The unspoken media war
Thursday, September 30th, 2004
There’s a lot of anger out there among establishment media types about the blogosphere, and it’s a great concern to me. I mean, I don’t care what people think about bloggers, but the extent to which nasty name-calling contributes to a kind of “truth-blindness” about the future of media does not bode well for mainstream news people, many of whom are my friends.
MSMers (blogging acronym for Main Stream Media) have never had warm fuzzies for bloggers. The issues have been credentials, checks and balances, and condescension. I’ve written about the roots of this many times here and argue that the news business is a trade, not the “profession” envisioned by Walter Lippmann. Bloggers are seen as amateurs and wannabes, but the RatherGate/MemoGate/CBSGate incident has put bloggers on the front page, and the resentments are getting ugly.
First, there was the reference by a former CBS News executive that bloggers were just people “in pajamas.” The blogosphere had fun with that one for awhile, considering the comment to be a badge of honor.
Last week, MSNBC/Newsweek columnist Steven Levy called bloggers “a nation of ankle biters,” which has prompted another round of shots from the blogosphere. Being the humorous types that bloggers are, links like this one are popping up. It leads to doggies wearing pajamas, a double reference to the condescension.
Glenn Reynolds felt he was misquoted in the article, adding:
“…as is so often the case with Big Media folks — he came in to the interview with his storyline predetermined, and he put things into that mold whether they fit or not. (It also, as always, makes me wonder where else this is happening without my noticing it.)And, sadly, that — together with the condescending notion that bloggers are “biting the ankles” of their betters — says it all about what’s wrong with Big Media today. Levy’s disappointed in the blogosphere. But I’m disappointed in Levy, and much of his profession.”
“Do bloggers have the credentials of real journalists? No. Bloggers are hobby hacks, the Internet version of the sad loners who used to listen to police radios in their bachelor apartments and think they were involved in the world.Bloggers don’t know about anything that happened before they sat down to share their every thought with the moon. Like graffiti artists, they tag the public square — without editors, correction policies or community standards. And so their tripe is often as vicious as it is vacuous.
…Most bloggers are not fit to carry a reporter’s notebook.”
And lest you think this only applies to the ivory tower known as “the press,” think again. While television stations and local newspapers are busy protecting their (shrinking) turf, new technologies keep coming down the pike that enable everyday people to do more and more. When these ankle-biting, hobby hacks in their pajamas turn to radio and television, everybody in town will be affected.
The cluetrain is leaving the station. Are you onboard?
Why I love spam!
Wednesday, September 29th, 2004Where else would you find wonderful pitches like this: “Get Passed Cable Box, Get All The Channels.”
Tina Brown’s need for closure
Tuesday, September 28th, 2004This quote by former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown (published first in Newsday.com a month ago) is destined to become a classic, because it continues to show up in articles and commentaries on the media issue of blogs and blogging.
Because of the blogs, there is no final version of the truth and that can become genuinely muddying and muddling, because there’s never any kind of closure on an issue.
In a Postmodern world, however, hierarchy loses its footing amid chaos, educated experts give way to personal experience, and closure is, well, unnecessary, because each occurrence of and in life has its own roots, environment and individuals. Truth isn’t always absolute in the Postmodern mind, so it’s understandable that Tina would be frustrated by what is essentially a Postmodern phenomenon (blogging).
I’m happy to see this kind of statement being bandied about, because it crystalizes the line between these two schools of thought and makes it easier to see what’s coming.
In the words of the immortal Carpenters: “We’ve only just begun.”
Doc Searls on supply and demand
Tuesday, September 28th, 2004The inimitable Doc chimes in on the online law of supply and demand, and offers some great advice to Web publishers and entrepreneurs searching for workable business models:
Face the fact that the Net isn’t yet another medium for pumping “content” from a few producers to countless consumers. Instead, it’s an environment — a very real marketplace — where the demand side has the power to supply. The consumers of yesterday are now full-power customers, plus something much more important: they are *participants*. They participate in the form of product advice, personal involvement, and by creating new inventions and businesses of their own. You either embrace that participation, or risk being shoved aside by it.
CNET on RSS
Monday, September 27th, 2004Here’s a link to an outstanding piece of work on RSS. Make sure you take a look at the video tutorial. Rafe Needleman does a great job, and don’t you wish you were producing this kind of stuff on YOUR Website?
When Supply Exceeds Demand
Monday, September 27th, 2004Here is the latest essay in the ongoing series, TV News in a Postmodern World. It is the 35th essay in the series, and in many ways, I think it’s the most important one, for it examines how information Websites are (wrongly) responding when they discover that the law of supply and demand is working against them online. Money is the issue here. How do you make money in an environment where supply is out of (our) control?
The point of the essay is that most media outlets are viewing the problem with old eyes. New business models are out there, but we won’t discover them until we adjust our perspective to the new reality.
Broder: shame and embarrassment at the media’s performance
Sunday, September 26th, 2004Washington Post columnist David Broder took a heartfelt and honest look inside the world of journalism over the weekend. In “The Media, Losing Their Way,” Broder writes of the CBS and New York Times scandals and blames, among other things, management.
The common feature — and the disturbing fact — is that none of these damaging failures would have occurred had senior journalists not been blind to the fact that the standards in their organizations were being fatally compromised.We need to be asking why this collapse has taken place.
My suspicion is that it stems from a widespread loss of confidence in both the values of journalism and the economic viability of the news business.
The way to the top of journalism was no longer to test yourself on police beats and city hall assignments, under the skeptical gaze of editors who demanded precision in writing and careful weighing of evidence. It was to make a reputation as a clever wordsmith, a feisty advocate, a belligerent or beguiling political personality, and then market yourself to the media.
TV’s impact remains strong
Sunday, September 26th, 2004The fall network television season’s first week further advanced the new era in crime dramas — the forensic scientist age. I’ll admit that I like these shows, and there are plenty to go around. Thursday night’s CSI was the top show of the week. CBS launched the third of its CSI series with CSI New York on Wednesday nights, and the show actually unseated long time king, Law and Order. There’s CSI Miami, Crossing Jordan, Navy NCIS, and NBC’s new Medical Investigators series. A crime show isn’t a crime show anymore unless its loaded with forensic science stuff.
This is impacting our culture in ways that only television can. I watched a fascinating report on Court TV last night in which lawyers and prosecutors were noting that juries now fully expect these goodies in trials. If a prosecutor doesn’t have it in his or her case, they had better be able to tell the jury why. The consensus was that it’s harder to get a conviction without it, and there was lots of speculation that convictions of the past wouldn’t make it in today’s jury pool. In some high-profile, forensic-science-laden cases, attorneys are screening jurors to see if they watch and enjoy such programs as CSI. They make better jurors in these cases.
Informed jurors have seen how it works on TV, and they’re demanding it in the real world. Of course, few police departments are as equipped as the labs on TV. And the flip side of this is that these shows are putting all kinds of ideas in the minds of the bad guys too, but Court TV hasn’t done that story yet.
TV ads can bring unintended messages
Thursday, September 23rd, 2004
When the new DVD version of the original Star Wars trilogy was released last week, a companion ad promoted a new video game as well. Star Wars: Battlefront offers users a variety of ways to engage in the battles fought in the Star Wars series. Those who regularly follow this blog will recognize something very important in the ad copy accompanying all the dazzling images:
For years you’ve watched the greatest Star Wars battles…what if…you could actually live them?
Play the classic Star Wars battles anyway you want! Experience the chaos of war as you fight the greatest battles in the Star Wars universe.
-o-
Everybody has seen this ad, where a split screen features Al Franken and Ben Stein describing the various ways Republicans and Democrats use Yahoo!’s search capabilities. Stein suggests the Democrats use it for hugging trees, while Franken suggests that Republicans are searching for yachts and trophy wives.
I’ve seen this so many times that I’ve begun to ask questions about what’s being said, and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a highly effective — albeit subliminal — ad for the Republican party. It’s not what Stein says; Franken unwittingly promotes the GOP by saying they use Yahoo! to find big boats, yachts and trophy wives. Hmm. Think about it, guys. Who hasn’t dreamt of yachts and trophy wives? Just sayin’.
Gallup questions reveal CBS fallout
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004The CBS fontgate/memogate/Rathergate scandal has produced an uptick in feelings of liberal bias in the media, while trust in the press has fallen to an all-time low. According to new numbers (Subscription Required) from the Gallup organization, which has been tracking the question of media bias for many years, the issues of media bias and trust showed significant shifts during the time CBS was under scrutiny, September 13-15.
For the first time since Gallup began this research over 30 years ago, more than half the people (55%) answered “not very much” or “none at all,” when asked about trust in reporting the news.
In general, do you think the news media is — [ROTATED: too liberal, just about right, or too conservative]?
| % Too liberal |
% Just about right |
% Too conservative |
% No opinion |
|
| 2004 Sep 13-15 | 48 | 33 | 15 | 4 |
| 2003 Sep 8-10 | 45 | 39 | 14 | 2 |
| 2003 Feb 17-19 | 45 | 36 | 15 | 4 |
| 2002 Sep 5-8 | 47 | 37 | 13 | 3 |
| 2001 Sep 7-10 | 45 | 40 | 11 | 4 |
| % Great deal |
% Fair amount |
% Not very much |
% None at all |
% No opinion | |
| 2004 Sep 13-15 | 9 | 35 | 39 | 16 | 1 |
| 2003 Sep 8-10 | 14 | 40 | 35 | 11 | * |
| 2002 Sep 5-8 | 10 | 44 | 35 | 11 | * |
| 2001 Sep 7-10 | 12 | 41 | 33 | 14 | * |
| 2000 Jul 6-9 | 12 | 39 | 37 | 12 | * |
| 1999 Feb 4-8 | 11 | 44 | 34 | 11 | * |
| 1998 Dec 28-29 | 11 | 44 | 35 | 9 | 1 |
| 1997 May 30-Jun 1 | 10 | 43 | 31 | 15 | 1 |
| 1976 Jun | 18 | 54 | 22 | 4 | 2 |
| 1974 Apr | 21 | 48 | 21 | 8 | 1 |
| 1972 May | 18 | 50 | 24 | 6 | 2 |
UPDATE Thursday. Gallup issued a news release on this today. Interesting stuff. It shows a sizeable shift in trust even among Democrats.
OPA Study: Internet top choice among young people
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004This won’t be a bulletin to those who study such things, but this new study (PDF) by the Online Publisher’s Association and Frank Magid Associates contains some important stuff.
“Consumers continue to move beyond purely functional uses of the Internet into more media-oriented activities, such as reading stories, looking at photos, and watching video,” said Michael Zimbalist, president of the Online Publishers Association. “These results show how receptive people of all ages are to the Internet as a medium and not just a tool.”
The study of 1,235 adults aged 18-54, shows that the Internet and television are the top two media choices. The graph below is from the question, “If you could use only two media in your life, which two of the media listed below would you use?
Sullivan: Fancy J-schools are a waste of time
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004Blogger Andrew Sullivan, writing in an interesting piece for Time, says people need to thank bloggers for their role in contemporary journalism. The genius of blogs, he writes, “lies not so much in the bloggers themselves but in the transparent system they have created.” The blogosphere’s collective mind is a corrective one, he adds, and he seriously disses those who look down their noses at the “guys in pajamas.”
The critics of blogs cite their lack of professionalism. Piffle. The dirty little secret of journalism is that it isn’t really a profession. It’s a craft. All you need is a telephone and a conscience, and you’re all set. You get better at it merely by doing it—which is why fancy journalism schools are, to my mind, such a waste of time.
When I was a news director, I actually gave precedence to those applicants with degrees other than communications or journalism. Give me a basic liberal arts education and a little passion, and I’ll show you a potentially good reporter. Other crafts require an apprenticeship before advancement within the trade. It should be the same for the news business.
On the road
Tuesday, September 21st, 2004I’ll be in Chicago today for meetings with prospective clients. Long day.
CBS/Rather apology accepted here
Monday, September 20th, 2004Tonight’s CBS Evening News broadcast was historic, and I had a profound sense (for the first time) that CBS realizes the enormity of its error and honestly regrets what has happened. I realize there are still unanswered questions, and I hope the independent investigation is thorough and conducted by a mix of different journalists. I’m also sure that there will be a continued cry for Rather’s head and ongoing judgments that the admission was disingenuous. Nevertheless, I thought tonight’s broadcast was a strong step in the right direction. Things will never be the same, but I think that’s a good thing. Apology accepted. Turn the page.
CBS admits it was misled
Monday, September 20th, 2004Here’s the guts of a CBS story on its own statement:
In a statement, CBS said former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett “has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents” and “admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents’ origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source.”The network did not say the memoranda — purportedly written by one of Mr. Bush’s National Guard commanders — were forgeries. But the network did say it could not authenticate the documents and that it should not have reported them.
“Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report,” said the statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward. “We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret.
“Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting,” Heyward continued. “We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust.”
In a separate statement, Rather said that “after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically.”
“I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers,” he said.
“We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry,” Rather added.
The face of news bias
Monday, September 20th, 2004The New York Times is reporting this morning that CBS News has come to the conclusion that the RatherGate memos are fakes. As this unfolds on-the-air over the next couple of days, pay close attention to the wording CBS uses in explaining the mess. Comments such as “We were duped” or “We were deceived” will take the focus off the network and onto the person who provided the documents. CBS will paint itself as a victim in order to save face, and this will only further the divide between itself and the American public.
Only an unqualified acceptance of responsibility will do. Here’s the real nut:
Mr. Rather and others at the network are said to still believe that the sentiment in the memos accurately reflected Mr. Killian’s feelings but that the documents’ authenticity was now in grave doubt.
The new reality is beautifully stated in a Chicago Tribune Sunday report by John Cook, “Glimpse at the future looks neither fair nor balanced.”
There are two dynamics at play, according to industry observers, that could make abandoning, or at least eroding, the traditional objective news ethic a viable business proposition. One is a decades-long trend in the media business away from a few dominant mass media players such as the Big Three networks and toward a plethora of smaller niche outlets. The second is the increasing politicization of the news media itself, a development visible in everything from the success of recent books such as Bernard Goldberg’s “Bias” and Ann Coulter’s “Slander” to the immediate suspicions among conservatives that CBS News used forged documents in its recent report on Bush’s Guard service.“What is reasonably clear is that you’ve got a greater fractionalization of the media,” said James Rutherfurd, executive vice president of the media investment bank Veronis Suhler Stevenson. “Whether it’s left-wing or right-wing or fly fishermen or golfers, you now have channels and programming directed at particular segments.”
But most major journalism outlets, including CNN, have traditionally been aggressively anti-niche in their approach, striving instead to be comprehensive, calibrated, balanced and offensive to no one.
Rutherfurd called that “lowest common denominator news.”
“It’s wishy-washy and namby-pamby,” he said. “And people might be looking for something with a little flair and spice — a little bit combative. Maybe that’s what the population wants.” He pointed to Europe, where many newspapers proudly wear their party affiliations on their sleeves, a move that has been good for business.
“In France you know if you’ve got a leftist or rightist newspaper,” he said. “And that’s made for a very lively and more exuberant newspaper market” than in the U.S.
“I’m not terrified by the idea of more partisan journalism,” said Jonah Goldberg, a syndicated columnist and editor-at-large for the Web site of the conservative National Review. “I don’t think that the ability of people to see what they want to see on their terms is a bad thing.”
The likelihood of CBS labeling itself as representing the left is about the same as Fox labeling itself as representing the right. Bias is more representative of individuals anyway — not necessarily entire organizations. This is where, I believe, a lot of observers err when examining Fox. The faces of bias on Fox are commentators and hosts of various programs representing a point-of-view. The face of bias on CBS, however, is now its primary news anchor, something the network will be hard-pressed to overcome.
M.I.P. = Men In Pajamas
Saturday, September 18th, 2004The CBS embarrassment, known as RatherGate, MemoGate or whatever you want to call it, will leave things behind other than the corpses of Dan Rather and the current CBS News leadership. I think one thing that will have legs is this quote by former CBS executive Jonathan Klein:
“You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances (CBS News) and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.”
Even at the height of my TV news career, I was smart enough to realize that what we did wasn’t rocket science. Research is research, and working in a newsroom doesn’t change that. There’s no hidden set of secret rules that transforms the “layers of checks and balances” of a newsroom into a better research tool than any other. It’s still people doing the work. The Internet (read: Google) has also leveled the playing field, and this is bad news for “professional” news and good news for the M.I.P.
We’re in the midst of a communications revolution, one where “dressed for success” has an entirely different set of rules.
Note to publisher: Make this a chapter in my book.
Not blogging today
Friday, September 17th, 2004Two words: Ryder Cup.
How about at least kissing us afterwards?
Thursday, September 16th, 2004Broadcasting is about to take it up the backside once again, as another unpaid distributor of its product comes into view. The telecom industry — tired of losing ground to cable companies, who bundle phone service along with high speed Internet and television — is getting into the cable TV business. This is, of course, no bulletin, but news that the delivery will be via Internet protocol (IP) is most intriguing — especially coming from the Chairman of the FCC.
“Almost every major phone company I’m aware of has an initiative underway to begin to try to plug the hole with partnerships with satellite-delivered video but what they’re really working on is broadband-delivered IP (Internet protocol) television,” (Michael) Powell told reporters.“That’s a major component that’s moving fast,” he said. Powell noted that TiVo Inc., famous for its digital television recorders, was joining up with online DVD renter Netflix Inc. to offer movies to a home via high-speed Internet, or broadband, lines.
Powell said it was unclear what regulatory obligations such as serving the public interest would apply to television via the Internet, if any.
But here’s the really BIG issue. If TV over IP is a viable method of home delivery, how long will it be before anybody can be a TV station? I have said this over and over again: everybody’s equal online. The cost of building a local video news entity have fallen to the point where anybody can do it, and Video On Demand (VOD) is the future. With AP talking about building a video archive, can “Terry’s PoMo News” be far behind? I think not, and I think THIS is an enormous threat to local broadcasters who — at least for the time being — own the local video news franchise.
UPDATE: Tim Hanlon, Starcom: “We see ‘television’ turning into simply ‘video’. The word ‘television’ carries business model connotations. But the future is a Video Ecosystem, where there’s lots of content, many touch points, and where consumers have control. To be successful, you have to deliver that video in whatever format the consumer wants to watch it in.” (From an advertorial by DVDMarketer.com)
CBS News is backtracking, and it’s a shame
Wednesday, September 15th, 2004The CBS statement today and the story tonight are extremely unsatisfying. The once proud network news operation is sounding more and more like a desperate politician, bending words to find a safe haven where there is none. At this point, nobody cares if the “story” is true or not — a point CBS seems to have missed. It’s all about the documentation and the sloppy reporting that put them in this mess in the first place.
“The memos are fake but the content isn’t” is the lamest of lame rationalizations. Come on, guys. You blew it. Put it on the table so we can get past it. All you’re doing with this charade is making matters worse.
All of journalism is watching…perhaps closer than they ever have.