Trimming paper to trim costs

Ed Padgett at the LA Times Pressmens' blog reported yesterday that the Los Angeles Times will once again trim the width of the paper to cut costs:

As the Los Angeles Times continues to seek ways to remain in the black the newspaper will trim an additional four inches from the width of the newspaper. Readers will note a one-inch reduction in the width of the newspaper immediately, which will save the newspaper millions of dollars from the expense of producing the newspaper in saved newsprint costs.

Any further reduction in newsprint width down the road may result in the Los Angeles Times reverting to the tabloid format.

Electric slide

The Los Angeles Times has shifted Lisa Fung from arts and culture editor for the newspaper to arts and entertainment editor for online, LA Observed reports. The memo from Editor Russ Stanton does not say whether Fung's former position will be filled. It'll be interesting to see what this sideways promotion signals for how resources are allocated for the print edition and for the website.

NYT aims for Chicago

After the New York Times launches its San Francisco edition later this year, the paper plans to cobble together a local edition for the city of Chicago.

Can Los Angeles be far behind?

The SF roll out will come sometime this fall and will consist of pages devoted to Northern California news twice a week. The Chicago edition will follow, assuming the SF edition proves successful.

The Wall Street Journal also plans to launch a Bay Area edition.

(via Newspaper Escape Plan)

Social government

Rick Cole, former Pasadena city manager mayor and now Ventura city manager, offers his view of how social media networks will change local government in this month's Public Management magazine. One consequence is more direct democracy, he argues, and less reliance on elected officials to decide things - and less reliance on newspapers to report those decisions:

A crowd-sourcing approach to local government resembles a barn raising more than a vending machine as a model for serving the community. Instead of elected leaders exclusively deciding the services to be offered and setting the (tax) price of the government vending machine, a barn raising tackles shared challenges through what former Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith calls "government by network."

Citizen groups, individual volunteers, activists, nonprofits, other public agencies, businesses, and ad hoc coalitions contribute to the designing, delivering, and funding of public services. The media compatible with this model are not the newspapers—the local newspaper reporting yesterday's council meeting, for example. The new media are the instant Facebook postings, tweets, and YouTube clips that keep our shifting body politic in touch.

Faster, cheaper, less nutritious

I've often wondered if the newsroom of the future would look more like a fast-food joint than the big newspaper newsrooms we see today.

Instead of delivering news to the doorstep like the erstwhile milk man did, news will be delivered through websites on the information superhighway. This means people will be looking for a convenient place to stop to get some news quick before getting back on the road. Whether on their office computer, their cell phone or their laptop at home, they will be looking for predictable markers to find the site, predictable menu items to peruse and a predictable time line for how long it takes to get and then consume what they came for.

People might even pay for this predictability.

If the virtual world shapes up like the real one has, this would probably mean more networked wire services churning out easily digestible stories packaged together by local crews but using fewer local ingredients.

This type of format for online news seems inevitable - it's how we consume things. The San Diego News Network seems to be headed in that direction, with its Starbucks business plan. So does MediaNews Group, which has individual newspapers that use similar online templates and route copy through centralized desks so it can be shared by the group. Other chains will either sell or follow suit.

It doesn't mean all higher-end offerings will be crowded out - SDNN isn't going to kill the New Yorker anymore than McDonalds killed Tavern on the Green*. There will still be readers who want to savor the news. Also, news content cannot be completely divorced from geography since people still care about local sports teams, local schools and local businesses. Still, I think we can expect more conformity than differentiation on the web in the coming decade. Conformity is easier to capitalize upon.

If the cookie-cutter approach goes too far it might invite a welcome backlash, just as industrial farming and fast-food restaurants brought us farmer's markets and the organic movement. Let's also hope quality alternative and local media find good real estate along the highway.

*Updated 10/1: An imperfect comparison at best, it turns out. As a reader pointed out, Tavern on the Green filed for bankruptcy in September. I doubt McDonalds was to blame and the point still holds up - hell, with the way bankruptcies have hit newspaper companies, maybe it's even closer to the truth.

Wikipedia edits

Last month, the New York Times reported that the board overseeing Wikipedia would impose sweeping new rules to prevent erroneous edits on the pages of living people, especially those with high profiles.

Time reports today that the story was wrong. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told the magazine that the changes being contemplated are minimal, and in fact look a lot like the old rules:

Wikipedia's ruling body of volunteers never decided to impose restrictions on all articles about living people. Instead, the site will adopt "flagged protection" — the new method for requiring editorial approval before changes to Wikipedia go up — for a small number of articles, most likely on a case-by-case basis.

So the question is: Did the New York Times get the story wrong? Or is there a disagreement within the Wikipedia ranks about what kinds of rules need to be adopted?

The business end of journalism

As newsrooms shrink to keep pace with shrinking profits, the business side of journalism has become increasingly dominant over the editorial side. Which probably explains the itchy trigger finger firing of Brian Nutting at Congressional Quarterly.

After he wrote an email that demanded the company explain why 44 newsroom staffers were laid off after the company merged with Roll Call, Nutting was told he could either resign or be fired. He was fired.

From the Washington Post:

Nutting said he wrote the e-mail in some haste, after walking out of a mandatory meeting called to discuss the layoff announcement. He said he did not expect his missive to go beyond his newsroom ("I'm a Luddite; I never thought about it"). But he took some issue with the notion that he was insubordinate: "I don't know what the definition of insubordination is," he said. "I guess it's whatever the employer says it is. I just asked some inconvenient questions."

At the moment, he said, has no job prospects and doubts he'll be able to continue in journalism, given the economy, his age and the declining state of the news business.

Nutting said he volunteered to be laid off last week if it meant sparing the jobs of two of his reporters, who had been laid off from other jobs. Both of the reporters were let go anyway, Nutting said.

A way back in

From Talking Points Memo:

Canned at CQ?

We're hiring. Details here.

The future of journalism

Want to make $60 the hard way? Click here.

Death of a newspaper

The Lemoore Advance in Lemoore, California (west of Visalia) closed its doors last week after 121 years in business. (via Newspaper Death Watch)

Times names new online managing editor

The Los Angeles Times has named Sean Gallagher to be the paper's new online managing editor, succeeding Meredith Artley who stepped down earlier this month.

From the press release:

“Sean’s talent, integrity and command of virtually every facet of online publishing have been crucial to latimes.com’s success,” said Times Editor Russ Stanton. “He will provide valuable leadership as we continue to evolve and has already played a key role in helping shape our round-the-clock, fully-integrated newsroom."

Gallagher is charged with working across The Times newsroom and masthead, and in tandem with Managing Editor, Print Jon Thurber, to ensure a consistent and complementary multimedia experience and continued integration of print and Web efforts. In addition, he will continue to manage and implement the daily news and features online that have made latimes.com one of the fastest-growing newspaper sites.

Gallagher started with the Times in 2006 as an associate editor and worked on the most recent website redesign.

Jim Long was 46

Jim Long, who worked as a sports writer for the Victorville Daily Press and San Bernardino Sun, died on Thursday at Kaiser Hospital in Fontana. He was 46.

Paul Oberjuerge, one of Long's former colleagues, remembers Long and his career:

He never in his life had what most of us would consider an “easy” day. He was born with Type 1 diabetes and palsy, suffered from lung cancer in his 30s (and lost half a lung) … and then battled strokes and cancer, again, over the past two years.

Yet he accomplished as much as most of us who have none of the issues he dealt with, and he never once complained, in my presence, about how he had been dealt a bad hand. In fact, he fought Mother Nature to a standstill for nearly 45 years, entered a profession for which he was perfectly suited, succeeded in it and, eventually, became the sports authority for the huge tract of territory (stretching from Hesperia to Baker) known as the High Desert — the San Bernardino County side of it, anyway.

He was mentally tough, impossible to intimidate, a good writer, an excellent researcher — and fully committed to the idea of print journalism, which he loved.

He was my first hire. He was one of my best hires, as well. He took himself and his job seriously and was utterly loyal to the newspaper and the San Bernardino Sun sports section. He never considered any assignment beneath his dignity. He covered preps, local colleges, California League baseball — and even some “downtown” events — and brought the same enthusiasm to all those assignments.

Oberjuerge says he'll update his post when the funeral arrangements and cause of death become known. The full post is here.

Four in the evening

1. The Washington Post reaffirms its allegiance to impartial journalism with a new social media policy. WaPo

2. Tehran Bureau has teamed up with Frontline to expand coverage of Iran. NYT

3. Read a banned book, it'll be good for your soul. Scott Martelle

4. Given the challenges we face in Afghanistan, it's time to take a closer look at Yemen. Time

The collector

In a piece about blurring lines, Poynter writes about a television reporter in Fresno who has to decide between her compassion for others and the strict ethical guidlines of her profession. She chooses compassion - and then writes a book about it.

Except the reporter's story isn't one of balancing compassion and ethics.

As described by Poynter, the television reporter, Alysia Sofios, covered a mass murder for her station and then later invited some of the surviving family members to live in her house. Whether that decision breaches ethical guidelines, if Sofios refrained from there on out from covering the story, is up for debate. But Sofios decided to help cover the trial of the man charged with the murders - a man Sofios' new roommates likely hated - and kept her compassionate act a secret from her colleagues and the television viewers.

To me, that's just bad judgment.

Doctor? No.

On June 9, the Register ran a rather uncritical feature story about a "self-described natural medicine doctor" who claimed he could cure cancer, AIDS and heart disease with his special brand of vitamin supplements.

The story quoted a UC Irvine oncologist who indirectly challenged one of the self-described doctor's claims about cancer treatments and ran a chart that implied the self-described doctor, Daryn Wayne Peterson, was overcharging his patients for what he claimed to be medication. (The story also included a slide show for some reason.)

The paper stopped short of challenging Peterson's ethics and qualifications, and it didn't directly test the veracity of his claims. But didn't it have a responsibility to do so if it was going to write about him in the first place? After all, Peterson did more than say he could do incredible things (without ever offering proof). He advised people to drop their health insurance and sign up with his plan. He told people with potentially terminal diseases they should stop using approved medicines in favor of his overpriced vitamins. He got a degree from what appears to be an unaccredited university that a quick Google search shows has a shady reputation. The story didn't say whether he has a medical license. He didn't.

On Thursday, the Register reported that Peterson, 37, had been arrested and charged with "unauthorized practice of medicine, operating an HMO without a license, treating cancer without a license, and offering an unapproved drug for cancer treatment." The story, which was written by the same reporter, says law enforcement caught Peterson in a sting operation launched after authorities read the June 9 story.

The Los Angeles Times also reported Peterson's arrest. The Times piece includes some information the Register left out:

The district attorney's office alleges that some of the patients featured in the Register article who spoke favorably of Peterson were either friends or relatives; and that those relations were not disclosed in the original article. Prosecutors said it was irresponsible for the paper to publish an article that did not contain that information.

"It gives a forum for snake oil salesmen to put out outrageous claims that they are curing AIDS and cancer with vitamin supplements," said Susan Kang Schroeder, a district attorney's spokeswoman.

The Times asked for and got a response from the Register:

Rebecca Allen, deputy features editor for the Register, said the reporter made "an effort to be fair and explore why people would go to such a doctor."

She said the reporter received a call after the article ran, saying one of the clients interviewed for the article was Peterson's sister. The reporter investigated the tip, but was not able to prove it. She also said the article included comments from other experts who disagreed with Peterson.

As one of the people in the June 9 feature said, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Check out the credential of the person making the claim."

Ready, set, charge!

Starting next year, the 54 papers in the MediaNews Group chain - including nine papers in Southern California - will begin charging readers for access to some online content. That's according to an interview MediaNews chairman Dean Singleton gave to KSL Channel 5 in Salt Lake City.

The details of what would go behind the pay wall remain sketchy. Singleton said sport, "hyperlocal" features and entertainment would be likely candidates for a subscription site, while breaking news would remain free to all readers. Subscribers to the printed newspaper would have access to everything online at no extra charge.

Said Singleton:

"When you give it away for free, it has no value. When you begin charging for it, it has some value."

In May, Singleton and MediaNews president Jody Lodovic released a memo that outlined their concept for an online subscription service. They contemplated dividing content between a free "news.com" site with breaking news and some user-generated content, and a subscriber-only "newspaper.com" site with in-depth features and specialized content.

The memo also left open the possibility that MediaNews would stop short of charging readers and instead require them to register. From the May memo:

We are not trying to invent new premium products, but instead tell our existing print readers that what they are buying has real value, and to our online audience (who don't buy the print edition), that if you want access to all online content, you are going to have to register, and/or pay.

New top editor at the Daily Breeze

Daily Breeze managing editor Toni Sciacqua, 37, will takeover as the paper's top editor, Publisher Linda Lindus announced today. Sciacqua fills a slot left open since August, when Phillip Sanfield left to become public relations director for the Port of Los Angeles.

Lindus sent the following memo to Daily Breeze staff:

Everyone,

Please take a couple of minutes to congratulate Toni Sciacqua on her new title and job responsibilities. Toni has accepted the challenges of editor for the Daily Breeze and its associated products. She has performed well during the interim period; understands and embraces the importance of our roles as journalists; and, is ready to meet the challenges of growing our audiences in both print and online with fresh ideas that reach out to not only to the Boomers, but also Millennials.

Congrats Toni. From the Senior Leadership Team/OC – we all look forward to working with you.

There will be cake in the newsroom today, so please share the announcements with your staffs. And Frank [Suraci, DB city editor], a story would be appropriate for our readers on our business page.

Linda

*Update: The Daily Breeze story on the announcement is here.

Blood on the Hill

Politico reports that 44 editorial employees were fired today as a consequence of the merger of Congressional Quarterly and Roll Call. Both of publications cover Capitol Hill. The mash-up publication will still have 184 staffers.

Four in the morning

1. Dead horse beat: Local news in Los Angeles is often an extended commercial for the network's entertainment shows. Robert Rector

2. Cluttertweet: There is no mailbox that junk mail will not find (and eventually fill). Twitter ads appear to be the latest iteration. Austin American-Statesman

3. DocumentClouds forming: The Atlantic, New Yorker, Mother Jones, MSNBC, WNYC and Washington Post have joined the nonprofit DocumentCloud. NYO

4. Buzz generator: Cliff Barney is psyched about reporting experiments at UC Berkeley's j-school. Calbuzz

Trust is valuable

Most people haven't thought much about what distinguishes a piece of journalism produced by, say, the Miami Herald from a piece of journalism produced by, say, World Net Daily. Neither are the subtleties dividing a Huffington Post roundup on protests in Iran and BBC story on the same topic much debated around the dinner table.

In the past, the more consistently credible reporting came bundled in a newspaper or beaming out of the radio; the less credible stuff got passed around in glossy tabloids, partisan newsletters or by word of mouth. Now all of it arrives on the same screen and often through aggregation sites that don't distinguish the well-researched, impartial story from the breezy opinion piece. Wheat and chaff are linked to side by side - and there's nothing to say any two people will agree on which is the wheat and which is the chaff.

That's not to say people don't know the difference between what Townhall does and the Los Angeles Times does - although the lines between opinion and straight reporting are getting more blurred, and not to the benefit of the reader.

Which is why the intellectual appeal to readers to pay for quality journalism, produced with high standards and under the rigors of honest editorial review, will probably never work. Instead, news organizations should come up with new ways to communicate clearly what standards and ethics they subscribe to. It will require publications to think through issues that they are too often on auto pilot about. Slogans ('Fair and Balanced') won't do the trick. And there will have to be a level of engagement with and accountability to readers that goes beyond feedback for the sake of feedback (as most online comments, reader surveys and letters to the editor are these days).

Bits of information might be passed around the Internet such that everything gets covered in the same mud, but serious readers will track information back to an original source. Original sources that have clearly laid out why their reporting is trustworthy will have a value that distinguishes them in the eyes of advertisers and potential subscribers/donors/micropayers.

PE.com gets facelift

The Press-Enterprise in Riverside has launched a redesigned website (readers can offer their two cents here). The site has echoes of the recently unveiled Los Angeles Times web page and is, at least upon a cursory view, much, much better than the previous one.

Shame business model

Someone's still buying newspapers.

Decadence

Michael Massing puts it in perspective: Katie Couric makes $15 million a year. The cost to produce NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered for a year is $11 million.

UC Press goes Boom

The University of California Press plans to launch a scholarly magazine about California issues called Boom: A Journal of California.

From the release:

Headed by Editors Carolyn de la Peña, Associate Professor of American Studies at UC Davis and Director of the Davis Humanities Institute, and Louis Warren, UC Davis’ W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History, the journal will include a wide range of works ...

... according to de la Peña, “To truly grapple with the crisis facing California, we have to gather new knowledge about who we are, how we got here, and what common ground can be built for the future. By featuring the work of researchers in multiple fields and combining that with community voices, we believe Boom will uncover fresh perspectives on the state we're in.”

Nonprofits have lots of room to bloom given the gaps left by the cuts to statewide coverage at California's largest newspapers.

King me

Los Angeles Daily News hockey writer Rich Hammond has taken a job as a columnist for the Los Angeles Kings. His work will appear on the team's official website.

Hammond spent 10 years at the Daily News and wrote the paper's "Inside The Kings" blog. He did stints at the Orange County Register and Torrance Daily Breeze as well.

Here's Hammond's quote from the team's announcement:

"I’m grateful to the Daily News for allowing me to develop my passion for covering hockey, and I’m excited about the opportunity to bring even better, more comprehensive coverage to Kings fans while maintaining the same journalistic standards."

Four today

1. Journalism critics don't always know what they're talking about. Etaoin Shrdlu

2. Journalism critics don't always know what they're talking about. Dan Gilmor

3. More Congressional hearings on the state of the newspaper industry. Editor and Publisher

4. Cock block: To curb cockfighting and noise problems, the Los Angeles City Council limits residents to one rooster per property. LADN

Roski's NFL dream a step closer

The cities of Walnut and Industry appear to have settled their differences over Ed Roski's planned NFL stadium. The terms of the deal, which Walnut approved tonight, remain confidential until both cities have ratified them. This should reopen the door to make unnecessary the California Legislature's effort to fast-track the project by granting the plan a waiver from state environmental regulations.

Brand journalism

The journalism job market looks a little weak right now and Medill has a suggestion for the frustrated mid-career hack: Be your own brand! Here's the ad:

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Want to learn more? Visit www.renewandretool.com to apply. Mention you saw this on Journalismnext.com when contacting us.

Overhead of the day

Overhead in the Newsroom No. 1815:

Editor: “If you were a better writer, you’d be done by now.”

Reporter: “If I was a better writer, I wouldn’t be working here.”

Four today

1. The New York Times wants to make it easier to search through the millions of tweets on Twitter. Mediaweek

2. J-school enrollment rises even as jobs disappear - and fuddy-duddy professor still think ethics and standards should be emphasized over gadgetry. Chronicle of Higher Education

3. Do newsroom unions have a useful role to play as newspapers decline? Alan Mutter

4. Spot.us comes to LA with a little help from USC. Nieman Lab

Maybe journalism

In his morning-quarterback analysis of the media's coverage of the public anger displayed at tea party rallies and town hall meetings, Howard Kurtz asserts somewhat passively that: "Maybe journalists have been asking the wrong question." He lays out his list of wrong questions and then offers a new route of investigation. Except the route is one many smart journalists have already traveled - including the three opinion writers Kurtz later quotes in his column. Kurtz then concludes his anger exploration with a second passive assertion: "Maybe the president needs to show just a smidgen of anger himself."

Maybe. Maybe not. Who can say?

Since neither the media nor the right-wing is in the business of supporting President Obama's agenda, maybe a more interesting line of inquiry is why liberals are so uncomfortable touting the president's proposals and accomplishments.

"We don't want it to look like there's an ad"

According to Oregon Media Central, the newest real estate reporter on Portland's KOIN-TV is a practicing real estate agent. Ron Pivo, the Realtor reporter, used to cover sports; now he makes balloon animal jokes and compares himself to Sanjay Gupta on CNN to downplay his conflict of interest. The station's news director assured viewers that Pivo's listings won't be featured in his reports.

Nothing says "trust us" like a disclaimer.

Apparently Realtors make great "hyperlocal" citizen journalists. In Seattle, Fisher Communications has launched a bunch of community blogs that will use real estate agents as news gatherers. Fisher's vice president of news had this to say:

We had the idea to work with Realtors because they drive around and they have cameras, and they do a lot of community work, obviously, with their jobs. The one rule that we have with them is that they can’t write about real estate. We don’t want it to look like there’s an ad. There’s been no money that has changed hands in this deal. When we were talking about what groups to reach out to for user-generated material, Realtors just struck us as a natural fit for that, because they are community-based.

Admittedly it is tough to find community-based people in a community who also drive around and have cameras, especially if you're looking for people with a vested interest in promoting themselves and local businesses and who also work for companies that buy lots of ad space.

Advo-torial

A new kind of advocacy journalism has taken hold, most prominently on cable television: self-advocacy journalism. Instead of standing up for populist principles or society's downtrodden, shows stand up for whatever turns a profit. Speaking of which, a leader in self-advocacy journalism, Fox News, got caught with its ethics down at the recent "tea party" rally in DC.

Nuts about ACORN

Hopefully we've reached the string-pushing limits of the ACORN-as-pimp-enabler story, but the Opinionator has a nice roundup of the fallout and what it all might mean for journalism, poor people and the media freak show.

TPM in DC

Talking Points Memo has hired two additional reporters, Christina Bellantoni of the Washington Times and Evan McMorris-Santoro from National Journal's The Hotline, in anticipation of opening its Washington, DC bureau next week.

Asymmetrical politics

Liberal hearts will rejoice at the shape of Steven Benen's graph showing a Republican Party in disfavor in most of the United States - everywhere but the South, it seems, where the favorable rating runs just 13 points ahead of the unfavorable.

But the graph also highlights a problem for Democrats. The asymmetry between Democratic power in Washington and Republican popularity may make it harder to push a progressive agenda. As anyone who's watched California's budget battle unfold, the incentive to compromise disappears when only one side has any real ownership of a policy. As in asymmetrical warfare, an enemy overwhelmed by conventional force will turn to unconventional means to gum up the works. Honest brokers become hard to find. Negotiations break down as factions, unconstrained by any sense of political ownership, become ever more provincial and extreme. As the health care reform debate shows, the party in power has to reach much further across the aisle to try to build a center; meanwhile, the power vacuum gets filled by corporations, which demand legislative changes without the filter of elected (read: accountable) officials.

Of course, it will not always be this way. To say the GOP will remain in the minority is as silly as Karl Rove's prediction that the party would be a permanent majority. A recalibration seems almost inevitable. It remains to be seen, however, whether the asymmetry leads to a lasting electorate shift (as conservative Democrats migrate back to the Republican Party) such that the default position of American politics is center-left instead of center-right.

Neutral territory

On Monday the Federal Communications Commission is set to endorse several rules to keep the Internet open to all technologies, and prevent major carriers from discriminating against their competitors.

Cuts at the Chronicle

The San Francisco Chronicle laid off another five editorial employees in recent days. More layoffs are expected, but not in the editorial department.

I read it in the papers

Timothy Noah at Slate learned the hard way why good (and accurate) reporting requires journalists to show up, rather than rely on the minutes of meetings.

The curious case of the dwindling audience

News of a shrinking audience is unsettling, even if there are technical arguments to be made about why the news isn't what it appears to be.

As James Rainey reports, KCRW (where I work) lost a huge chunk of its estimated audience when Arbitron changed the device used to calculate its ratings. In spring 2008, under the old diary method, KCRW had 539,000 listeners a week. This year, using the new people meters, the number dropped to 289,000.

From the story:

"This has been a growing concern over the last several months, since we started seeing the new numbers," said one member of the KCRW foundation board, who asked not to be named for fear of angering station management. "You can quibble with the numbers. But even if they are just true relatively speaking, then we should be asking what they mean."

Of course, there are many explanations as to why the people meter fails to capture KCRW's core audience - younger people, people who listen on iPods or computers, people in other countries. Indeed, KCRW has the largest online audience of any local public radio station in the country and fund-raising remains steady.

Again, from Rainey:

Making all the number-crunching somewhat academic, at least for now, is the station's other bottom line. It has lost little, if any, appeal with subscribers, counting more than 50,000 of them. With corporate underwriting thrown in, the station raised a total of $12.5 million in the most recent fiscal year.

The key challenge will be similar to the one facing many media, including newspapers, Lavine said. That is: finding ways to make money off the Internet audience.

Public radio, like all other media, is still trying to figure out the Internet. While donations are stable for now, there's a real concern that a more fragmented audience may become less loyal to the programming - no matter how good it is.

Four tonight

1. There was Jefferson and Hamilton, now this.

2. Our sideshow is the freakiest.

3. Net neutrality on the agenda.

4. Free speech and dog fights.

The audicity of trusting the reader

In the age of sloppily swung sledgehammers, scalpels are passé.

Toxic water

Charles Duhigg at the New York Times has spearheaded a investigative series on toxic drinking water in America:

The Times obtained hundreds of thousands of water pollution records through Freedom of Information Act requests to every state and the E.P.A., and compiled a national database of water pollution violations that is more comprehensive than those maintained by states or the E.P.A. (For an interactive version, which can show violations in any community, visit www.nytimes.com/toxicwaters.) ...

That research shows that an estimated one in 10 Americans have been exposed to drinking water that contains dangerous chemicals or fails to meet a federal health benchmark in other ways. ...

In some cases, people got sick right away. In other situations, pollutants like chemicals, inorganic toxins and heavy metals can accumulate in the body for years or decades before they cause problems. Some of the most frequently detected contaminants have been linked to cancer, birth defects and neurological disorders.

Records analyzed by The Times indicate that the Clean Water Act has been violated more than 506,000 times since 2004, by more than 23,000 companies and other facilities, according to reports submitted by polluters themselves. Companies sometimes test what they are dumping only once a quarter, so the actual number of days when they broke the law is often far higher. And some companies illegally avoid reporting their emissions, say officials, so infractions go unrecorded.

A world wide web of opportunities

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Newton to step down as Times editorial pages editor

Jim Newton, editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial pages, will step down next week. Deputy editor Nick Goldberg will assume the editor's job and oversee the paper's editorial board.

Newton, who's stated reason for leaving is to finish his book on Eisenhower, will remain on the masthead as editor-at-large, and will continue to write opinion pieces and maintain a his seat on the editorial board.

Publisher Eddy Hartenstein's memo announcing the changes is here.

The shield

New York Times editorial board wants Congress to pass a federal shield law for journalists.

Late afternoon rumor patrol

Will the bankrupt Orange County Register sell its headquarters in Santa Ana and move into the offices that housed the bankrupt LA Times' OC edition? I don't know, but the OC Weekly had heard enough talk that it decided to write a story about the rumors.

Also, an anonymous comment on this blog said pink slips were going out at the Los Angeles Times. I haven't confirmed any layoffs, but pressman Ed Padgett says he's heard that at least four press workers at the Times OC facility have been let go.

Four in the morning

1. Awkward.

2. FactCheck in overdrive.

3. Four in California.

4. "Everything that starts out as a cultural revolution ends up as capitalist routine."

Wow.

A new voice from behind the Orange Curtain

A new nonprofit online newsroom called the Voice of OC hopes to get off the ground by the end of the year. The website, which will model itself after the Voice of San Diego, will cover public affairs in Orange County and be edited by former Orange County Register reporter Norberto Santana Jr., the Los Angeles Times reports.

The initial funding for the site comes from the Orange County Employees Association, which kicked in $140,000. Supporters hope to raise $600,000 to cover first year expenses.

The nonprofit board for the venture includes Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Irvine Law School and trial lawyer Tom Girardi. Former LA Times reporters Harvey Weinstein and Dan Morain also sit on the board.

Labor unions, trial lawyers and journalists are not the first things that come to mind when thinking about Orange County....

Goodbye, hello

What David Carr's story about a reporter who left the Star-Ledger in New Jersey to become a flak and then returned to the paper to become a political columnist tells us, beyond the fact that Thomas Moran, at 52, found out he still wanted at a newspaper job, I don't know. But its interesting to note that the Star-Ledger laid off 40 percent of its staff a year ago and then, in July, had to respond to a massive corruption scandal. Maybe the paper suddenly realized the value of institutional memory. Maybe the layoffs gave the paper the margin to hire a few more bodies, meaning the bleeding has stopped. Or maybe Moran just didn't want to be a flak anymore and got lucky with an opening.

Google buddies up to newsrooms

After announcing a proposed platform that will allow publishers of any size to charge for content, Google has launched an experimental site called Fast Flip to gives big publishers a share of the advertising revenue from the search.

Neither of the products will save the publishing industry nor give independent bloggers and startups the kind of revenue they need to stay afloat. This does indicate, however, that Google sees a future in which people pay something for online content. In the former case, we have a farmer's market model in which smaller publishers can get something for home grown work. The latter points to a more traditional mall product, where name brands are on display.

Ken Doctor at Content Bridges has more on Fast Flip. He notes that Google, now #9 on the list of top news search engines, needed a better mousetrap. Indeed, Google may have found the ultimate cheese to lure newspapers and magazines away from all the other aggregators: revenue.

Four today

1. The camera always adds a few pounds... PolitiFact

2. The profit in shame... Time

3. Newspapers go upside putting ad revenue ahead of circulation... The Wrap

4. "The Rush To Be Wrong"...Jamie McIntyre

Entrepreneurial journalism

A prominent television news anchor in Las Vegas was caught on tape trying to play both ends of a newsroom investigation into a local tire chain, the Las Vegas Sun reports.

Nina Radetich, an anchor at station KTNV, introduced several stories about a state consumer affairs probe into customer complaints about Tire Works. Days before the first segment ran, Radetich tried to drum up a little business for Jack Finn, a former spokesman for Sen. John Ensign and Radetich's boyfriend. Radetich suggested Finn could help the owner of Tire Works push back against the negative publicity from the stories.

KTNV's general manager called Radetich's actions a lapse in judgment, but told the Sun that it had no effect on the station's reporting.

Finn said his girlfriend "did a pretty good job of upholding her ethical standards" - I'll assume he's only speaking of her standards, and not the ethical standards of others.

(via Romenesko)

Four today

1. Chi-Town Daily News finds nonprofit to be not profitable. CTDN (via Romenesko)

2. ProPublica managing editor: The work is different, the job's the same. LAT

3. So who leaked the tape of California Assemblyman Mike Duvall bragging to Assemblyman Jeff Miller about his sexcapades? TPM*

4. Comedy writer Larry Gelbart, best known for MASH, has died. LAT

*Update: I've heard the story, now reported at Editorials From Hell, that FlashReport blogger Jon Fleischman had an axe to grind when it came to Assemblyman Mike Duvall and so was motivated to push the tape of Duvall boasting about his trysts into public view. The story is that Duvall fired Fleischman's wife, Maureen. Fleischman told the OC Register's Brian Joseph that his wife resigned. Even if there was friction, and even if Fleischman did turn the tape over to KCAL for broadcast, and then published his own story seconds later, there's still a question of where he got it from - did Fleischman comb through hours of committee hearings on a hunch? Did Jeff Miller's chief of staff, Brandon Powers, turn it over to him (Powers denies any involvement)? Did a lobbyist listening to the hearing decide to leak the information at just the right time?

Journalizm

Former People's Court analyst Harvey Levin stopped by Columbia Journalism School to tell the students how proud he was that dying newspapers credited his website, TMZ.com, with being the first to report singer Michael Jackson had died and then thanked Britany Spears and her many breakdowns for making the future of journalism profitable. He let the students show their appreciation by handing him copies of their resumes.

First Amendment lesson

Another school year has begun and another high school principal has tried to stop the publication of a student newspaper over an uncomfortable, but factual, article.

Sue Vaughn, principal at Santa Ana's Orange County High School of the Arts, a public charter school, halted publication of the student-run "Evolution" newspaper over a report that the cafeteria's private food vendor, Alegre, was on a mission "to serve God."

From the Orange County Register:

Vaughn confirmed Thursday that Alegre's religious affiliation was one of the factors that led her to authorize the printing delay, but denied trying to censor the students' work.

"We're in no way trying to censor anything," Vaughn said Thursday. "We were given the copy to look at after it was sent to the printer. There were errors in it that need to be corrected, and then the printing will be continued."

Alegre's religious proclivity is factually correct – that's evident from the company's Web site – but Vaughn noted that a school official had been misquoted in that article. ...

Vaughn never makes clear what the misquote was (wouldn't a correction have taken care of that?) and the reporter stood by her story.

As usually happens in such cases, the freaked out administrators trying to censor the article have drawn more attention to it than if they'd simply let it run.

(via Romenesko)

California Watch debuts

The first story from California Watch lands today, the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and uses public records to evaluate how California's cities and counties spent the $1.9 billion in Homeland Security funds awarded to make them safer:

Under the state’s open-records laws, California Watch found scores of instances of wasteful spending, purchasing violations, error-prone accounting and shoddy oversight at agencies across the state during the years immediately following 9/11.

The complete article is here.

California Watch was started by the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting.

Picture of war (update)

In response to the debate over the publication of an Associated Press photograph of a mortally wounded Marine in Afghanistan, Tim McGuire at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism argues that news outlets have a responsibility to show the grim truth of war and shouldn't let government appeals or family feelings sway the decision.

McGuire writes:

My former ethics students have been particularly engaged by the controversy over the Associated Press transmission of the photo of the soldier who died in Afghanistan. One student wrote: “I thought of you as I was reading about the controversial photo of the Marine that AP posted, even after they were repeatedly asked not to by family and others. I was wondering what you thought about this picture and whether you would have posted it.”

If you are like me, the phrase that defines my student’s note and screams out is, “even after they were repeatedly asked not to by family and others.” For so many people following this controversy, including Robert Gates, that family request should have stopped publication. Gates was quoted as writing to AP, “Why your organization would purposely defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple newspapers is appalling.”

This case is great evidence why journalistic publications in pursuit of news and bent on showing truth are never going to be friends with government, and even some of the public. It’s why business model discussions which might sacrifice real independence scare the heck out of me. I know there are people who feel the anger of this Associated Content commentator, but the contention that AP transmitted this photo in the pursuit of money displays such an incredible lack of understanding of how news works, it is staggering. ...

Read his entire essay here.

(via Romenesko)

Jargon to the rescue

Yet another journalism conference. Get your tickets now.

Comings and Goings (and Scares)

The Los Angeles Daily News has hired sports writer Jon Gold to takeover the UCLA beat at the newspaper. He replaces Brian Dohn, who left the paper in August for New Jersey. Word is that the Daily News put off hiring a replacement for Dodgers writer Tony Jackson, who was laid off in May.

Speaking of the Daily News, the paper's offices were evacuated today because of a bomb scare. An inmate at the Metropolitan Detention Center said claimed he'd hidden explosive around the building.

The Pasadena Star-News newsroom is down a reporter. Robert Hong, who covered cities and cops for the paper, resigned last week to travel in Europe. The paper has yet to hire a replacement.

Both the Star-News and Daily News are part of Dean Singleton's Los Angeles Newspaper Group.

Headlines in the clouds

Fans of Huffington Post seem quite excited about this: The headline for today's top story is "No, YOU Lie" - but the Drudge-like snark isn't the point. Readers who think they can come up with a more clever headline (how hard could it be?) can Tweet their brilliance and have it join the #headlinehelp string.

From Huffington Post:

"No, YOU Lie" Can you write a better headline? Check our top story at http://huffingtonpost.com and reply with the hashtag #headlinehelp!

The contest has inspired lots of "pants on fire" riffs, but it's still not clear to me whether HuffPo plans to actually use any of the suggested headline.

What's in a name

Sources say the dean of USC's Annenberg School for Communication has added a couple words to its name. The school will now be known as the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Role of the fixer

The death of Sultan Munadi has drawn attention to the important role local "fixers" play in helping foreign journalists cover foreign wars.

Munadi, who worked with the New York Times in Afghanistan, was killed in a gun battle on Wednesday as British commandos attempted to rescue him and New York Times correspondent Stephen Farrell from their Taliban captors. Farrell survived.

New Yorker writer George Packer, who reported extensively on the Iraq war, shines some light on the work fixers do and how foreign bureaus rely upon their cultural, historical and linguistic knowledge.

The relationship between fixers and foreign correspondents can be very close. Shared dangers and successes will do that, especially when the work done together, the tie between you, is what puts you at risk. In Iraq and Afghanistan and a growing number of other places, the foreign correspondent would be a target with or without the fixer, but the fixer is a target because he or she is with the foreign correspondent. Both are considered spies, but one is only an infidel, while the other is something worse—an apostate, a traitor. In my experience, this mutually voluntary risk is rarely a source of resentment on the part of fixers. They are generally young, cosmopolitan, quick-witted, stoical, tinged with idealism, implacable foes of their countries’ extremists; and, after all, they understand better than anyone what they have signed up for. For the most part, the risk strengthens the bond. It becomes a cause of tension only when it’s borne by just one side.

New York Times reporter David Rohde knew Munadi and wrote a remembrance of him for the paper here. Rohde was also captured by the Taliban and later escaped along with his fixer:

The death of Mr. Munadi illustrated two grim truths of the war in Afghanistan: vastly more Afghans than foreigners have died battling the Taliban, and foreign journalists are only as good as the Afghan reporters who work with them.

Munadi wrote about some of his own experiences at the Times' War blog:

Being a journalist is not enough; it will not solve the problems of Afghanistan. I want to work for the education of the country, because the majority of people are illiterate. That is the main problem facing many Afghans. I am really committed to come back and work for my country.

Google sets up platform to charge for news

As Nieman Journalism Lab reported yesterday, and MarketWatch picks up today, Google plans to introduce a platform that will let newspapers charge readers for content, using either a subscription or a micropayment method.

The company said of its Google Checkout proposal:

Google believes that an open web benefits all users and publishers. However, “open” need not mean free. We believe that content on the Internet can thrive supported by multiple business models — including content available only via subscription.

Newspapers have pressured Google to help them develop a way to increase revenues to make up for steep advertising losses on the print side. Whether Google Checkout can raise the kind of profits needed to keep corporate owners flush seems questionable, but this could be a solution for small and independent news sites.

Of course, the platform will be available to all web users, not just newspapers, which could turn the free flow of content into something more like a farmer's market.

Publisher confuses stupid for sassy

A publication in Florida tells political candidates they have to buy ads if they want the privilege of being covered in its pages.

Wrote the publisher of the Conch Color:

"Freedom of the press does not ensure campaign coverage, just a level playing field. And you have to pay to play."

Setting aside the poor judgment and childish boasting for a second, doesn't this make the publication a political mailer under state law?

(via Romenesko)

What turned LA noir

John Buntin, author of "LA Noir," and Richard Rayner, author of "A Bright and Guilty Place," talk with Kevin Roderick of LA Observed about the troubled souls and spit personalities that made LA.

Commandos free NYT journalist

Military commandos freed a New York Times reporter held captive for four days by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Stephen Farrell and his interpreter, Sultan Munadi, were captured on Saturday while reporting on a NATO airstrike near Kunduz that killed upwards of 90 people. Munadi was killed during the rescue.

As happened when reporter David Rohde was captured, the New York Times kept quiet about the journalists; abduction.

From the NYT:

“We feared that media attention would raise the temperature and increase the risk to the captives,” said Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times. “We’re overjoyed that Steve is free, but deeply saddened that his freedom came at such a cost. We are doing all we can to learn the details of what happened. Our hearts go out to Sultan’s family.”

The YouTube collection agency

Tina Dupuy wrote a column. The Tampa Tribune published the column. The Tribune did not pay Dupuy for the column. Dupuy posted a YouTube video pointing all of this out. The Tribune has decided to pay Dupuy. Dupuy has posted a second YouTube video extolling the virtues of public embarrassment.

A few links

Reading Mencken in Paris...

...Betting on death, or How Wall Street rebuilt its house of cards

Nothing draws attention like a coverup...

...The limits of health care

Denver voters keep an eye on the sky...

...A members-only section for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Battle for the Bay

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times both plan to launch a special edition targeting the San Francisco Bay Area, and both are poised to create other regional editions if the experiment by the Bay works out.

From the Times:

Both The Journal and The Times seem to be betting that the Bay Area is the place to try first. Its biggest newspapers, The San Francisco Chronicle and The San Jose Mercury-News, have suffered through some of the sharpest downsizing in the industry, and a very high percentage of the region’s residents moved from elsewhere, which usually means less attachment to the local paper. ...

“I think the San Francisco area is the most obvious market to try this in, because it’s big, it’s sophisticated and it’s getting progressively more poorly served by its papers,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute. But if the strategy takes off in multiple cities, he said, the national papers should worry that “they’d be seen as administering the final death blows to these metro dailies.”

In addition to the shrinking Bay Area papers, the Los Angeles Times has curbed its coverage of California as well.

Picture of war

An Associated Press photograph of a mortally wounded Marine in Afghanistan has raised old questions about the appropriateness of publishing photos of American soldiers who are dead or dying.

The picture, taken by AP photographer Julie Jacobson, shows two Marines tending to Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard after he was hit in the legs by a rocket-propelled grenade. Bernard later died during surgery.

Jacobson said this to Editor and Publisher:

To ignore a moment like that simply ... would have been wrong. I was recording his impending death, just as I had recorded his life moments before walking the point in the bazaar ... Death is a part of life and most certainly a part of war. Isn't that why we're here? To document for now and for history the events of this war?

Editor and Publisher did a quick survey of the papers that did, and did not, publish the photo.

InDenver Times, the successor to the Rocky Mountain News, did not run the photo and explains why here.

The New York Times ran the photo on its Lens blog and explains why here.

The photo can be seen here.

Phew

“You don’t need to work at the L.A. Times anymore to be a significant journalist in L.A." -- Tom Rosenstiel, director of Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, speaking Wednesday at USC Annenberg

(via Romenesko)

Artley exits Times

Meredith Artley, online managing editor for the Los Angeles Times, has announced she'll be leaving this month to go to CNN.com. LA Observed has a memo from Times Editor Russ Stanton and a goodbye note from Artley to the staff.

Burying the lede, and everything else*, **

David Folkenflik had a fascinating and highly disturbing piece today on Morning Edition about a story written by reporter Scott Anderson for GQ that was buried so deep it's been scrubbed from the Internet. The story was entitled "Vladimir Putin's Dark Rise to Power." From NPR's web story:

[Anderson's] investigative piece, published in the September American edition of GQ, challenges the official line on a series of bombings that killed hundreds of people in 1999 in Russia. It profiles a former KGB agent who spoke in great detail and on the record, at no small risk to himself. But instead of trumpeting his reporting, GQ's corporate owners went to extraordinary lengths to try to ensure no Russians will ever see it.

The corporate owners don't seem to have any concerns over the accuracy of the story or with Anderson's safety. An email from Jerry S. Birenz, a lawyer for Conde Nast, the corporate owner of GQ, indicates financial motives were at play:

[Birenz] ordered that the article could not be posted to the magazine's Web site. No copies of the American edition of the magazine could be sent to Russia or shown in any country to Russian government officials, journalists or advertisers. Additionally, the piece could not be published in other Conde Nast magazines abroad, nor publicized in any way.

It wasn't just that there was no reference to Anderson's piece on the cover of this month's GQ, which featured a picture of Michael Jackson, a reference to tennis star Andy Roddick's wife and a ranking of obnoxious colleges and top drinking cities. At this writing, I cannot find any reference to Anderson's piece on the Internet.

Listen to the Morning Edition piece here.

*Update: Gawker is working on a Russian translation of the GQ story. The site has also scanned the article from the magazine for anyone who wants to read it.

**Update II: The New York Times picks up the story.

A little more sunshine

The White House will make public most of the names of people who visit the White House on political business. This is a change from the confidentiality policy of the Bush administration and comes in response to several lawsuits filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. USA Today

Arson

Authorities classify the Station Fire as arson, which because of the death of the two firefighters also makes this a homicide investigation.

LANG to unfreeze vacation time

Because of cost cuts, employees of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, a division of Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group, have had their vacation time frozen in place since April. That state of affairs will come to an end on October 1.

An exec with LANG's San Gabriel Valley papers sent the following email:

As you know, the company suspended vacation accruals the past several months as part of an effort to control expenses in a tough economic environment. I appreciate the effort and sacrifice everyone has made in this regard, and am happy to report that we are on track toward meeting those financial objectives. I am even happier to report that as of Oct. 1, vacation accruals will be restored. Again, thank you for everything you are doing to fortify our business and, as evident in our superb coverage of the ongoing wildfires, for continuing to make the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group a benchmark of excellence.

In addition to the hold on vacation accrual, LANGers have faced two rounds of furloughs - one completely unpaid, the other designed to dry up remaining vacation time.

Station fire photos

Guy McCarthy at Watershed News has some photos up of the Station Fire.

Chronicle goes totally domestic

The San Francisco Chronicle shuttered the Chronicle Foreign Service today.

Would MediaNews want a little Freedom?

So, what are the chances that Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group tries to buy up some or all of the Freedom newspaper chain?

Freedom filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this week, a move that will all but eliminate the legacy ownership stake held by the Hoiles family in favor of a board appointed by the company's major lenders, including JPMorgan Chase.

Banks, as Alan Mutter points out in this Colorado Springs Gazette article, aren't in the business of running newspapers. They'll want to unload the chain - in whole or in pieces - as soon as possible. The list of potential buyers has shrunk to almost zero given the state of the newspaper industry, but MediaNews has at least two reasons to want Freedom.

First, MediaNews has its headquarters and its flagship, the Post, in Denver, and so might want to absorb Freedom's properties in Colorado. Mutter had this to say about Singleton's interest in Freedom's Colorado papers:

Mutter said Denver Post owner MediaNews Group would be a logical buyer because it could hold down expenses by combining operations with the Post. The Gazette already delivers the Post in the Pikes Peak region, and the two papers share news stories.

MediaNews Chairman and Post Publisher Dean Singleton said he’s always interested in Colorado properties, but has had no talks with Freedom officials about purchasing The Gazette.

“We’d have to wait and see how things play out,” said Singleton, whose company also has been reported to have its own massive debt load.

Second, Freedom owns the Orange County Register, once a prime target in the Southern California newspaper wars and a missing link in Singleton surround-the-Los-Angeles-Times advertising/circulation strategy. In 2003, Singleton showed his interest when he and Gannett partnered to try to take over Freedom.

While plunging circulation and ad revenues have cooled the wars, MediaNews has reached out to partner with the Register on several fronts (and to varying degrees of success). For instance, the papers share sports stories and the Register prints Singleton's San Gabriel Valley newspapers.

The Los Angeles Times might want to bid the Register if Freedom is sold off in pieces, but Times owner Tribune Co. is itself ensconced in Chapter 11 and might not have the financial nimbleness needed to compete.

Hyerlocal, indeed

Is this the future of news? The Local, which is published by the New York Times, received some vague information about a bicycle accident and is asking readers to fill in the details. Can't get much more "citizen" or "hyperlocal" than that.

YouTube wants payers

Google's YouTube plans to stream movies for a fee, putting it into direct competition with Netflix and providing the still free service with some much needed revenue.

Word chipper

Add "the new normal" to the phrases that should be banned from our political discourse, along with "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" and "walled gardens."

Station Fire still spreading, investigators investigating

The Station Fire is slowing, but now its headed for mountains behind Sierra Madre and Monrovia. ... Mt. Wilson, its observatory and its array of communications towers remain threatened but water and gel drops have kept the flames at bay so far. ... Investigators have cordoned off an area on the Angeles Crest Highway near mile marker 29 where the fire is thought to have begun. LAT, Star-News

From the LA Times:

Although the number of structures razed is small compared with other recent wildfires, this one has ripped an enormous hole in one of Southern California's most treasured wildlife areas, a fact that was particularly evident along Angeles Crest Highway, which remained closed to the public.

Under skies tinged coral and gray by dense smoke, acres of slope once covered with manzanita, sumac, sycamore and pine trees looked like black dunes.

Four today

1. Is George Will's wisdom really scoop-worthy? Opinionator

2. Bottoms up: Did Gawker trigger a State Department investigation? Bloggasm

3. Apparently it's so easy to dismiss criticism of Ariana Huffington as jealousy that Jon Friedman, in the second part of his glowing two-part series on the founder of Huffington Post, has decided to do just that:

When Huffington speaks, it is sometimes hard to know who is doing the talking. Is it Huffington the entrepreneur? Or the optimistic visionary who routinely triumphs over obstacles, grinning devilishly all the way?

Then again, some in the media who don't like, trust or believe her suspect she has a bit of the carnival barker in her persona. It's easy to chalk up the skepticism to simple jealousy.

4. The line between reinventing journalism and dissembling about journalism is a fine one. This story on Nieman Lab serves as a good example. Wrap your head around this:

Reporting ≠ journalism. Sure, Swart worries about the future of the media. But don’t wait for him to weep for the vanishing beat reporter. He’s been watching the local web, and he doesn’t see an information shortage on the horizon. Instead, there’ll be shortages of reliability, priority and presentation.

Bankruptcy is rad

The way the interim CEO at Freedom Communications talks about bankruptcy, it's a wonder more newspaper companies aren't rushing to the courthouse:

I consider this to be good news, not bad news," said Burl Osborne, Freedom's interim chief executive. "It's not about liquidation or going out of business. It allows the company to operate more effectively." ...

"This gives us a green light to operate the business as usual," said Mark A. McEachen, Freedom's chief financial officer.

Freedom, which owns the Orange Country Register, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday.

The spin cycle*,**

Public relations expert Eric Dezenhall yawns at last week's revelations from Stars and Stripes that the Pentagon used a private PR firm to screen journalists who wanted to embed with military units in Afghanistan. In a post entitled "Pentagon Caught, uh, Promoting Its Interests," Dezenhall tells us:

Profile-gate is emblematic of a pandemic of "news" stories where the publication of internal memos by cultural villains, usually corporations or industry associations, outlining programs that - push back from your computer screens because what you are about to read is not for the faint-of-heart -- PROMOTE THEIR INTERESTS!

Clever. But in addition to being a cultural villain to some, the Pentagon is prosecuting a war, and the central question driving the stories was whether the profiles were used to reward positive coverage and punish negative coverage of that war. Maybe Stars and Stripes got a little breathless at times, but answering that question promotes our interests.

Speaking of which, freelance journalist Jason Motlagh, writing at Time.com, says the military denied his request to embed with a special forces unit after the private PR firm gave him a negative review:

I recently applied to embed with U.S. Special Forces to cover a new initiative to raise and train civilian militias in Taliban strongholds. After waiting for more than a month for a response, I was accidentally copied on an e-mail sent by the public-affairs department to the presiding officer who would give or deny approval. A color-coded pie chart showed that 47% of my stories were deemed negative, 47% neutral and 6% positive. In a section titled "Key Takeaway Points," it was mentioned that my stories have been lengthy, with plenty of context and sources. It was added, however, that "most notably, he tends to quote experts" from a British think tank "which has been critical of the coalition mission and the Afghan government." A day after the e-mail — which included the Rendon analysis — was sent to the officer, my application was rejected without explanation.

*Update: Journalist Thomas Ricks also nonplussed by the Stars and Stripes stories.

**Update II: New York Times editorial board applauds the decision to dump the Rendon Group and encourages the Pentagon to focus its energy on conducting the war rather than shaping the story.

Battle for Mt. Wilson

From the LA Times:

...firefighters were frantically trying to save the historic astronomical observatory and dozens of critical TV and radio antennas from destruction. By 3 p.m., the fire was approaching closer than ever from two directions: one-half mile to the north and three-quarters of a mile to the west.

“We expect the fire to hit the Mt. Wilson facilities between 5 p.m. today and 2 a.m. Wednesday morning,” said Los Angeles County Fire Department Deputy Chief James Powers. “Right now, we’re conducting controlled burns around the perimeter in preparation for the impending fire's arrival. We’re also bringing in trucks and special equipment to coat all of the structures with protective gel and foam if necessary. We do not plan to cover everything with a gooey mess.”

CBS has some raw footage of the fire here.

Bankruptcy behind the Orange Curtain

The parent company of the Orange County Register filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today, adding more uncertainty to the future of Southern California's newspapers.

By filing for bankruptcy, Freedom Communications hopes to cast off about $445 million in crushing debt. As a result, Freedom's founding family, the Hoiles, will turn over operations of the company's 33 dailies, 70 weeklies and eight television stations to a board chosen by its lenders.

From the LAT (which is owned by the bankrupt Tribune Co.):

Under the plan, Freedom's lenders would forgive $445 million of debt for the company. That would leave Freedom with $325 million in debt. ...

The Register, which in the 1980s and 1990s fended off a determined effort by The Times to invade Orange County, saw its circulation fall by a third in the new millennium, dropping from more than 363,500 in 2000 to about 231,000 this year.

The Register intends to continue publishing throughout the bankruptcy proceedings. Presumably this includes normal press operations - Dean Singleton's three San Gabriel Valley newspapers are now printed at the Register's printing plant.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that the Register would file for bankruptcy this week.

More complaints about fire coverage

Los Angeles Times TV critic Mary McNamara scolds local television stations for failing provide more coverage earlier of the fast-moving Station Fire that has now consumed 122,000 and cost two firefighters their lives:

What do we have to do to get a little blow-by-blow televised coverage? "If only Kate Gosselin lived in La Crescenta," I found myself thinking Monday morning as I watched KTLA-TV Channel 5 (which is owned by Tribune Co., as is The Times) move quickly off a brief report of the fire -- it's spreading -- into a segment about decoding carbs, then we'd have the news crews out in full force.

Complaints about the lack of coverage started coming in over the weekend and were aimed mainly at local TV and national news outlets.

Times reporter Greg Braxton gets the local stations to respond to LA County Supervisor Mike Antonovich's charge that their coverage was "horrendous."