the war in Iraq, via social media

SF Chronicle Executive VP Phil Bronstein talks up the value of social media when it comes to war coverage, vis-a-vis WikiLeaks' recent leaks of encrypted government footage that tracks what transpired when an Apache helicopter crew opened fire on a dozen people -- including two Reuters photographers -- on the streets of Baghdad back in 2007.

He contrasts war coverage via social media versus his own reporting in the Phillipines over 20 years ago, when his notebook and his photog's camera were the only instruments of recorded fact.

From his piece in today's Huffpo:

I've seen a fair number of people killed in countries at war, including combatants, journalists and civilians. Even at ground level, though, in the midst of bone and blood spray, sorting things out is near impossible.

I am sure of one thing: tragedy aside, this is all good for us in the bigger sense, starting with the video release. Transparency is the victor here. More information and even more yelling back and forth gives everyone more data and opportunity to make up their own minds. And it keeps life-and-death topics like war fully in the bull's-eye heat of aggressive social interaction.

That's what's really changed since my war correspondent days. No one today has to be a passive non-combatant in the important moments of our culture.

what we lose. again.

While I was gone, the San Francisco Chronicle announced that more layoffs are imminent.

This past spring, the paper deleted about 150 jobs, citing weekly losses of $1 million. Apparently, not enough. From the story:

The Guild said the Chronicle's management may be willing to tolerate "some" additional losses, but that "the company clearly intends to reduce the gap to as close to break-even as possible during the fourth quarter."

Guild officials said they were told that the continuing decline in revenue is "worse than expected, mostly because of the weak economy and ongoing problems of the news industry," according to management. The Great Recession aside, newspapers have been suffering in recent years, as classified and other advertising shifts to the Internet, to other sites or at much lower prices, and as many younger consumers appear to have lost the newspaper-reading habit.

Guild representatives in Friday's discussions included Michael Cabanatuan, Gloria La Riva, Carl Hall and Doug Cuthbertson, according to the Guild, while Calvin Siemer, Annette Vedanayagam and Suzy Cain represented management.

Hall confirmed to the Business Times via email that the union expects additional job cuts, "hardly a scenario that gives our members confidence that our sacrifices earlier this year are paying off." He said the Guild understands how tough times are, but that staffers at the Chronicle and other dailies wonder how many more jobs can be eliminated "before nothing is left" and newsrooms are wrecked beyond repair.

For a refresher on what we lose if the Chron goes under, go here. A better-than-average rant, if I say so myself. bk

more is less

Joe Garofoli, the SF Chron's media writer -- yes, they still have one -- incisively questions whether more information on the swine flu is resulting in a public that is less informed.

It's a problem that has been attributed to the 24-hour news cycle for years whenever a big story (with good visuals) broke: a constant barrage of too much information, designed to fill the space between commercials. But today the plague of TMI has been exacerbated by the deluge of scare-sites on the Web, which makes it hard for some folks to separate fact from fiction. Or reliable information (no need to panic) from rumor (beware the pork chop).

In this case at least, it seems like slow news may be good news. bk

Love it! (Exclamation point intentional.)

Have emails, texts and tweets cheapened the friendly exclamation point? SF Chron columnist John Diaz thinks so. Read his column from the Sunday Chron here, where he makes a bunch of witty points about the power of the point -- when we use it for the right reasons.

Here's just a taste:

What I bemoan is the cheapening of the exclamation mark in all forms of written communication. For the past half century, Strunk and White's classic little primer, "The Elements of Style," has provided students with a north star to clear writing. In its simple, straightforward, scolding tone, it admonishes writers to reserve exclamation marks for use after "true exclamations or commands." Or, as many an editor has reminded me over the years in calling for restraint in punctuation or typography: "We have to save something for the Second Coming."

Today, the exclamation mark has become so common that its power has been lost. In fact, it has become so expected in e-mail, texts, Facebook and 140-character Twitter communications that its absence is considered a statement in itself.

more on the twittersphere

Gavin Newsom held a virtual press conference sans press today -- to announce his candidacy for governor of California simultaneously on twitter, facebook and youtube. Notably absent: reporters and/or pesky questions from the rabble.

From the piece on sfgate.com, the online version the SF Chron:

"No candidate has ever used all of these tools at once - and it had to happen with a candidate from the Bay Area. This is the capital of new media," said Newsom's political consultant Eric Jaye, who noted that San Francisco-based Twitter, Palo Alto-based Facebook and San Bruno-based YouTube, now a subsidiary of Google, are all located in the region.

Jaye said the mayor has amassed some 270,000 followers on Twitter - second only to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - as well as 40,000 on Facebook, 150,000 names on his campaign e-mail lists, and reaches thousands of others with his regular blogs on the Huffington Post and Daily Kos, two progressive Web sites.

Back when RS was relevant

To mark the shutdown of Rolling Stone's San Francisco office -- there were only three employees, and two will be laid off -- The Chron offered this semi-obit on Saturday.

The magazine began its irreverent life in San Francisco some 42 years ago, and quickly became the chronicle of the counter-culture. Within a few years, it became a pivotal voice for everything from rock and roll to politics, boosting the careers of Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Ben Fong-Torres and a host of others who were attracted by the ability to write long, take chances and create their own style.

Go here for a quick backgrounder on a glimpse of why the mag mattered and what we lost when the book went mainstream. bk

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

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