Ugh. Sponsor Me This, Batman

Sigh.   Ad Age reports that certain publishers are enlisting staffers on the editorial side to "produce content" for their advertisers.

Is this the future of journalism?    Ugh.   This is what happens when we call it "content."

Mainly, the offenders are smaller, newer digital sites, such as Mashable and Mental Floss.  Still.  Is this what we can look forward to as journalism goes completely digital? So wrong, on so many levels.   What rankles most, at least in the Ad Age piece, is the justification for using reporters to pimp product.  From the story:

Will Pearson, the president and other co-founder of Mental Floss, said setting up in-house studios separate from the editorial talent fails to benefit sites' advertisers and readers, because editorial staffers most ably reflect the voice of the magazine.

"We noticed that other media properties' sponsored posts were not as strong as their regular content," Mr. Pearson said. "And we put our finger on why that was: So many publishing companies and media properties are spinning off studios and separate editorial teams."

Thus far, it seems that only smaller or relatively new media brands are using their editorial staff to write sponsored content. George Janson, managing partner and director of print for GroupM, sees this arrangement as something of an anomaly in the publishing business. But there could be some appeal to marketers, he said.

"If the reporter is a subject matter expert more so than a marketing person, which I assume they would be, then ideally that reporter has more credibility," Mr. Janson said.

Um, benefit the readers?  And: more credibility?   With whom?  Seems to me that reporters who are tasked with pimping widgets might have a little less credibility if and when they might be reporting actual news, especially as concerns those widgets and/or the folks who make them.

Who exactly are you gonna trust?  For that matter, when the same reporters/sites are reporting news as well writing "sponsored content", will readers be able to tell the difference?  Someone needs to call this sh*t out, yeah? bk

How to Get a Journalism Job, Step one

Write an epic cover letter. 

Katherine Goldstein, an editor at Slate, lays out the do's and don'ts of getting to the top of the resume pile and scoring yourself an interview, if not a job.  Among the tips:

* Leave out the musings about your personal journeys, your spiritual awakening or your lifelong desire to "be a writer".
* Include specifics about what you know/love about the publication. 
* And: spoiler alert.  no one really cares what your GPA was, where you went to school, or what your senior thesis was all about.  Much more important is evidence of the journalism you have already done.

Here's a taste:

Explain how selecting you will benefit me. This is where candidates often get it totally backward. I frequently read lines like: “I am applying for this paid internship because I think working at Slate would be highly beneficial for me, and would do a lot to help my future job prospects for a career in media for after I graduate from college.” I know how working at Slate would strengthen your résumé. But I am looking to you, candidate X, to solve a problem for me. My problem is that I need good interns. Explain to me how choosing you will solve my problem. Here’s how one candidate convinced me that his skills were pertinent to the role I was hiring for: “From my editorial experience as managing editor of 34th Street Magazine here at Penn, to my experience in news and culture blogging at LAist.com last summer, I've picked up the tools I need to perform as a Slatest intern with excellence.”

And one more thing:  keep it short.  bk

Will Work For Free

Check the New York Times' editorial on unpaid internships.  Legal?  Ethical?  And why are not-for-profits off the hook when it comes to exploiting eager college kids who are convinced their only route to a job after graduation is to spend a summer working for free?

Here's a taste of what the NYT editorial board had to say:

Unpaid internships are, at best, ethically iffy. A necessary precursor to jobs in certain fields, they act as both a gateway and a barrier to entry. Young people believe they have no choice. Anyone unable to forgo pay risks being shut out.

Legally, they’re murky. The Labor Department holds that unpaid internships in the nonprofit sector are “generally permissible,” meaning my stint at The Paris Review, a nonprofit, was probably legitimate. A similar arrangement at a moneymaking outfit wouldn’t pass the department’s six-point test, which says that interns cannot displace regular employees; that the experience must be “for the benefit of the intern”; and that the employer cannot derive an “immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities.

I see this more as more than a labor issue.  The editorial hits (too briefly) on the fact that only a certain class of students can afford to spend the summer (or even the school year) without a paycheck.  If internships truly are the route to a job for college graduates, is this another way we are perpetuating a two-tier system? 

And then there's this: shouldn't those organizations with the noblest of missions -- i.e., non-profits -- do their best to attract a diverse workforce rather than, of necessity, limiting themselves to students of privilege?  Just asking.  bk

How to Write Right, via the late Elmore Leonard

Prolific and iconic mystery writer Elmore Leonard, who died this week, once offered the following rules for writing in a 2001 article for the New York Times.   His cut-to-the-bone suggestions help explain why his clipped, staccato voice -- not unlike some hard-edged detective talking out the side of his mouth -- translates so well to the screen, both big and small. 

(Not familiar?  Two can't-lose suggestions: "Get Shorty" and "Justified.")

His admonitions to avoid adverbs, hooptedoodle, exclamation points and anything other than forms of the verb "to say" could be well applied to journalism -- especially magazine writing.  Here's just a taste:

3. Never use a verb other than ''said'' to carry dialogue.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ''she asseverated,'' and had to stop reading to get the dictionary. 

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb ''said'' . . .

. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances ''full of rape and adverbs.''

Well worth keeping in mind... she said.  bk

(Photo credit: The Guardian)

Robots need not apply

Poynter reports that the Washington Post has decided against using robo-writers to cover high school sports.  At least for now. That's a relief.  But the baffling thing is that they were even considering it.

Words fail.  Go here to read more.

It's not who you know. It's who you quote...

What does it take to get quoted on the front page of the New York Times?  Apparently, testosterone.

No surprise.  But still.

Slate recently reported on a content analysis of the NYT's front pages during January and February that found that men were quoted 3.4 times as frequently as women:

In January and February of this year, Alexi Layton and Alicia Shepard scoured the 325 front-page stories published in the New York Times, and found that the paper quoted male sources 3.4 times as frequently as female ones. (Shepard got similarly dismal results when she performed a count of NPR’s on-air sources in 2010.) The endless trend pieces about how women accessorize, parent, and hook up today have failed to materialize into equal representation across the newspaper. In the Times, men are individuals who are quoted to represent countries, corporations, academics, and citizens; women are quoted to represent other women.

As Layton and Shepard note, the Times’ sourcing problem is, in part, a reflection of a global lack of female representation in positions of power: World leaders, members of Congress, and Fortune 500 CEOs are still overwhelmingly male. The gender discrepancy in the paper’s sourcing for stories about world news, politics, and business—punctuated at Poynter by a series of depressing charts—is striking, if not totally surprising. But male sources also vastly outnumber female ones in sections of the newspaper that are perceived to be more female-dominated, like style, arts, education, and health.

Ugh.

The researchers also found that men were much more likely than women to have front page bylines. And: the stories written by men had four times as many male sources as women.  Women reporters did better, but still didn't even the score.  Women were quoted half as many times as men.

While the authors of the study use the stats to shed a light on the lack of gender diversity at America's paper of record, there are a couple of other issues here as well, both of them depressing.  First, the preponderance of male sources when it comes to politics or finances reinforces 1950s style gender stereotypes:  Men are out in the world, taking charge.  Women, well, stay in their place.

The other message is equally disturbing.  And that's this:  The dearth of quotes from powerful female sources tell us that, even in 2013, women lack equal representation in politics, business, world affairs....

Everywhere, in fact, but home.  bk

More on bypassing the press

To continue the conversation we started here, hit this link to read what the New York Times' Frank Bruni has to say about politicians -- recently, Michelle Bachmann and Anthony Weiner -- using social media to bypass the press altogether in getting their messages out via online videos: Bachmann, in bowing out of politics (for now) and Weiner, for bowing in.  He also mentions a video by Hillary Clinton, endorsing gay marriage.

The problem is obvious: going directly to the public eliminates the need for a politician to answer any questions that might be posed at an in-person press conference by pesky reporters.  Now, as Bruni acknowledges, going straight to the voters via video, all from the comfort of a candidate's office, might have a benefit: eliminating the need for constant stumping on the campaign trail which would could allow more time for actual work to get done.  Costs less, too, which might reduce the need for campaign cash.  He also suggests that cynical reporters -- on the look out for the latest dirt and focussing on the contest, rather than the content -- may have brought this isolation on themselves. 

However, as Bruni writes, there may be a high price to pay:

The Clinton, Weiner and Bachmann videos, all different but related, simply ratchet up the effort to marginalize naysaying reporters and neutralize skeptical reporting. And as Chris Lehane, a Democratic political strategist, pointed out to me, they take a page from corporate America, whose chieftains have used that same format, as opposed to news conferences or interviews, to distribute sensitive communiqués. Lehane mentioned, for example, the 2007 video in which David Neeleman, then the C.E.O. of JetBlue, explained the airline’s brand-quaking operations meltdown. 

But corporations answer only to shareholders and customers. Politicians answer to all of us, and have a scarier kind of power, easily abused. So we must see them in environments that aren’t necessarily tailored to their advantage. We must be able to poke and meddle. It may not be a pretty sight, and we journalists may not be doing it in a pretty way, but eliminate that and you wind up with something even less pretty: Bachmann, robotically composed, telling you that she’s quitting for purely high-minded reasons, with the vigor of the republic foremost in her heart.

The title of the piece is a question: "Who Needs Reporters?"  The answer is:  all of us.  bk

how to write a great pitch: more linx

Here you go.  Good advice/good models all around.

http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/185746/6-questions-journalists-should-be-able-to-answer-before-pitching-a-story

http://www.theopennotebook.com/pitch-database/

http://soundcloud.com/hergirlfriday/throw-like-a-girl-panel-zoom

For some oldies, but still goodies, type "pitch" in the search box.  That's it.  bk

Straight to you: How social media allows politicians -- and others -- to control the message

Now that politicians have figured out social media, many of them are using facebook, youtube, twitter, etc., to bypass the traditional news media completely and go viral on their own, pushing their messages to exponentially more people -- without the filtering and independent reporting that, in years past, actual journalists provided. 

Good for politicians.  Not so much for the rest of us.  Go here for a good, and thoughtful take on the issue by MediaShift's Alex Kantrowitz.  Here's a taste:

The approach seems to be working for politicians who can effectively grasp how to communicate via new and social media channels. Publishing on their own is an effective way for politicians to get a message out exactly how they want to, said PBS NewsHour political editor Christina Bellantoni.
“If you go through a media filter,“ she said, “you’re getting context and history and criticism and often a competing viewpoint, because that’s how most journalists approach their work.” But, she added, if you can directly communicate, you don’t have to go through any lens at all: “You just put out what you’d like to get out there.”
The approach gives politicians more control, said Bellantoni, who pointed to the early stages of the practice — in 2007 politicians began to put out web videos instead of holding live events for major announcements. “You can take as many takes as you need to make sure it’s perfect before you hit publish,” she said. “Then the press has no way of holding you accountable for that or asking you questions or asking your thoughts because you’ve given them one thing and that’s it.”
- See more at: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/05/political-medias-new-competition-the-same-people-theyre-covering116#sthash.9DzWKSAO.6PUt8xTa.dpuf

The approach seems to be working for politicians who can effectively grasp how to communicate via new and social media channels. Publishing on their own is an effective way for politicians to get a message out exactly how they want to, said PBS NewsHour political editor Christina Bellantoni.
“If you go through a media filter,“ she said, “you’re getting context and history and criticism and often a competing viewpoint, because that’s how most journalists approach their work.” But, she added, if you can directly communicate, you don’t have to go through any lens at all: “You just put out what you’d like to get out there.”
The approach gives politicians more control, said Bellantoni, who pointed to the early stages of the practice — in 2007 politicians began to put out web videos instead of holding live events for major announcements. “You can take as many takes as you need to make sure it’s perfect before you hit publish,” she said. “Then the press has no way of holding you accountable for that or asking you questions or asking your thoughts because you’ve given them one thing and that’s it.”
- See more at: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/05/political-medias-new-competition-the-same-people-theyre-covering116#sthash.9DzWKSAO.6PUt8xTa.dpuf

The approach seems to be working for politicians who can effectively grasp how to communicate via new and social media channels. Publishing on their own is an effective way for politicians to get a message out exactly how they want to, said PBS NewsHour political editor Christina Bellantoni.
“If you go through a media filter,“ she said, “you’re getting context and history and criticism and often a competing viewpoint, because that’s how most journalists approach their work.” But, she added, if you can directly communicate, you don’t have to go through any lens at all: “You just put out what you’d like to get out there.”
The approach gives politicians more control, said Bellantoni, who pointed to the early stages of the practice — in 2007 politicians began to put out web videos instead of holding live events for major announcements. “You can take as many takes as you need to make sure it’s perfect before you hit publish,” she said. “Then the press has no way of holding you accountable for that or asking you questions or asking your thoughts because you’ve given them one thing and that’s it.”
- See more at: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/05/political-medias-new-competition-the-same-people-theyre-covering116#sthash.9DzWKSAO.6PUt8xTa.dpuf

The approach seems to be working for politicians who can effectively grasp how to communicate via new and social media channels. Publishing on their own is an effective way for politicians to get a message out exactly how they want to, said PBS NewsHour political editor Christina Bellantoni.

“If you go through a media filter,“ she said, “you’re getting context and history and criticism and often a competing viewpoint, because that’s how most journalists approach their work.” But, she added, if you can directly communicate, you don’t have to go through any lens at all: “You just put out what you’d like to get out there.”

The approach gives politicians more control, said Bellantoni, who pointed to the early stages of the practice — in 2007 politicians began to put out web videos instead of holding live events for major announcements. “You can take as many takes as you need to make sure it’s perfect before you hit publish,” she said. “Then the press has no way of holding you accountable for that or asking you questions or asking your thoughts because you’ve given them one thing and that’s it.”

The approach seems to be working for politicians who can effectively grasp how to communicate via new and social media channels. Publishing on their own is an effective way for politicians to get a message out exactly how they want to, said PBS NewsHour political editor Christina Bellantoni.
“If you go through a media filter,“ she said, “you’re getting context and history and criticism and often a competing viewpoint, because that’s how most journalists approach their work.” But, she added, if you can directly communicate, you don’t have to go through any lens at all: “You just put out what you’d like to get out there.”
The approach gives politicians more control, said Bellantoni, who pointed to the early stages of the practice — in 2007 politicians began to put out web videos instead of holding live events for major announcements. “You can take as many takes as you need to make sure it’s perfect before you hit publish,” she said. “Then the press has no way of holding you accountable for that or asking you questions or asking your thoughts because you’ve given them one thing and that’s it.”
- See more at: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/05/political-medias-new-competition-the-same-people-theyre-covering116#sthash.9DzWKSAO.6PUt8xTa.dpuf

The approach seems to be working for politicians who can effectively grasp how to communicate via new and social media channels. Publishing on their own is an effective way for politicians to get a message out exactly how they want to, said PBS NewsHour political editor Christina Bellantoni.
“If you go through a media filter,“ she said, “you’re getting context and history and criticism and often a competing viewpoint, because that’s how most journalists approach their work.” But, she added, if you can directly communicate, you don’t have to go through any lens at all: “You just put out what you’d like to get out there.”
The approach gives politicians more control, said Bellantoni, who pointed to the early stages of the practice — in 2007 politicians began to put out web videos instead of holding live events for major announcements. “You can take as many takes as you need to make sure it’s perfect before you hit publish,” she said. “Then the press has no way of holding you accountable for that or asking you questions or asking your thoughts because you’ve given them one thing and that’s it.”
- See more at: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/05/political-medias-new-competition-the-same-people-theyre-covering116#sthash.9DzWKSAO.6PUt8xTa.dpuf

The approach seems to be working for politicians who can effectively grasp how to communicate via new and social media channels. Publishing on their own is an effective way for politicians to get a message out exactly how they want to, said PBS NewsHour political editor Christina Bellantoni.
“If you go through a media filter,“ she said, “you’re getting context and history and criticism and often a competing viewpoint, because that’s how most journalists approach their work.” But, she added, if you can directly communicate, you don’t have to go through any lens at all: “You just put out what you’d like to get out there.”
The approach gives politicians more control, said Bellantoni, who pointed to the early stages of the practice — in 2007 politicians began to put out web videos instead of holding live events for major announcements. “You can take as many takes as you need to make sure it’s perfect before you hit publish,” she said. “Then the press has no way of holding you accountable for that or asking you questions or asking your thoughts because you’ve given them one thing and that’s it.”
- See more at: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/05/political-medias-new-competition-the-same-people-theyre-covering116#sthash.9DzWKSAO.6PUt8xTa.dpuf

The approach seems to be working for politicians who can effectively grasp how to communicate via new and social media channels. Publishing on their own is an effective way for politicians to get a message out exactly how they want to, said PBS NewsHour political editor Christina Bellantoni.
“If you go through a media filter,“ she said, “you’re getting context and history and criticism and often a competing viewpoint, because that’s how most journalists approach their work.” But, she added, if you can directly communicate, you don’t have to go through any lens at all: “You just put out what you’d like to get out there.”
The approach gives politicians more control, said Bellantoni, who pointed to the early stages of the practice — in 2007 politicians began to put out web videos instead of holding live events for major announcements. “You can take as many takes as you need to make sure it’s perfect before you hit publish,” she said. “Then the press has no way of holding you accountable for that or asking you questions or asking your thoughts because you’ve given them one thing and that’s it.”
- See more at: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/05/political-medias-new-competition-the-same-people-theyre-covering116#sthash.9DzWKSAO.6PUt8xTa.dpuf

The approach seems to be working for politicians who can effectively grasp how to communicate via new and social media channels. Publishing on their own is an effective way for politicians to get a message out exactly how they want to, said PBS NewsHour political editor Christina Bellantoni.
“If you go through a media filter,“ she said, “you’re getting context and history and criticism and often a competing viewpoint, because that’s how most journalists approach their work.” But, she added, if you can directly communicate, you don’t have to go through any lens at all: “You just put out what you’d like to get out there.”
The approach gives politicians more control, said Bellantoni, who pointed to the early stages of the practice — in 2007 politicians began to put out web videos instead of holding live events for major announcements. “You can take as many takes as you need to make sure it’s perfect before you hit publish,” she said. “Then the press has no way of holding you accountable for that or asking you questions or asking your thoughts because you’ve given them one thing and that’s it.”
- See more at: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/05/political-medias-new-competition-the-same-people-theyre-covering116#sthash.9DzWKSAO.6PUt8xTa.dpuf

In Their Shoes: How the cover of the May issue of Boston Magazine came to be

Go here for the heartwarming story behind the Boston Magazine cover.   Here's a taste:

To me the cover is about two things: perseverance and unity. By itself, each shoe in the photograph is tiny, battered, and ordinary. Together, though, they create something beautiful, powerful, and inspirational. Remove just one shoe and you begin to diminish, in some small way, the overall effect. Collectively, they are the perfect symbol for Boston, and for our response to the bombings.

Thanks, Chelsea!  bk

Strange bedfellows? What we can learn from the news coverage of the Boston Bombings.

For the past week or so, I have been collecting links to post-mortems of the news coverage of the hunt for the Boston bombing suspects.  Rather than let the hoarding go south -- as it so often does -- I thought I might as well call it a day.

For those of you still contemplating the ways in which the intersection of social media and traditional news sources will play together in the future, here's some food for thought -- from the New York Times, Salon, Huffington Post, Poynter, Seattle Times, Newsosaur, Neiman Journalism Lab -- and on and on...

This Week in Review: Verification and the crowd in Boston 

Knowing Where to Focus the Wisdom of Crowds 

Twitter, the Suspected Killers and Us: Radical Connectivity and the Week in Boston  

Covering what comes next in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon explosion 

The Pressure to Be the TV News Leader Tarnishes a Big Brand 

Citizen ‘journalism’ ran amok in Boston crisis
 
Boston Bombings Reveal Media Full of Mistakes, False Reports (VIDEO)

Lesson from the manhunt: We're all journalists now
 
A Nation of Police Scanner Rebels

How journalists are covering the news unfolding in Boston

If anything good is to come of all the mistakes, false steps, and the race to be first gone wrong, I hope it will be some critical thinking about how these new forms of media -- the interplay of amateurs and professionals --  can work together as a lens into what the newsroom of the future may look like.  As for the links, I'm sure I've left out quite a bit.  But one can only hoard so much, for so long.  Let me know what you think.  bk 

 

Boston Globe gets it done

Want to know why we still need the pros?

Amid all the social media mistakes and journalistic goofs (multiple links TK) that came out of Boston over the past couple of weeks, the following stands out:  a harrowing reconstruction, by Boston Globe staffer Eric Moskowitz, of the night that "Danny" spent with the Tsarnaev brothers in the front seat of his carjacked Mercedes SUV.

Here's a taste:

In an exclusive interview with the Globe, Danny — the victim of the Tsarnaev brothers’ much-discussed but previously little-understood carjacking — filled in some of the last missing pieces in the timeline between the murder of MIT police officer Sean Collier, just before 10:30 p.m. on April 18, and the Watertown shoot-out that ended just before 1 a.m. Danny asked that he be identified only by his American nickname. 

The story of that night unfolds like a Tarantino movie, bursts of harrowing action laced with dark humor and dialogue absurd for its ordinariness, reminders of just how young the men in the car were. Girls, credit limits for students, the marvels of the Mercedes-Benz ML 350 and the iPhone­ 5, whether anyone still listens to CDs — all were discussed by the two 26-year-olds and the 19-year-old driving around on a Thursday night.

Quentin Tarantino indeed.  Read it all here.  Whew.  bk

How do YOU define journalism?

I came across this review of Vice, HBO's edgy news show, in the San Francisco Chronicle today. These two paragraphs caught my eye:

"Traditional journalists and academics may debate the validity of "Vice's" approach to storytelling: Reportorial distance used to be seen as crucial to being able to fully report the facts on all sides of a story without bias. 

"But does reportorial distance also keep traditional journalists from either getting stories that go unreported or from getting to the real heart of the stories that do get reported? There's no question that the image of that bodiless head instantly and indelibly communicates the horror of daily life in Afghanistan, perhaps better than more conservatively selected images we're likely to see on broadcast or cable news shows.

It occurred to me that, based on the above, I am neither a traditional journalist nor an academic.  And hooray for that.  But I am always amused when folks who don't do what I do make assumptions about what it is that I do do.

Anyway, what do you think?  Does this whole business of "reportorial distance" help or hinder the process of journalism?  bk

State of The News Media, 2013

 Pew Research Center just released its latest report on the State of the news Media.  Basically, there's good news and bad news...

Audiences are as hungry for news as ever, but their first stop is rarely the mainstream press.  On the other hand, social media and conversations with friends and family lead many of these consumers of news back to traditional news sources to dig deeper into the stories.

The bad news, however, is that, with audiences drifting (wait, make that flooding) to digital sources, traditional news industries continue to sufferfinancially, which means fewer and fewer resources to actually do the reporting.

Another problem is the fact that when social media becomes a first source for news, stakeholders can go directly to the public with their message -- without the filter, fact-checking, vetting or context that reporters provide.

Anyway.  Go here for the overview.  bk

quick linx for the freelancers

Go here for links to the mastheads of hundreds of well-known (and not so much) magazines, from Dwell to Vogue to Crochet Today.   Click on the name of the mag, then scroll down for the complete list of names, numbers and, in some cases,  easy-to-figure out email addresses.  Fantastic!

That's all.  bk

Why Going Digital Won't Save Journalism -- At Least Not Yet.

Robert McChesney in Sunday's Salon on the news media meltdown:  "...The Internet does not alleviate the tensions between commercial­ism and journalism; it magnifies them."

It doesn't do a whole lot for journalistic integrity either.  If the current crisis in the news media has to do with making enough money to pay the journalists to do the work, going digital not only exacerbates the problem, but tarnishes the product as well.  McChesney exposes several recent attempts to make money online -- and why they've failed, at least when it comes to the true purpose of journalism.  Here's a taste:

The latest hope is that the rapid emergence of mobile communication will open up new ways to monetize content. But the point of professional journalism in its idealized form was to insulate the news from commercialism, marketing, and political pressures and to produce the necessary information for citizens to understand and participate effectively in their societies. In theory, some people were not privileged over others as legitimate consumers of journalism. That is why it was democratic. It was a public service with an am­biguous relationship with commercialism; hence the professional firewall. Journalists made their judgment calls based on professional education and training, not commercial considerations. That is why people could trust it. The core problem with all these efforts to make journalism pay online is that they accelerate the commercialization of journalism, degrading its integrity and its function as a public service. The cure may be worse than the disease.

 What's at stake is not just media corporations' bottom lines -- or even reporter's paychecks.  It's democracy itself.  bk

Did Truman Capote fudge the facts in "In Cold Blood"?

More backstory on Truman Capote and the book that put him on the map: In Cold Blood.

The Wall Street Journal reports that newly unearthed Kansas Bureau of Investigation files from the infamous Clutter murder -- the subject of Truman Capote's famous book -- suggest that Capote may have played with some of the facts:

A long-forgotten cache of Kansas Bureau of Investigation documents from the investigation into the deaths suggests that the events described in two crucial chapters of the 1966 book differ significantly from what actually happened. Separately, a contract reviewed and authenticated by The Wall Street Journal shows that Mr. Capote in 1965 required Columbia Pictures to offer Mr. Dewey's wife a job as a consultant to the film version of his book for a fee far greater than the U.S. median family income that year.

Was the first "non-fiction" novel more novel than non-fiction?  And: considering the ground-breaking nature of the book, how much does it matter?  bk

What's wrong with email interviews?

Poynter reports that a growing number of campus newspapers have decided to ban email interviews.  The latest is the University of South Florida.  Why?

 In a letter to readers Monday, Editor-in-Chief Divya Kumar said an increasing number of sources are requesting email interviews in hopes of having more control over their message.

As a newspaper, is it our job to provide readers with the truth, directly from the source — not from the strategically coordinated voices of public relations staff or prescreened e-mail answers.

We don’t think these responses provide our readers with the unvarnished truth, and we will no longer include them in our articles at the expense of compromising the integrity of the information we provide. University departments do not have one, centralized voice, but rather are made up of a multitude of diverse perspectives.

Other universities, such as Princeton and Stanford also veto email interviews:

Princeton University’s The Daily Princetonian did so last September, saying email interviews have “resulted in stories filled with stilted, manicured quotes that often hide any real meaning and make it extremely difficult for reporters to ask follow-up questions or build relationships with sources.”

Sure, email interviews can be convenient for fact-checking purposes or follow-up questions -- or for setting up initial interviews.  But the information you get via email always has to be slightly suspect -- and incomplete.  Plus, there's this:  even under the best of circumstances, sources will not only be tempted to varnish their replies, but are likely to keep their answers short and sweet, simply because it's more work to write a long answer than it might be to relay the same information via a phone call or in-person interview.

And, as the late ABC News anchor Peter Jennings said back in 2001, -->

"The Internet is a great research tool, but when it comes right down to it, the thing that bothers me is I'm never quite sure if I'm talking to a goat."

The Art of Non-fiction

Super smart stuff on literary nonfiction from Tracy Kidder, Pullitzer-winning journalist, who spent an hour with Michael Krasny on KQED-FM's Forum on Wednesday morning.   He touches on everything you need to know about writing -- and reporting -- long-form journalism.  Fantastic tips and insights for (future) magazine writers.  Ahem.
 

Listen to the interview, or download the podcast, here.  bk

To get it first, to get it right....

... or to get it on camera.  That is the question.

And it all surrounds the bizarre case of Manti Te'o and the reporters who loved him.  Or at least loved his story.

According to the New York Times, ESPN had the story of the inspirational Notre Dame football player who loved, then lost, a girl who didn't exist --  but sat on it.  To get it right?  To get te'o on camera? Or was the decision more complicated?  In any event, while ESPN waited, Deadspin, a sports blog, posted.  Recriminations -- and ethical questions ensued:

For some, the debate within ESPN quickly gave way to regret and reflection. Three ESPN executives interviewed in recent days said they should have published on Jan. 16. The executives, who would not be identified because they did not want to second-guess their organization by name, said that the network’s focus on waiting until getting an interview with Te’o was a mistake. 

“If I had my druthers, we would have run with it,” one executive said. “We’ve had a bunch of discussions internally since then, and I don’t think it will happen this way again. I wonder sometimes if perfection is the enemy of the practical.” 

ESPN has faced considerable skepticism over the years about its ability to aggressively report on potentially embarrassing issues involving the leagues and universities with which it has an array of lucrative broadcast deals. Just days before learning that the Kekua story might be a hoax, ESPN televised Notre Dame’s loss to Alabama in the Bowl Championship Series title game before the second-largest audience in cable television history. 

In this instance, there does not seem to be any obvious competing interest that might have blunted ESPN’s vigor in reporting the story. Except, perhaps, the value it attaches to having its subjects on camera. ESPN, as a journalistic matter, said it needed to talk to Te’o. But ESPN, as a competitive broadcaster, also dearly wanted that to happen on camera. Despite its broad expansion into radio, print and digital outlets, ESPN’s greatest strength is built on the power of video.

And so you have to wonder where the ethics play in: Was ESPN trying to get it right?  Trying to stay on the right side of a moneymaking contract?  Or prioritizing the flash -- in this case, an on-camera interview -- instead of the news?  The irony is that Katie Couric rather than ESPN was the one to get Te'o on camera. bk

Just because you can, should you?

Poynter asks: Do journalists have the right to do whatever they want with public records?

The case in question was the publication by The Journal News of Westchester County, N.Y of the names and addresses of local gun owners.  This was in the wake of the Newtown shootings.

The names and addresses were all public record, which is to say -- the information was available for whoever took the time and effort to mine it.  And as with all public records, perfectly legit for reporters to publish.

And yet: just because we have the right to publish something under the First Amendment -- should we?  Where does the ethical reasoning come in?

Many issues to consider, among them the fact that data can be wrong or misleading.  Back to Poynter:

Yes, public records can be obtained by anybody. That’s thanks to public policy decisions that certain government-held knowledge ought to be passively accessible to any individual upon request.

But when a journalist chooses to copy that information, frame it in a certain (inherently subjective) context, and then actively push it in front of thousands of readers and ask them to look at it, he’s taken a distinct action for which he is responsible.

Good data journalists (I talk to some of them below) will tell you that data dumps are not good journalism.

Data can be wrong, misleading, harmful, embarrassing or invasive. Presenting data as a form of journalism requires that we subject the data to a journalistic process.

We should think of data as we think of any source. They give you information, but you don’t just print everything a source tells you, verbatim. You examine the information critically and hold yourself to certain publishing standards — like accuracy, context, clarity and fairness.

There's also the damage that publication can do to an individual.  Thanks to the internet, once you name names, accurate or not, that info never goes away. 

Back to the ethics involved -- should you or shouldn't you? -- Poynter offers a quick checklist down at the bottom of the piece that might help you answer the question.  bk

Photo-shopping

Legit or not?


Direct from Poynter: The AP recently posted a team photo of Washington's newest class of women lawmakers -- the largest group ever.  The problem:  four of the women were late for the shoot.

Then: Nancy Pelosi's office released the same pix, with one difference.  The four latecomers were photo-shopped into the last row of the photo.

Small quibble, maybe.  But it brings up the whole issue of staged photographs or, for that matter, broadcast retakes when, say, the interviewer or the interviewee stumbles.  Still true -- but is it the truth?  bk

Journalism: not about you

Check what Gawker's Hamilton Nolan has to say about I-journalism -- that's "i" as in first-person, not internet.  He takes to task writer Susan Shapiro, who recently penned an Opinionater piece for the New York Times in which she extolled the virtues of sharing your innermost traumas on the page (or the screen) as the ticket to writerville.

She teaches a class in memoir to 20-year-olds.  She herself has written nine of them.  Her signature assigment is the "humiliation" essay.  She advises her students thus:

The first piece you write that your family hates means you found your voice, I warn my classes. If you want to be popular with your parents and siblings, try cookbooks.

What Nolan wonders is when reporting became tossed aside in favor of, you know writing.  So do I, if you'll excuse the self-reference.  I also wonder when and why journalism became conflated with first person essays.  Granted, there may be a few 20-year-olds out there with the life experiences of a Frank McCourt or Augusten Burroughs, whose stories definitely merit confessional prose.  But probably not a whole lot of them.

Anyway, Nolan begins:

Every year, thousands of fresh-faced young aspiring journalists flood our nation's college classrooms, in order to learn how to practice their craft. What should we tell them? This, first: journalism is not about you.

Susan Shapiro, an author and college journalism teacher, has a piece in the New York Times in which she explains that her "signature assignment" for her students is to write an essay confessing their "most humiliating secret"—when asked why, she replies "Because they want to publish essays and sell memoirs." This confessional is good practice for launching all of these 20 year-olds on careers as 21 year-old memoirists and "Modern Love" columnists.

It is tempting to stop here and dismiss Shapiro, the author of nine(!) "first-person books" including three(!) memoirs, as a run-of-the-mill narcissist whose unfortunate students are being molded in her own misguided image. (Quoth the professor, "You have to grab the reader by the throat immediately, which is why I launched my second memoir with the line 'In December my husband stopped screwing me.'") But let us more generously interpret Shapiro's attitude as not a cause, but a symptom—her own honest reading of the state of the professional writing market today. In a way, she is not wrong, although she is also part of the problem.

Nolan ends his piece by suggesting that the biggest problem in teaching first-person-essay-as-journalism is that by focussing on one story -- their own -- young and talented journalists neglect the millions of great stories throughout the world that need to be told.

And, when it comes to journalism, isn't that the point?  bk

Out with the old...

Check this post from Newspaper Death Watch on Newsweek's final print issue:

With Newsweek set to shut down its print operations today after a 79-year run, the magazine is going out with another of its famously provocative covers. This one shows a 1940s-era photo of the magazine’s logo towering over the Manhattan skyline juxtaposed with a hash tag that represents the 21st century forces that undermined it. It brilliantly contrasts the old- and new-media worlds, and it does it without passing judgement on either (Not everyone agrees with our opinion).

Newsweek isn’t going away. It will continue online and on tablets, with a new global edition planned for February. But the passing of the print edition marks the end of an era when millions of people got their perspective on the week’s news from the the troika of Newsweek, Time and U.S. News & World Report. Only Time is still in print today, and who knows how long that will last?

Also check this HuffPost piece on the print edition of the Orange County Register, which rather than dying, is having a small growth spurt:

It feels like a throwback to an earlier era at the Orange County Register, where a first-time newspaper owner is defying conventional wisdom by spending heavily to expand the printed edition and playing down digital formats.

Aaron Kushner added about 75 journalists and, with 25 more coming, will have expanded the newsroom by half since his investment group bought the nation's 20th-largest newspaper by circulation in July.

Changes also include thicker pages with triple the number of colors to produce razor-sharp photos and graphics. By the end of March, the newspaper will have 40 percent more space than under previous owners, Freedom Communications Inc.

Kushner, 39, believes people will pay for high-quality news. His bet is remarkable in an industry where newspapers have shrunk their way to profits for years, slashing costs while seeking clicks on often-free websites to attract online advertising.

 .. in with the, uh, news? bk

Don't do this. Ever!

Sources that don't exist?  Really?!

A reporter for The Cape Cod Times recently admitted to fabricating a number of people in articles she had written since the late nineties, as well as giving other sources false names, without letting readers know of the use of pseudonyms:

Times editors have been unable to find 69 people in 34 stories since 1998, when we began archiving stories electronically.

Check the story here.

The good news is that the paper apologized.  Why they didn't notice sooner is beyond me.  The reporter no longer has a job.   Better news still.

Baffled.  Why on earth would a reporter do this?  Didn't she know that this is indefensible?  See Shattered Glass.   bk