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.