05 Dec 08 The E&P feed paints a grim picture

Ouch.

Tags: journalism

23 Sep 08 ‘EPIC 2014′, revisited

It’s interesting how much of this video, made back in 2005, is starting to come true. Will they save the journalism industry? With today’s unveiling of the Google Android phone, Google continues it’s “epic” growth over the media landscape.

And I for one welcome our new media overlords and look forward to toiling away in their underground research labs.

Also of interest is the NYTimes profile of HTC and its founder, Cher Wang. Gives a little bit of insight on why Google chose HTC (and HTC chose Google) for the hardware of their phone. Investors, start throwing your money at HTC stock now, if you have any left that is.

P.S. And to further prove my point of the impending Google take over, I switched my theme to a Google Chrome-based one that was available about a day after Google Chrome debuted.

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Tags: journalism, video

06 Sep 08 The ‘targeting’ of journalists in St. Paul is grossly overblown

You’ve probably heard the stories and the rallying cries crying fowl about the police presence (or state, as protesters would like to call it) to quell protesters during the RNC. You may have also heard that some journalists were arrested too, 19 in fact. That’s 19 out of over 800 people arrested. That’s 19 out of the estimated 10,000-15,000 journalists in town to cover the convention. You may have also heard the “horrible injustice” against Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, another ridiculously overblown incident. Needless to say, I’m more than a little annoyed at how this is being spun. Even going so far as Amnesty International slamming the treatment of protesters and journalists at the RNC.

First, some transparency of course. I live and work in St. Paul. I was on the ground with media credentials at several of the protests, including the huge one Monday and the final one on Thursday that involved nearly 400 arrests. I took tons of pictures of both days.

The supposed “targeting” of journalists that happened is total fabrication, and here’s why. First, almost everyone had a camera, journalist, ‘citizen’ journalist and protesters alike. Nothing distinguished them from one another, especially in the midst of some melee. I understand that journalists want to get the best photos and the story, but several times I saw journalists crossing police lines and standing right in the thick of the protesters. That’s fine, but in my opinion you do so at your own risk. It should also be noted that a majority of the journalists arrested have already had their charges dropped.

During the Shepard Rd. incident on Monday, one of the most heavily documented group arrests of the protests, the police did in fact target journalists. When they had everyone on the ground and were arresting people, they had journalists show their press passes…in order to let them leave the area. Wow, what evil Gestapo. Several times throughout both events, I walked (slowly) toward police lines, showed them my press pass and they let me go through to get to my destination. Even when there was an altercation right up the street, they would respect the credential.

The disconnect here is that journalists expect that same respect in the middle of a melee when force is being used and pepper spray is flying wildly about. I’m sorry folks, press pass or no, that is a luxury that just can’t be afforded. It’s not “suppressing the media”, it’s police doing their job.

You may have heard the story of Marcus Washington, a documentary filmmaker from Tennessee who was sprayed with pepper spray. If you watch the video of the incident, you can see Washington at the end. He is right in the middle of the fracas trying to take video and gets sprayed with pepper spray. Just because you have media credentials doesn’t mean the police are supposed to aim pepper spray around you. You take certain risks as a journalist, Mr. Washington learned that. I feel bad that he got sprayed, as I’m sure it hurt, but it’s all a part of the risk of covering protest politics.

What is funny about the video is that if you think about it, the guy who got the better story and video of the event was well out of the reach of police and kept themselves out of danger. You can cover a story without becoming the story (and this coming from a huge Hunter S. Thompson fan).

And about those credentials. Looking at the pictures it appears Mr. Washington, like many of the journalists on Monday, had the media credentials from the event, not from a legitimate media company. Those credentials meant even less than real press credentials that day. Anyone with a point-and-shoot camera could have walked up to the media tent at the event and got some “credentials.” They are what a colleague of mine called, Kinko’s journalists. If you watch one of Washington’s videos an interviewer asks him who he is with. His answer, “I’m with myself.”

In addition to that, cops aren’t mind readers. When things are getting hairy, protesters are fighting back and adrenaline is flowing, the police have to react and make a quick decision to use their crowd control devices (i.e. pepper spray) or get bowled over by an unruly mob that wants to smash windows and break stuff. They don’t have time to spot out media credentials and look out for journalists. If you are in the mob, you’re essentially part of the mob. The solution, know what you’re doing and get yourself out of harm’s way.

So many journalists have such an inflated sense of self-importance and ego they expect the police to know exactly who they are and what they are doing there. Sorry, no. The police have a job to do and that doesn’t include massaging your ego.

Which, brings us to Amy Goodman. I love Amy, she’s done great work in journalism. But, often she incites these sort of things herself. The day before she was arrested she jumped a fence to get right in the middle of a police investigation. Legitimate or not, at the time the house was the site of police investigating potential criminal activity. You wouldn’t just barge into a murder scene or a robbery scene to ask questions. Why would you do it in this case? By doing so she incites the police to react, and yes often overreact, and makes herself the story instead of actually finding the FACTS of the story. And I’m sorry, watching the video Amy clearly could have handled that better.

Now, I couldn’t be everywhere at once so I am sure there are perhaps a few incidences of overreaction by police or police brutality. But those have to be viewed on a case-by-case basis. To drape this blanket of Gestapo, evil police over every police officer there, is just inaccurate and dishonest. The majority of police that I saw were doing their jobs, some even smiling and waving at the parade and spectators.

My point is that this claim that journalists were targeted is bull. Doing the math of jailed versus non-jailed journalists and taking a scan of the wealth of coverage these protests got, it is clear that the police gave journalists a fairly wide berth. Those unfortunate few who were caught up in the mayhem are no different than catching a bullet covering a war. That sounds harsh but it is the truth. It comes with the territory, if you don’t like it Wal-Mart is always hiring and there are a ton of other journalists (more and more everyday) that would love to have your job.

I’m not saying the police were 100 percent correct in their behavior, nor am I saying that every protester and/or journalist was 100 percent incorrect in theirs, I’m just making an assessment of what I saw happening on the ground contrasted with what I am reading in the news. I’m sure someone has some episode that contradicts my assessment. However, in my experience, usually when someone says, “I wasn’t doing anything…,” the common defense in these cases, they were usually doing something.

I open the floor for discussion and if someone has evidence to prove me wrong please present it.

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Tags: journalism, rights, RNC

28 Aug 08 ABC News producer arrested in Denver (video)

You’ve probably already heard about this, but now there is video of the ABC News producer who was arrested in Denver.

The video doesn’t lie, these cops were aching to arrest someone. Pushing someone into the street and then telling them they are “blocking traffic” is just ridiculous. I am curious about what happened between the cut of cop pushing then suddenly the guy, identified as Asa Eslocker, is arrested.

Hmm, I wonder how much of this we’ll see in St. Paul next week.

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Tags: journalism, video

24 Aug 08 Jay Rosen on the political conventions

Via BigThink.

Just a note to BigThink, nix the ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ colors on the videos.

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Tags: journalism, video

20 Aug 08 AP, you’re on notice!

More and more newspapers are planning on canceling their AP subscriptions due to their new and pseudo a-la carté fee structure. Many of the papers say the AP’s proposed savings isn’t enough to let them keep staff.

I find it admirable that some papers are choosing to keep staff for local coverage over a $200,000+/yr AP account for national coverage. I still wonder what these papers will use for A-section fillers but that remains to be seen. Doug Fisher over at Common Sense Journalism weighs in as well.

Sue Cross, AP senior vice president/U.S. media markets responded this way:

“The last time we had a big rate structure change was in 1984, we had cancellations then,” Cross added, saying the news cooperative is not keeping count of those seeking to drop. “My impression is that it is a very low percentage. The positive feedback has outweighed the negative.”

Obviously this has a more detrimental effect on smaller papers whom a $200,000/yr immediate savings makes a large difference over millions in aggregate savings. This positive feedback most likely comes from the big dogs who can easily afford the rate changes and the negative ripple is not so severe.

I’m not sure how all of this will play out and honestly it’s not my territory, but it’s interesting to read the various reactions to what the AP meant to be a benign change.

Thoughts?

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Tags: AP, journalism

17 Aug 08 New models for print journalism are popping up all over, so stop whining

If you follow the world of journalism, or even read the newspaper, you know that the industry is in “turmoil,” or so they say. It is chic right now to talk about the death of the newspaper industry, the end of journalism as we know it and a half-dozen other clichéd statements being trotted out on the increasing number of journalism blogs these days.

The tidal wave of buyouts and layoffs industry wide, plus the machinations of Sam Zell & Co., have given both journalists and ex-journalists alike a lot of ammo and fingers to point at the current state of the print journalism world. A lot of this outcry is due to journalists seeing an industry which they love and have studied crumbling and changing before their eyes, a valid concern.

The problem I have with a lot of this is that all of the venom-spitting in the world isn’t going to change the way things have turned out. Sam Zell, Randy Michaels and Lee Abrams have a plan for Tribune and no amount of TellZell whining is going to change that. Blog all you want, it’s not going to change the ad structure and revenue models of your standard newspaper that are in steady decline. Trust me, I hate it too and wish much of it wasn’t happening, but the reality is that it is happening.

Our industry, not just print journalism but journalism in general, is changing and evolving. This is a good thing. The problem seems that many journalists aren’t willing to go through the birthing pains of changing the face of journalism, even young journalists. In my experience there are still kids coming out of journalism school that have that delusion of being the fedora-wearing, beat journalist who just hits the streets with a notepad and their wits. While that’s all well and good, it’s not enough and it’s the old model.

Nothing I’m saying here is new and many others have said it better. My point is, the cure for the death of print journalism is already out there, staring us in the face, all anyone has to do is step up and be willing to take a risk because they truly love journalism. Here are a few examples of what I am talking about:

MinnPost.com
Started by a group of ex-journalists, including former Star-Tribune publisher Joel Kramer, MinnPost was their answer to what they felt was the decline of high-quality journalism in the Twin Cities. MinnPost is a non-profit journalism outfit that uses an online and a print-on-demand model. They focus on investigative journalism with a focus on politics, government, science, health and culture. Last I read they were one of the few news organizations in the black.

SportingNews
Now the Sporting News is not a new organization, they’ve been around since 1886. However, there is obviously a reason they’ve survived so long, they innovate. News designer Charles Apple recently joined the Sporting News to help launch their new e-newsletter. Though the paper is supposed to continue print publication as a bi-weekly later this month, this e-newsletter format is something that more organizations should be willing to try. People still want the portability of a paper so why not give it to them while at the same time saving the organization on printing costs. We’ll have to see how this is working out in six months but I think it is a great idea.

Spot.us
Spot.us is an experiment in non-profit, crowdfunded journalism that is scheduled to launch this fall. The project was started by journalist David Cohn after he won the Knight News Challenge. According to the site:

“Spot Us” is a nonprofit that allows an individual or group to take control of news in their community by sharing the cost (crowdfunding) to commission freelance journalists to write important, or uncovered news stories.

Will it work? Who knows, but its boldness and Cohn’s willingness to try something innovative is more than admirable, it’s what the industry needs.

ProPublica
You may have heard of ProPublica already, the independent, non-profit newsroom that squarely focuses on investigative journalism. Investigative journalism is one of the fastest casualties of the slimmed down newsroom. Less journalists equals less time and resources to dig into those real meaty stories that newspapers are supposed to be known for. According to their site, they are “…the largest, best-led and best-funded investigative journalism operation in the United States.” Whether you agree or not, ProPublica looks poised to pick up where traditional news organizations are losing out.

TheUptake
A citizen-journalism Web site, The Uptake has garnered recent attention for a member-submitted story about the protests in Beijing, China. Their motto: “Will journalism be done by you or to you?” Many trained, educated journalists take issue with the citizen-journalism movement but there is merit to having eyes and ears on every corner. News organizations can’t hope to cover every angle of a story and that is where sites like TheUptake pick up the slack. I’m not sure of the history of the site and couldn’t find anything on it, maybe someone from the site can shed some light.

These are just a few examples of bold new steps for journalism and I’m sure there are more. My point here is that the solution to this supposed destruction of modern journalism is not going to come from new owners, publishers or executives. No, it’s going to have to come from the true journalists that love this business, this life and love getting the news to the people that want to read it, listen to it or see it.

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Tags: journalism, new media

12 Aug 08 Wanted: One slacking blogger

Found him!

Yeah, yeah, like everyone else I’ve been busy, though that is no excuse. New job, lots of training, trying to find a place to live and exploring a new city take up a lot of time. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to scan the old RSS feed and make snarky comments at all of the whiny, angry and venomous curmudgeons talking about the news business.

Oh, and there’s also a little thing called the Republican National Convention happening right up the street. Kind of a big deal and I’m looking forward to being on the media (cyber) front lines.

That being said, I’m going to try and start writing here a lot more. With so many changes in the industry, both online and off, there’s a lot to talk about. Not to mention the Olympics, one of the best events to do unique multimedia coverage of.

Until then, go see what I’ve been taking pictures of.

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Tags: journalism, personal

01 Jul 08 Making the most of your internship

10,000 Words.Net has a great post about making the most of your journalism internship. With the volatile landscape of the journalism world these days it may be nerve-wracking for students and those just out of school to deal with an internship. Truth be told, if I were interning at a paper right now and saw the things happening around me, I’d be terrified.

All is not lost however. The best thing you can do at an internship is learn from everything that is happening around you, both good and bad. 10,000 Words offers these tips, but be sure to read the full post for the detailed descriptions of each tip.

1. Get paid
2. Speak up
3. Ask questions
4. Jump into multimedia
5. Fraternize with the staff
6. Get business cards
7. Make yourself indispensable

Obviously I couldn’t agree more with the tip regarding multimedia. Right now there is a big initiative to cross-train the journalists in the newsrooms and hey, if you can get some of that training for free then why not?

The Washington Post just made a big showing of how they recently finished training over 200 of their journalists on doing video for their stories. I know of several newsrooms (*wink wink*) that were doing this over six months ago. Imagine walking in the door for an interview and already having those skills. You are instantly a more viable candidate than the other guy, who doesn’t have those skills and the paper will have to spend time and money training, by taking the necessary steps.

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Tags: journalism, journalism education

23 Jun 08 Columbia, CUNY get cash for new media programs

From SPJ’s Classrooms & Newsrooms:

The graduate journalism schools at Columbia University and the City University of New York will improve their new-media programs with a total of $8-million in grants from the Tow Foundation, the charity announced today.

Columbia will receive $5-million, and CUNY $3-million. Under the terms of the grants, Columbia must garner an additional $10-million in donations within 18 months, and CUNY must raise enough to double its grant. Leonard Tow, a co-founder of the foundation, said the grants were a response to his “serious concerns about what is happening in the world of journalism.”

While I think it is great that programs like those at Columbia and CUNY (home of Jeff Jarvis) are receiving donor funds for new media programs, I am also disheartened that it is only these elite programs that seem to receive these influxes of cash (if I’m wrong someone show me some links). Not everyone can afford to go to Columbia, NYU or CUNY.

Furthermore, why only graduate programs? Aren’t undergrad journalism programs just as deserving of money toward teaching new media as grad programs? To that one might say that undergrad programs teach the fundamentals and grad programs are where you learn more advanced journalism skills. Well, that’s debatable. Looking at the course descriptions at both Columbia and CUNY for their M.A. programs, many of the courses are basics (reporting I, editing I, ethics, law).

While I understand that many people who go to a graduate-level J-school have undergrad degrees in other disciplines, what about us folks that want to continue our journalism education but already have a B.A. in journalism? Why force us to repeat and basically negate what we spent four years earning?

OK, sorry for the journalism education rant. My point is that funding for new media and new media education should not be exclusive for graduate programs, especially the elite graduate programs. Some of the best journalists in history, and some great ones I know personally, went to smaller and less well-known schools. I imagine this is an issue across many majors and not relegated strictly to journalism but hey, I’m speaking to what I know about.

Point blank: More money for journalism schools! Eh, in a perfect world right?

[/END JOURNALISM RANT]

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Tags: journalism, journalism education

19 Jun 08 So it begins: OC Register to outsource copy editing to India

From Doug Fisher and Media Bistro, apparently the Orange County Register is going to start a pilot program where they will outsource their copy-editing duties to India.

To me this is simply a tragedy. There are those that feel copy editing is the most mechanical of all of the journalism duties in the newsroom, fixing grammar and running spell check on stories. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Copy editors have to know almost more than the reporters so that they not only know when something is wrong, logically and semantically as well as grammatically, so that they know when to ask questions. AP Style, grammar and spelling can be taught sure, but not pop culture references, idioms or other forms of expression that are uniquely American.

From a writing perspective, a copy editor’s job is to make the writer look better. When someone reads a story they don’t look at it and lavish praise or criticism on the copy editor, the name on the byline is the sole person responsible in their mind. When that editor becomes someone that is totally disconnected from the writer, both culturally and by proximity, that disconnection will show itself in the stories. They too will be mechanical and stale.

Outsourcing copy-editing duties may save the paper money, but at what cost? Thomas L. Friedman, I blame you and your ‘The World is Flat’ thinking. Globalization is not necessarily a good thing.

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Tags: journalism, news business

16 Jun 08 Online Journalism Review to cease publication

Yup, the OJR is going to stop the publication of it’s Web site. From Robert Niles in the final post:

This is the final post at OJR. After a decade, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication has decided to cease publication of the website. The archives will remain online, but there will be no new articles.

One of OJR’s goals over the years has been to help mid-career journalists make a successful transition from other media to online reporting and production. I’m pleased to say that USC Annenberg will continue to provide support in that area, through the Knight Digital Media Center. I encourage OJR readers to click over to the KDMC website and its blogs, if you are not already a regular reader there.

The decision to close OJR means that I have left the University of Southern California. But I am not going offline. I will continue to write, daily, about new media and journalism at my new website, SensibleTalk.com. I hope that many of you will click over and visit me there.

That’s a shame, I really liked OJR. Niles and his cohorts posed some interesting questions and had some great discussions on their site. I also liked the network and group feel of the site. It made you feel like you were a part of something.

But, the show must go on, as the cliché goes. Thankfully Niles will continue to blog on his own site so we online journalism geeks won’t be without his wise words and inquiries.

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Tags: journalism, new media, online journalism

15 Jun 08 Biased or not biased, that is the question

The current issue of the American Journalism Review has an excellent article by Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi analyzing the charges of media bias in our current political campaign and in general. I urge you to read the full article, but one portion stood out to me:

The public doesn’t really understand how the news is made.

That might sound elitist, except that much of the daily suspicion cast on reporters’ work seems to stem from naïveté and reflexive public cynicism. Ask journalists about a recent accusation of bias and watch their eyes begin to roll. Julie Mason, the Houston Chronicle’s White House reporter, remembers one reader who took her to task for being “obsessed” with John Kerry during the 2004 campaign. Obsessed? She was covering his campaign. “It was my job to be with him every day,” she laughs.

Another reader spotted bias in the placement of quotes in one of Mason’s stories. “I’m biased,” she says, “because I put the quote in after the jump, which to them means I’m trying to bury it. They don’t believe you when you say you don’t control where a story jumped.”

| FULL ARTICLE |

I think that this notion is an essential truth right now and a reason why so many people feel that media is biased. The public seem to have this grim notion that all of the reporters, editors and the rest of the people that make the news sit around and conjure up evil machinations on how they can destroy, exploit and make money.

One of the more interesting charges comes when people accuse the media of using a particular, sensationalist article to increase circulation and readership, and thus, increasing salaries. As if there is a direct correlation between a reporter’s pay and how much attention one article receives. It’s not the stock market, it’s a newsroom.

These charges and the current misunderstanding of how the news is made reinforces the need to create a more transparent newsroom, something the Internet can handle far better than ‘Letters to the Editor’ or an ombudsman.

Increasingly newsrooms are doing Q & A sessions online with newsroom staff (i.e. NY Times, Dallas Morning News) and projects like the above-mentioned newsroom.

There’s that tired adage about not wanting to know how the sausage is made, but in our industry, I think it’s high time we started letting people check out the ingredients. If not just for them, but also for us.

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Tags: journalism, journalism business

13 Jun 08 Tim Russert (May 7, 1950 – June 13, 2008)

Tim Russert (May 7, 1950 - June 13, 2008)

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Tags: journalism, journalists, obits

11 Jun 08 It’s official! I’m moving to the Twin Cities

After a long and difficult decision between two great opportunities, I finally had to choose. I am now an Associate Editor for Online News at Minnesota Public Radio, part of the American Public Media Group. The next few weeks will be spent handling the logistics of moving 1,600 miles, getting acclimated to the Twin Cities and learning my new role as part of the MPR team.

Once I get settled this blog will come alive again, especially once I’m playing a large role in the online development of such a creative and diverse news organization. I’m looking forward to having a more direct perspective of the online journalism world as we enter this age of broad and sweeping change in our beloved industry.

To say I am excited about this opportunity would be putting it mildly. Yay for the future!

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Tags: jobs, journalism, personal