AOL + HuffPo? Good for Ariana, Bad for journalism

And with that, we all suffer: those of us who report the news. And those of us who believe in -- and rely on -- its relevance.

Among all the words spent ruminating on the merger, among the best come from the Los Angeles Times' Tim Ruttan, who suggests that when journalism becomes content, we all lose. He also compares the merger of one site -- AOL -- that pays very little with one -- HuffPo -- that doesn't pay at all to "a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates." Here's a taste:

The media-saturated environment in which we live has been called "the information age" when, in fact, it's the data age. Information is data arranged in an intelligible order. Journalism is information collected and analyzed in ways people actually can use. Though AOL and the Huffington Post claim to have staked their future on giving visitors to their sites online journalism, what they actually provide is "content," which is what journalism becomes when it's adulterated into a mere commodity.

Consider first AOL's pre-merger efforts, which centered on a handful of commentators and a national network of intensely local news sites called Patch. The quality of those efforts varies widely, but the best ones are edited by journalists who lost their jobs in the layoffs and buyouts that have beset traditional news organizations over the last decade. These editor-reporters are given reasonable benefits and salaries that are about what beginning reporters at major newspapers were paid three decades ago. Their contributors, by contrast, are paid a maximum of $50 an article, often less.

The results pretty much conform to the old maxim that you get what you pay for; the best Patch journalism almost invariably is being done by experienced journalists who do the work out of idealism or desperation. What happens when that pool of exploitable surplus labor dries up — as it will with time — is anybody's guess, but the smart money would bet on something that isn't pretty.

quick hits: then again not.

In case you missed these:

Newsweek is on the sale rack. Makes me sad, then again not. Since it changed its format this year, the name of the magazine has been a misnomer. Read more here and here.

Reporting via social media can be efficient and economical, then again.... Go here for an ooops story on how HuffPo came up with the WRONG Facebook page for the Times Square bomber.

On the other hand, here's how wired.com found the guy who found the prototype for the iPhone. Yep, it started with Facebook.

Finally, journalism is reportedly dying, but then again not. Go here for a story on the growth of sports journalism classes in university journalism programs. From the story, by award-winning sportswriter Dave Kindred:

Of the many reasons a man would want to be 21 again, number four or five on my list would be today’s full palate of journalistic choices. When I was 21, a reporter/writer interested in sports could work for a newspaper or magazine – end of story. Today’s students have newspapers and magazines (for a while, anyway) along with hundreds of outlets from the big boys at ESPN.com, AOL’s Fanhouse, Yahoo! Sports, and CBSSports.com to newspaper websites, blogs, and niche blogs reporting on every aspect of SportsWorld. Today’s 20somethings see sports journalists on television, hear them on radio, read their blogs, follow them on Twitter, friend them on Facebook.

"Sports journalism isn’t dying, it’s transforming," said Tim Franklin, once the editor of The Baltimore Sun and now director of the NSJC. "When I meet with students, they’re excited about the future. They will have a different career path than we had. But when they look around, they don’t see the abyss. They see a changing, but dynamic, landscape. . .

on the job training?

... or slave labor. Is an internship by any other name, well, still an internship? You choose.

Is the experience worth the (lack of) paycheck? Or are eager college kids -- in a down economy -- being taken advantage of by everyone on the j-side from Huffington Post (which once auctioned off an internship to the highest bidder at a charity auction) to Rolling Stone.

Go here to read a New York Times piece questioning the legality of unpaid internships. The piece also points out that many unpaid internships often have little experiential value as well as also pondering whether kids from wealthy families end up getting an unfair leg up the career ladder. From the story:

One Ivy League student said she spent an unpaid three-month internship at a magazine packaging and shipping 20 or 40 apparel samples a day back to fashion houses that had provided them for photo shoots.

At Little Airplane, a Manhattan children’s film company, an N.Y.U. student who hoped to work in animation during her unpaid internship said she was instead assigned to the facilities department and ordered to wipe the door handles each day to minimize the spread of swine flu.

Tone Thyne, a senior producer at Little Airplane, said its internships were usually highly educational and often led to good jobs.

Concerned about the effect on their future job prospects, some unpaid interns declined to give their names or to name their employers when they described their experiences in interviews.

While many colleges are accepting more moderate- and low-income students to increase economic mobility, many students and administrators complain that the growth in unpaid internships undercuts that effort by favoring well-to-do and well-connected students, speeding their climb up the career ladder.

Sticking with the publishing side, Daily Finance blogger Jeff Bercovici notes that The Atlantic, possibly red-faced after the Times' piece, has announced that it will start paying its interns. But he also includes some horror stories about pubs that don't -- despite the fact that the law says employers must provide either cash or college credit along with meaningful work:

But many other companies employ interns who receive neither cash nor credit -- even though such an arrangement falls into exactly the legal "grey zone" Atlantic Media is exiting. A search of online job listings in magazine publishing turns up plenty of unpaid internships for non-students, although in most cases credit can be had for those who want it. A listing for a fashion internship at Interview magazine specifically states, "College credit is not required," while one at Us Weekly merely says credit is "available." It's not much different in online media: A spokesman for the Huffington Post says the site " has both paid and unpaid interns, who work at the site for the training, experience, and exposure." Adds the spokesman, "We're careful to follow all employment guidelines."

Those guidelines, however, are fairly subjective and, taken literally, rather unfavorable to employers. They require, among other things, that any company employing unpaid interns derive "no immediate advantage" from the work they do to ensure that the emphasis is on job training, not exploitation. That rule seems to be honored mostly in the breach at places like Rolling Stone, which is owned by the same company as Us Weekly, Wenner Media. A former intern there says her job was mostly transcribing interview tapes and fetching coffee for editors.

three quick hits...

Again with the three dot bloggery...

But all good stuff, tho only connected by a slim thread. Anyhow...

Go here for a good laugh, re making a career out of the newspaper deathwatch, from Paul Dalling, who writes on Huff Po that he has decided to become a "Death of Newspapers" blogger:

I'll join the ranks of Jeff Jarvis, Paul Gillin, Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky in competing to see who can use the most jargon to describe something everyone knows is happening.

Apparently, it's very simple. The more you self-reference, pick feuds and talk about the failure of TimesSelect, the better you're doing. If you make it sound like you're the one who figured out newspapers are dying, you win.

I mean, the point's not to fix anything. It's to describe the problem more dramatically than the next guy. If Steve Outing says newspapers have a "death spiral" and Clay Shirky predicts "a bloodbath," the point goes to Shirky.

Thus prepped, go here for something more serious: A reading list from Jay Rosen on the future of news (or death of news, whichever), featuring links to thoughtful pieces by many of the names you may remember from Dalling's piece.

Finally, go here for an op-ed in today's Chron by David Sirota on "newspapers' self-inflicted blows". He makes many good points, which you will have to read for yourself, but what really caught me was his lead:

At Northwestern University in the mid-1990s, the journalism professor with the most devoted student following was an understated teacher who said that substantive writing and reporting isn't everything, it's the only thing. Alternately despondent and sanguine, he reminded me of Grady from the book "Wonder Boys" when he told us that he spent weekends drinking in his closet and that he corrected papers in green ink because "green is the color of hope."

I love it: ".... it isn't everything, it's the only thing." And that's why, all evidence to the contrary, I could never become a "death of newspapers" blogger.

Unless of course, there was money in it. 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."

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