By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
I realize this sort of thing is happening all the time these days. Still, it seems noteworthy when a Washington Post fixture like media reporter Howard Kurtz up and quits in order to go over to the new-media side — in his case, to Tina Brown’s Daily Beast.
Kurtz will continue hosting “Reliable Sources” on CNN.
It’s hard to think of this as anything other than a great move for Kurtz. What does that say about the Washington Post?
In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that CNN’s newest program, “Parker Spitzer,” hosted by Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker and former New York governor (and noted pervert) Eliot Spitzer, isn’t just awful — it’s also awful in a painfully uninteresting way.
Why would anyone at CNN think it was a good idea to give a prime-time talk show to former New York governor Eliot Spitzer and Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker? There is only one reason anyone thinks Spitzer will be a ratings winner, and it’s not his non-existent journalism background or even his sharp analytical mind.
I’m not going to rehash what I’ve said before about CNN; you can read it here if you like.
Briefly, though, CNN touts itself as a profitable, news-driven alternative to the ideological talk shows on Fox and MSNBC. So why act as though your every programming decision is based on ratings? If CNN is truly in a different business from Fox and MSNBC, then what does it mean to say CNN comes in “third”?
Given that there is almost no way CNN can have an impact at 8 p.m. against the O’Reilly-Olbermann juggernaut, Jon Klein and company should have tried something radical. Like news. How about an hour of CNN International, which everyone who has traveled overseas tells me is exponentially better than what’s on the three U.S. cable nets?
I can’t say I’ve ever watched Campbell Brown’s program on CNN. In fact, I almost never have the TV on at 8 p.m. So this has nothing to do with what she is offering viewers.
Instead, I want to ask a question about her announcement that she is leaving because she concluded her non-partisan program couldn’t compete for ratings with the opinion-driven talk shows hosted by Bill O’Reilly on the Fox News Channel and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC.
Simply put: Why?
CNN executives keep telling us that they alone are offering news, while Fox and MSNBC are just talk stations. They also keep telling us that CNN is very profitable. Given those two pieces of information, why should they see Fox and MSNBC as their principal competitors any more than they worry about TLC or the Food Network?
There’s a real disconnect here, and CNN honchos had better figure it out as they go about retooling their ratings-challenged prime-time line-up.
Following a report earlier this week that CNN’s prime-time ratings were continuing to crater, there’s been quite a bit of talk about how to get the original cable news net back in the game against the Fox News Channel and MSNBC. My “Beat the Press” colleague Kara Miller has some thoughts, and, as previously noted, Michael Calderone of Politico interviewed a bunch of media observers, including me.
But here’s a counterintuitive idea. Maybe we’re all making a category error. As former CNN host (and Media Nation favorite) Aaron Brown tells Calderone, CNN remains a “highly profitable business.” CNN posits itself as a news alternative to the partisan, opinion-driven talk-show line-ups offered by Fox and MSNBC. In that sense, maybe the three cable news nets aren’t really competitors at all.
The problem, of course, is that CNN’s prime-time line-up also consists mainly of talk shows, though not very good ones. The other night I briefly tuned in the best of the bunch, “Anderson Cooper 360,” and saw Dr. Phil talking about the Phoebe Prince tragedy. I nearly injured myself in my haste to change the channel. (By the way: I like Cooper, but think he’s being misused.)
What I’d like to see is a smart, analytical approach that makes sense out of all the news tidbits we accumulate throughout the day, unafraid to call out lies and misrepresentations but nonpartisan in its overall approach. Something, frankly, like Brown’s old program, “NewsNight,” canceled to make way for “AC360.”
And, yes, it’s time for Larry King to get his gold watch. No Larry-bashing from me: the man has a lot to do with the success CNN has enjoyed over the years. But all things must eventually come to an end.
Given that CNN continues to make money, maybe everyone would get off the network’s back about its poor ratings if it were offering not just an alternative to Fox and MSNBC, but one that is compelling and smart.
Michael Calderone has a long piece in Politico on how to fix CNN, whose ratings have recently gone from bad to worse. As you’ll see, I told Calderone that if it were up to me, I’d bring back Aaron Brown and undo the decision to let Christiane Amanpour jump to ABC.
The worst idea is the one he leads with: bringing back “Crossfire.” Canceling the wretched shoutfest will be the only positive mark on CNN president Jon Klein’s report card when he finally walks the plank, and when I’m finally through mangling my metaphors.
On Wednesday I mentioned Global Voices Online, a Harvard-affiliated service that was rounding up citizen media from Haiti and the Caribbean.
Global Voices has since set up a Haitian Earthquake 2010 section that aggregates citizen-produced content and includes key links to mainstream news organizations — including the Boston Haitian Reporter. It’s got its own RSS feed, so you can plug it into Google Reader.
Here’s a first-hand account of the quake that I found on Global Voices:
Towards 4:45 PM, with our driver, we enter the parking lot of Karibean, Pétion-ville’s big mart. As usual, the way in is slowed by the usual Delmas traffic. While driving up the entry, our Patrol began to dance. I was imagining three or four boys standing on the bumper wanting to swing the car. In front of us, the parking lot ground rocked like the waves at Wahoo Bay. The Karibean building started to dance and in 3 seconds’ time completely tumbled down. A white cloud swept across the parking lot and you could see zombies whitened by dust appearing, in complete panic.
The earthquake is a tragedy whose full dimensions won’t be known for quite some time
Note: This item originally included a photograph of a woman being rescued that was cited as an example of citizen media. On March 16, I was informed that the photo was, in fact, the copyrighted work of Daniel Morel, a professional photojournalist. Please see this for more information.
Update: Wednesday, 7:21 p.m. We are posting more links in the comments.
Ever since a tsunami devastated South Asia in December 2004, social media and citizen journalism have been recognized as key components of covering natural disasters and other breaking news stories. Professional news organizations can’t be everywhere; on the other hand, millions of people are carrying cell phones with cameras. New-media expert Steve Outing called the tsunami “a tipping point” for citizen journalism.
In such a decentralized news environment, the challenge for journalism has been to make sense of what is happening in something approaching real time. Most recently, social media have played an important role in bringing news of the Iranian protest movement to the outside world.
So when a major earthquake hit western Haiti yesterday, it was no surprise that news organizations, large and small, tapped into Haiti’s online community in order to provide them with the on-the-ground eyes and ears they did not have. Given Haiti’s unfortunate status as one of the poorest countries in the world, you might not think there would be much in the way of electronic communication. In fact, there is a lively and heartbreaking stream of reports coming out of the island.
I’ll begin closest to home. Last night the Boston Haitian Reporter started a live blog to gather accounts from readers and to link out to relevant information. The blog includes a live Twitter stream of news from Haiti. As the Boston Globe observes, there are 43,000 people of Haitian descent living in Greater Boston.
The New York Times, which over the past few years has morphed into one of the most Internet-savvy news organizations, has, not surprisingly, posted stories, a slideshow and a Reuters video. But the real action is taking place on The Lede, its blog for breaking news, which includes everything from staff reports to cell-phone photos posted to TwitPic. The Times has put together a Twitter list of people and organizations posting news updates about Haiti. And it is actively soliciting reports from its readers:
The New York Times would like to connect people inside and outside Haiti who are searching for information about the situation on the ground. Readers outside Haiti who have friends and relatives in the country, along with readers in Haiti who are still able to access the Internet, can use the comments section below as a forum to share updates. Some readers may be searching for the same family members.
Have you been able to reach loved ones in the area affected by the earthquake? What have you learned from people there?
National Public Radio’s efforts bear some similarities to those of the Times. NPR is concentrating its breaking-news and linking efforts on its blog The Two-Way, and it has also assembled a Twitter list.
CNN, whose iReport project is a major outlet for citizen journalists, has put together a page on the Haitian earthquake. As is often the case with citizen media, it’s not always easy to tell what you’re looking at. Some of the images are quite graphic, and are slapped with a label reading “Discretion advised.”
One of my favorite examples of professional journalists and citizen bloggers working together is Global Voices Online, a project founded at Harvard Law’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society several years ago. Global Voices’ editors round up bloggers from every part of the world. For the most part, they labor in obscurity. But not at moments like this.
As of this morning you’ll find a compilation of tweets and photos and a digest of what bloggers in Haiti and throughout the Caribbean are saying. Here is Afrobella, described as a “Trinidadian diaspora blogger”:
Right now my heart aches for Haiti. The already-suffering island nation was just hit with a 7.0 earthquake. A hospital has collapsed. Government buildings have been severely damaged. There was a major tsunami watch, earlier. Reports of major devastation are just starting to pour in…my thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Haiti, and anyone with friends or family in Haiti.
You can also click through directly to Afrobella’s blog.
Twitter itself is a good source of raw information. At the moment, Yéle, a charity founded by Haitian-American musician Wyclef Jean, is the number-two trending topic, and “Help Haiti” is number three. If you want to dip into the Twitter torrent, try searching on #haiti.
CNN has fallen to third place in prime time. It’s an easy way out to argue that it’s because CNN is doing news while Fox and MSNBC are doing talk. But it seems to me that CNN has three problems of its own making:
Problem solved. Next?
POLK CITY, Florida (CNN) — At a boisterous Sarah Palin rally in Polk City, Florida on Saturday afternoon, one name was surprisingly absent from the campaign décor — John McCain’s…. [T]he GOP nominee’s name was literally nowhere to be found on any of the official campaign signage distributed to supporters at the event.
Literally! Oh, wait — never mind. (Via Jay Rosen’s Twitter feed.)
