David Simon, creator of The Wire, has an article in the Washington Post about the decline of hard-hitting journalism:
Half-truths, obfuscations and apparent deceit — these are the wages of a world in which newspapers, their staffs eviscerated, no longer battle at the frontiers of public information. And in a city where officials routinely plead with citizens to trust the police, where witnesses have for years been vulnerable to retaliatory violence, we now have a once-proud department’s officers hiding behind anonymity that is not only arguably illegal under existing public information laws, but hypocritical as well.
Yeah, yeah, posting here has been light, and I have all kinds of plans, hopes, and dreams that I want to pursue with this blog…
Moving on.
I awoke at 4 a.m. today thinking that there was a fire above me on Stringer’s Ridge. Once I gained my bearings, I realized that there was no fire. Everything was ok, and it was all in my head. I’ve been hard at work on Chattarati the last 2 weeks, and I had a series of ideas I wanted to get down before lying back down for a few more hours of shuteye.
That’s been my motus operandi as of late — having nightmares that the neighborhood is burning down, or waking up in desperate need of a shovel.
While the convergence of news, blogging, and historical perspective may be a relatively new phenomenon, the result is a natural culmination of three traditional spheres moving closer together: the town crier, the town square, and the town expert. (Follow the link for a pretty stellar Venn diagram.)
Steve Yelvington believes that local news sites tend to invest too many resources into the town crier model, neglecting the other two fields:
Journalists tend to gravitate to only one of these roles: the town crier, the quaint colonial-era village character who walks around ringing a bell telling you what’s happening. It comes naturally. This is why 24×7 coverage teams and the “continuous news desk” concept take root so quickly when newsrooms suddenly awaken to the urgency of taking the Internet seriously.
But the other roles aren’t secondary. They’re coequal, and they’re grossly neglected by most local news websites.
As far as Chattanooga is concerned, the town expert model is desperately needed. Finding information outside of “most recent events” requires a trip to the library when it should just be a Google search away. Incidentally, revamping the library has been a big project during the last 2 years, but accessibility has taken a backseat to marketing.
Despite being two of the most well-read news outlets in the world, both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are in serious, financial trouble for a simple reason. Though part of the WSJ is subscription-based (yeah, who does that?), most of their online revenue is derived from advertising. Walter Isaacson describes the failure of this model in a recent Time Magazine article, How to Save Your Newspaper:
This is not a business model that makes sense. Perhaps it appeared to when Web advertising was booming and every half-sentient publisher could pretend to be among the clan who “got it” by chanting the mantra that the ad-supported Web was “the future.” But when Web advertising declined in the fourth quarter of 2008, free felt like the future of journalism only in the sense that a steep cliff is the future for a herd of lemmings.
Newspapers and magazines traditionally have had three revenue sources: newsstand sales, subscriptions and advertising. The new business model relies only on the last of these. That makes for a wobbly stool even when the one leg is strong. When it weakens — as countless publishers have seen happen as a result of the recession — the stool can’t possibly stand.
Incidentally, Mark Cuban’s announcement of an Open Source Stimulus specifically states that he won’t invest in a business that “generates any revenue from advertising.” Why? Because it’s a lost cause. Ad revenue might bring in a sustainable living for a few bloggers working out of their homes. But for large and (sometimes) inflated organizations like NYT and WSJ, that model just isn’t good enough. The other two legs of the stool are missing. And both investors and media-types are beginning to understand this new reality.
There’s a finer point here that while the free market is currently speaking loudly about these 2 organizations, their content remains relatively free and undervalued as far as the end-user is concerned. They are operating in unchartered territory in which there is not a stable model to go by. There is currently no “market” in this free market equation.
It was Plouffe (rhymes with bluff) who gathered the president’s unprecedented thirteen-million-name contact list, which has grown into a fulsome pulsing beast, and it is Plouffe who now owns it and keeps it under lock and key. Plouffe sent those thirteen million people an e-mail in mid-November and they replied, Yes, I still want to be involved, and yes, David Plouffe, I’ll have house parties when you tell me to. Here is who I am socioeconomically and socially. I am boxers; my next-door neighbor is briefs. Now the president has instructed him to make that list a new lever of government.
#TCOT aficionado’s take note. The email address still lies at the core of a user’s online identity. And control of such a massive email list allows the organizer to work across multiple platforms with continuity — even if those tools haven’t been developed, yet.
If you follow me on Twitter for the express purpose of pointing to your own content or telling me how awesome your business is 10 times a day, there’s a 90% chance I will not want to read your updates.
If you ‘friend’ me on Facebook through mutual contacts, only to turn around and invite me to 3 events in which I have no interest in attending (because you never bothered to learn), you will be purged from my friends list.
If you are a company that believes you’re only a blog post, Twitter post, or a Facebook event away from market penetration, you might need to re-evaluate your business strategy.
Otherwise:
If you are an interesting individual, and happen to enjoy communicating ideas (and the occasional link) in 140 characters or less, there is a 90% chance I want to read your updates on Twitter.
If you want to sometimes pass messages or photos along, or even invite me to the occasional event that you have a lot of personal energy invested into — or you deem it worth my while because you’ve taken the time to know what I like — we should be friends on Facebook.
If you’re a business that happens to enjoy social media websites because it lets you stay connected with fans of your products or services, you get the big picture.
In that:
Social media (whatever that is) is not a business strategy. And it’s not a marketing plan. It’s simply another way for individuals to interact with other individuals.
James Warren discusses the role of print journalism in a democratic society, and the inherent trust between the newspaper as an institution and its audience:
Journalism at its best succeeded because of an accumulation of trust on the public’s part over the past 60 or 70 years–a general sense, now sadly on a southerly trajectory, that the final product merited both inspection and confidence. There was value in a reporter gaining true expertise in a given area, winning the trust of individuals, and ultimately using that expertise and trust to cover and break stories of relevance to a community.
What’s left is local news, investigative journalism and intelligent coverage of national news. Perhaps 2% of the cost of a typical paper. I worry about the quality of a democracy when the the state government or the local government can do what it wants without intelligent coverage. I worry about the abuse of power when the only thing a corrupt official needs to worry about is the TV news. I worry about the quality of legislation when there isn’t a passionate, unbiased reporter there to explain it to us.
But then I see the in depth stories about the gowns to be worn to the inauguration or the selection of the White House dog and I wonder if newspapers are the most efficient way to do this anyway.
Point taken, but among other things, I’ll miss accountability. There are very few news sites that I trust outside of the traditional lexicon. And a lot of network coverage still takes its cues from newspaper reporting (and isn’t always the most reliable source of information, I should add).
As the first installment in the 2009 George T. Hunter Lecture Series, Team of Rivals author, Doris Kearns Goodwin will give a lecture entitled “Lessons in Leadership from Abraham Lincoln” tomorrow at UTC in the Roland Hayes Concert Hall. I’m supposed to have Coral Castles practice during that time (and damn these lectures/events for always taking place on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s), but I’d really like to attend.
Also, it looks like David Brooks will be here in November, and that will be a must-see for sure.
John Hawbaker, Bill Colrus and I have sort of an ongoing discussion about the direction of print media in these uncertain times, and specifically, the shortcomings and resulting fall of traditional newspapers. Yesterday, John pointed us to Michael Hirschorn’s article on the abysmal state of The New York Times Company in this month’s issue of The Atlantic:
The paper’s credit crisis comes against a backdrop of ongoing and accelerating drops in circulation, massive cutbacks in advertising revenue, and the worst economic climate in almost 80 years. As of December, its stock had fallen so far that the entire company could theoretically be had for about $1 billion. The former Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal often said he couldn’t imagine a world without The Times. Perhaps we should start.
A world without the print version of the New York Times seems to be the logical conclusion here. And though the prospect seems taboo, I have to admit that despite reading the Times daily, I only purchase the paper when I’m away from the internet — a few and far between circumstance.
On a somewhat related note, check out this amusing story of Larry Flynt asking Congress for a $5 billion bailout of the porn industry.
An interesting post from the Cato Institute wonders whether the transition team is using the economic crisis as an opportunity to impose a liberal Shock Doctrine of the Naomi Klein variety:
Well, one government has now announced its intention to take advantage of an economic crisis to implement “things you could not do before.” And since this government no doubt includes a lot of people who have read Naomi Klein, she may very well be able to take credit for giving them the idea.
I’ve been kicking the idea around as well, but Boaz ignores a broader point. We are in the middle of an economic crisis that just so happened to occur around an election. Regime change brings with it a new policy agenda, and the first year of a new administration is often the most important in terms of accomplishing specific goals outlined by the winner’s platform.
Chaos, doom, and “I told you so” are the order of the day. Maybe my brain is just wired differently, but I find most of the doomsday banter a little off-putting. I take climate change very seriously, but I don’t see what good will come from wallowing in end-times rhetoric or imagery. After all, global warming does have its upside. With that said, the swimming pool photo in the first link looks pretty wicked.
Sprint: Plug into Now — A lot of informational widgets jammed into one page, presumably as a selling point for Sprint phones. It’s like a website out of Terry Gilliam’s imagination. I was immediately drawn to the world population, energy consumption, and deforestation widgets. But I’m sure anyone will find something in his/her obsession portfoilo there. via yewknee.
David Frum writes about his exit strategy from National Review:
It’s my belief that conservatism as we have known it - and the Republican party as an institution - are in very great trouble. Conservatives and Republicans need a new kind of conversation about how we can adapt to new realities.
I want to assist in that conversation. Starting over Inauguration Weekend, I’ll be launching a new website, NewMajority.com. It will be a group blog, featuring many different voices. Not all of them identify as conservatives or Republicans. But they - and people like them - are the people conservatives and Republicans need.
Let’s just hope he stays away from all that Axis of Evil nonsense. To Frum’s credit, he was one of the first prominent conservatives to openly criticize McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin at a time when she was portrayed as the savior of the party. I disagree with a good chunk of Frum’s political positions, but I have a lot of respect for his candor and intellectual honesty. Wish I could say the same for the remaining ashes of WFB’s legacy.
Some of those questions regarding ‘what do I read up in Alaska’ were to me, a bit irrelevant, and my annoyance with those questions shone through.
Given how much is still unknown about the governor, this question wasn’t as condescending or irrelevant as she or her supporters tend to argue. What you read shapes your worldview. It determines the policies you gravitate toward, and gives voters a glimpse into how you would govern. Even a cursory glance at some of the obvious answers to this question reveals a lot about you as a potential leader.
Palin dodged Couric’s question, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt for a moment. Let’s assume that the governor at least scans newspapers of record from time to time, but couldn’t admit it because it didn’t jive with her anti-intellectual populism. There is a fundamental difference between the editorial boards of the Times, Post, and the Journal, and the readers of each have a different take on events and the world around them. And even if you stay within the realm of conservative to moderate publications, you find stark contrasts of opinion. Just compare National Review to The Economist for example.
The fact that Palin views the question as impertinent should raise a lot of red flags. Because anyone with a basic understanding of media (presumably someone with a bachelors in journalism) knows that the sources of your information matter a great deal.
Obama Election Night Flickr Set goes behind the scenes with the President-Elect while he watches election results come in. You have to admire a candidate & campaign that has gone to such great lengths to include its constituents in the process.
And then there’s Change.gov, the Obama transition website. Great idea. Terrible nomenclature. Along the same lines, Office of the President-Elect? I voted for the guy, but all this fake Presidential seal business has got to go.
Finally, Newsweek has a series on all kinds of behind the scenes shenanigans from the Obama, Clinton, and McCain campaigns. If I’m not mistaken, that’s where a lot of the holy shit, what were we thinking with Sarah Palin? stories are originating.
A lot has been said about media coverage since the conventions, and this graph confirms what McCain surrogates have been whining about all along. But — and it must be said — the McCain campaign has done a horrible job of maintaining a consistent narrative for the media to report on.
McCain had to swing to the right to save his campaign, and the transformation from Straight Talk Express to Far-Right Capitulation Express killed his existing narrative. Killed it. The media-darling maverick and the GOP presidential nominee really are two different people (Bush Tax Cuts, anyone?). If there is a lesson to be learned from this campaign, it’s that you stick to your arc. You don’t hire Steve Schmidt to run a “civil” campaign. And when your raison d’etat is “experience,” you don’t pick the clueless, pretty girl to be your running mate. Piss on the intelligentsia and they’ll piss right back on you.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The media is unfair in this country. It just is. As long as publishing and broadcasting are tied to advertising revenue, it will stay that way. Deal with it and move on. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, “You don’t campaign with the media you want. You campaign with the media you have.”
Everything is hunky dory until about 12 seconds in. Then all of a sudden, it’s dirty power plants, big bad oil lobby and evil capitalists. I don’t necessarily disagree with the ad’s message, but I can see why ABC turned it down.
A newspaper’s most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. This influence makes it more attractive to advertisers.
In The Elite Newspaper of the Future, Meyer points to the rise of alternative media as the standard bearer of information in our culture. In contrast, newspapers struggle to keep up with our increasingly narrow interests. News media is certainly more diversified today than it was 15 years ago. This can be good when you’re looking for an alternate perspective on an issue, but bad when you accept one interpretation as fact and another purely as partisan bias.
Citizen journalism is on the rise and playing a larger role in our public discourse. When Daily Kos spread rumors about Palin’s daughter and youngest son last month, it subsequently altered the mainstream media’s access to the VP nominee at a time when the public needs it most. The rumors were quickly proven false. And we’re now paying the price of an overzealous progressive movement’s grip on information.
Citizen journalism is a good, good thing when the pedestal is used responsibly, but what about when it’s not used responsibly? Even in today’s hyper-aggressive media culture, would we ever see a responsible news organization publish rumor as fact without evoking scandal and a string of apologies and corrections from the editors?
What is the economic disincentive for keeping citizen journalism in check?
