CJR story brought to you by the FCC

January 2nd, 2012

The Columbia Journalism Review has presented — as a news commentary — a piece indirectly written by the FCC that favors the commission’s position in a key legislative issue involving broadcasters. The piece hypocritically trashes broadcasters for the same kind of behavior it represents, and it does so using the popular buzz term “transparency.” This is a smokescreen for what’s really being conveyed.

First, a little background.

Long ago, our government decided that “the airwaves” belong to the public and, therefore, should be regulated by the public’s representatives in Washington. Licenses to “use” the public’s airwaves were granted and maintained by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and so was born an antagonistic relationship between the licensor and the licensees. Broadcasters have long held the upper hand in this antipathy. They are a powerful group with the ability to easily reach the public “back home,” where legislators raise money and votes. The National Association of Broadcasters was and is a powerful lobbying organization.

However, there’s been a recent shifting of that power, and things are a little different today. Armed with knowledge of a real demand for wireless broadband — which would use that same spectrum owned by the public — the FCC is turning up the heat on broadcasters. This will evolve to an all-out war that threatens the core value of all of broadcasting, and as the number of people receiving TV via those airwaves alone dwindles, the case of the whole industry weakens. We’re in a season when broadcasters can extract value two ways: through subscriber revenues from cable providers and via advertising based on reach, at least some of which is over-the-air. As a group, therefore, broadcasters must promote both, and that hands the FCC an industry with a split focus to regulate. The FCC, however, cares mostly about that spectrum.

We can argue that cord-cutting raises the value of that over-the-air signal — especially in high-definition — but the longer technicians are able to innovate and resolve compression and other hi-def delivery problems, the more viable TV over IP becomes, and so we must admit that broadcasting’s “cake and eat it too” has a limited window. Broadcasters are well aware of this “problem,” and are working on so-called solutions that limit broadcast signals over IP to those geographic regions determined by broadcast licenses, thereby maintaining the old status quo. The weakness of one solution supported by the NAB and big broadcast companies (Syncbak) is that it requires the broadcast signal to verify geographic position within the market. This will be a hard proposition to sell Congress or the FCC as pressure mounts for broadband spectrum.

It’s into this scenario that an advisor to the FCC Chairman was begun writing what I would call “attack pieces” published in the Columbia Journalism Review. What or who is being attacked? Broadcasting, specifically television. It would be untoward for me to suggest that this is a deliberate effort to cloud the picture of the FCC versus broadcasting, but it does strike me as odd that such vertically-slanted stories would be published in the high church of the Columbia Journalism Review.

Steve Waldman is the writer/advisor, and his latest (This News Story Is Brought to You By…) is about how some television stations “allow sponsors to dictate content” within or close to newscasts. Mr. Waldman was the lead author of the FCC’s Information Needs of Communities study, which challenged broadcasters and helped lay the groundwork for the above arguments about the best use of spectrum.

One of Mr. Waldman’s major concerns in the CJR article is the use by certain television stations of video news releases disguised as news stories or other methods that those with a position employ to escape the wall of separation between news and advertising via the public’s airwaves. In making this charge in the Columbia Journalism Review, however, Mr. Waldman is guilty of the exact crime of which he accuses broadcasters, namely the presentation of a government position paper as news or commentary. I find it astonishing that the CJR would permit this, and yet, there it is.

That said, Mr. Waldman’s point is well-taken and broadcasters most certainly should be following the law and clearly labeling such as sponsored. But so should the Columbia Journalism Review, for this piece was surely presented — however indirectly — by the FCC.

Posted in Broadcasting, Ethics, Journalism, Legal | No Comments » |

Dean Starkman and the FONers

December 26th, 2011

Back when Dean Starkman first struck out at those who present a view of the future of news (FON) other than his, I wrote a scathing retort but never published it. Others were saying the same things, and besides, I went after him for lazy intellectualism, which is always hard to prove. So I stayed home and let the FONers speak for themselves.

But wait! I’m a FONer myself, and now Mr. Starkman has struck out again, this time choosing to “interact” with one of his chief targets, Clay Shirky. Shirky had responded to his rant, so Mr. Starkman chose to engage Shirky and clarify his disregard for the FON crowd. After conceding four points that Shirky made, Mr. Starkman boiled his concern down to one simple thought – the story.

But all of this misses the point; the talk here is all about process and structure. I’m talking about great stories. As I said in the piece, I care about institutions only to the extent that they can produce them.

…I do kind of believe that newspapers must find ways to blah blah and whatever, but in fact I care far less about that than that they produce agenda-setting stories.

And this leads me to what seems to be a gaping hole in FON theory, and that is this: It doesn’t have any great stories, and, worryingly, it doesn’t seem to have any way to produce them.

There are many ways to go in response to this thinking, but let me state just three.

1. The problem with news in the future has nothing to do with content; it’s in how we get paid for making whatever content is required. News institutions aren’t really in the content business, they’re in the advertising business, so the argument about stories is irrelevant to the problem facing organizations that shoulder a free press responsibility.
2. “The story” is a product of production processes and schedules. Many of us have written about this extensively, myself included (News is Not a Story). I think I know what Mr. Starkman means by “the story” in the above, and it’s more about the process than the product. He’s speaking of delving into some heretofore untold or hidden narrative and bringing it into the light of day through good old legwork and other journalistic practices. Clinging to this, however, as a justification to strike out at the FONers is problematic, because the very process that Mr. Starkman holds dear is being disrupted by the next factor.
3. Communications is now horizontal and in real time. This completely destroys the top-down framework within which Mr. Starkman’s story paradigm works. He proposes that the world needs educated and experienced professionals to generate and follow-up on their leads, knowledge and suspicions, and to do it in such a way that follows the ethical and legal requirements of the profession. The results are then turned over to another even more educated and experienced group for vetting and final preparation before being dispatched to a large audience for maximum effect, thereby engaging with the issues of society. It’s neat. It’s ordered. It served us well for centuries. But the world itself has changed, and in a horizontal, real time communications paradigm, no feed is special.

Mr. Starkman is asking for a replacement for that concept within the new, and there isn’t any so far. I’m not sure there ever will be, due to factor number one. Moreover, I don’t think this is the only or even the preferred way for journalism to function by default, because it produces inertia and inefficiencies along with the occasional, “agenda-setting” story.

And if we’re really going to be honest, we must ask ourselves, too, if the hiding of the various facts that make up “the story” before it’s deemed ready to publish is really always necessary in a horizontal world. If the newsgathering process is made public, we can all participate, including those who can advance “the story” separate from the person or organization who first started the snowball on its downhill adventure. I realize this may not be applicable to every situation, and that there may be times when keeping quiet is necessary. In those cases, however, I believe the new culture will figure out ways to do it without breaking the bank.

Then there’s this: Mr. Starkman’s piece in the Columbia Journalism Review — a highfaluting industry institution — is broken into two pages, presumably to play the old media game of page views. You won’t find anything similar among the FONers or their responses to Mr. Starkman. Not Mr. Shirky, not Jeff Jarvis, not Jay Rosen, not Mathew Ingram, not the host of others who fit the definition. This is itself a clue about tomorrow, for those who consume digital media are not unaware that the companies who practice such irritating tactics are merely raising the cost they have to pay for interaction. This won’t be tolerated forever. Scrolling is much more user-friendly than clicking.

The FONers know this. Mr. Starkman and those of his ilk either do not or don’t care.

Posted in Culture, Journalism, Networked World, The Great Horizontal | No Comments » |

The power of the personal brand (in a social world)

December 22nd, 2011

In a recent Nieman Journalism Lab article on the possibility of newspapers making money by selling ads on Twitter, Justin Ellis notes the successful efforts pioneered by celebrities and athletes. The fact is that the reach of certain celebrities far exceeds that of traditional media companies, so why shouldn’t advertisers pay them instead of media companies to get their word out? Besides, there’s that whole illusion of endorsement thing.

Mr. Ellis says much in a tongue-in-cheek reference to a certain reality show “star.”

Not to mention non-news outlets like, um, Kim Kardashian, for whom pay-per-tweet is a long-standing phenomenon.

Kardashian may be a “non-news outlet,” but she is so only in the sense of a traditional view of “news.” Prior to social media, celebrities required the filter of news organizations in order to be promoted, but much of that is now in their own hands. Are they “media companies?” Of course they are. And just as Wal-Mart has a bigger advertising platform than the New York Times and the Washington Post combined, Hollywood and our athletic fields are cranking out new platforms regularly. It’s into this environment that the efforts of newspapers to play copycat look just a little weak in comparison.

In the last few weeks, The Hartford Courant and The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune have experimented with using Twitter as a new advertising channel. At the Courant, they’ve started offering twice-daily deals to local businesses — think Groupon by tweet — to their followers. The Times-Picayune, more controversially, used Twitter to advertise itself — or at least its website, as the online division of its parent company, Advance Publications, paid New Orleans Saints players to tweet about the newspaper’s relaunched Saints site on Nola.com.

Mr. Ellis notes that the hashtag #spon, which appears at the end of some tweets is a “semi-legible indicator of a sponsored tweet.”

“A Twitter search for #spon is an enlightening look,” he adds, “into what sorts of companies are paying people to tweet: at the moment, Verizon, Clorox, Pepperidge Farm, and Q-Tips.”

I like what Advance Publications did in employing NFL celebrities to promote its website, but the use of a mass media Twitter news stream is problematic. It’s is a part of what I dubbed “unbundled advertising” in a 2005 essay about how to make money in the unbundled universe of the Web. It was written prior to Twitter.

If unbundled media is where we’re headed, then unbundled advertising must necessarily follow. This is a scary concept, however, for there is no command and control mechanism or manipulable infrastructure in the unbundled world. The upside, though, is that it costs very little to participate. All that’s necessary is the release what I call “ad pieces” into the seeming chaos of the Internet, where other businesses will take those pieces and reassemble them when summoned by customers who are trading their scarcity for information they actually want.

So while I fully support the concept here, we need to go back to the comparison with Kim Kardashian to understand why media companies using this particular application — in their own streams — is suspect strategically. The problem is that Kim Kardashian is a real person; The Hartford Courant is not. Ms. Kardashian’s brand is personal and as transparent as a reality star can be. Followers and fans connect with her on a visceral level. They experience emotions in their vicarious relationship with her. When Ms. Kardashian tweets for a sponsor, there’s an inference that she wouldn’t try to “fool” her fans. The endorsement also benefits her directly, and fans understand, accept and appreciate that. The few seconds it takes to “see” the endorsement isn’t wasted; it supports a real person with whom fans are connected.

Moreover, the purpose of following a celebrity on Twitter is different than the purpose of following a news organization’s stream. For Ms. Kardashian, it’s about the connection. With The Hartford Courant, it’s about the news feed. To the former, therefore, a sponsored tweet is about the person, but to the latter, it’s about noise, an interference. A sponsored tweet in the midst of a stream of news is an interruption. It’s, well, advertising.

Nevertheless, it’s good strategic thinking, because it gets us into the world of unbundling, where aggregation is the real value proposition. We’d do much better, however, if we would take up the challenge of developing the personal brands of our news people and helping them create the relational types of connections with fans enjoyed by others with celebrity. This would directly conflict with the core value proposition of mass media — the maintenance of a sterile stage from which to place advertisements — so it’s not likely a concept that media companies will enthusiastically embrace. Moreover, media companies think of employees as “theirs,” so the idea of trumpeting a brand that might one day quit and go elsewhere seems counterintuitive. This is, however, precisely the kind of thinking we need to employ, for today’s media is increasingly unbundled and social, and people follow people, not institutions.

But Mr. Ellis nails the real problem. “Newspapers,” he wrote, “are trying to insert themselves as a middleman in a medium that doesn’t require one.” He’s right. With the possible exception of aggregators, there’s just no market for middlemen online. Advertising is the new content king, because they can place that content directly in front of people in the same way we can. The people formerly known as the advertisers are now competing with us for the same eyeballs.

It’s a battle we’ll lose, because they have the money.

Posted in Advertising, Culture, Journalism, personal media, Reinventing Local Media, Unbundled Media | 1 Comment » |

Stop complaining and do your job!

November 22nd, 2011

I was surprised in two ways when I read bureau reporter Gary Sinderson’s editorial “Why The Penn State Scandal Stayed Secret” in TVNewsCheck this morning. Surprise number one was that Mr. Sinderson’s employer, Cox Media Group, would permit this, and the second surprise was the cavalier manner in which he excused not doing his job.

In a nutshell, the piece is defensive rubbish about how he got scooped by a Harrisburg newspaper writer (Sara Ganim) and how tough it is to work as a TV guy in a restricted environment such as Penn State University. The key graph for me comes as Mr. Sinderson is congratulating Ms. Ganim while at the same time acknowledging that he had basically the same information.

We compared notes on the Sandusky issue. She did fine work and deserves the boatload of awards that will probably be coming her way. We both knew the truth of the story was in Harrisburg with the grand jury. The Patriot-News, to its credit, gave her the time necessary to work on the story.

Why couldn’t I report it? I didn’t have the time to get the needed verification to move the story ahead or to convince my bosses it’s not a rumor, but a real story. It’s just the nature of my particular job. I’m a one-man band, expected to crank out several stories a day. I may get a day or two to work on a large story, but not the time afforded to Ganim.

Let me say, as a veteran news manager in “the biz” and now as an observer of media trends that this is nonsense designed to shift blame to managers who either didn’t believe him or wouldn’t give him the time and resources he felt he needed. It also taps into the misleading and empty jargon from certain industry types who (perhaps even sincerely) believe that more resources is the solution to the problems of TV news. It’s the greedy corporations or the demanding producers who just don’t understand what it’s like out here. Poor me.

I’ve personally worked with “one-man-band” bureau chiefs who’ve worked tirelessly to uncover deep and provocative misdeeds while at the same time maintaining the daily needs of the content machines. These people never complained. Never. They felt it was a privilege to hold such a position, and they worked their butts off to prove it. In a bureau where you’re the Lone Ranger, you’re also the king. You are the master of your own reputation, more so than in any other job within the TV news industry. On behalf of all of those hard-working people everywhere, I deeply resent Mr. Sinderson’s suggestion that he was somehow blocked from this story by his institution or the difficulty of finding people to go “on the record” with him on such a story.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in the news business in Milwaukee in the 70s. We had a major who refused to talk to the press and a police chief with dictatorial powers who designated the chief of detectives as the only person who could speak with the media. Being seen speaking with a reporter, whether on duty or off, was grounds for dismissal. It was impossible to do our jobs without determination (never take “no” for an answer) and ingenuity, of which we had bundles. It all depends on how badly you want it.

That was then, and this is now, but the principle is the same. Cox might want to look into its resources in State College but not to “give more time” to what it already has in place.

Posted in Broadcasting, Journalism | No Comments » |

What credibility?

November 13th, 2011

Here’s a quote today from Ted Diadium of the Cleveland Plain Dealer in a piece arguing on behalf of journalists keeping their beliefs to themselves:

The most precious thing that any news organization has to sell is its credibility, and that sometimes gets into the shadowy territory of the perceptions that readers and listeners have of their news source. If they see that reporters and editors and Web producers are political activists, our news consumers can easily begin to suspect that the stories are slanted to conform with those political views. Once that faith is lost, so is the reader.

A couple of things to consider. Firstly, what credibility? Here, again, is the Gallup chart:

Secondly, let’s be clear about what Diadium is actually saying when he says “sell” our credibility. He’s talking about maintaining a sterile environment into which they can place advertisements. Therefore, what is presented as an argument for journalism is actually an argument for mass marketing, and this is the great illusion under which many journalists function today. Ignorance of the truth doesn’t make it any less disingenious.

Posted in Advertising, Journalism | No Comments » |

The Poynter conundrum

November 12th, 2011

As hierarchical institutions begin to lose their grip on our culture, a great many things we used to take for granted are now up in the air. This is a permanent fruit of what Jay Rosen calls “the Great Horizontal,” and we really have no idea where it’s taking us. Our culture is based upon hierarchical layers of “expertise,” some of it licensed by the state. This produces order, which Henry Adams called “the dream of man.”

It also produces elites, the governing class, those who call the shots for others not so fortunate as to occupy the higher altitudes. This is the 1% against which the occupiers bring their protests, their dis-order.

We used to think that elites and hierarchical order were necessary for the well-being of all, but that idea is being challenged as knowledge — the protected source of power (and elevation) — is being spread sideways along the Great Horizontal. It’s not that we’re so much smarter than we used to be; it’s that the experts don’t seem so “expert” anymore, because the knowledge that gave them their status isn’t protected today. Anybody can access it with the touch of a finger.

This is giving institutions fits, and each one is fighting for its very life against the inevitable flattening that’s taking place. Medicine wants no part of smart and informed patients and neither does the insurance industry. The legal world scoffs at the notion that they’re in it for themselves as they occupy legislatures and create the laws that work on their behalf. Higher education increasingly touts the campus experience over what’s being learned, because they all know that the Web has unlimited teaching capacity. Government needs its silos to sustain its bureaucracy, but the Great Horizontal cuts across them all.

And then there’s the media, which brings me to The Poynter Institute.

Exercising its position as the arbiter of institutional journalistic ethics, Poynter publicly chided one of its most valuable treasures, Jim Romenesko, over what it called “incomplete attribution” of some of his source material. That’s their way of saying he failed to put quotes around some pieces of copy that were lifted from the articles for which he was providing links. That’s what Romenesko has done for Poynter since 1999 — provide links to content about journalism that he felt was worth reading. He’s held in high esteem by most within the profession, and has received nearly unanimous support over the suggestion — not an actual accusation — that he was practicing plagiarism. Romenesko didn’t just drive traffic to websites; he had his eye on the cutting edge of the institutional changes hammering journalism. His RSS feed has been in my reader since he first provided one. Before that, it was a newsletter.

Romenesko was going to retire at the end of the year, but after the public hand slap from his employer, he resigned this week. He said his heart was “no longer in the job.” I don’t blame him a bit.

Plagiarism, to be sure, is a serious ethical issue for journalism. By failing to provide quotation marks, wrote Poynter editor Julie Moos, those sections “may appear to belong to Jim when they in fact belong to another.”

“We are in uncharted territory, marked by uncertainty, which suggests caution. We will continue to evaluate this situation and to be as transparent as possible about what we learn and decide.”

Integrity isn’t determined by pedantic adherence to a set of rules. That’s the bedrock of hierarchical order, where he who is in charge makes the rules. Integrity is a complex (honesty, truthfulness, accuracy) but simple internal character attribute, the virtue of which lies in its consistency. The problem comes in judging it entirely on external appearances, for it’s the full weight of a person’s heart that determines integrity. From my limited view, Jim Romenesko hasn’t a dishonest bone in his body and is respected for his integrity, so this harsh and public suggestion is based on the “appearance” of hypocrisy. As it turns out, Poynter says they were reacting to an inquiry by a reporter from the Columbia Journalism Review, so they acted to spank Romenesko publicly ahead of what they expected would be a “look what I found” piece from the CJR. If that’s indeed the case, it’s especially pathetic.

But Jim Romenesko isn’t Poynter’s problem. The organization’s real conundrum is that it has no choice but to defend the indefensible, journalistic poppycock disguised as the self-governance of an institution in disruption. As a non-profit organization, Poynter must raise funds from a variety of people and organizations, and those who feel under attack are more likely to give a buck than those who aren’t. It’s why every 501.c.3 has an “enemy” that they must overcome and why they deal with crises four times a year.

Here’s a line from the fundraising section of the Poynter site:

Your support of Poynter makes clear your belief that the work of our democracy is too complex and too important for us to be informed by anything less than the very best journalism we can get.

I don’t question the sincerity of those who believe this, but it’s extremely narrow and represents only those who benefit from what it preaches — a group of “qualified” elites who, by virtue of their supreme knowledge, training and skill, are able to figure things out for us poor, stupid morons from main street. It rings hollow, because the people it’s supposed to serve stopped trusting in it in the mid 70s, and now many more people distrust the press than have any faith in it at all. It’s the stuff of the 1%, which the whole occupy movement is resisting, a hegemony that greases the wheels of those who manipulate it so that it can remain atop its self-created pedestal.

This doesn’t do the institution of journalism a lick of good, but it’s wonderful fundraising fodder. One of the complaints that the pros have about so-called “amateur” journalism is its sloppiness when it comes to the sacred canons, so Poynter is in the inevitable position — as defenders of the canons — to ALWAYS act on their behalf and avoid even the appearance of a violation. It finds itself between a rock and a hard place here, unable to bring the enemy of common sense into any argument.

If Poynter was really concerned about the future of journalism, it would take the lead in its reinvention. That is impossible, however, if your core funding mission is the protection of the crumbling status quo.

Most of the stuff I’ve read from Poynter has come through Jim Romenesko. Now that he’s gone, I’ve deleted the RSS feed to make room for the one from jimromenesko.com.

I can’t imagine I’m alone.

Posted in Journalism | 8 Comments » |

Those awful news gurus

November 8th, 2011

Not that they need my defending, but I’m a little irked today about some whining thoughts expressed about a couple of my friends and colleagues by Dean Starkman in The Columbia Journalism Review. Starkman’s meandering screed (Confidence Game: The limited vision of the news gurus) is about the institution of journalism fighting against a group of new thinkers that he calls “the future-of-news (FON) consensus” — “known for neither their journalism nor their scholarship.” Nice.

Most prominent are Jeff Jarvis, Clay Shirky, and Jay Rosen, whose ideas we’ll focus on here, along with Dan Gillmor, John Paton, and others.

The News Gurus - Sketches by John Hendrix

…in the debate over journalism’s future, the FON crowd has had the upper hand. The establishment is gloomy and old; the FON consensus is hopeful and young (or purports to represent youth). The establishment has no plan. The FON consensus says no plan is the plan. The establishment drones on about rules and standards; the FON thinkers talk about freedom and informality. FON says “cheap” and “free”; the establishment asks for your credit card number. FON talks about “networks,” “communities,” and “love”; the establishment mutters about “institutions,” like The New York Times or mental hospitals.

…If some aspects of peer-production theory and its FON offshoot sound familiar—anti-institutionalism; communitarianism laced with libertarianism; a millennial, Age-of-Aquarius vibe; a certain militancy—some scholars have traced its roots to 1960s counterculture.

Mr. Starkman mocks the work of Jarvis, Rosen and Shirky and others to reach a conclusion that we need the institutional press more than the ideas of this FON consensus. The enemy, he says, is time, time to investigate and to understand the narrative behind the story. That which the FON preaches, he notes, is discouraging to the people who are trying to do the work of — are you ready for it? — real journalism.

Whether it be called The New York Times or the Digital Beagle, we must have organizations with talent, traditions, culture, bureaucrats, geniuses, monomaniacs, lawyers, health plans, marketing divisions, and ad salespeople—and they must have the clout to take on the likes of Goldman Sachs, the White House, and local political bosses. The public needs them, and it will have them.

This kind of all-or-nothing, us-versus-them thinking is not only old, it’s boring and irrelevant. He speaks of a “debate” over journalism’s future, and then misrepresents the views of his foils, because they don’t agree with his definition of journalism. He acknowledges that traditional journalism is hosed by cultural shifts, but he offers nothing in the way of a solution other than the tried and true. This makes no sense.

And it’s completely irrelevant anyway, because it isn’t the reinvention of journalism, per se, that’s the real problem for the institution; it’s the revolution underway in advertising that’s crushing the hopes of the status quo. It has nothing to do with the journalism. I mean, of course it has some relevance, but the future of the First Amendment isn’t in the health of institutions; it’s in who’s going to pay for it.

So bickering about what works or doesn’t work regarding journalism solves nothing in terms of the only question that really matters, and this is why I find this particular article so distasteful. Mr. Starkman is playing defense. The others are playing offense in trying to move a big rock that needs moving.

And it’s not institutions that represent the evils of the participatory culture; it’s hierarchical institutions. Why? Because every one of them is in it for themselves, not the people they were intended to serve. I agree with Mr. Starkman’s conclusion that we’ll one day have new institutions, but I think they will be vastly different than what we have today.

I’m sure he’d ask me to explain how they’d be different, but that’s the problem with trying to think ahead of others. The answer is that I don’t know, only that they’ll be different.

Ironically, this article appeared at the same time as another article, this one by the Neiman Journalism Lab at Harvard about retiring newspaper editor John Robinson. The interview with Robinson (disclosure: he’s a friend of mine) includes the advice to “find thinkers that will challenge you” and includes the same names that Starkman chose to challenge. Dean, meet John, an old school guy but with a mind in the 21st Century.

Posted in Journalism | No Comments » |

Oh-oh! Press trust stays low.

October 20th, 2011

The opening sentence in the press release from Gallup says it all:

The majority of Americans still do not have confidence in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 44% of Americans who have a great deal or fair amount of trust and the 55% who have little or no trust remain among the most negative views Gallup has measured.

Here is the new data from Gallup tacked on to old data from Gallup, so that you can get the big picture. This is in 3-year increments going back to 1973. I’ve been updating and showing this image for ten years, because it immediately ends arguments about the viability of continuing down the same, tired paths.

This slide evidences the insurmountable problem for media companies today, because it slams the door on any attempts by the press to right the ship doing things the way we’ve always done them. It ain’t gonna work. Period.

The standard journalist response to the decline in ratings or circulation is that we’re not doing enough “hard” news, whatever that is. Or we’re not doing enough “investigative” news, whatever that is. Look at that graph. The nostalgia with which most journalists sincerely believe will fix what’s broken has to go back a very long way, for the decline in trust goes back 35 years. Thirty-five years! It’s broken, and we need to start over, not go back to the good old days when the people were spoon-fed by our “expertise.”

This is why contrary opinions, like the one expressed by AP’s David Bauder this week in New life in television’s evening news, are so disappointing. Bauder takes a look at some numbers and concludes that the network evening newscast is back.

…the networks have just completed a TV season where all three grew their audiences for the first time since 2001-02, when terrorists struck and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars began. The growth is continuing for the first few weeks of this season.

The reason he and his list of experts cite is concern about the economy and what he calls “the curating function of the evening news,” which is necessary because, you know, the audience is incapable of figuring out anything for themselves.

People follow news, “but they want someone they trust at the end of the day to explain it to them, to show what it means to them. Somebody credible,” said Michael Corn, executive producer of ABC’s “World News” with Sawyer.

Brand name journalists mean something when people can’t trust the accuracy of what they see online, said Dave Marash, a veteran journalist who worked at ABC News and Al-Jazeera English.

What Bauder and those like him fail to do is overlay the Gallup graph onto attempts to justify the hole in which we find ourselves. Michael Corn apparently believes that people “want someone they can trust at the end of the day to explain it to them.” Right. Now take a look at that graph and repeat that to me.

Folks, let’s be honest. The rise of new media is, in part, a direct response to the Gallup graph, and we make fools of ourselves every time we try to explain it otherwise. Before we say people trust us, we’d better be sure of the facts.

Posted in Broadcasting, Culture, Journalism, Networks, Newspapers, Reinventing Local Media | 3 Comments » |

When Closure is Contrived

September 28th, 2011

Here is the latest in my ongoing series of essays, Local Media in a Postmodern World:

When Closure is Contrived

This continues the theme of the shift of news from “stories” to real-time flows and streams. Writers all know that stories have a beginning, middle and end. Woven throughout is a narrative that the writer chooses to frame the story. Real-time news, however, is showing us that these narratives are sometimes inaccurate and reflect the inherent beliefs of the writer. Story “endings” are contrived, because we don’t know the real end of most news “stories” until many years have passed. Contrived closure,  therefore, is a cultural landmine, especially when the motives of the writer/reporter are questioned as either self-promotional, biased, or both.

Posted in Essays, Journalism | No Comments » |

Court redefines “The Press”

August 31st, 2011

This was inevitable.

A few weeks ago, I wrote of the coming clash between police and everyday people with cameras. The issue advanced significantly on Friday with a stunning Federal Appeals Court ruling affirming the First Amendment right of citizens to photograph or create videos of police while they’re on duty. Police agencies in some communities were using an odd interpretation of wiretap laws to confiscate the camera phones of bystanders, and the court rightly found that to be unconstitutional.

The decision has far-reaching implications that go beyond the mere taking of pictures at crime, disturbance and accident scenes. By granting everyone this “right,” this ruling redefines “the press” in this country by shattering the myth of privilege associated with working for a so-called “legitimate” news organization. Some will cry that it opens Pandora’s Box, because a clearly defined “press” helps the machine of modernity function. This decision is potential chaotic, for example, to those cultural institutions who have a vested interest in keeping their “news” in the hands of a professional class (that can be manipulated). Think of an agency holding a press conference, for example. If press freedom applies to everybody, then that agency cannot restrict access to only those who work for a news organization.

The decision should make anybody in a traditional newsroom shutter. As we’ve been saying for years, the personal media revolution — what Jay Rosen calls “the Great Horizontal” — IS the second Gutenberg moment in Western civilization. It destroys the hierarchical infrastructure of the modern world and scatters authority across the people that the hierarchy was supposed to serve. Hierarchies, however, are comprised of human beings, and each has drifted into self-preservation and self-advancement rather than service.

It’s an enormous cultural shift, because power disrupted impacts everything. If the First Amendment press freedoms now belong to everyone, we clearly need an entirely different way of thinking about how information gets created and distributed in the culture. We’re going to hang onto the old for as long as we can, but we MUST be exploring ways to compete against that model, because the path for others to compete against us is now much simpler.

The ruling itself is fascinating, and I strongly recommend you go read it. The language is clear, as the following excerpts reveal. The case itself originates from a 2007 incident in Boston. Simon Glik was arrested for using his cell phone to film several police officers arresting a young man on the Boston Common. The case was thrown out in municipal court, but Glik sued. The Federal District Court affirmed the suit, which was automatically appealed to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, which issued its decision Friday.

The defendants moved to dismiss Glik’s complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), arguing that the allegations of the complaint failed to adequately support Glik’s claims and that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity “because it is not well-settled that he had a constitutional right to record the officers.” At a hearing on the motion, the district court focused on the qualified immunity defense, noting that it presented the closest issue. After hearing argument from the parties, the court orally denied the defendants’ motion, concluding that “in the First Circuit…this First Amendment right publicly to record the activities of police officers on public business is established.”

…is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.

It is firmly established that the First Amendment’s aegis extends further than the text’s proscription on laws “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” and encompasses a range of conduct related to the gathering and dissemination of information. As the Supreme Court has observed, “the First Amendment goes beyond protection of the press and the self-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw.”

As I wrote a few weeks ago, police in many places are using the smokescreen of wiretap law violations to avoid scrutiny, and I warned of the consequences:

The law of unintended consequences is waiting in the wings, however, as governments try to press their need for authority over this in public. The First Amendment is the “first” for a reason, and in the age of its writing, it protected those who bought ink by the barrel and those who printed their pamphlets any way they could.

…In this country, the right to report news isn’t reserved only for elite professional organizations, despite the reality that we’ve operated that way for a long time. We want and need to stay as far away from “licensing” as possible, for who then would report on those providing the licenses? Times have changed, and there’s no going back. The best we can do is adapt, and in this issue, that means getting involved.

Technology is altering many of the core beliefs and functions of the modernist world. This is why I’ve maintained a blog for the past ten years under the banner “The Pomo Blog.” Pomo stands for postmodern, and all of my ideas, suggestions and memes flow from the belief that modernism died the day the Web was created. This simple observation has been validated almost every day.

We want and need things to stay the same, because it’s what we understand. This includes media, so let me repeat for those with ears to hear that our future is along a different path, and the sooner we get on it, the better. There is no value in being the last buggy whip maker.

Posted in Disruptions, Journalism, Legal, Postmodernism, The Great Horizontal | 8 Comments » |