off with their heads...

... or some such.

Yeah, yeah, the print newspaper industry is hurting for cash. But this? The front page of today's LA Times was an ad for the new Johnny Depp film, Alice in Wonderland.

You have to wonder if the Mad Hatter is now making editorial decisions. From the HuffPo:

The Los Angeles Times has already cut its editorial staff in more than half, but it's crossed another line here by making the real news little more than an aside to advertising dollars, and selling its masthead off to the highest bidder. Advertising used to sustain the news, now it's obscured it.

AdAge on Arianna

Sure, I like HuffPo as much as the next liberal, but i couldn't agree more with AdAge's Simon Dumenco. He points out the irony in the fact that Syracuse's Journalism School is giving its "Fred Dressler Lifetime Achievement Award" to the woman whose business model relies on kicking journalists to the curb.

Arianna pays writers in "exposure". Not money. Which is great, if you already have a day job, or don't need one. But whether her fault or not, the problem is that the model has spread to any number of digital news sites that are reluctant to pay for content. (Content. What is that, exactly?) And expect writers to not only thank them for the privilege, but come back for more:

Write for us! We'll give you visibility! We'll pay you by the click! You never have to leave the building! All you have to do is riff on other people's work!

I've ranted (okay, riffed) about the insidious practice here, here and here, among other venues. No good can come of it. Not for writers. Not for readers. (er, users?)

From the post:

I've been raging about HuffPo's devaluation of content -- and, ergo, content creators -- since late 2007, when HuffPo co-founder Ken Lerer told USA Today the company had no plans to ever pay its bloggers: "That's not our financial model. We offer them visibility, promotion and distribution with a great company."

At the time, a HuffPo contributor, Blake Fleetwood, wrote an open letter to Jim Romenesko's media blog, saying, "For HuffPo to have paid their posters from the beginning would probably have doomed the experiment at its inception." Well, fine -- except that last year The New Yorker was reporting that HuffPo was already basically break-even. And insiders have floated a valuation for the company of $200 million. I've questioned that bloated figure in this column as recently as January, but even if HuffPo is worth half that or a quarter of that, well, it's unconscionable for Huffington and Lerer and the backers of HuffPo to create millions for themselves on the backs of bloggers duped into working for "visibility." Especially since the most obvious beneficiary of the HuffPo visibility dividend is Arianna Huffington herself.

and now, when science goes bad

Here's an old post from the HuffPo on bad science, or what Geoffrey Dunn calls voo-doo social psychology, regarding a study that "found" that Sarah Palin's looks tanked her chances to be taken seriously. She was, according to the study, simply too sexy to be VP.

Once again (see below, on numbers) the methodology was the villain. From the post:

Let's look at the methodology itself. Heflick and Goldenberg assigned students to jot down a few lines about one of two American women celebrities, Palin or the actress Angelina Jolie. Half of the participants in each category were asked to write "your thoughts and feelings about this person," while the other half were asked to write "your thoughts and feelings about this person's appearance."

The participants were then asked to evaluate their subject (Palin or Jolie) in terms of various attributes, including "competence." Finally, they were asked to identify who they were intending to vote for in the upcoming election.

First of all, the study's sample of 133 undergraduates was hardly large enough for an accurate conclusion to be drawn. Moreover, the sample group, presumably in their late teens and early twenties, is hardly reflective of the American electorate. Generational distinctions cannot even be identified or assessed with this study. Moreover, the sample was heavily skewed toward women (96 females compared to 37 males). While party affiliations were identified, there were no variant markers for race, class or geographical origin of each participant. In purely statistical terms, its reliability is extremely low.

There's more. Read it all. bk

help me help you

... with a fat check, that is.

AdAge reports that the Huffington Post is willing to give a wannabe journalist a good leg up by auctioning off a HuffPo internship to the highest bidder. Last bid: $13,000. Granted, the money goes to a worthy cause, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, and a spokesperson noted that HuffPo will offer several other internships that don't require aspiring j-kids to pay to play. But still, I find the concept sick and twisted. Especially now.

Hideous enough to expect journalists to write for free -- for the, ahem, exposure -- but to ask someone to pay for the privilege? I ranted about this before. Clearly needed to follow up. bk

craven swine on swine flu

HuffPo's Bonnie Fuller calls out media right-wingers who are suddenly and simultaneously using the swine flu as an excuse to promote their hideously racist theories. Read her piece here.

You have to wonder whether these guys came up with this nonsense on their own -- or if they are echoing right-wing talking points courtesy of email blasts. What we can only hope is that their ridiculous racist rants do not go viral.

Sick and twisted that at a time when real journalists are hanging on to their jobs by a thread, these right wing bloviators -- whose job is to do nothing but spin -- are thriving. Even more disturbing is the fact that the junk these nutbags spew is considered news by a sizable percentage of the population. bk

and more on the future of news

Go here to read a speech delivered by HuffPo co-founder and chairman Kenneth Lerer to Columbia University's J-students Thursday night as part of the Journalism School's annual new media lecture series. He stresses that journalism is not going anywhere -- but the model has to change. Lerer taught an entreprenership class at the school this year.

What I find interesting is the fact that this kind of discussion never really took place when it should have -- ten years ago -- when "new media" actually was new. I also find it interesting that my intro j. kids -- "the architects of the change" -- have come up with as many, or more creative solutions after only four weeks on the job, er, in the class. Makes you wonder: where were the smart guys when we needed them?

While he encouraged the new generation of journalists to be creative, to find their own way to dig and deliver the news, he didn't say much about that other essential -- their paychecks.

From his speech (why i cannot get rid of the italics, i have no clue):

Not surprisingly, we're now in the midst of an industry-wide debate over what all this means for the future of news. Virtually everyone with a stake in journalism has weighed in. Some fear that journalism will vanish if papers no longer hit the doorstep. Others say that the delivery medium is meaningless; they don't care if news is printed, or not, as long as quality content remains. But the future of journalism is not dependent upon the future of newspapers and as all this is debated back and forth that's very important to remember.

The news business now faces real practical questions, such as how to pay for digital content and how to preserve standards online. But beyond these logistical challenges, we have to ask whether printed newspapers can remain relevant, or whether they're becoming anachronisms like paper checks and fax machines. And if digital news is the future, how much of the old system can we -- or should we -- preserve?

and:

The reality is, in short, that newspapers followed their longtime customers down the rabbit hole and lost track of their future readers. They are scrambling to adapt, and everyone has a different idea about how to fix the problem.

I know for sure that no one idea is perfect, and no single idea will work instantly. This will be a difficult process that newspapers should have started for real years ago. That said, it's still doable if newspaper owners move away from their legacy business model, and if they follow what their consumers have come to want and expect from the Internet.

As a starting point, I think that online newspapers need to think of themselves as technology companies, as much as media companies. They need to recognize that new technologies have changed the culture of news, and that online readers want engagement instead of passive delivery. There is also the Internet culture and economy of linking online, a culture that newspapers need to accept (and see as an opportunity). And also, as a friend of mine at MTV said to me a few years ago, ubiquity is the new exclusivity. That means that news outlets need to get their content out there in as many places as they can.

and:

And remember ubiquity is the new exclusivity. The way for newspapers to be somewhere is to be everywhere.

I want to stress again what I said to the student in Michael Shapiro's class many months ago. Journalism has a great future. It isn't going anywhere. Nothing could ever replace the invaluable role that journalists play in our society. And as the Internet grows, news will only improve... so become part of the future and jump in. The impact you can make today vs. just a few short years ago -- by breaking a story online, by creating a blog that will make a difference, by starting a site from scratch and being able to build a brand in one year is what it's all about. Sometimes I'm very jealous I'm not you 25 all over again. But just sometimes.

Finally, here's a post on the speech from Portfolio.com's Alexandra Fenwick, who was there. A student at the J-School, she has a slightly different take on what Lerer had to say.

arianna steps up

Huffington Post announced yesterday that it is launching an investigative journalism project, similar to ProPublica, that will be funded by several philanthropic entities. The initial budget of $1.75 million "should be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate stories with freelancers, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief."

Stories produced by the project would be available for free to any news media once the pieces have been posted on HuffPo.

From the article:

Huffington said she hoped to encourage others to fund similar ventures. Foundation spending to support journalists is a promising trend, although the money set aside for such ventures represents far less than what a newspaper would spend to thoroughly cover a community, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Foundation-based journalism will also require organizations to prove that situations are being looked at with a truly open mind, a larger burden than that faced by newspapers, he said.

The Huffington Post skews liberal, but its founder promised that the work done by the investigative fund would be nonpartisan. The group would be discredited quickly if it puts out faulty information, said Nick Penniman, the fund's executive director.

"We care about democracy, not Democrats," he said.

wanted: writers of independent means.

Is writing for the rich? That's the question Francis Wilkinson, one of the original writing recruiters for the Huffington Post, poses in this essay from this week's The Week.

If not for the rich, certainly for folks with day jobs. You wonder what that tells us -- about the industry itself, and the value we readers/viewers place on thoughtful and responsible journalism.

From his essay:

The Internet has brought the newspaper business to its knees. Some serious magazines are undergoing stress tests of their own. Maybe a certain kind of writing about the world, informed by underdog experience and lower-class perspective, will also prove to be a relic of the dead-tree era. Such writing wasn’t in great supply before. But movie stars, business executives, even accomplished authors all write for free these days. Why should some kid nobody’s ever heard of get paid?

goin' poachin'

This is the way the HuffPo rolls, writes Michael Miner of the Chicago Reader: Give us your work, we'll give you exposure. But not, unfortunately, money.

Or publish something somewhere, and we'll link to it, along with a clever riff. But we won't pay for that, either.

But it's not just the HuffPo, it's most blogs. (Ahem) And most of them have only the tiniest fraction of HuffPo's readers.

Makes you wonder: Why are so many writers willing to work for free? Why can bloggers (ahem again) get away with poaching -- even though they call it aggregation? And, as someone smart once mused, don't people who know what they are doing do it better when they are paid to do it?

Or have we decided that all you need to call yourself a journalist -- is a day job.

If the HuffPo is the future of journalism, fine. It's smart and entertaining. But if the HuffPo model is the future, maybe not so much. bk

debatable

Does the fact that Gwen Ifill is writing a book on race and politics that includes material on Barack Obama disqualify her from moderating tomorrow night's vice-presidential debate? Conservative blogs have been buzzing all day, suggesting that her book "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," is evidence that she is in the pocket of the Obama campaign. Read Ifill's response in the Huffington Post.

Word of her book has been on the street for a few months, writes Howard Kurtz in the WaPo. You have to wonder why it's become an issue the day before the debate.

Ifill says that she has not yet written the chapter on Obama and is curious as to why people assume it will even be favorable. She tells the Huffington Post: "Do you think they made the same assumptions about Lou Cannon (who is white) when he wrote his book about Reagan?" said Ifill, who is black. Asked if there were racial motives at play, she said, "I don't know what it is. I find it curious."


Photo credit: Associated Press

mayka makes good

Congrats to Mayka Mei (SCU '06), who is now a featured writer on That Minority Thing, a new web community where minority voices can come together -- as well as a filter for news about issues relating to groups often marginalized by the mainstream press. The site launched last week. You can read her first piece here.

Back at SCU, Mayka Mei was Director of the Multicultural Center her junior year and before and after that, a writer and designer for The Santa Clara. She won an award for a piece on clubbing she did for the paper her senior year. She started her latest blog, theMaykazine -- subtited "overthinking so you don't have to"-- a couple months ago. Below, she talks about how a post on her blog led to her current gig: A good lesson on why you should always practice good blog etiquette.

"A few months ago I started my latest blog. (My oldest blog is old enough to enroll in second grade.) Even though I don't have a singular theme for theMaykazine, I discipline myself in writing about my core interests in culture and intercultural relations at least once a week.

After writing "You can't see me!" in response to John Ridley's Huffington Post article "Are Asians the new invisible man?," I received an invitation from Ridley's publicist to contribute to That Minority Thing. It excited me a lot. I didn't expect to be receiving any messages other than silly press releases, and here was an opportunity to contribute to a new media outlet devoting itself to minority issues and minority voices.

TMT just launched officially last week, but I already love the Featured Writers section, where other socially conscientious bloggers like myself have aggregated to examine current events and ongoing issues.

Advice to aspiring bloggers: Always practice good blog etiquette and hotlink your sources."