By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
One of my students passed this along:
Shift Happens – Click Here for more great videos and pictures!
I don’t know where this is from, nor have I verified the facts contained therein — although it seems that they’re directionally correct, even if a few details could be disputed.
In any case, it’s about six minutes long and well worth watching.
Media Nation joins Jon Keller and Adam Reilly in congratulating the Boston Globe for its two (according to Editor & Publisher) Pulitzer Prize nominations. The Globe has reportedly been nominated in Local Reporting for its “Debtor’s Hell” series, on unscrupulous bill collectors, and in National Reporting, for its stories on President Bush’s promiscuous use of presidential signing statements to negate the will of Congress.
Each is an example of public-service journalism at its best, and it’s a demonstration that — for all the angst that has enveloped the newspaper business over rapacious ownership and declining circulation and advertising revenues — large metropolitan dailies like the Globe, as well as national papers like the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, remain the places where most important journalism gets done.
The “Debtor’s Hell” series was headed up by Walter Robinson, who is now a colleague at Northeastern. The signing-statement story was reported by Charlie Savage.
“Debtor’s Hell” is also a fine example of how the smart use of technology can enhance a story that, no matter how good, would have ended up as day-old fish wrap just a few years ago. The electronic version goes way beyond “shovelware” — that is, print content thrown online with little regard for the Web’s strengths and weaknesses.
The main page offers podcasts, offsite resources and the all-important tip line for follow-ups. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find a message board, audio Q&As, interactive graphics like this, the transcript of an online chat with Robinson and source documents, such as this, filed by Peter Damon, in which he informed bill collectors that he was in the hospital being treated for the loss of both arms in Iraq.
My guess is that the Pulitzer judges will only be looking at the clips. Someday, though, when the winning team is honored, it ought to include the Web producers alongside the reporters, photographers and editors.
The Pulitzer winners will be announced on April 16.
I thought last night’s installment of “Frontline”‘s excellent “News War” series was the strongest yet. The first two parts focused on the so-called reporter’s privilege — the rapidly eroding right of journalists not to disclose their confidential sources or turn over their notes, photos, video footage and the like if called before a grand jury or a judge. Important stuff, but a little esoteric. Last night’s 90-minute installment, by contrast, was about the future.
My only complaint is that it rambled. Framing the story as some sort of dual narrative encompassing both the rise of new media and the fate of the Los Angeles Times was awkward, though both tales are worth telling. Especially good was Dean Baquet, who left as editor of the LA Times last November rather than follow orders from his budget-slashing overlords at the Tribune Co. Baquet, recently hired as Washington bureau chief at the New York Times, came across as a real human being — unlike the LA Times’ bloodless new publisher, David Hiller. (Check out Hiller’s attempt at pre-broadcast spin, reported by Kevin Roderick in LA Observed.)
Baquet’s predecessor in Los Angeles, John Carroll, pointed out a crucial fact: Most of the serious reporting in this country is done by newspaper journalists. If the newspaper business is in trouble, who will do the kind of public-service journalism that we need to govern ourselves?
Though it rambled, it rambled at a sprightly pace. Reporter/producer Lowell Bergman isn’t afraid to use silence to his advantage, forcing his interview subjects to fill the empty space. At times, it seems, Bergman is able to squeeze out good stuff simply by raising a reproachful eyebrow.
I do wish the new-media story hadn’t been subsumed by the drama over the LA Times. Bloggerman Jeff Jarvis was his usual pugnacious self in countering Nicholas Lemann‘s dismissal of blogs as “church newsletters,” telling Lemann (through Bergman) that the future will be marked by professional and amateur journalists working together. It’s a crucial point, but Bergman didn’t follow up. I doubt anyone who isn’t already following the rise of “open-source journalism” would have even known what Jarvis was talking about.
The bottom line, according to Bergman and the folks he interviewed, is the bottom line. Though newspapers remain profitable, they are being gutted because of Wall Street’s ever-rising demands for even greater profits. Combined with a belief among financial analysts that the Web will kill off the print side in the not-too-distant future, the newspaper business has become engulfed by a sense of crisis even as it continues to crank out annual profits in the range of 20 percent.
Bergman was unable to suggest much of a solution other than to highlight a few well-known alternatives, such as the St. Petersburg Times (owned by a nonprofit foundation, the Poynter Institute), and National Public Radio (a nonprofit funded mainly through listener contributions, corporate underwriting and the late Joan Kroc).
But he was certainly asking the right questions.
Update: Jeff Jarvis reacts in his usual laid-back manner, writing that Bergman and company “played the themes we have heard again and again, as if on a Top 40 radio station: tsk-tsking the tackiness, fretting about the news that the big guys are sure we need, evil Wall Street, looney citizens. I could sit down and fisk, as we say, all its cheap shots and lazy analysis and incomplete reporting but, frankly, I don’t find it worth the effort.”
Over the past year or so, students have become increasingly savvy about the downside of Facebook and MySpace. In talking with my students and in reading their stories for journalism classes, it’s clear that they know if they post photos of themselves drunk and/or in compromising positions, potential employers will somehow find out about it.
What they may not know is that college and university officials themselves may be cruising around Facebook — and going after students who’ve posted content they don’t like. In the current Phoenix, Greg Lukianoff and Will Creeley report that students have been singled out and punished for posting content that is obnoxious and racially insensitive, but that nevertheless is protected by the First Amendment. They write:
Contrary to popular misconceptions, the speech codes, censorship, and double standards of the culture-wars heyday of the ’80s and ’90s are alive and kicking, and they are now colliding with the latest explosion of communication technology. Sites like Facebook and MySpace are becoming the largest battleground yet for student free speech. Whatever campus administrators’ intentions (and they are often mixed), students need to know that online jokes, photos, and comments can get them in hot water, no matter how effusively their schools claim to respect free speech. The long arm of campus officialdom is reaching far beyond the bounds of its buildings and grounds and into the shadowy realm of cyberspace.
Lukianoff is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and Creeley is a top official with FIRE.
What’s the secret to the Norwegian newspaper VG’s online success? The ugliest design on the planet, apparently.
I’ll be on “At Issue with Ben Merens,” on Wisconsin Public Radio, tomorrow from 6 to 7 p.m. EST. We’ll be talking about the death and rebirth of the newspaper business. If you’re interested, you should be able to listen live here. Choose “WPR’s Ideas Network.”
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.)
Following news earlier this week that the Boston Globe is closing its remaining foreign bureaus, I received a challenge from inside the Globe newsroom: to define a positive future for major regional papers like the Globe beyond the mostly local/mostly online formula that I and many other media observers have been espousing.
In a sense, of course, it’s an impossible challenge. Figuring out that future is something those of us who care about the news will be doing for the rest of our careers. There’s obviously no easy answer. And the first priority, of necessity, is fairly uninspiring. The Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Miami Herald and others in their weight class must shrink their way to financial viability without damaging the local coverage that is their principal appeal.
Beyond that? The Los Angeles Times, amid turmoil that may end in its being sold to local investors, has announced an initiative to transform itself into a 24-hour-a-day news operation, with latimes.com as its main vehicle and the print edition as a secondary outlet. (Romenesko wraps up the coverage here.)
That’s exactly what the Wall Street Journal is doing with its recently shrunk print edition, too. WSJ.com will be the primary news outlet, and the print edition will feature a lot of analysis.
The Globe is doing more than some readers might realize. It’s got a ton of staff blogs, allowing people to go deep in certain areas that they really care about. It’s done some innovative Web journalism, such as this mashup combining campaign-contribution data from the gubernatorial race with a Google map. Its multimedia specials are a model for innovative online journalism.
But the reason I say the Globe is doing more than some might realize is that the ethos coming out of Morrissey Boulevard continues to be print first, online second. Even if that’s not the way editor Marty Baron and company are thinking, that’s the message we’re getting.
Then, too, the Globe’s Web site(s) is/are still too hard to navigate. Boston.com may no longer be separate from the Globe Online, but they feel separate. Papers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post have done a better job of presenting an integrated face.
Now here’s the hard part. The key to a successful local strategy is not to use reduced national and international ambitions as nothing more than an excuse to save money. Ultimately the Globe and papers like it are going to have to reinvest in local coverage and do more than they are now. Cost-cutting may be necessary, but at some point they’ve got to start growing again.
Innovations in citizen journalism such as reader blogs and pro-am collaborations are well worth trying. But nothing brings more value to news consumers than skilled reporters — reporters who can write stories, shoot photos and video, record sound, blog, and get it all up onto the Web with minimal adult supervision. And that’s not going to happen until someone gets the economic model right.
Let’s not forget, too, how much better technology is going to get. One of the problems with the shift to online is that computers are still not a particularly satisfying way to read. That will change. I don’t want news on my cell phone, thank you very much, but I might very well want it on an Apple iPhone, with its ultra-high-resolution (so they say) screen and always-there wireless connection.
What so much of the current news meltdown is all about is that the old model is collapsing at a time when we can barely glimpse the new model. That will change, but it’s not going to happen quickly.
John Mello quotes me in an article for TechNewsWorld on the growing popularity of newspaper blogs.
Tom Stites, whose speech at last July’s Media Giraffe conference I linked to here, is back with an essay called “Needed: More Excellence in Journalism.” It’s an extension of his speech — a meditation on the fate of public-service journalism, especially for audiences not served by elite news organizations such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Well worth reading.