Wikipedia Grows Up

I was happy to see the news recently that Wikipedia would be changing its policies to limit changes on articles about living people.

Under the new policy, according to the New York Times, an experienced editor will review changes to articles about living people before the article can go live. As Michael Snow, a Seattle lawyer who is chairman of the Wikimedia board, the nonprofit board that oversees Wikipedia put it, “We are no longer at the point that it is acceptable to throw things at the wall and see what sticks.”

The policy is a huge change for an organization that prided itself on letting anyone be a contributor. But with 60 million Americans visiting Wikipedia every month, it’s a necessary change.

The editorial policy, called “flagged revisions,” is already in effect for some famous people like Britney Spears and President Obama and the German Wikipedia version has had this editorial policy for all its content for the past year.

As The Times points out, it’s not difficult to insert false information into Wikipedia right now. In January, for example, someone inserted information stating that Senators Edward M. Kennedy and Robert C. Byrd had died.

I remember watching Stephen Colbert of “The Colbert Report” gleefully tell his audience that he planned to solve the problem of elephants being endangered by getting everyone in his audience to triple the number of elephants. Wikipedia eventually locked out users from tampering with the entry but it convinced me. The prank was a great argument for mistrusting information on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia can be useful for background information or to provide original sources since much of the information is footnoted but I would never use it as a primary source of information.

I hope that Wikipedia eventually decides to have editors review all information posted on Wikipedia. Until that happens, I will continue to take information on Wikipedia with a huge grain of salt. It’s a good place to find original sources of information or get background information but even with these changes it’s still suspect.

Wikipedia image from commons.wikimedia.org

On Vacation

Journalism Jitters is on vacation until Sept. 1.

The Seattle Times Turns a Profit

It’s hard to know what to make of the fact that the Seattle Times, now the only newspaper in Seattle, is beginning to show a profit.

The newspaper became the only daily newspaper in time after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer shut down its daily newspaper operations in March, surviving only as a news website devoted primarily to local blogs.

The resurgence is no doubt due to the fact that the Seattle Times managed to pick up most of the Post-Intelligencer’s subscribers. The newspaper’s circulation rose 30 percent in June from 200,000 to 260,000, according to the New York Times.

The Times itself was apparently nervous about their own demise when the Post-Intelligencer shut down with the newspaper asking whether Seattle would now become a “no newspaper town.”

Newspaper executives had reason to be worried. Many newspapers that are the only daily in town are still struggling to survive, so the Seattle Times is clearly doing something right. But since the Times is a private company it’s unclear exactly what that something is.

Meanwhile, the Post-Intelligencer also seems to be doing well with its scaled down Web operations at SeattlePI.com and has retained the audiences that formerly read the newspaper online.

The main reason The Times is doing better seems to be that its partnership with the deceased Post-Intelligencer has ended. The papers used to share expenses with the Times handling printing and delivery for the Post-Intelligencer and sharing profits 60-40. The Times had been trying to get out of the partnership, arguing that the partnership was dragging it down, while artificially prolonging the life of its rival.

The Seattle Times’ lean mean operation may also be helping its financial picture. The newspaper has cut staff drastically, going from 375 people five years ago to 210 people today. But many newspapers have cut staff and pared down costs only to find themselves still hanging on to life by a thread.

Perhaps the quality of the newspaper has also helped increase profits. The Seattle Times has a reputation of being a great newspaper and the Blethen one of the few family owned newspapers in the country, according to the New York Times. The family owns 55 percent of the paper with the McClatchey Co. owning the rest. Eight family members still work for the newspaper. I’m not sure how many such newspapers are left but surely the family keeps a better eye out for the newspaper than a media conglomerate would.

Whatever reasons the newspaper is succeeding, it’s a glimmer of brightness in the gloom and doom of media news these days. Let’s hope there will be more glimmers that can lead us out of the darkness.

Photo from nytimes.com

Newspapers Quest For Dollars From Internet Pirates

Can the Associated Press and companies like Attributor help newspapers battle Internet sites that poach their content and help them get some of that Internet revenue for themselves? Newspapers are hoping the answer is yes but not everyone is convinced.

Attributor is behind a group called the "Fair Syndication Consortium," that hopes to track down sites that are using whole newspaper articles without paying for them through a search engine developed just for that purpose. Many of these sites stealing the stories are probably blog but those blogs do receive some minimal compensation from big search engines like Google. Attributor claims the loss in revenue is as much as $250 million a year.

Attributor seems to have received a warm welcome from the newspapers and syndicates themselves. Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters Media, told the New York Times that the plan “seems to me to be a way to bring order out of the chaos.”

The consortium is made up of The New York Times, The Washington Post, Hearst, Reuters, MediaNews Group, McClatchy and Conde Nast, the magazine publisher.

But the big question is whether Google and other search engines will agree to send some of that nice Internet money back to the newspapers themselves. But so far Google and other sites have said only that they're reviewing the proposal. Saul Hansell, a media blogger for the New York Times, told the NPR radio show "On the Media," that Google and other companies seem skeptical and will likely be reluctant to get in the middle of the newspapers and the pirates.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press announced back in April that it would be tracking down illegal Internet poachers and taking legal action against them, if necessary. The idea would be to code AP stories so that the AP can track down the users.

The newspapers and the Associated Press are shouting "Show me the money." Let's hope someone hears them.

On Vacation

Journalism Jitters is on vacation until July 27.

Teens Love Facebook, Ignore Twitter, TV & Newspapers

Teenagers don't read the newspaper, they don't watch much TV except for their favorite shows and they aren't into Twitter. What they are into is social media like Facebook. They love their cell phones, they like movies, they go to concerts but they don't want to pay for music or anything else for that matter. They love their computers and computer games.

That's the summary from 15-year-old Matthew Robson who wrote a report on teen-age media consumption for Morgan Stanley in a wham-bam take it or leave it kind of voice that makes you believe what he's saying even though it's not based on any reports, cites few statistics and is from a kid who's British.

The bombshell from the "report" seems to be that teens don't use Twitter. But as The Guardian's PDA blog points out The Pew Internet and American Life Project found "the median age of Twitter users in the US was 31, higher than 26 for Facebook and 27 for MySpace."

I'm also not shocked that Robson says teens don't read newspapers. It only backs up what I've seen in my own classroom where last semester only one student read a hard copy of a newspaper and only a handful read the newspaper at all. Most students said they get their news from John Stewart and Steven Colbert,if they get any news at all. And these are journalism students!

Teens don't listen to radio much but when they do it's for the music but that's becoming less so since they can now stream music online, Robson says.

I thought Robson's statement that teens don't watch much TV was striking. He seems to be saying that teens will watch certain shows during certain seasons but then will switch off for weeks at a time. I find this heartening but I'm a bit skeptical. This would mean that all those TV guzzling children and tweens suddenly become more discerning TV viewers when they enter adolescence. I hope he's right. He adds that they hate ads and switch offf when ads are on. Yahoo!

As for newspapers, Robson says teens don't read them because of coste but will pick up free newspapers. Again, I'm a bit skeptical of this because presumably most teens are still living at home where their parents foot the cost of newspapers. But it makes sense to me when Robson says that teens are more likely to choose tabloids. He says it's because they're compact and easier to carry. I'm guessing the racy content and Page 6 girls don't hurt either.

I also found it interesting that Robson says teens don't use paper directories. Again, this makes sense. I think most of us, myself included, turn to the Internet before we search for the Yellow Pages.

Another nugget was Robson's assertion that teens enjoy and support viral marketing because they find it funny and interesting. But they hate web ads such as pop-up and find them "extremely annoying." Join the club, teenagers.

We all know that teens don't want to pay for music and so Robson's comments here don't break much ground. He states that they also use itunes but don't like it because of the cost.

Another good bit of news is that teens love the movies, according to Robson, and sometimes go just for the experience. He states that older teens don't go because of the price (British theaters charge full price above age 15). In the U.S., I'm pretty sure kids over 12 pay full price but I've seen movie theaters full of kids so this probably depends on the wealth of the kids.

As we all know, teens love their mobile phones and Robson tells us that they prefer pay-as-you-go phones because of the price (assuming they're paying for it themselves).
While teens love to text, they don't use the Internet on their phone because it's too expensive, Robson says.

Finally, Robson says that as we know, teens love their computers but prefer stand-alone computer games such as the Wii and Xbox to games on the PC.

I think the report is very useful as a snapshot. Whether it's a prescription for today's media, I don't know. If we had a teen write about teen-age eating preferences, we'd no doubt find out that teens like pizza, fries and ice-cream and don't like vegetables. That's good to know but it doesn't necessarily portend the end of vegetables.

Thank you to Rutgers Professor Steve Miller for pointing out this report.
*Photo by Maggic Smith, freedigitalphotos.net

Sarah Palin and the Media

Has Sarah Palin gotten a raw deal in the press? I don't think so. She stepped into the spotlight as the vice-presidential candidate and then she didn't like it when that spotlight revealed what many of us suspected: that she was unprepared and largely unqualified to be vice-president.

But even as she stepped down as governor of Alaska on July 3, she was still taking shots at the press. After citing her accomplishments, she lamented that "You don't hear much of the good stuff in the press anymore, do you?" Sigh.

A friend criticized the Times for calling the speech "rambling," but having read the speech I have to defend the Times use of the word "rambling." Not where she states that she is resigning because it would be "apathetic to just hunker down and "go with the flow." She then adds, "Nah, only dead fish "go with the flow." Um OK.

Like many politicians, Palin has always wanted to have it both ways. She paraded her family into the national spotlight when she stepped onto the stage of the Republican National Convention. She showed she was both a devoted mother and a staunch anti-abortion advocate who put her money where her mouth was by giving birth to a baby with Down Syndrome. If that wasn't evidence enough of her prolife bonafides, there was her pregnant teen-age daughter.

But after an electrifying convention speech, she apparently refused to prepare for important national interviews. The recent Vanity Fair article on Palin details exactly how unprepared and uncooperative she was after she was chosen by McCain. (It also shows that, as we always suspected, she was poorly vetted by McCain's people). She had a very poor grasp on national and international issues and so fumbled her interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, neither of whom are the hardball interviewers).

Even after the presidential race was over, she has continued to both take shots at the media as somehow being at the heart of her problems. At the same time, she got into bizarre media tugs-of-war, as the recent Vanity Fair article shows. After the father of Palin's grandchild Tripp told Tyra Banks that he stayed in Bristol's room and that he assumed Palin knew they were having sex, Palin issued a "blistering" statement refuting those claims, for example.

More recently, Palin's lawyers threatened to sue media outlets if they publish defamatory material relating to whether Palin is under federal investigation, according to Politico.com. The blogosphere, including Alaskan blogger Shannyn Moore, has apparently been speculating that Palin embezzled funds from the sports arena project built in Wasilla, Alaska.

"This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who republish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law,” the lawyer warned. Neither the Post or the Times have published anything about the rumors but the statement was apparently meant as a warning to deter them from doing so.

Whether this ultimately proves to be true or not, this does seem to point out my problem with the blogosphere "publishing" unsubstantiated rumors. But by issuing such a detailed refutation of the charges, Palin succeeded in drawing attention to the very issue she was trying to defend herself against.

Palin's attacks on the press make sense as a way to establish a connection with her conservative base. If she resigned in order to make a run for the presidency, as many people think, she will need those conservatives who still love her, to establish her base.

Jon Friedman, of Market Watch, says that Palin has "mastered the art of using the media to divide and conquer and is using it to solidify her hold on her political base."

"Go ahead. Call her stupid and unsophisticated and goofy and sleazy. But understand that Palin also has more street smarts when it comes to keeping her name in the news than anyone today on the national scene. She has mastered the media by acting like the star of her own reality television series," he says.

And he's right. We are all (myself included) fascinated by Palin. Some of us are fascinated and repelled by her but we are fascinated nonetheless. It will be interesting to see whether she is planning to run for office or just running away.

Washington Post Almost Sells Its Soul

The fact that the Washington Post, the paper that broke the Watergate scandal, is itself involved in a scandal for planning to charge up to $250,000 to lobbyists and executives for “exclusive,” off-the-record access to top Obama administration officials, only goes to underline the sheer desperation of newspaper executives to explore any money-making idea, even those that were clearly built on shaky ethical ground from the beginning.

The “salons” were to be held at the home of publisher Katharine Weymouth, granddaughter of Katharine Graham, and a flier on the first salon on health-care reform offered an “Underwriting opportunity: an evening with the right people can alter the debate.” The flier went on to urge companies and lobbying groups to “Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with Obama administration and Congressional leaders.”

Politico.com broke the story last week after a lobbyist leaked the flyer to the political blog. By July 2, Weymouth canceled plans for the dinner and on Sunday she published and apology to readers “for a planned new venture that went off track and for any cause we may have given you to doubt our independence and integrity.”

The event was hastily planned and she didn’t see the flier that went out and she acknowledged that the paper’s mistake was to put out a flier offering an off the record event with power brokers and lobbyists that was paid for by a sponsor. The original plan was to hold an event that would be sponsored by a company only “at arms length” that would not allow the company to control the discussion and would not give special access to journalists.

If journalists participated they would not be asked to invite other participants and would serve only as moderators. There “would be no limits on what they could ask. They would have full access to participants and be able to use any information or ideas to further their knowledge and understanding of any issues under discussion.” (Notice she did not say they could write about the talks?”)

The New York Times’ David Carr points out that Weymouth is a lawyer who went to Harvard School of Business but never worked in the newswroom and apparently doesn’t have a firm grasp on the traditional wall between journalism and advertising. That whole conflict of interest thing. And while her explanation about the brochure may be true, it doesn’t’ explain why invitations to the salon to two members of Congress came from her personal email, according to the New York Times.

If you’re wondering whether this affects the paper’s credibility, consider that Press Secretary Robert Gibbs joked about whether he could afford to take a question from a Washington Post reporter. Ha ha.

But clearly the dinners were an attempt to make money for a newspaper that lost $19.5 million in the first quarter of this year in what one analyst told the L.A. Times was “the worst quarter in the modern history of American newspapers.”

In fact, many newspapers and media groups have held conferences and talks to make money. The New York Times seems to hold many such events and Politico had a panel at George Washington University in 2007 that was sponsored by the A.C.L.U, according to the New York Times. But these are usually public, on-the-record events.

Clearly, newspapers must find ways to make money. But as the Washington Post has learned selling your soul shouldn’t be one of them.

Gannnett Cuts More Jobs

My heart goes out to anyone who works at a Gannett newspaper right now after Gannett announced yesterday it would cut 1,400 jobs or 3 percent of its workforce.

It has to be terrible waiting for the ax to fall. One friend who has survived previous cuts at the Asbury Park Press, my old newspaper, says she doesn't know if she'll survive this one. I think she has a good shot because she's a great reporter with years at the newspaper. But even if you do manage to keep your job, you have to watch colleagues and friends leaving. It has to be like going to work at a wake.

Gannett, like other newspaper companies, has been suffering from declines in ads and reported a 34 percent drop in the first quarter, according to the Associated Press. It looks like the cuts won't affect U.S.A. Today, Gannett's flagship newspaper.

There have been 10, 103 newspaper job cuts in the U.S. this year alone, according to the Paper Cuts blog, which features a map showing that the cuts are all across the country with huge clusters in the northeast.

More bad news for reporters, writers and editors and more bad news for all of us out there looking for work. If there's a bright side to all this downsizing I'm having trouble seeing it right now.

Gov. Sanford and covering scandals

You have to love the story about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford who was supposedly hiking the Appalachian Trail for four days but now says he was actually in Argentina ending an affair.

Sure, I feel sorry for Sanford's wife and four boys, three of whom are teens and the youngest of whom is just 10. I don't feel Sanford's pain but that's probably because he lied and left his state without a governor while he was off fooling around or whatever he was doing.

Then there's the story of Nevada Sen. John Ensign, who resigned from a party leadership position early this month, after news came out about an affair with a former staff member. Ensign is vocal about family values and opposes gay marriage. So much for the sanctity of marriage. What more does he think homosexuals could do to marriage?

In each case, there's a legitimate news value to these stories. Sanford apparently left the state with no one in charge and Ensign is violating his own holier than thou principles. But here's the thing: you can always find news value in public officials' family life or to put it another way, the personal life of politicians has become fair game for better or worse.

I love a scandal as much as the next guy and I guess I wouldn't advocate going back to ignoring personal issues. F.D.R. couldn't hide the fact that he was crippled today and J.F.K. certainly couldn't hide his numerous affairs. But it's amazing how we accept the fact that politicians' personal lives are up for grabs and then find ways to justify it afterward.

As for the politicians who know the rules of the game and are well aware that the world is watching, their inability to keep it in their pants will never cease to amaze us. The Republican leaders are dropping like flies and that's because they're using the wrong organ to do their thinking for them.

But I don't want to get all sanctimonious here. I love a good scandal and I'll be following all the details of Gov. Sanford and his long, long detour around the Applachian Trail.

Twitter in Iran

I loved the report in the Times today about an Obama official calling Twitter to ask them not to shut down so that tweets from Iran could continue. Iran has shut down texts on cell phones and journalists aren't allowed to cover the protests, so Twitter has become one of the few places where reports can be posted.

I actually joined Twitter just to look at the tweets from Iran. I remain unenlightened but I'm sure if I spent more time I would find the photos and posts that are actually from Iran. I just got a lot of posts telling people to make their avatar green to show support for the people in Iran. I'm not sure what a green avatar has to do with Iran. In fact, I'm not sure what an avatar is, but I was interested to see the conversation about Iran.

Robert Schlessinger at U.S. News and World Report points out that not all the tweets and blog posts from Iran are accurate and that they don't replace journalism. And he's right, of course. There's no interpretation or sorting through the facts.

Marla Singer on Zero Hedge makes the point even more strongly warning readers not to "believe the hype." She points out that the secret police in Iran can use Twitter just as easily as the protesters and, since Twitter isn't anonymous, they can use it to find the people who are sending out Twitter.

Still, it is inspiring that people have found a way to get the word out, for as long as they're able to do it. It's not so much a testament to the power of Twitter as a testament to the power of information to leak out despite attempts to suppress it.

Can new blog site True/Slant succeed?

Another blog collective designed to provide a “new” kind of journalism and make money is the newly launched site True/Slant: an original content site that has 100 contributors, many of whom are well-known veteran journalists from CNN, TIME, Rolling Stone and The New York Times.

The beta site launched on June 6 with 100 “entrepreneurial journalists” who are blogging already or who have perspectives on the news as academics or professionals who will create original blogs and “curate” news stories in print or video with their own perspectives.

The contributors also agreed to try to “break down barriers between the writers and their audience,” by having online conversations with some of the people who comment on their sites. Everyone is allowed to comment but contributors get to pick comments that they think further the discussion and to highlight that discussion. Contributors are also encouraged to comment on each other’s posts.

The other unique aspect of this site is that True/Slant will give advertisers the same ability to post content and use stories and headlines and video on their blogs as the contributors have and to have a “dialogue” with readers. True/Slant promises that the TS/Ad Slant page will be clearly labeled so that readers will know it’s an advertorial.

It’s unclear how the contributors make money but it seems that part of it will be finding their own advertising sponsors, according to Dan Gillmore, of The Knight Foundation’s IdeaLab (a great site about “reinventing community news for the Digital Age).

A press release about how the business works doesn’t shed much light on the subject. stating that True/Slant “redefines the static employer-employee model.” Some contributors are looking for a platform, others are “sharing in revenue generated from their pages,” while still others “earn stipends based on their editorial contributions.”

I think it’s fair to say that many journalists, like me, are phobic about becoming salesmen both because there is that traditional line between advertising and news and because many of us are former English majors who would rather remove our fingernails than have to sell to people.
There is certainly a potential conflict if contributors are soliciting advertisers although I suppose if they then send them off to their own corner of the world, it might be OK.

I’m also skeptical about the moneymaking potential but then again, I am currently making no money at all, so right now a “stipend” sounds pretty good.

The site has a lot of interesting posts. Recent posts have a blog on “The case against post-feminist marriage,” by Mark Stricherz of the Catholic Independent, a blog on Sarah Palin and a blog on “Next Generation Arranged Marriage,” by Ali Eteraz, of American Saracen. It also has a section called “Headline Grabs” in which contributors link readers to other blogs, stories and video.

I hope that True/Slant works. It’s an interesting model and I like the fact that it clearly separates advertising and editorial at least on the site. I’d still like to know more about how it all works. But as Gillmore, the director of the Knight Center for Digital Media, points out, it’s one of several ideas out there that are trying to keep journalism alive. Even if we don’t know what that will look like, that has to be a good thing.

Blogging Rants

I've been blogging for about a year now and it still feels like sending a message in a bottle into the ocean or maybe sending a paper airplane off a skyscraper, so I was interested to see the article in the N.Y. Times Style section Sunday about the large number of bloggers dropping out of the blogosphere.

The Times story cites a Technorati estimate that only about 7.4 million of 133 million blogs were updated in the past 120 days. That's a huge failure rate and it's safe to say that people stop blogging because they're busy, they're tired and frankly, they're a little discouraged.

In my case, I'm sure my blogs aren't taking off because I haven't promoted them and because I'm writing about journalism in one and parenting in the other: two prosaic and (yawn) boring subjects to lots of people I'm sure. Maybe I have to do something more edgy.

I also haven't gotten the proper tone: personal, snarky and humorous. I try for humour sure but I sense that I'm not hip enough or maybe that's just the insecurity of a 50-year-old journalist/mom with one foot in 2009 and the other back in the 20th century when we had typewriters and simple computers and jobs.

I have admittedly been inconsistent about posting and clueless about finding an audience. I get the theory and I think it goes something like this: you write a marvelous, literary, fascinating blog that everyone wants to read. People start reading it and they can't get enough. Soon you have an audience of gazillions and everyone is beating a path to your door. A major magazine wants to run your blog. There's a book contract and a possible movie deal. Yeah right.

My dear friend Tracy Schroth and a few other people have worked on a blog about local politics called The Secret News in Emeryville, Calif. and they've been very successful. They've gotten a huge audience, they've been quoted in the New York Times and politicians are apparently quaking in their boots. So the blogging thing can work but it's tough going for most of us.

I'm still slogging away despite it all. I suspect that I have to do a lot more to get my blog noticed. Maybe nude photos? I'm kidding, I'm kidding. This blog thing is like some giant mountain I have to climb and seriously I'm just a short-distance walker. But you never know.

Newsroom of the Future

I joined a group called the "Next Newsroom," a project out of Duke University that envisions what a future newsroom would look like. It's also looking at revamping the campus newspaper The Chronicle. Anyone who joins can post their thoughts about what newsrooms will look like in the future.

Here's what I had to say about "The Next Newsroom:"

I hope there are newsrooms in the future. There is a certain amount of optimism and faith involved in assuming that there will be. I don’t have to remind anyone familiar with media today that these are dark days in newspaper newsrooms and broadcast newsrooms.

I always assure my students that there will always be journalism in some form. We just don’t know what it will be yet. So maybe it’s best to assume that there will be future newsrooms in some form.

Perhaps future newsrooms won’t be a geographic place but a digital space. That’s what happening with hyperlocal media and with Internet news. I’m old-fashioned enough to think that there’s a loss if there’s no central gathering place for news gatherers but I guess that’s what the Internet has become.

Future journalists will do what many current journalists are doing: everything. They’ll write articles, blog, do multimedia and podcasts and whatever else fits in. I hope that there will still be a place for skilled trained journalists and editors who look over their shoulder. I know there’s a lot of wonderful stuff coming out of blogs and perhaps I truly am a dinosaur but I hope there’s a place for the balanced reporting, in-depth stories and investigative pieces that are the hallmark of good journalism.

If the future newsroom is staffed with future journalists then there’ll have to be a way to pay them. Maybe news organizations will all run on the NPR, non-profit model. Sure, NPR has had cutbacks too but their audience has grown while other news organizations’ audiences have shrunk. They must be doing something right.

Perhaps news organizations will find some way to make money from the Internet. There is widespread skepticism that Internet readers will pay for content but maybe they will. I know I was one of the few people paying for the Times archive so I would be one of those people. Whether there’s enough people like me, I’m not so sure. My few students who read the newspaper read it online. They pay for iTunes or at least some of them do. But the newspaper isn’t quite so fun and it’s worthless the next day.

I hope future newsrooms will find ways to reproduce traditional newsrooms’ best features: the shared ideas, the collegiality, the shared passion. If they can do that, it’s probably OK that there’s no way to gather around the coffee machine anymore.

Newsweek Remake

I had heard that Newsweek was dramatically redesigning its magazine so when I picked up the latest issue I thumbed through it looking for the changes. It has a new look but on that count, I found it too busy and cute. As for content, it's supposed to be "reported narrative" and "the argued essay," with "the straightforward news piece," according to a forward by editor Jon Meacham.

I'm not so sure what this means. It seems to me Newsweek already had "reported narrative" and as for the "argued essay," it's not what I want in a news magazine. I know I am probably wrong about this and wrong to say this but the "argued essay" puts me to sleep. I'd rather get it straight. Is this a response to the blogosphere? If so, it seems wrong-headed.

Newsweek also seems to have cut one of my favorite features, the "My Turn" column. Anna Quindlin has left so there's another favorite gone.

Meacham's argument that Newsweek is going to avoid stories where they can't "add to the conversation" seems solid. Moving the conversation forward is a good goal. I'll even forgive him for saying that newspapers have been forced into the "traditional newsmagazine model" but "there is only so much wisdom one can summon in a few hours." After all, he's carving out Newsweek's territory here. Plus he's right. Newspapers don't have time to be wise.

Michael Kinsley offers a much more insightful slam at Newsweek in a piece in the New Republic in which he takes the magazine apart feature by feature. As for me, I'm still picking it up. (OK it comes in my mailbox every week so it's easy to do). But I have my doubts whether this is a change for a positive or even a real change.

ProPublica's Investigative Bloggers

ProPublica, the non-profit journalism organization that funds reporters to delve into national issues and then sells its stories to national media, is starting an investigative project with citizen bloggers that will look into the federal stimulus package. (Here's the story on ProPublica's site).

The idea of "Adopt a Stimulus Package" is to set bloggers to work following one project being funded by the stimulus package, say a local bridge, through to its completion. The reporters would find out how many people use the bridge, how the bridge was constructed, how many people were hired to build it, etc.

"We want to get reports from people across the country to help us measure the impact of the spending and to see what’s really taking place in their communities,” said Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica's managing editor.

I hate to say it but the idea makes a lot of sense. It would be impossible for reporters to tackle a project of this scope because of its sheer magnitude. By getting citizen journalists to do the grunt work, ProPublica can get a lot of detailed information. Assuming that reporters and editors provide some supervision (and fact checking) it could be a great way to wed reporting and blogging.

Of course, this is just another instance of how blogging (i.e. largely unpaid work) is taking over reporting and editing (paid work). But that ship has sailed already so maybe it's time to move on and figure out how to make these things work. I'll be interested to see how this one turns out.

Arizona Newspaper's Future in Doubt

The Gannet Co., owner of the Tuscon Citizen, a 138-year-old newspaper, is in court today to determine whether the newspaper must reopen after closing its doors on May 15.

The paper had bids from several potential buyers but Gannett decided to close the paper anyway, leaving just a small web operation dedicated to opinion and commentary but without any news or sports coverage.

Among several interested buyers, according to Newspaper Death Watch, was the Santa Monica Media Co., but they were unable to meet Gannet's price and couldn't get Gannett to come down in price. They may be behind the move by Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard to block the sale of the newspaper. The suit claims that Gannett Co. and Lee Enterprises violated antitrust laws by closing the newspaper. If the court rules in the Attorney General's favor, the newspaper could reopen but it seems unlikely.

Meanwhile, the website for the Arizona Citizen, proclaims that today "begins a new chapter in the history of the Arizona Citizen and tusconcitizen.com. Call it tusconcitizen.com, version 2.0, if you will." Hmmm. There's other things you could call it too but let's not go there.

Asbury Park Press reunion

I found myself surrounded my about 200 familiar faces on Saturday when I went to a reunion of past and present employees of the Asbury Park Press, my former newspaper on the Jersey Shore.

It was tremendous fun to see so many of my colleagues, many of whom had been laid off or bought off and many of whom have become very successful. There were several editors at the New York Times. There was Wally Stroby, who has written three mystery novels, and so wasn't too devastated by being bought out at the Star-Ledger. Steve Breen, an alum, who has won two Pulitzer Prices for his cartoons, was supposed to be a guest there but I never did catch up to him so I'm not sure. (Some reporter I am). Then there were my friends Matty Karas, a writer for VH1's "Behind the Music," and Michael Taylor, a writer for numerous television shows including "Star Trek Voyager," and "Battlestar Gallactica."

Mike is celebrated for having lost his job for having roundly and obscenely told off a copy editor who had ruined his copy. There may or may not have been a chair thrown in the incident. But boo hoo for him, he went on to live out this fantasy existence in Hollywood.

Plenty of people at the reunion had changed careers too. There were at least a couple of journalists turned lawyers among the group and one woman who told me she was currently brewing beer!

We heard about the tragedies among the employees as well: an editor who had died in his 40s, a former copy editor who committed suicide, a former coworker who lost his wife. But there were also plenty of joy: kids running around and babies and a few spouses. I contented myself with a photo of my family because I knew they would be bored and cranky if I forced them to come.

Behind most of the conversations was the slow death of newspapers. We all shook our heads and lamented about these kids today who don't read papers. We talked about how the Internet took away the classifieds. We discussed the fact that few people seem to understand that subscribers don't pay for the newspaper, they just bring in the advertisers. We talked about whether people would pay for content on the Web and whether it could possibly save newspapers.

It was a great party but it was also kind of a wake. Fortunately, we're all journalists so it was an Irish wake. It felt like a reunion of long lost, distant relatives, some of whom couldn't quite place each other. ("Is that Uncle Fred over there? Now who's that?") There was lots of beer, lots of toasts and despite the mourning, there was a whole lot of laughter.

Journalism Education Grapples With the Internet

It's puzzling that enrollment in many journalism programs, including Columbia's J-School, is increasing even as so many newspapers are dying.

I'm sure that much of this has to do with the Internet and the fact that many students are already blogging and creating their own videos and photos and so journalism seems a natural step for them.

I'm afraid my students choose journalism because they think they are being practical, as in, "I really want to be an actor," "I really want to be a filmmaker," "I really want to be a novelist,"...."but journalism is my backup." I quickly try to inject a little reality into that equation.

As Elizabeth Zwerling points out on OJR, journalism programs are responding to the demand by offering more online courses. Some are ending the distinction between traditional print media and online media as if they are two utterly forein concepts to each other. The University of Wisconsin at Madison's journalism school offers a "boot camp" for journalists of six core courses under the umbrella of "Mass Communication Practices." Advanced students choose either reporting or strategic communications (I'm not sure what that is exactly but never mind).

At Rugers, students can take a course on web design, exploring new media or a new course on multimedia reporting. Like many schools, Rutgers is examining how to instill "media intelligence" in its students.

All this is headed in the right direction but I think the universities that take a wholistic approach that includes multimedia and print have the right idea. This helps put to rest the debate over whether students need to learn basic reporting and writing skills (yes), get a good basic understanding of media, ethics and law (yes) or learn technological skills (yes).

Of course, all this means that all we old school journalists and journalism professors have to become new school. As Regina McCombs, an multimedia instructor at the Poynter Institute told Zwerling, "They have to learn new things. When you first are trying a new thing you say, 'I suck at this...You have to go through sucking at it."

She got that right. Zwerling goes on to say that she's promised her students she'll go on Facebook this summer. Um, OK. My students spent several minutes discussing how terrible itis that their parents have taken over Facebook, so I don't think they would be thrilled to know that I'm on Facebook. But I agree with her premise. We have to take the bull by the horns and start social networking. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go make some new "friends."

Journalist Roxana Saberi Freed

The release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi in Iran, who was jailed on trumped up spying charges, is a victory of sorts for journalists and for the U.S. Iranian officials apparently succumbed to U.S. pressure to free Saberi.

Saberi, 32, a freelance reporter for NPR and the BBC, had been held since January in an Iranian prison. She was first arrested for buying a bottle of wine but later charged with spying and working without a press credential, according to the New York Times. She had briefly gone on a hunger strike but stopped when it affected her health.

But as Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists points out, there are still at least six journalists imprisoned in Iran, none of whom received any trial, not even the kind of trial Saberi received.

The incident underlines again the danger many international (and some national) journalists place themselves in to do their jobs. Sadly, incidents like these also have the effect that repressive governments are looking for: It tamps down press coverage and that leaves governments more free to operate without scrutiny. That's a scary prospect at a time when there is less coverage than ever of the Mideast, particularly in broadcast news.

Nazanin Rafsanjani, another NPR journalist with dual American-Iranian citizenship told "On the Media," that the arrest made her think twice about plans to travel to Iran to cover the upcoming election. They decided not to go. "If it's a tactic to intimidate journalists," she said. "It's working."

Job Prospects for young journalists

Every semester, I spend the last day of my news writing and reporting class discussing jobs. It's a sad, depressing discussion but I feel that somebody's got to do it.

I bring them coffee and doughnuts and this year I joked that the doughnuts would be the only sweet thing I would be giving them. It wasn't a joke.

Some 5,900 jobs were lost in 2009, according to the Pew Research Center's annual journalism report. Newspapers, magazines and broadcast companies are all shrinking. There are 47,000 newspaper journalists unemployed nationwide. (This is where my students began looking shell-shocked).

I also told them that some journalists are getting web-related jobs. An annual survey of journalism and communications graduates by Lee B. Becker of the University of Georgia, found that nearly 56 percent of students who graduated in 2007 with communications degrees worked in jobs requiring web skills.

Good technology skills and hands-on experience are crucial in getting a job, I advised my students. I told them that in some ways they have a better job of landing a job than I do because they would be applying for entry-level jobs, while I would be applying for upper-level jobs (yeah right) that might pay more (snicker, snicker).

I was reminded of the recent Princeton conference on the death of newspapers at which Star Ledger Editor Jim Willse spoke. After losing 40 percent of their staff, the newspaper has hired several entry-level reporters straight out of college. Willse was frank about the reason: they don't have to pay them very much. He was also frank that losing all those experienced reporters created a tremendous void for the newspaper. But the Star-Ledger, like most newspapers, was and is fighting for survival and you do what you have to do to survive.

Hiring young reporters to replace older, better paid reporters has been a tradition at many news organizations that run on the power of enthusiastic young people who are willing to work long hours for little pay. I remember one editor calling me in to tell me that he just interviewed a Columbia Grad who was willing to sweep floors. I felt like saying, "I've swept floors. I'm done."

But now hiring young people for little or nothing has been institutionalized. Look on any journalism job site and unpaid internships abound. If you're a journalism major graduating this spring, you could get an unpaid internship, work as a waitress or waiter at night, and commute into the city from your mom and dad's house.

This is how I started out. I worked at a low-paying weekly newspaper and then tutored and worked at a bookstore to supplement my measly income while I lived with my mom in New York. But let's face it, that plan doesn't work well in the long run.

My students are understandably frustrated at the idea of making no money after graduating. A couple of years ago all my students wanted to go to graduate school or law school. Now they want to all go out and get jobs to pay off all those expensive student loans they've taken to be in college. The only problem is there are so few jobs out there and even the ones that pay aren't enough to live on.

One student asked me to tell them about my own experience. Did I want to teach when I graduated from college and grad school? I told them that I wanted to be a newspaper reporter and I did get to do that and I had a lot of fun. But I quit that job when I had kids and went to freelancing and teaching. That worked until a few months ago when all my freelance jobs started drying up. Now I'm thinking of teaching high school.

I think they were pretty horrified by that as well. I guess teaching high school is a fate worse than death. But that's my Plan B and I might have to go there.

So my final words of wisdom for my crew of young journalists was to go for their dreams and not settle right away. I told them they should decide what they can't do as well as what they want most to do. If they know they would hate being an administrator or a bureaucrat they shouldn't do that. But they should decide what they are willing to do.

Follow your dreams, I told them, but have a Plan B just in case.

The Boston Globe Lives On

The Boston Globe just announced that it reached a settlement with one of its largest unions that will allow it to remain open.
It's heartening that this major newspaper that has been operating for 137 years and that broke the priest-sex abuse scandal, will remain open at least for now. That's great news for Boston and the rest of the country.
Whether it's great news for the staff of the Globe remains to be seen. The Times Co. had asked for the Boston Newspaper Guild, representing 700 editorial, advertising and business staff to take cuts of a whopping 23 percent. The guild had offered cuts of 5 percent. Apparently the agreement is somewhere in the middle, according to the Associated Press.
Another issue was the lifetime job guarantees held by 470 employees, including about 190 guild members, that makes it harder for the Times Co. to lay people off. The guarantees were given to employees in 1994 when the Times Co. bought The Globe.
Lifetime job guarantees seem like a luxury no company can afford, especially newspapers. But employees should have some job protections in this era when there are such deep cuts in many companies but especially newspapers. Unfortunately, as The Globe case proves, newspaper owners essentially can hold the newspaper hostage with a gun aimed right at its head. If employees don't give in to their demands, they can kill the newspaper and then everyone loses.

Newspapers Dying: Why Should We Care?

We all know that newspapers are dying quickly but even the most avid proponents of newspapers among us don’t put it as strongly as Paul Starr who argues that newspapers are an essential component of our democracy, serving to keep governments in check and to reduce corruption and still serving as the main source of original reporting in our society. (Starr wrote a great article on this subject in The New Republic in March. )
Starr, a professor of communications and public affairs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and author of “The Creation of the Media,” and "Freedom's Power" was the keynote speaker at a conference on “The Newspaper Crisis” that was filled with doom and gloom and perhaps a few glimmers of hope.
The conference also featured two panels on the newspaper crisis in new jersey and possible solutions to the crisis. In those panels, Jim Willse editor of the Star-Ledger, detailed how his newspaper has dealt with cutbacks of 45 percent of its staff and Steven Engelberg, managing editor of ProPublica, discussed a non-profit model for journalists. (More on them in future blogs).
New Jersey is not immune from the effects of the decline of newspapers, Starr argued. The state “has long suffered a news deficit,” and with cutbacks at all the major newspapers. Where once there were 50 reporters covering state government in Trenton there are now just 15 and that means state residents get less news about what the government is doing and less news going to the general public. But there are many cities that may wind up with no daily newspaper at all.
Online publications do well serving people who want one type of news, Starr pointed out. If you want sports, you can find plenty of sports sites online. But while the sports fan who picks up the newspaper also gets a smattering of news if only from the headlines, the sports fan who goes online only gets sports.
While some online sites provide original reporting, most depend on newspapers for their content, Starr said. Now the Associated Press is hoping to get search engines like Google to pay them for content but no one knows if that will work or if it will provide enough money to really help newspapers. Other alternatives could be to make newspapers non-profits.
One model could be National Public Radio that depends on government and corporate grants and listener donations to survive. “It has become the last refuge of real journalism on radio,” he said.
Some countries, like France, directly subsidize the media. But that obviously has problems of its own because it could affect the media’s independence, Starr said.
Access to online news also depends on people’s income, education and political interest, Starr said. People who are already interested in news can find news sources online but it may be less accessible to less educated people who aren’t accustomed to finding information online. That means fewer people will be able to make informed decisions, Starr said.
“This is an old problem of democracy coming back in a new form,” Starr warned, “and the future of Democracy is at stake.”

Twitter

I went to an American Society of Journalist and Author's conference this past weekend and it was all about Twitter. The message was that all journalists should be out there with their blog, their website, their Facebook and their Linked In and then they should be linking all the thing with tweets.
Tweets are 140 character messages that you send to your friends or "followers." It's the kind of technology that many of us over 30 might dismiss as the latest fad. But what it is is another means of getting your message (whatever that message is) out to the general public. Here's a full explaination on Tweeternet.
That means all of us unemployed, semi-employed and under-employed journalists have to not only send out tweets into the ethernet but also make them witty and well-written and interesting, all in 140 characters. Not an easy task for the long-winded among us (myself included).
Columbia Journalism Professor Sree Sreenivasan introduced us to Twitter by showing a world map with little birds where people were Twittering in Japan, Russia and all over the world.
I wanted to know why my friends would want to know that I was currently eating a pastrami sandwich. Sreenivasan replied that they wouldn't want to know I was eating a pastrami sandwich but they would want to know that I was eating a pastrami sandwich at the same deli where a famous editor eats and they would want to know any other interesting tidbits I might pass along.
He also had a couple of examples of the importance of Twitter, including the story of a young man who was arrested in Greece and wrote a one-word tweet that just said "arrest" and promptly got him out of jail. Another woman posted a suicide threat to actress Demi Moore and Moore was able to somehow connect back to her to get her help.
For most of us, Twitter probably won't save lives but maybe it could save our professional lives. There's certainly enough of us drowning. Many journalists (myself included) also wanted to know how we're supposed to find time for all this. Sreenivasan advised us to target our technology wisely and use it to promote ourselves. So sometime soon look for my tweets. I promise not to write about pastrami sandwiches.

Will charging for content save newspapers?

The Associated Press is taking a stand that Web site users and Internet companies that use their work should get their permission and share the money with them. If they don't, they are threatening legal action.

I want to applaud this action but it's so late in the day that it also makes me want to throw my hands up in disgust. Can they stop a trend that record producers and nearly everybody else in the universe has found impossible to control? It seems almost impossible. They let the genie out of the bottle when they offered it free to begin with and it's always hard to get that genie back into the bottle later on.

As the Newsosaur blog points out, the hunt for offenders could turn into a ridiculous and futile chase that he compares to the Keystone cops. That's because there's no good way to find offenders and punish them. It may come down to the kind of enforcement effort seen in the music publishing industry that made examples of several illegal downloads, including some children, but did not nothing to stave the unending flow of illegal downloads.

On the other hand, newspapers and news organizations have to find a way to make money on the Internet or they most assuredly are doomed. Since the Associated Press is owned by newspapers, it could be one way to get more revenue. The New York Times tried a paid service years ago and I was one of those people shelling out 99 cents per article. But it apparently never made money.

The new policy seems to be aimed mostly at Google which is both the angel that brings people to news sites and the devil that may be profiting from the hard work of all those reporters and editors out there.

I want it to work. I really do. I want something to work. I'm just not sure this is the answer.

Hyperlocal blogs continued

To continue my discussion about hyperlocal media, Placeblogger has a post reporting on the idea that hyperlocal blogs could take the place of the Boston Globe. The New York Times Co. has threatened to close the Globe if unions don't make $20 million in concessions.
The post refers to another blogger, Rick Burnes, of Cambridge, who suggests "we shouldn't be asking how to save The Globe, we should be asking how we'll build its replacement. He goes on to suggest that The Boston Foundation should fund a community news experiment similar to the Knight Foundation.
I think it's unlikely that community bloggers will take the place of a national institution like The Globe and the 340 people on its news staff and apparently many people in the community, including bloggers, agree, according to a New York Times article. Supporters of The Globe are also suggesting that it be taken over by a community foundation.
Obviously there will have to be drastic changes in how newspapers are financed if they are to survive. Maybe hyperlocal blogs will eventually replace newspapers (although it's unclear how they will make money too) but I don't think they will ever replace the kind of depth of coverage you find in a newspaper like The Globe. So, let's say a little media prayer for them and for all of us present and former reporters.

Hyperlocal Media

Is the future of news going to be in hyperlocal media websites? Apparently, several entrepreneurs think so. There are a number of sites springing up that can give you news about what's happening in your little plot of the world, according to a recent New York Times article.
These include OutsideIn, Placeblogger and Patch. The Knight Foundation is backing several local web experiments. I guess I should be cheering any attempt at bringing news to more people and people do seem to want local news. I can see having some centralized spots where people can blog about their communities.
I guess my cranky reaction to all this stems from the fact that I don't see blogs replacing local reporters. That is, I don't think blogs offer the same objective reporting you can find in newspapers and I don't care so much about what the guy down the street thinks about my little patch of the world. But to be fair, maybe I would turn to these sites if they were all that was on offer. (We have two small weeklies in town so it isn't) and if they expanded enough to really offer some interesting perspectives.
The sites I looked at also didn't have anything on Princeton, N.J. This isn't surprising since Princeton isn't exactly a major city but I'm a little less interested in reading about South Orange or Newark. Of the few sites I looked at, Patch seems to have the most content. Surprise, surprise, Patch, which was stated and funded by the new AOL Chief Tim Armstrong, has reporters working out of its New York office.
Most of the sites seem to rely on local newspapers for content and obviously that will be a problem if those newspapers go out of business. So that brings us back to square one and the demise of the newspapers again.
The article also points out that the hyperlocal sites have the same problem as newspapers: finding a way to fund their sites. They can try to get local businesses and I guess they can pick up the local businesses from newspapers if they die. (I was going to say when they die but it was too depressing).
One ofthe sites, Placeblogger, can connect you to bloggers all over the world: Milan, Paris etc. and has a link to a New Jersey political blog, politicsnj, as well as a blog about Livestock and something called The Jersey Exile.

Young people and newspapers

Only 43 percent of all Americans say that losing their local newspapers would hurt their community "a lot,"  according to a recent Pew poll and only  33 percent say they would miss the newspaper if it were gone. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1147/newspapers-struggle-public-not-concerned

Those numbers go up with regular newspapers, 56 percent of whom say that the loss of the newspaper would hurt the community and 55 percent of whom say they would miss their newspapers. But even those numbers are astonishingly low.

I used the poll in my journalism class and asked two students to represent newspaper readers and non-readers. Sadly, there were a lot more non-readers than readers although several students said they read the newspaper online.

The young woman representing non-readers is a sassy and smart young woman in my class who wants to go into magazine journalism.  She just came right out and said that newspapers are boring and that she is a visual person and she sees all those gray columns as really boring. She also said that she's not that concerned about news that doesn't affect her.

I was heartened that the other students questioned her closely about her news consumption. They asked her if she reads blogs? No. Does she watch TV news? No. One young woman even asked, "How can you make informed decisions as a citizen if you're not informed yourself?" Thank you! 

The young man representing newspaper readers didn't put up the greatest defense of newspapers. He said he reads them because he has poor vision and can't read them online. But it was clear he does keep informed on all the news.

A few days later I talked to them about how disturbed I was by the young woman's comments.  I told the students I would like them to find some way to engage with the news, whether it's the radio or TV or blogs.

"What do you do to get your news?" the same young woman asked. I told them I read The New York Times and listen to NPR and I also watch the Today Show and Jon Stewart.  So I'm not a good example of a local newspaper subscriber either unless you count the weekly. I stopped subscribing to the local daily, The Trenton Times, when they dropped my column.

I don't know how to get young people to read the newspaper. I give them quizzes, I have them do weekly briefings on the news. But many of them clearly still aren't paying much attention to the news and clearly a few of them are paying no attention at all.  As for getting them to read the newspaper, it's a losing battle. They can't afford to subscribe to the newspaper and even the best of them get their newspapers online.

So it seems that both the poll and our informal class discussion underlines once again how very bleak the future of newspapers is if future journalists aren't reading the newspaper. Clearly, the next generation will be getting their news online if they're even getting the news. That makes me sad but it seems that fighting that trend is a battle that can't be won.