The Seattle experiment

Let’s begin with the obvious. It’s a damn shame that about 145 newsroom folks are losing their jobs, as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer becomes the largest newspaper in the country to move to an online-only platform. Only about 20 people will cover the news at seattlepi.com.

That said, I think 20 people could do a lot of useful damage if they’re focused on the right things — covering local news that really matters and offering intelligent aggregation of other content, including local bloggers. Given that the Post-Intelligencer was the number-two paper in Seattle, I can think of no better place to try such an experiment. Too bad the dominant paper, the Seattle Times, is in such tough shape, too. But that’s the case pretty much everywhere.

I was interested in see in Ken Doctor’s analysis that Lincoln Millstein, the head of Hearst News Digital, will have an indirect hand in the Seattle experiment. Way back when, Millstein was editor of what was then the Boston Globe’s Living/Arts section, and a good one.

That said, I’m skeptical of the online-only model. Maybe if seattlepi.com enjoys some initial success, the Hearst folks might consider a free daily tabloid consisting of the best of what’s online. As long as advertising remains more lucrative in print than on the Web, that might be the way to go.

Some sort of print presence would also help to distinguish it from Crosscut, a non-profit community news site that serves the Seattle area.

Dylan goes Tex-Mex

I’m very excited about this. After Bob Dylan wrapped up his comeback trilogy in 2006 with “Modern Times,” I figured that would be just about it. He’s 67 now, and he’s more than proved his point.

Except that Dylan apparently never thought of it as a trilogy. He’s got a new album of original material, “Together Through Life,” coming out next month, supposedly with a Tex-Mex flavor. (I’ll assume he’s not going to revisit the hilarious accent he unveiled on “Romance in Durango.”) Zimmy says he’s aiming for something different this time:

I think we milked it all we could on that last record and then some. We squeezed the cow dry. All the “Modern Times” songs were written and performed in the widest range possible so they had a little bit of everything. These new songs have more of a romantic edge.

Joel Brown pointed me to this Rolling Stone piece, which describes “Together Through Life” as having “the live-in-the-studio feel of Dylan’s last two studio records, 2001’s ‘Love and Theft’ and 2006’s ‘Modern Times,’ but with a seductive border-cafe feel (courtesy of the accordion on every track) and an emphasis on struggling-love songs.”

I can’t wait.

Last night I was listening to “Tell Tale Signs,” Dylan’s recent collection of outtakes, mainly from the trilogy and 1989’s “Oh Mercy.” It strikes me that Dylan’s so-called comeback is now 20 years old — that, contrary to the conventional wisdom that he staggered around for decades, he actually rediscovered his gift in his late 40s, and has been kicking ass pretty much ever since, with just one turkey (“Under the Red Sky,” 1990) in all those years.

Yes, “Time Out of Mind” (1998), as good as anything he’s ever done, signaled to the wider public that he was back. But if you look at his actual output, you’d have to say that he’s been on top of his game for a long time.

Gmail and its discontents

It must be the season of technical difficulties.

I use Gmail for everything. I’ve set it up to pull in my Northeastern e-mail, and I have an alias that allows me to send mail via Gmail as if it were coming from my Northeastern address. Gmail isn’t perfect, but it’s better than anything else.

Today, though, I sent an e-mail to a colleague at Northeastern. It never arrived. I tried again. No luck. Finally, I sent the same message using my Gmail address. Bingo — she got it immediately.

What I had run into, I strongly suspect, was a hyperactive spam filter at her end. The filter saw that my incoming e-mail address did not match the underlying Gmail information in the header and flagged it as spam. (The theory is that I must have been faking my outgoing e-mail address, and so therefore was up to no good.) I’ve run into this very occasionally before, but not quite so directly.

Now, of course, I’m wondering how many other e-mails I’ve sent to people at Northeastern that never arrived. I’ve contacted the IT folks to see if there might be a solution that doesn’t force me either to stop using my NU address (unprofessional) or abandon Gmail for NU business (undesirable). But I’m not holding out a whole lot of hope.

Any thoughts?

Dissecting the news in Brookline

Friend of Media Nation Danny Schechter will be speaking and screening a new film next Monday, March 23, at 7 p.m. in Brookline. His appearance will benefit Brookline Access Television. Here’s Danny’s announcement:

I may no longer live in Boston, but Boston lives in me.

Danny Schechter, your News Dissector here, inviting you to an event I am being saluted at on Monday evening, March 23, at 7 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on Harvard Street in Brookline.

It is a benefit for Brookline Access Television, a vital community TV station.

I will be screening a “self-dissection,” a film called “WORK IN PROGRESS: Putting the ME Back In MEDia,” a hour retrospective on my work including my years at WBCN, WGBH, WCVB, the Harvard Nieman Journalism Fellowship, etc.

Produced by Marie Sullivan, it is a fast-paced romp through my media career from the ’60s to 60 and beyond, with many fun moments and serious ideas. I did it because media folks rarely scrutinize their own work or try to draw lessons for younger people enchanted with the media world. Folks who have seen it say they were surprised that it is not self-promotional. (Well, maybe just a little!)

In my career I have told many stories — including my most recent, still-unreleased film on the Barack Obama campaign — so why not tell my own?

I would be pleased if you can come, support a good cause — people’s TV — and see what I have been up to in the years before and after I lived in Boston. (Incidentally, Ijust learned that the year after I left, Obama moved into an apartment around the corner from our house in Somerville. Smile.) Another connection of interest — this event takes place at the very cool Coolidge Corner, a great theater that my brother Bill, who lives nearby, helped save year back. I am proud that he did that.

Disclosure: They are looking for a $10 donation. Thanks to BATV for the invite and for organizing it. For more information: Peter Zawadzki, who can be reached at peter {at} batv {dot} org.

Until then,

Danny Schechter

For more on what our company, Globalvision, is up to these days, go to globalvision.org.

Photo of Schechter with another Boston media legend, Sarah Ann Shaw, is (cc) 2006 by the Boston chapter of the Action Coalition for Media Education and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

A new paradigm in foreign correspondence

Good story in the New York Times on Sunday about the new paradigm in foreign reporting. It wasn’t that long ago that a reporter for, say, the Times understood that few of the people he was covering would ever see what he wrote — and that it would trickle back slowly.

Now, because of the Internet, writes Anand Giridharadas, Western media outlets are available everywhere — so much so that the majority of Google searches for Indian and Chinese news in the Times comes from those countries.

Business as usual in the governor’s office

There’s been plenty of outrage over Gov. Deval Patrick’s appointment of state Sen. Marian Walsh to a transparently unnecessary $175,000-a-year job. Both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald have editorialized against it.

But I’m especially struck by mild-mannered CommonWealth magazine pundit Michael Jonas’ post on CW Unbound, which ties together a number of loose threads in order to demonstrate precisely what a business-as-usual governor Patrick has become. Jonas frankly describes the Walsh appointment as an “outrage” and writes:

It’s hard not to see that as the trajectory Gov. Deval Patrick is on after the latest slap in the face to those expecting more from an administration that pledged to sweep out the culture of patronage and cronyism on Beacon Hill.

Jonas connects the Walsh appointment to Patrick’s high-handed, Big Dig-tainted transportation secretary, Jim Aloisi, and his pension-abusing stimulus czar, Jeffrey Simon, as well as to the goodies Sal DiMasi handed out as he was leaving Beacon Hill.

Well, DiMasi’s gone. Patrick is still here, and he’s got to persuade the public that it should put up with some pretty draconian budget cuts and tax hikes in the months ahead. Good luck with that, Governor.

Media heavyweights seek libel relief

Q: What do the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix and the Boston Herald agree on? A: The dangerous precedent that would be set if a ruling that undermines truth as a defense in libel cases is allowed to stand.

Earlier this week, according to the Boston Globe’s Jonathan Saltzman, noted First Amendment lawyer Robert Bertsche filed an amicus curiae brief (PDF) asking that the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit overturn a decision reached recently by a three-judge panel of that court. The brief is signed by a host of media giants, including the New York Times Co. (which owns the Globe), GateHouse Media (which owns more than 100 newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts), ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, the Washington Post, Time Inc., WGBH and many, many others.

As I reported in the Guardian on Feb. 17, the decision, written by Judge Juan Torruella, allowed a libel suit to move ahead on the grounds that the offending speech (an e-mail to some 1,500 Staples employees about a sales director who’d been fired for violating the company’s expense-report policies), though true, might be held libelous on the grounds that it was made with “actual malice.”

In making that ruling, Torruella relied on the meaning of malice as it existed in 1902, when the Massachusetts law at issue went into effect — a meaning that Torruella defined as “ill will” or “malevolent intent.” In Times v. Sullivan (1964), the U.S. Supreme Court redefined “actual malice” as a defamatory statement made even though it was known to be false, made with “reckless disregard” as to its truth or falsity.

The Torruella decision applies only to private persons, whereas the Times v. Sullivan and its progeny pertain to public officials and public figures. Nevertheless, in other decisions — most famously Gertz v. Robert Welch (1974) — the Supreme Court made it clear that even a libel suit brought by a private person must be based on a statement that was false and negligently made.

The amicus brief argues that if Torruella’s ruling is allowed to stand, plaintiffs will be able to win libel suits if they are merely able to prove that the defendant was “out to get them.” The brief continues:

In some quarters, it may even have the chilling effect of discouraging reporting and commentary on some of the most pressing issues of the day, such as the internal affairs of businesses coping with severe economic challenges, for fear that such matters might mistakenly be deemed to be of only “private concern.”

This is a case of enormous importance to the beleaguered news media and, more important, to the public, which depends on tough, fair, truthful reporting. Let’s hope the full court does the right thing.

A low whine from the Naked City (II)

Alan Mutter, one of the best newspaper analysts in the blogosphere, shares Adam Reilly’s and my skepticism about Douglas McIntyre’s list of doomed newspapers. Mutter calls McIntyre “a friend,” but adds that there is “no hard data or deep analysis to support his findings.” He continues:

Although some of the papers one day may succumb to anemic readership and revenues, there is not enough information or analysis underlying the scary list to support the proposition that the publications are more or less doomed than any of 10, 20 or 30 other papers that might have been named, instead.

What Mutter’s got to say about Boston is especially interesting:

Even though weak economies are hardest on the No. 2 papers in two-newspaper towns, Doug predicts the demise of the print edition of the Boston Globe while saying nothing of the apparently fragile financial status of the far smaller Boston Herald.

Over at the Phoenix, Reilly responds to the Inside Track’s criticism.

Update: Paul McMorrow nails it.

NewsTrust J-hunt: The final five

My stint as host of NewsTrust’s journalism topic area comes to an end today. Here are five stories I submitted this morning:

I could write an entire post on the last item, but I’ll just say this: Stewart is perhaps the best and most important media critic we’ve had since A.J. Liebling.

His dissection of CNBC’s Jim Cramer last night — as well as his two eight-minute pieces lampooning the so-called experts of CNBC (here and here) — will have, I predict, a major and well-deserved negative effect on the network.

A low whine from the Naked City

Is this what the Boston Herald calls a correction?

The Herald’s Inside Track chides the Phoenix’s Adam Reilly and Media Nation today for questioning a blog post by financial analyst Douglas McIntyre placing the Boston Globe on a list of 10 newspapers that may go out of business or go online-only by the end of the year.

What’s really amusing, though, is the way the Track quietly corrects an error made earlier this week on Jessica Heslam’s Messenger Blog. The error — which had Time magazine predicting the Globe’s demise — remains uncorrected.

As Media Nation was the first to report, Time, like several other media outlets, was merely running the feed from McIntyre’s 24/7 Wall St. blog on its Web site. Naturally, the Track takes Reilly and me to task for not doing any “reporting,” which it conveniently defines as not calling the Globe in order to get a “no comment.”

Finally, the Track manages the neat trick of lampooning Reilly’s and my skepticism over McIntyre’s claim that the Globe is worth only $20 million while simultaneously acknowledging that the paper’s real estate and other assets are probably worth more than $100 million.

The plain fact is that the most recent analysis anyone has seen is one put out by Barclays Capital analyst Craig Huber, who estimates the paper’s value at $192.8 million.

The newspaper business is in unimaginably bad shape, and the Globe is as vulnerable as any paper. If being cautiously optimistic about the future of the Globe makes me hopelessly naive, then I offer my deepest apologies.

Then again, I’m also one of the few media-watchers I know who predicts that the Herald will also survive. I suppose I could be wrong about that, too.

More: WBZ Radio (AM 1030) still has a Tuesday report up on its Web site wrongly attributing McIntyre’s item to Time magazine. Come on, folks. This isn’t that hard.