top of the Ticket," says he still treats each item like a fact-based story, but with some buzz and style. "Most non-newspaper blogs are committed, one way or another — there is a slant," he says. "They are selling a particular view. Our niche is to be sort of unexpected. But it is possible to be a real professional. Cover something straight and develop a perspective to inform your discussion."

L.A. Times Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus points out the different views of what is objective. "I think it means presenting every side of an argument fairly in ways that the proponents would accept as valid," he says.

But more and more, both new media and old-fashioned news types are disagreeing with that approach. The growing trend is that the truth must surpass the 50/50 doctrine. "We have gotten it so wrong with the idea of giving equal play to both sides," says Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of Huffingtonpost.com and a longtime proponent of trading arbitrary "balance" for truth. "We are not always going to be balanced. Very often, it is one side or the other." She cited the ongoing arguments against global warming, which she contends mainstream journalists allowed for too long to go unchallenged: "We wasted a lot of journalistic capital on global warming trying to be balanced." She says the recent government rescue of financial institutions is another, noting too many mainstream outlets did not question if the bailout was needed: "Those of us who live online already dismissed certain elements of the bailout, such as the lack of oversight."

Adds [Keith] Woods, [dean of faculty at the Poynter Institute]: "Whether you quote both sides does not change what is the truth. We allow the 50/50 idea to substitute for truth. Where we often fail is when we may get somebody on one side with deep knowledge, understanding, perspective, and credibility to speak and on the other side someone with just an opinion, but they have no credibility."

[Boston Globe Editor Martin] Baron agrees: "We are involved in journalism, not stenography exercises. It is finding out what is actually happening. Balance means every story gets 50/50? I don't believe that."

the beat goes on

Jack Gillum sent me a link to this Q-and-A with New York Times White House correspondent Sheryl Gay Stolberg. She discusses the ins and outs of Washington beat reporting, why you don't want to go to the chummy place with sources -- but how you can be shut out if you don't, especially when dealing with a freakishly secretive administration.

(Jack adds: "Note how long they've requested an interview with the president")

What she has to say can be applied to any beat reporter, even those of you struggling through the dog days of Comm 141. bk

P.S. Back to Jack. He also wrote: "I was in the newsroom on election night, and it was a flurry of activity. Then I went to downtown DC and saw people cheering in front of the White House and dancing on cars. What a country."

who says liberals have no sense of humor?

The headlines read:

"Iraq War Ends"
"Nation Sets its Sights on Building Sane Economy"
"Ex-secretary Apologizes for WMD Scare"

And my personal favorite in the bogus business section: “Public Relations Industry Forecasts a Series of Massive Layoffs.”

Other articles tell readers that we have initiated a national healthcare program, have abolished corporated lobbying, and established a maximum wage for CEOs.

It's all the elaborate and expensive work of a bunch of pranksters -- clearly progressives with a sense of humor -- who printed and distributed free copies of the fake NYT at busy subway stops throughout the city. A group that calls itself the Yes Men took credit for the hoax:

"In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass them out on the street."

On a more serious note, one of the writers told Poynter.org the rationale behind the spoof:

"It's all about how at this point, we need to push harder than ever," said Bertha Suttner, one of the newspaper's writers. "We've got to make sure Obama and all the other Democrats do what we elected them to do. After eight, or maybe twenty-eight years of hell, we need to start imagining heaven."

The newspaper is dated July 4, 2009.

et tu, oprah?

The New York times reports that Hearst Corporation is planning to kill O at Home, a spinoff of its insanely popular O, The Oprah Magazine. Word is out that Hearst has cut staff at other pubs as well.

The problem is not that audiences are shrinking -- They are not. Especially online -- but that advertising revenues are.

Clearly, the readers are out there. So are the writers. But where's the new business model?

photo credit: shannon kelley gould
santa barbara independent

wired presidency

The Washington Post has an intriguing piece today on how the Obama presidency might use its unprecedented online organization to communicate directly with constituents -- and in a targeted way -- in a manner that has never happened before.

What's more: there will be instant interactivity so that, at least in theory, constituents will be able to communicate directly with the White House.

All good.

Except for that tiny nagging feeling, even if the president-elect was clearly your guy: If the news media can be side-stepped, will there still be folks out there willing to mediate the message in a credible way? And will we pay attention if/when they do?

Don't know. Can't say. Something to think about, though. bk

dispatch from jeremy

You may be wondering what it's like to be in j-school on an election night. Jeremy Herb, a former capstoner and currently a grad student at Columbia, forwards this quick note:

I did get to report on the presidential race for a "deadline team" on election day. I was at the Republican camp for most of the night which was, umm, interesting. But fun overall. And then I went to the Democratic event three blocks away, and it was just nuts. Such a fun day, 17 hours of working and I wouldn't have wanted anything less.

You can see everything Columbia did here: columbiajournalist.org. Three broadcasts (radio, video, new media) + the print team that I was on. We had to file stories at 5 p.m. 9 p.m. and midnight, which was also good experience and nerve wracking when I had no Internet.

"information is not free..."

The infamous geewhy sent me a link to this piece from The Century Foundation that, in the face of Google’s $125 million settlement with book publishers vis-a-vis lawsuits challenging the right to digitize copyrighted books for search and distribution without paying for them, wonders why newspapers and news mags aren't getting paid when their stories pop up on Google and other search engines.

And, I might add, on blogs (like this), which would be nothing but silly first-person riffs without links to the work of reporters out there doing the job.

While the majority of bloggers make no money whatsoever, Google makes boatloads. Shouldn't there be a way to share the wealth they make off the backs of the folks who actually do the work? It's a great question, and as the piece points out, an urgent one:

"There is a running and increasingly urgent dialogue under way about new business models for newsgathering in which the brutal realities of lost advertising and circulation are balanced against the still paltry revenues generated by the online newspapers and news magazines. Audiences for news from traditional providers are stratospheric. (On September 29, the day the first Bush bailout proposal was voted down by the House and the Dow Jones went down almost 800 points, the New York Times Web site had 10 million visitors and 42.7 million page views.) And yet the news proprietors have chosen or been unable to do what the pokey old book publisher and authors did: take on Google for what is an absolutely core issue of fairness and increasingly of survival."

The story ends:

"... But the issue itself is very clear: the collection of quality news is expensive, and it is seriously threatened. Google drives a very hard bargain in pursuing its business interests, but can be brought around by persistence and grit. There is a vast amount of money changing hands for news these days. A way has to be found—and fast—for those now making money from the distribution of news to pay for it."

foreshadowing

Mark Purdy sent me this link to President-elect Obama's commencement address to the Northwestern University's class of 2006.

FYI: In 2005, the commencement speaker was John McCain. About three minutes in, Obama mentions the fact that a Northwestern student paper columnist wrote that she hopes that in his speech, he is "better than John McCain."

But listen to the themes. That's where you will find the real foreshadowing. Almost half an hour, but well worth it. bk

go ask alice

More: For those of us who were obsessed with the campaign, Alice forwards this link to a piece from The Onion that, well, mocks us all.

She also just started a blog. bk

the day after christmas

On Monday I got a text from someone very near and very dear to me who wrote: "Don't you feel like a little kid on Christmas Eve today?

The answer was yes. Indeed.

On Tuesday, I like many others around the nation, was so excited/nervous, I was about ready to jump out of my skin. Imagine trying to be coherent in the classroom. I came close to letting my afternoon class talk me into migrating from the classroom to a nearby bar with a TV tuned to CNN.


Then Tuesday night: euphoria. One of those capsules of time when all of us will remember exactly where we were at the historic moment.

And now today. On Tuesday, I had gotten an email from Alice Joy, a former capstone kid, who had previously done a piece in my magazine class about the brutal withdrawal among young campaigners who had worked long and sleepless hours for the Kerry campaign. She forwarded this link to a recent piece on This American Life that seems particulary relevant.

She wrote: "I don't know if you remember my magazine article on youth campaign workers in the 2004 election and their post-election depression but this piece just seems like the natural set-up to the article I had written - all these young people 110 percent invested in a cause, pouring all their time and energy into it. I was really thinking just how devastating it's going to be if Obama does lose. It occurred to me, however, that there will probably be some sense of loss for these volunteers even if he DOES win, just because of the inevitable let down once something is over."

The San Francisco Chronicle's Steve Winn also addressed the issue for the rest of us who participated vicariously (Full disclosure: Tom and I did our part in a battleground state at the other side of the country over the weekend. Four turfs in one day, thank you, if you happen to know what that means) Winn quotes media guru Robert Thompson: "This year more than in a very long time, come the day after the election, it's going to feel like the entire nation has woken up in a collective political equivalent of Dec. 26," predicts Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. "The presents look more promising before they're opened. The tree is starting to look a little funky. Reality sets in."

Finally, here's a piece from The New Republic that looks at the end-of-the-campaign from the point of view of the reporters who have been on the campaign trail for what seems like forever.

None of which is to say that the outcome of this campaign has been any less than spectacular. Just that real life will be dull by comparison. bk

have the reports of its untimely demise been greatly exaggerated?

Maybe print isn't dying afterall.

Word on the street is that because the demand for today's paper far out-trumped the supply, the New York Times had to do an extra press run today. Here's a picture of people waiting in line to buy a copy.

How cool is that? bk

don't forget to vote!

"curiosity never killed this cat"

RIP: Studs Terkel, the master of the oral history, the journalist who truly gave voice to the voiceless, and the inspiration for many of us -- reporters, profs, and students alike.

As Charles Kuralt once said, "When Studs Terkel listened, people talked."

Even Marcel Marceau.

Of the many obits written over the past few days, I like this one the best. I read it while out of town, doing my part for that other important guy from Chicago. bk

Photo credit: Associated Press. Author Studs Terkel celebrating after winning the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for his novel, "The Good War" (welt online)

"...paper is not just how news is delivered; it is how it is paid for."

So wrote David Carr in the NYT this week. His column includes a "print deathwatch" roll call as well as an oblique reminder that it's not where the news appears that matters -- but how we will pay for folks to cover it. Scary stuff.

Clearly, reinvention must be on the horizon. Or under the rug. Wherever. Let's just hope the smart people are looking.

But meanwhile, back to Carr. He writes:

"More than 90 percent of the newspaper industry’s revenue still derives from the print product, a legacy technology that attracts fewer consumers and advertisers every single day. A single newspaper ad might cost many thousands of dollars while an online ad might only bring in $20 for each 1,000 customers who see it.

The difference between print dollars and digital dimes — or sometimes pennies — is being taken out of the newsrooms that supply both. And while it is indeed tough all over in this economy, consider the consequences.

New Jersey, a petri dish of corruption, will have to make do with 40 percent fewer reporters at The Star-Ledger, one of the few remaining cops on the beat. The Los Angeles Times, which toils under Hollywood’s nose, has one movie reviewer left on staff. And dozens of communities served by Gannett will have fewer reporters and editors overseeing the deeds and misdeeds of local government and businesses."

everything i learned about journalism ...

... i learned from Jon Stewart? And Campbell Brown?

You probably already saw this, but if not, listen/watch what she has to say about "false equivalency" (aka "balance), access, the Washington press corps, and partisan news media. She gets it. bk

- more -

Back to thirty:

The LA Times reports that the Christian Science Monitor will become the nation's first newspaper to drop its daily print edition in favor of its online "treeless" edition. A sign of the times, or a prudent economic move? You have to hope that the 5 million online page-views will be able to support a robust reporting staff and that the journalism will remain the same quality that earned the paper seven Pullitzers. But still. It's a sign of the times.

In response, former capstoner Timi Gould, who once had "latimes.com" in her email address, wonders: "IS online the answer? Are online ad sales more profitable? Are online articles the same quality as those that would run in the paper? Is newspaper page layout and design a thing of the past?"

To which my answer is, well, I don't have one. But I do have some questions of my own.

For example, in Monday's column about the increasing polarization of the news media, Howard Kurtz wonders whether Fox's Sean Hannity and MSNBC's Keith Olberman are "watching the same presidential race, or even living in the same country?"

He continues: "Prime-time viewers of Fox News and MSNBC get vastly different perspectives on the campaign that sometimes approach mirror images. This goes well beyond the hosts' political views to the booking of guests and the way stories are framed, pumped up and sometimes ignored. In that sense, the programs reflect the increasing polarization of the media world, where columnists, strategists, bloggers and radio talkers have built thriving careers catering to those who already agree with them."

Here's what worries me: as daily newspapers (and the straight-ahead journalism that they support) shrink, the growth industry appears to be opinion, either via cable or the blogosphere. Not sure that makes for an informed citizenry. Full disclosure: I am an Olberman junkie. Still, I recognize that folks like him and Hannity are preaching to the choir. But. Does everyone?

Finally, this is so preposterous, I can't even comment. According to a piece in USA Today last week, Media News Group CEO Dean Singleton, whose media company has presided over the near-dismantling of our beloved Mercury News, spoke to the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, suggesting that newspapers consider outsourcing many of their daily operations.

Really?!

"One thing we're exploring is having one news desk for all of our newspapers in MediaNews ... maybe even offshore," said Singleton, whose company owns 54 newspapers, several in the Bay Area, and who may well be the poster child for Molly Ivins' apochryphal comment about newspapers committing suicide.

Of course, that's just my opinion (Yep, I'm doing just what I worry about. See above.) bk

I don't know who's writing your questions...

One of my loyal readers told me tonight that today's post was a big fat bore. I didn't think so, but whatever...

So anyhow, remember that post about interviewing a few weeks back where I referenced John Sawatsky's interviewing techniques vis-a-vis (oops, getting boring again) Katie Couric's interview with Sarah Palin re the Supreme Court?

Here's a case study in how NOT to interview -- in how the opposite approach can backfire bigtime. Object lesson: any time your source responds to a question with "Is this a joke? Is that a real question?" -- you've blown it. Watch the video of an exchange between vice presidential candidate Joe Biden and WFTV reporter Barbara West. It hits the fan about two minutes in. (Be sure to jump past the online ad.)

Biden: 1, West, 0.

This one, not a bore. Alrighty? bk

- thirty -

Where are the smart people?

Forbes and Editor and Publisher report more bad news about the newspaper industry. Note, though, that the untimely demise of newspapers does not necessarily mean the death of journalism.

Or does it? Where is the brainstorming about new directions for the news biz that will sustain the quality journalism that not only serves our democracy but is accessible to all? We need some creative ideas to go along with the pit in the stomach and the hand-wringing -- before the "- 30 - " becomes permanent. Anyone out there? bk

on ethics

Three quick questions:

Where do you draw the line between private and public figures? How do you define rights to privacy? And how do anonymous sources muck things up?

Three linx for your consideration. The New York Times did a feature on Cindy McCain this past weekend. Read it here.

Salon's Glenn Greenwald questions whether that piece was relevant or just dredging up gossip.

Finally, last week the University of Texas El Paso campus newspaper ran a story about the forced resignation of the homecoming queen. (Be sure to look at the sourcing.)

And check out the aftermath.

I guess that was four. bk

just curious:

According to Beet.TV, the Wall Street Journal is currently training many of its print reporters to use video as well. The site further reports that "as of June, 185 print reporters at The Washington Post had been trained to produce online video."

Is this an indication that reporters will soon be expected to report across multi-platforms? A sign, as Microsoft Chairman Steve Ballmer predicts here, that print will be gone entirely in ten years?

If both Beet.TV and Ballmer are right, I wonder what the impact will be -- on the news media itself and on those who either produce it or rely upon it. Your guess: good as mine. bk

three on numbers

We did a lot of riffing about numbers back in September: here, here, here and here.
More below:

Here's a cautionary tale on a little numbers-tweaking by a New York Times freelancer who stretched a few stats to mean more than they actually did. Moral of the story: Don't twist. Don't stretch. Don't assume. Read about it on Gawker.com

For all you numbers geeks, the San Francisco Chronicle on Saturday took a look at all the new polling aggregators, including fivethirtyeight.com, which have sprung to the fore this campaign season. The piece also looks at reasons why some political polls can sometimes go wrong.

Finally, a quick read of Howard Kurtz's column in yesterday's WaPo makes you wonder if journalists who rely too heavily on polls in their reporting can actually affect the outcome of an election. You also wonder if over-reliance on data/handicapping the races can sometimes blind reporters to the other cues out there, so that ultimately the story goes south. bk

cocktails for capstoners

Four of the former capstoners who now live in the Big Apple met for drinks not long ago. According to Megan, who forwarded the pix, they talked a lot about journalism, reminisced (clearly, in a revisionist way) about capstone, and talked story ideas with Jeremy, now in j-school at Columbia.

I figured they would have all met in some chi-chi bar over in the meat-packing district or some such glamorous locale. Not quite. The meet took place at a dive in the East Village called Kings Tavern. "I suggested the place because draft beers were $4 that night... and that is a big deal here!" Megan wrote.

Not exactly The Hut, but then, so few things are.

From left: Kristin Swenson ('07), Alice Joy ('06), Jeremy Herb ('08) and Megan O'Connor ('07).

on the tube

Gotta wonder:

Why Sarah Palin would do a drive-by on Saturday Night Live tonight, but has never been on "Meet the Press", arguably a more appropriate venue for a vice-presidential candidate.

And so I just emailed "Meet the Press" that very question, asking if they would publicly invite Ms. Palin to appear on the program, given the fact that she apparently has no aversion to NBC. (see above.)

Clearly, it's in the public interest for the voters to see either how she would come across on this influential, unscripted and important forum -- or her reasons for sending her regrets.

Just asking. Maybe you should, too. bk

signs of the times

For sale signs, that is.

We heard rumors a few weeks ago, but now it's apparently official. The San Jose Mercury reports today that its longtime headquarters and surrounding land are up for sale. In the story, Merc publisher Mac Tully says that the newspaper could save money by moving to smaller offices. A relevant point, seeing as how the workforce has decreased exponentially since the paper was taken over by Denver-based MediaNews Group a few years back. Tully notes that an adjacent parcel of land -- to be converted into a big-box shopping site -- just sold for somewhere near $27 million.

One question is whether the money saved by the sale and proposed move to smaller digs would be used to rebuild the paper -- which almost shrinks as you hold it -- into a news organization that will again serve Silicon Valley as it once did. The other question, slightly scarier, is where those new digs might be. Tully acknowledges that the paper has not yet found a new location.

Coincidentally, my intro class just turned in an assignment in which they created their own blueprints for the news media of the future, with special consideration to the principles laid out in The Elements of Journalism, Kovach and Rosenstiel's treatise on the relationship of journalism and democracy. These j-kids represent the generation of fresh-thinking, techno-savvy future journalists who may one day lead the news media through these scary growing pains into something the old-timers have yet to imagine. Their blueprints reflect a certain amount of idealism and passion for all that journalism could be, something that has been drained away -- along with the money -- from so many daily newspapers today.

Maybe folks like Tully should pay attention. bk

p.s. More dismal news. The Boston Herald reported last week that Portland, Maine "could become one of the first American cities to lose its daily newspaper. The Portland Press Herald said in court papers last month that it is hemorrhaging so badly that it may have to be dismantled if it isn't sold."