Citizen journalism on the air

A small television station in Santa Rosa, Calif., has eliminated most of its news staff and will replace its evening newscasts with contributions from citizen journalists. The station, KFTY-TV, is owned by Clear Channel. Thus, this has all the makings of a profit-driven fiasco — a perversion of the promise of citizen journalism.

But you know what? Clear Channel’s bottom-line-driven motivation aside, this might prove worthwhile. As the ironically named station executive Steve Spendlove is quoted as saying, “There will be a loss in local coverage, I’m not going to lie to you. But there are a lot of other places to get most of that information.”

It’s hard to tell from this Wikipedia entry how well-served the Santa Rosa area is. But assuming that residents still have two or three local newscasts from which to choose, having another outlet doing something completely different strikes me as something well worth trying.

Here is another story on the Santa Rosa situation. And here is the KFTY Web site.

Counting on Anna Nicole

Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times writes that the death of Anna Nicole Smith may be among the first celebrity stories to land on the front pages of quality newspapers in large measure because of Internet traffic. Rutten explains:

Throughout the afternoon Thursday, editors across the country watched the number of “hits” recorded for online items about Smith’s death. These days, it’s the rare newspaper whose meeting to discuss the content of the next day’s edition doesn’t include a recitation of the most popular stories on the paper’s website. It’s a safe bet that those numbers helped shove Anna Nicole Smith onto a lot of front pages.

What makes this of more than passing interest is that serious American journalism is in the process of transforming itself into a new, hybrid news medium that combines traditional print and broadcast with a more purposefully articulated online presence. One of the latter’s most seductive attributes is its ability to gauge readers’ appetites for a particular story on a minute-to-minute basis. What you get is something like the familiar television ratings — though constantly updated, if you choose to treat them that way.

As someone who believes in the more interactive, “news as a conversation” model espoused by Dan Gillmor, Jay Rosen and others, I’m troubled by Rutten’s observation. This isn’t good, is it? And I say that as someone who believes Smith’s death probably deserved to be on page one — just not as a result of Web numbers.

Then again, this isn’t the inevitable consequence of greater interactivity — it’s less than that. As Rutten notes, this is a matter of editors emulating their television counterparts and following the ratings. And let’s not forget, though TV executives may know how to win any given night by going downscale, news audiences overall have been shrinking for more than 20 years. What feels good right now isn’t necessarily what succeeds in the long run.

Newspaper editors — the good ones, anyway — have traditionally aspired to something better. Unfortunately, being able to measure reader interest is going to make it harder to resist the urge to pander. (Thanks to Media Nation reader R.P. for alerting me to Rutten’s column.)

Stomach-churning details

The Boston Herald’s page-one stunner today is uncorroborated, but it’s on the record — and revolting. Jessica Van Sack’s interview with James McGonnell and Kelly Williams about Michael Riley, charged with murdering his 4-year-old daughter, Rebecca, with prescription medication, is stomach-churning. (McGonnell is Riley’s brother-in-law; Williams is McGonnell’s fiancée.)

As for Department of Social Services commissioner Harry Spence’s yet-again defense of his agency (Globe story here; Herald story here), my head tells me that he might be right, but my heart tells me that we’ve heard enough excuses over the years. Sorry, Mr. Spence, but Gov. Deval Patrick ought to personally escort you from the building by the end of today.

The fatal attraction of free

Frank Beacham, in an essay at TVTechnology.com, identifies the biggest challenge facing citizen journalism: the relentless attempts by corporate media companies to co-opt well-meaning amateur reporters, photographers and videographers into giving away their work in order to fatten someone else’s bottom line.

Beacham is especially upset with Yahoo and Reuters, which are teaming up to add citizen contributions to their mix while paying little or nothing for them. Beacham writes:

It’s a good thing that Abraham Zapruder, the pioneering citizen journalist who aimed his 8mm movie camera toward the Kennedy motorcade in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, was not dealing with Reuters. It’s doubtful he would have gotten the $150,000 payment — about half a million in today’s currency — when he sold the footage to Life magazine.

Who do these media companies think they are fooling? They are making a blatant attempt to build news organizations based on free user- provided content.

There is, however, a significant flaw in the corporate-defined citizen-journalism model. Good journalism may be hard, but technology is easy. And rather than giving it away to Yahoo, Reuters et al., most citizen journalists are doing it themselves.

Earlier this week the Knight Citizen News Network released an important new report titled “Citizen Media: Fad or the Future of News?” Unlike Beacham’s essay, the Knight report focuses on so-called hyperlocal journalism — blogs dedicated to one community, or even to just a neighborhood.

And, here, the DIY ethic is alive and well. I haven’t had a chance to do more than skim the report, but I can tell you that the focus is on independent sites. Many of these are being run by professional journalists with an eye toward making a profit, such as the New Haven Independent and Baristanet — a new opportunity for journalists trying to survive in a shrinking business. Some corporate media experiments, such as GateHouse’s Wicked Local sites in Eastern Massachusetts, are given a look as well.

I think it’s likely — or at least I hope — that the very real problem identified by Beacham will turn out to be self-correcting. Corporate media executives who genuinely want to use citizen-media tools to build community and experiment with new business models will be rewarded for their efforts.

But those who think they can profit by suckering amateurs into giving away their content will soon discover that what they’ve created a host of new competitors.

Beam sends a message to Welch

The quote of the day comes from Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam, who tells the New York Observer what would be wrong with a Jack Welch-led buyout of the Globe: “Jack Welch and David Geffen’s idea of journalism is like a Charlie Rose interview. ‘Gosh, Mr. Welch, tell us more about your fabulous career.’ That’s not our idea of journalism.”

Geffen, of course, is the entertainment-industry mogul who wants to buy the Los Angeles Times from the Tribune Co.

The Observer reports that New York Times Co. chief executive Janet Robinson will meet with the Globe staff on Feb. 8 and 9 to address the recent spate of bad news coming out of Morrissey Boulevard, including the closing of foreign bureaus, 125 job cuts at the Globe and at its sister paper, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, and the company’s recent decision to devalue the Globe and the T&G by more than $800 million.

The Phoenix’s Adam Reilly has a good roundup here.

The questions all along have been two-fold: Will the advertising climate in Greater Boston turn around? And will the Times Co. sell?

It appears that Robinson is going to tell the troops “yes” and “no.” And that would be moderately good news. If you consider what’s going on in the newspaper business right now, continued Times Co. ownership might well be the least bad alternative.

Something (or someone) better might come along in two to five years. But for now, the Times Co. is probably a safer bet to preserve the Globe’s core local mission than any other prospective owners.

And kudos to Beam for dissing a zillionaire who could still somehow wind up as his boss. (Via Romenesko.)

But what about 2002?

Scott Helman of the Boston Globe weighs in today with a curious — or perhaps I should say incurious — profile of Peter Flaherty, who is described as Mitt Romney’s “go-to guy for conservatives.”

Romney, of course, has engendered considerable skepticism on the right with his shift from moderate to conservative on social issues, especially abortion and gay rights. Flaherty’s job is to tell conservatives that Romney’s conversion is sincere and not a matter of mere political expediency.

Flaherty’s key talking point: “Obviously I’ve got to believe he’s for real, or I wouldn’t be wasting my time.”

Trouble is, the only evidence Helman cites that Romney used to be a moderate dates back to 1994, and to that illuminating YouTube video of Romney trying to out-liberal Ted Kennedy during their Faneuil Hall debate for the U.S. Senate. There’s no question that Romney has moved well to the right since then.

But there’s also no question that Romney has moved well to the right since 2002, when he ran for governor as a moderate — and, significantly, when Flaherty went to work for him, according to Helman’s story.

Take, for instance, this AP story from October 2002 in which Romney’s then-running mate, Kerry Healey, defended her boss as being every bit as pro-choice as his Democratic rival: “There isn’t a dime of difference between Mitt Romney’s position on choice and Shannon O’Brien.” Romney himself said that he “will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose … I will not change any provisions in Massachusetts’ pro-choice laws.”

Or consider that in 2002 Romney opposed a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. Or that, also in 2002, his campaign distributed pink-colored fliers at Gay Pride that read, “Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride weekend! All citizens deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual preference.”

Which brings us back to Flaherty, who defends Romney’s conservative credentials on the grounds that he wouldn’t waste his time working for someone who did not genuinely hold such views. The obvious question is why Flaherty was so willing to waste his time in 2002.

The irony-deprived

That would be today’s Boston Globe editorial page. And MetroWest Daily News editor Richard Lodge. And Media Nation.

Think back over the past few days to how many people have defended the Mooninite pranksters on the grounds that they were promoting a well-known cartoon — well-known, at least, to a certain subset of teenagers and twentysomethings, a category that most definitely does not include, uh, me.

Does that mean that our governmental and public-safety officials must be expected to have an advanced degree in pop culture before deciding what to do about a bunch of circuit boards with batteries and wires sticking out? Such things have been known to blow up, you know.

How could we be so stupid? It’s simple. We don’t watch this stuff. We don’t know about it. We don’t have time. Sorry.

But Jay Fitzgerald is right — if Mayor Tom Menino tries to ban the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” movie over this, then he really has lost his mind.

Identical triplets

Until this moment, Media Nation has resisted the conspiracy theorists who’ve been wondering about those nearly identical stories that appear in the New York Times and the Boston Globe on the same day.

But now there are three separate incidents, and as every journalist knows, when you’ve got three, you’ve got a trend. So let’s review, shall we?

We begin with “Animal House,” the Democratic congressional crash pad occupied by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and our own Rep. Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts. A worthy feature? Absolutely. Alex Beam certainly thought so, and his piece appeared in the Globe on Jan. 18. So did my former Boston Phoenix colleague Mark Leibovich, whose Times article (sub. req.) also appeared on Jan. 18.

Next up: Sen. Barack Obama’s days as a student at Harvard Law School, the subject of lengthy, front-page articles last Sunday in both the Times (by Jodi Kantor) and the Globe (by Michael Levenson and Jonathan Saltzman).

Finally — and shame on me for not reading the Times first thing this morning — it turns out that Jackie MacMullan’s Globe story on Ted Johnson’s debilitating series of concussions is competing with this front-pager in the Times by Alan Schwarz on — yes — Ted Johnson’s debilitating series of concussions.

So what is going on here? My guess is that it’s not a conspiracy, but it’s not a complete coincidence, either.

Obviously if the New York Times Co., which owns both the Times and the Globe, were looking to save money, it would simply run the same story in both papers. And if the Times Co. were coordinating coverage in some way so that the Globe could neither beat nor be beaten by the Times on local stories, I’m reasonably confident that the Globe newsroom would be leaking like Scooter Libby.

But pure coincidence? That seems pretty unlikely.

Which leaves us, then, with the usual journalistic sausage-making.

Let’s take the “Animal House” story, which is probably the most transparent. The Times is working on a story, and Delahunt figures his hometown paper, the Globe, will get pissed if he doesn’t say anything. So he makes sure someone at the Globe knows about it, as well as when the Times story is slated to run. (You could work this in reverse, too, with Schumer as the tipster. But what about Durbin and the Chicago Tribune? Pathetic. The Tribune picked up the Times piece off the wires 10 days later.)

With Obama, Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree, to name just one possible suspect, is quoted in both stories. I’m not saying he tipped anyone off, but these things can come out in conversation through the proverbial friend of a friend of a friend.

Which brings us to MacMullan’s story. It didn’t register this morning, but now this passage makes a certain amount of sense:

Johnson toyed with going public with his story before. He shared his struggles with the Globe last summer, but later requested his comments be put on hold. The recent suicide of former NFL defensive back Andre Waters, who had multiple concussions and suffered from depression, finally prompted Johnson to come forward.

One interpretation is that MacMullan got word that the Times story was coming out, and that she wanted everyone to know she had it first — or, at least, she would have if Johnson had been willing to let her tell his story last summer.

The Times Co.’s ownership of the Globe is such a radioactive topic in these days of downsizing that many observers don’t want to hear any interpretation except the most nefarious. From what I can see, though, these three stories merely add up to One of Those Things.

Of Mooninites and pipe bombs

There’s a good Peter Gelzinis column in today’s Herald that places the stunt-gone-bad in the context of those two fake pipe bombs. Gelzinis interviewed Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis and writes:

Until those guerrilla marketeers at Turner Broadcasting finally owned up to their Mooninite shenanigans late Wednesday afternoon, Davis said that the chorus of law enforcement agencies had no choice but to assume that gag devices had been systematically planted all over town as a distraction for “real” ones that had also been placed.

In other words, the police weren’t quite as punk’d as all those “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” hipsters out there in the blogosphere would lead you to believe. It wasn’t those LEDs tacked onto all those circuit boards that police worried about, as much that guy with no light on upstairs, running away from what looked a helluva lot like a pipe bomb.

“Had we simply found these cartoon characters stuck here and there,” Davis said yesterday, “I can assure you this thing would have been tamped down in pretty short order.”

“But what troubled us was the discovery of those other two devices that looked very real indeed. And it wasn’t until the people from Turner took responsibility for what they had done, that we could think about the coincidence of what had taken place.”

Is Davis putting two and two together after the fact in order to make himself look good? Maybe. But his comments strike me as sensible and credible.

Over at the Globe, Steve Bailey has some very smart things to say, and Brian McGrory, well, doesn’t. And Seth Gitell makes a few good points in defense of Mayor Tom Menino, his former employer.

Head cases

Here’s a little context for Jackie MacMullan’s story in today’s Boston Globe on Ted Johnson, the former Patriots linebacker who’s suffering from depression and other ailments that he blames on repeated concussions during his career.

In August 2004, the Globe’s Gordon Edes checked in with Johnny Damon, who, you might recall, had suffered a concussion in an outfield collision with Damian Jackson and missed two games in the 2003 post-season. Edes wrote:

He is dealing, he said, with some physical aftereffects from that Jackson collision, most notably its impact on his vision. He is sufficiently concerned, he said, that he has an eye exam scheduled and plans to have doctors check out a few other things, too, though he refused to be more specific (“I’d rather not talk about it,” he said).

“I definitely can’t see like I used to,” he said. “When I cover up an eye and try to get a clear vision, it’s not there. At night, at dusk, I definitely have a tough time. It’s something I have to battle with.”

Then there’s this, from Damon’s book, “Idiot”:

While I was on a stretcher being put into an ambulance, I gave a thumbs-up. When they carted me off the field, everyone thought I was okay, but I wasn’t. I’d suffered a bad concussion. My mind was scrambled. I actually thought I was wearing an Oakland uniform and that I was walking off the field waving to the Oakland fans, saying, “Thank you for supporting us this year….”

When we got back to Boston, I went to the team doctor, and he said everything was checking out fine, that I was regaining some of my faculties. But the truth was I wasn’t close to normal — it took me four or five months before I had a clear, vivid picture of what was going on.

Remember, this was after one concussion, and Damon, by all appearances, made a full recovery. By contrast, here’s what Johnson told MacMullan: “Officially, I’ve probably only been listed as having three or four concussions in my career. But the real number is closer to 30, maybe even more. I’ve been dinged so many times I’ve lost count.”

Based on MacMullan’s story, it would seem that Patriots coach Bill Belichick is slated for a mighty uncomfortable off-season. Still, Belichick, by pushing Johnson to play before he was ready, wasn’t doing anything unusual by football standards.

The larger question is what is the NFL going to do about it. The players need to be protected from themselves.