Four in the evening

1. Craigslist founder Craig Newmark thinks NPR is the future. Atlantic

2. NPR's Twitter followers want more hard-hitting, breaking news. NPR

3. Former LA Times executive editor John Arthur is now vice president and executive editor of the Bakersfield Californian. BC

4. Greg Sargent at the Plum Line is satisfied that Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell fibbed about attending England's Oxford University. Plum Line

AOL Patch combines Wal-Mart and Real Housewives*

The LA Weekly has a story about AOL's Patch network, which pays a single reporter/editor to cover a single community with the help of a stringers. Critics alternatively compare Patch to Wal-Mart, for coming in to upend mom-and-pop newsites, and to the Real Housewives, for chasing ad dollars instead of news:

... instead of bringing journalistic eyes to spots that desperately need it, Patch isn't opening in Bell, Compton, South Gate, Vernon or Cudahy. It's taking the Real Housewives circuit: Beverly Hills, the West Valley and the Westside.

I don't think there's a Wal-Mart in Beverly Hills.

(found via LA Observed)

*Update: A writer for the West Hollywood Patch got caught plagiarizing. I've had my differences with the West Hollywood Patch before.

More on Christine O'Donnell and the Claremont Institute

Talking Points Memo continues to dig into Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's questionable claims about her education background. The liberal news site reported today that, when O'Donnell applied for a 2002 fellowship at the Claremont Institute, she listed the University of Oxford on her resume. The same claim was made on a LinkedIn profile that carried O'Donnell's name, but O'Donnell says the profile is a fake. The fellowship resume indicates that she's fudged this questionable association with Oxford before.

O'Donnell also appears to have told the Claremont Institute (a private, conservative think tank that somehow morphed into the respected and wholly unaffiliated Claremont Graduate University on the LinkedIn profile) that she had a bachelor's degree at the time. As I noted here Tuesday, the Institute listed O'Donnell as a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University. We've since learned that O'Donnell did not receive her degree until this month.

LinkedIn deletes disputed O'Donnell profile

LinkedIn has taken down a profile of Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, as she requested, but has yet to determine whether the profile is a fake, as she has claimed.

Yesterday, the Washington Post and this blog reported that the profile falsely asserted that O'Donnell had studied at the University of Oxford and Claremont Graduate University. Today, the O'Donnell's camp said the LinkedIn profile wasn't hers and asked that it be removed.

O'Donnell has yet to explain why she didn't challenge the profile's authenticity when the Post first asked about the Oxford listing. In fact, the campaign had a two weeks to think about it: AOL News raised the same question in a story published Sept. 15.

O'Donnell's educational background has come under scrutiny before. As CBS News reports:

She claimed for years that she was a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson Unversity, but she in fact only received her degree on Sept. 1 of this year, years after attending the school. ... Additionally, O'Donnell suggested in a lawsuit that she was pursuing a Master's degree at Princeton University, but she later acknowledged she has not taken any graduate courses at Princeton.

The education of Christine O'Donnell

Did Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell lie about her educational background on a social networking website? Or was she merely the victim of the website's poor design?

Or have we all been duped - either by a malevolent prankster who wanted to embarrass O'Donnell or a careless do-gooder who failed to do his or her research?

Yesterday, after reading a Washington Post story that disputed the accuracy of O'Donnell's LinkedIn profile, specifically a claim that she'd attended the University of Oxford, I decided to check whether she had attended another school listed on the profile, Claremont Graduate University. A spokesman for the school said without hesitation that were no records of her attending classes or registering there as a student.

The implication, of course, was that O'Donnell had padded (i.e., lied on) her resume.A writer for the conservative RedState blog admonished the attack-dog media to withhold judgment, saying it had failed to take into account LinkedIn's quirky design:

Depending on when O’Donnell created her LinkedIn profile, at one point you could only enter educational programs that were in the LinkedIn system. And even today, you have to hard-code in the text for places like Claremont, which are not recognized Institutions or Companies, but exist only as search terms in their system.

The idea, I guess, is that O'Donnell or one of her staffers might have been flummoxed by the website's lack of options and unfriendly design and, as a result, mistakenly listed Oxford University and Claremont Graduate University under the education tab.

The argument lost any relevance, however, when O'Donnell's campaign contacted Washington Post writer Greg Sargent and told him flatly that the LinkedIn profile was a fraud. Her statement reads in part:

There have been reports that I have released false information on a LinkedIn profile under my name. This is categorically untrue. I never established a LinkedIn profile, or authorized anyone to do so on my behalf.

This would mean someone else created the online profile and misstated O'Donnell's educational background either on purpose or by mistake.

Talking Points Memo talked with the O'Donnell camp, which says it will investigate who created the profile. A campaign spokesman would not explain why the issue of the profile's authenticity wasn't raised in the first place.

It should be noted that Sargent did reach out to the O'Donnell campaign, as any good journalist would, before he published the initial story. The campaign did not challenged the profile's authenticity and instead tried to explain why the Oxford University listing was an innocent mistake.

O'Donnell's profile has 84 "connections" - meaning 84 people have chosen to link to her profile. It would interesting to know whether any of them have ever communicated with the profile's creator. Also, all LinkedIn profiles require a working email to get them established. I've asked LinkedIn if it would release the email address associated with this account, but I won't hold my breath.

Other stories about O'Donnell and her educational background are here, here and here.

Christine O'Donnell didn't go to Claremont Graduate University either (update*)

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post's Plum Line has a story today that says Christine O'Donnell, Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, embellished her online resume to say she'd studied at Oxford University, when she'd actually taken a course from an outfit called the Phoenix Institute in a space rented from Oxford.

The same resume lists O'Donnell as having attended Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. The claim seemed suspicious since O'Donnell had yet to receive her undergraduate degree, from Farleigh Dickinson University, until last summer. So I asked CGU's public relations officer, Rod Leveque, if the school had any record of O'Donnell attending classes there. His response:

In short, no. Claremont Graduate University has no student or education record for an individual named Christine O'Donnell.

In 2002, O'Donnell was listed as a "Lincoln Fellow" at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank also based in Claremont. However, the institute is not affiliated with the Claremont Graduate University or any of the other Claremont Colleges. One of the Claremont Institute's fellows, Harry Jaffa, did teach at the Claremont Graduate University back when it was known as Claremont Graduate School.

 Incidentally, the 2002 entry for O'Donnell on the Claremont Institute website describes her as a graduate of Farleigh Dickinson University.

*Update: Greg Sarget just updated his Plum Line blog with a statement from O'Donnell in which she says the LinkedIn profile is not hers. Here's the statement:

"There have been reports that I have released false information on a LinkedIn profile under my name. This is categorically untrue. I never established a LinkedIn profile, or authorized anyone to do so on my behalf. I have always been clear about my educational background. I completed undergraduate work at Fairleigh Dickenson University. After my undergraduate work, I completed a summer program run by the Phoenix Institute, at the Institute's Oxford University location. The Institute runs programs around the world at various universities, and participants study issues of human dignity. I also completed a Lincoln Fellowship at the Claremont Institute in Claremont, CA. We would encourage LinkedIn to remove this profile.

Four in the morning

1. Former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon wins a "genius" grant largely for his work on "The Wire." Baltimore Sun

2. Huffington Post to Mayhill Fowler: "How do you resign from a job you never had?" Yahoo

3. NPR praises the LA Times for Bell stories. NPR

4. Tonight's gubernatorial debate between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman airs live on KCRW 89.9, followed by political analysis on "Which Way, LA?" WWLA

Out of power

Power in my neighborhood (90029) has gone out twice now. Most recently at about 7:30 p.m. Air conditioners are humming at full power across Southern California with temperatures still hovering around 95 degrees.

Comings and goings

Former Press-Enterprise reporter Aaron Burgin has taken a staff writing position at the San Diego Union-Tribune, where he covers the communities of Carlsbad, Oceanside and Vista.

*Here's one of his first stories, a nice profile of a local councilman with an apparent gambling problem.

Fowler wanted to get paid to do her job

Mayhill Fowler got a lot of attention for herself and for Huffington Post when she quoted then-candidate Barack Obama saying that some folk cling to their guns and religion. But HuffPo never hired her as one of its paid reporters, choosing instead to offer her a "platform" in lieu of real money. So she's quitting as loudly as she can.

Here's part of her parting shot:

The Huffington Post business model is to provide a platform for 6,000 opinionators to hold forth. Point of view is cheap. I would never expect to be paid there when the other 5,999 are not. However, the journalism pieces I have done in the past year seem to me as good as anything HuffPost’s paid reporters Sam Stein and Ryan Grim produce. Why do they get money, and I do not? I don’t recall either of them writing the story about Barack Obama waxing large on “clinging to guns and religion,” which seems more and more as time goes by to be the one big story out of the last presidential election to live on. Or at least it is the one that journalists and pundits are quoting regularly now. ... 

 She continues on at length before getting to founder Arianna Huffington:

Don’t get me wrong.  Arianna has many wonderful qualities.  I especially admire her wit and her continual reinvention of herself, in that classic American (especially immigrant American) way.  But she is also the quintessential opportunist.  And I cannot help but feel that, at the end of the day, as I thought I was proving myself to her to be worthy of journalism, she on her part was milking me for everything she could get before letting me go.

 (found via LA Observed)

The cost of political warfare

Want to know how much money is being spent on that annoying candidate ad? Wesleyan University has a database for that:

Transparency and government responsiveness depend critically on real-time publicly available information disclosing efforts to influence elections. The Wesleyan Media Project tracks and analyzes all broadcast advertisements aired by or on behalf of federal and state election candidates in every media market in the country. Throughout the course of the 2010 election cycle, we will provide real-time information on the extent of corporate and union spending in federal election campaigns across the country, who specifically is doing that spending and which candidates are benefiting.

Four in the morning

1. Twenty-eight-year old Pulitzer winner uses his prize money to establish a fund for rural reporters. IRJ

2. Las Vegas Review-Journal defends its practice of suing over alleged copyright violations. LV Sun

3. Thank god someone is finally giving corporations a chance to be heard. Forbes will run corporate/marketing/advertising blogs alongside staff blogs to make sure these afflicted get the comfort they so sorely need. AdAge

4. I guess since so many journalists have already left, Sidney Harman won't have to fire that many people at Newsweek. Poynter

Rep. Loretta Sanchez catches foot-in-mouth

Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Garden Grove, told Univision that the "Vietnamese and the Republicans" are trying to steal her seat away to the detriment of the Latino community. Here's the story and here's the video.

Four today

1. eMeg Whitman, Republican candidate for California governor, is the 332nd richest person in the world and only one of 34 women to make the Forbes 400. Gawker

2. Getting a handle on the SEO slave-drivers in the newsroom. Nieman Journalism Lab

3. National Journal continues to beef up, hiring Patricia Wilson from Reuters as the deputy editor-in-chief. The news magazine was criticized for being too male dominated in its new hires. Poynter

4. Spot.us, the fund-raising news site, has a 10-month gig for a reporter/editor to cover "overlooked, quality-of-life issues across Los Angeles." Journalism Jobs (via LA Observed)

Zell is still a billionaire

"Property baron" Sam Zell, owner of the bankrupt Tribune Co. empire, is worth $4.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine, which lists his ties to the media company as a "sore spot." He comes in at #237 in the Forbes 400 richest people in the world.

Press-Enterprise's owner wants to toss the old newspaper image

The Press-Enterprise Company, which owns and operates the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, La Prensa, and a few other publications and websites, has adopted a new name: Enterprise Media.

The name change has several purposes, not the least of which is to shed the image of a company tied to a tired, "one-dimensional" product: newspapers.

The new name also appears designed to position the company to better capture new revenue sources - Belo, Enterprise Media's parent, is going to experiment with paywalls come spring - and could simplify matters if Enterprise Media chose to partner with other media companies in the region.

From the memo to staff (my emphasis):

This change in our Company name has been planned for some time to ensure our business is seen by our clients as keeping pace with the significant, rapid and dynamic changes that are happening in the media industry. It also is aligned with the long-term vision for our business to reflect the innovation, new directions and forward-thinking multimedia strategy that our Company is actively pursuing. We have expanded from being a newspaper company to become a diversified media company. It’s now time for our customers to know us as more than a newspaper company as well.

The name Enterprise Media describes and defines who we are as a company. It effectively conveys our position as a future-focused media company; a leading and digitally savvy, multi-media news and information content provider. It is a name that will impress and influence our advertising and business-side clients to change their minds and attitudes about who we are.

This change is important because the name ‘Press-Enterprise Company’ does not align with our strategy. It is inextricably tied to our daily newspaper, ‘The Press-Enterprise,’ and it does not communicate to our customers the size, scale and capabilities of our multi-media product portfolio. ...

[T]he name ‘Press-Enterprise Company’ is tied to their past experiences with a newspaper company and it evokes attitudes and perceptions that are:

· One-dimensional. It causes our B2B [business-to-business] clients to see us as a one-product company; in their minds, one that has limited, if any, value for their needs. Reality is we are so much more as a business partner.

· Geographically limited. In the minds of our B2B clients our Company’s market and audience reach is limited to the geography of our newspaper circulation area. Reality is that our sphere of influence and audience extends well beyond the geographic area our newspaper serves.

· Institutionally bound. It says “newspaper” which means “inflexible,” “high rates,” and “old media” to advertisers who are looking for new ways to reach their clients using social media, mobile, and more. We want our name to convey that we’re playing in that space too.

The full memo is here.

Two laid off at LA Times Magazine

Los Angeles Times Magazine has laid off senior editor Jod Kafkan and assistant editor Allison Kornberg, fishbowlLA reports.

Huffington Post gets Goodman

Peter Goodman, national economics correspondent for the New York Times, has decided to leave the paper to become business and technology editor at the Huffington Post. Goodman told Howard Kurtz that he wanted the freedom to advocate solutions to the nation's economic woes rather than simply report on them. His reporting, by the way, has been consistently excellent throughout the Great Recession and gives me a reason to actually read the website.

Sad state of the Mexican press

The drug war in Mexico has claimed the lives of at least 56 reporters in the last five years; 90 percent of the media-related crimes go unpunished, according to a recent report from the Committee to Protect Journalists. In response, one newspaper to ask the drug lords what exactly they want it to publish. From the New York Times:

It was by turns defiant and deferential, part plea and part plaint, a message as much to the drug gangs with a firm grip on Ciudad Juárez, the bloodiest city in Mexico’s drug battles, as to the authorities and their perceived helplessness.

“We want you to explain to us what you want from us,” the front-page editorial in El Diario in Ciudad Juárez asked the leaders of organized crime. “What are we supposed to publish or not publish, so we know what to abide by. You are at this time the de facto authorities in this city because the legal authorities have not been able to stop our colleagues from falling.”

In Mexico’s drug wars, it is hard to pinpoint new lows as the atrocities and frustrations mount. But Ciudad Juárez belongs in its own category, with thousands killed each year, the exodus of tens of thousands of residents, the spectacle of the biggest national holiday last week observed in a square virtually devoid of anybody but the police and soldiers, and the ever-present fear of random death.

The question now is whether anyone there will dare to continue documenting the turmoil in Ciudad Juárez, a smuggling crossroads across from El Paso that is battled over by at least two major criminal organizations.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is meeting with President Felipe Calderon on Wednesday to discuss the constant and dire threat journalists face. The group's report on journalists deaths in Mexico is here.

Bell officials arrested*

At least eight officials with the city of Bell were arrested this morning, a source in the DA's office told the LA Times. Four of the eight are sitting council members. District Attorney Steve Cooley is expected to enumerate the charges at a press conference at 11 a.m.

*Update: The Times now reports that former City Manager Robert Rizzo; "former Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia; Mayor Oscar Hernandez; Councilmembers Luis Artiga, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal; and former Councilmembers George Cole and Victor Bello were among those arrested."

Huffington Post thinks the revolution runs through the mainstream

The Huffington Post has savaged the mainstream media for being out of touch. To prove the point, the website has hired the epitome of mainstream news, writer and political Howard Fineman, away from Newsweek.

Private enterprise more important than free press, Philly judge rules

A district court judge in Philadelphia has banned "the media" from covering next week's auction of the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer. The auction is taking place in open court, meaning open to the public, but the judge said having reporters there would just be too disruptive - and the papers' creditors happily agreed.

The many ironies and contradictions are enough to buckle a rational mind: A free press being banned from an open court hearing, for starters. A free press being banned from covering a public event in a public facility that concerns the future of the free press, for another.

Want more?

A federal judge blithely employing prior restraint against a constitutionally protected practice. A federal judge choosing to limit a constitutionally protected practice in order to promote a business deal. A federal judge choosing the interests of private business over the public's right to know in a case when two entities established to maintain the public's right to know (the very thing that gives them value) are on the chopping block.

One further complication: The creditors' committee includes the Newspaper Guild, a union representing the news reporters. That puts a reporter in the courtroom. To ensure he maintains control, the judge said the reporter would have to forsake his identity and act only as a representative of the creditors.

Unless a smart attorney or First Amendment group gets Judge Stephen Raslavich to come to his senses, the story of what happens to these two newspapers will be told by wealthy businessmen.

Four in the afternoon

1. NPR is looking for an ombudsman (or woman). NPR

2. NBC News is building newsroom in Conan O'Brien's old studio. LAT

3. The Washington Post on the downward side of the arc. CJR

4. Irony blushes as a judge bars "reporters" from a public auction of two Philadelphia newspapers. WSJ

Stopping the presses in San Diego

One month before an election in which three college board seats are up for grabs, the administration at Southwestern College has cited a rule that could stop the student newspaper from printing its next edition.

A spokesman for the college said the Sun newspaper must choose a printer through a defined bid procedure or it won't get any money to pay for the printing. Student journalists say the paper has for decades shopped around for printers and asked why the administration decided to enforce the rule on the eve of the board elections.

From the Voice of San Diego:

The Sun was supposed to go to print tomorrow. If the printing question has to go to the college board, students fear the board could prevent them from printing before a November election in which three members of the college board are up for re-election.

Their campaigns are tied to the controversial tenure of Superintendent Raj Chopra, who has been in the crosshairs of faculty members after making unpopular, unilateral cuts. The Sun has written extensively about the clashes and their campaigns. Its upcoming issue was slated to include articles about the candidates, the ongoing battle over whether the college will keep its state accreditation, and a summer fundraiser held by the college vice president in which he raised money from companies whose contracts he oversees.

"It seems very convenient. They're pulling this ancient policy out of nowhere," said Lyndsay Winkley, a student writer for the Sun.

Students are considering raising the approximate $3,000 needed to print the paper from outside sources.

(via fishbowlLA)

Miami chop house

The Miami Herald is cutting 49 employees, including seven full time and two part timers. Poynter has the memos.

Going online vs. being online

In a piece at the Online Journalism Review, Robert Hernandez explains the difference between online journalism and journalism online. It's the difference between taking what you do offline and posting it to the web and using the web and its tools to create a new type of coverage. Here's how he explains it:

Journalism Online is what we use to lovingly call "shovelware," which is taking existing "legacy" content and posting it on the Web. We know that there is immeasurable value in having the paper's articles, radio show's podcast and TV show's newscasts available on the Web.

Text alone is perhaps the most powerful form of journalism on the Web.

But that is still Journalism Online.

What I do.... what I identify with... what I live and breathe is Online Journalism.

So, what is that exactly?

Well, it's hard to explain but I look at the latest technology and opportunities only available on the Internet and try to harness them for the advancement and distribution of storytelling and journalism.

I look at FourSquare and see how we can use that to find eye-witness sources in breaking news events. I look at photo gallery widget by TripAdvisor, meant for vacation snapshots, and see how it could enrich our coverage of, say, the World Cup.

I work with engineers and see how our crafts can work together and create new experiences. Like when we took RSS feeds from around the globe and mapped them for a Seattle Times project. It was based on the addicting, but somewhat pointless Twittervision.

Think of how more powerful our journalism becomes when we crowd-source. Add some technology, like CNN did by using Microsoft's PhotoSynth, and it captures a historic moment in a unique way.

Eventually, the two worlds will collapse into one, but at a point when this technology is so new, it makes sense to have people on the vanguard. The tension it creates is healthy, too; though the decimation of coverage by media companies that don't know which world to be in is obviously depressing.

(via Nieman Journalism Lab)

Everyone wants a piece of Sam

Tribune Co.'s unsecured creditors want to sue Sam Zell and the company's board of directors over the 2007 deal that gave Zell ownership of the company - and later landed Tribune in bankruptcy court. AP

Press-Telegram gets a new editor

The Long Beach Press-Telegram will undergo a major personnel change on the editorial side at the end of the month. Rich Archbold, who has served as the newspaper's executive editor since 1997 and managing editor for 19 years before that, is leaving his job to become "community liaison director" - meaning he'll be the public face of the paper at community and civic events. Sue Schmitt, a former editor of the Daily Breeze in Torrance, will take over in a dual role as editor and general manager of the Press-Telegram. The press releases are here and here.

What happens in the Review-Journal stays in the Review-Journal

The editor and publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal are boosters for Nevada's Republican Senate Sharon Angle. They're also suing for copyright infringement after she posted R-J articles on her website without the paper's permission. To find about the suit, however, you have to read the paper's competition, the Las Vegas Sun. Steve Friess at Politics Daily has the story.

New publisher for the Desert Sun

Gannett has named Mark Winkler publisher of the Desert Sun in Palm Springs effective Sept. 27. Winkler will replace Rich Ramhoff, who was hustled out of the position earlier this month.

Winkler comes to Gannett from Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group, where he served as chief of sales and chief marketing officer. One has to wonder whether his move to inland Southern California, a region saturated by MediaNews newspapers, is a sign of a developing partnership with the Singleton's Los Angeles Newspaper Group.

In addition to being publisher of the Desert Sun, "he will also hold the position of West Group vice president with oversight responsibility for the U.S. Community Publishing markets in Visalia, Tulare, Salinas, CA, and Guam," according to Marketwatch.

Here's more on his business background:

Prior to Winkler's work at Media News Group, he served as chief operating officer for Capital Securities Real Estate, LLC, a global real estate investments fund. From 2000-2006, Winkler was a division vice president/general manager for Comcast Communications and from 2004-2006 had oversight of corporate interactive and new sales technologies for Comcast. From 1997-2000, he served as a Western Region vice president for Media One, Los Angeles, CA. Winkler is a cum laude graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

No, it's not getting better yet

The headline on Alan Mutter's blog says it all: "Newspaper ad sales head to 25-year low"

Public radio and film reviews

Roger Ebert is reviving "At The Movies" and has selected Elvis Mitchell, who hosts KCRW's "The Treatment," and Christy Lemire of the Associated Press as co-hosts.

News Corp's English coverup

The UK-based tabloid "News of the World" is mixed up in a juicy scandal of its own making, one that involves hacking celebrity and government phones, payoffs, jailed journalists, a curiously stalled investigation, and conveniently forgetful executives. Ryan Chittum at Columbia Journalism Review offers a fascinating recount of the affair, which raises serious question about the ethics of Rubert Murdoch's UK media empire.

Don't sip from the lamestream, media

For responsible journalists, figuring out how and what extent to cover publicity-stuntman Pastor Terry Jones is a complicated task.

Less difficult is pointing out the shamelessness of some media in their attempt to ride the publicity wave Jones and his Quran-burning aspirations have created. For instance, staffers at ABC News wanted to fly Jones to New York City and film the journey. The dumb idea wasn't killed by journalists at the station, but by company executives, Yahoo's Michael Calderone reports.

Calderone also reports that over at MSNBC, the "Morning Joe" crew decided to simultaneously milk the Jones publicity machine and make themselves look above it all at the same time. The show had Jones appear as a guest, but didn't let him speak, instead choosing to have soon-to-be-former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham sermonize to the pastor about New Testament values.

This kind of nonsense becomes irresistible when you live or die by ratings. Which is why a New York Times article about how newspapers are now admitting that they pay a lot of attention to page hits should be worrying.

Proponents of a digital revolution in the news business will generally applaud the paper dinosaurs for finally listening to what readers want, rather than substituting their stodgy editorial judgments for a potentially vibrant democratic discussion.

Newspapers can do a lot of things better if they have a deeper conservation with readers (and with non-readers). But measuring page views and responding to that isn't the way to do it. Indeed, page clicks is the single most dominant measure of success online and it invites the most abuse.

Here's how the Wall Street Journal uses hits to reorder its news site:

At The Journal, editors use traffic data to inform decisions on how articles should be presented on WSJ.com. “We look at the data, and if things are getting a lot of hits, they’ll get better play and longer play on the home page,” said Mr. Murray. Conversely, articles getting low audiences will be moved down more quickly if there is no compelling news reason to keep them prominent.

Predictably, the Journal's editors immediately cite an exception to the rule, saying they've investigated or reported on some issue they knew wouldn't be very popular. But exceptions are merely rationalizations for what is actually happening. And when Bill Keller, editor of the New York Times, says his paper uses page views only to determine how articles are presented online, not to direct coverage, he is being similarly disingenuous. Does anyone really think a newspaper is going to invest as much time and resources into topics that it knows won't ever get strong play on the web site? And isn't how a paper presents itself, whether in print or online, one of the key ways it communicates its editorial judgment to readers? (The answer is yes.)

Popularity is, as everyone who has ever heard of Justin Bieber knows, not synonymous with quality. What news organizations can do to protect quality is to develop more effective and nuanced ways to measure success and guide presentation. This doesn't mean they shut readers out. Newspapers should not refuse to adapt to useful feedback from the public. But to protect editorial judgment, they absolutely develop metrics that bake in editorial judgments and organizational mission. Ratings/hit-counts are passive; they will inevitably cause newspapers to substitute audience judgment for their own editorial judgment. Newspapers need a more sophisticated and active approach; they should be hiring people who know how to create the metrics that will make them better, not just more profitable.

Otherwise, they might as well book a flight with Pastor Terry Jones right now.

And a shameless huckster shall lead them*

Terry Jones, the extremist pastor in Florida who threatened to burn Qurans on September 11, says he will not burn the books after all. Instead will fly to New York City on Saturday to talk with Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf about a proposal to move Rauf's planned Islamic center, known as Park51, farther away from Ground Zero.

Imam Muhammad Musri of Central Florida brokered the deal.

I guess this means that Pastor Jones, who thinks "Islam is the Devil," now represents all those politicos (Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, et al) who called for the community center to be moved. 

Also, news organizations will no longer have to deal with the discomfort of figuring out how to cover the Quran burnings.

*Update: The "deal" here seems less certain as the hours pass. Wouldn't be surprised if the Quran-burning stunt was rescheduled.

A prisoner's-eye view of prison life

An inmate in the Maryland corrections system has smuggled cameras into prison to document prison life, just as he did when he served time in New Jersey. Omar Broadway's footage of his time in New Jersey aired as part of a documentary on HBO. Prison officials say they are increasingly concerned about the use of cameras and other mobile devices behind bars, according to the Baltimore Sun story about Broadway.

Al Jazeera could join the Pacifica Radio network

Pacifica Radio, which runs KPFK in Los Angeles and four other public-radio stations around the country, is in talks with Al Jazeera Network to broadcast the Persian Gulf-based news service in the United States, the Washington Post reports.

From the story:

If an agreement is reached, Pacifica would become the biggest American broadcaster to air Al Jazeera, whose news reports have at times drawn criticism from Western governments, including the Bush administration during the early days of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Al Jazeera is perhaps best known for being the first network to broadcast video communiques from Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

How to cover a book burning

Whatever ridiculous forces put a fringe Florida pastor on our front pages and TV screens, and into the mouths of our president and top Pentagon officials, there's little doubt that Terry Jones' planned Quran burning on Sept. 11 will be covered. Indeed, the story has already taken root in the Muslim world, and the reverberations are very real.

So how should a news organization cover this publicity stunt?

The Associated Press has a memo outlining its intentions, including a policy that the news service "will not distribute images or audio that specifically show Qurans being burned, and will not provide detailed text descriptions of the burning."

 Poynter ethics leader Kelly McBride offers her take here, noting that even ugly events like this demand coverage: "[P]art of our job as journalists is to document events. When we ignore acts of hate, no one has the opportunity to react, to condemn them or to proclaim a different belief system."

Four today

1. We are what we measure. CJR

2. Freakonomics is headed for radio. WNYC

3. The law and online aggregation. Nieman Journalism Lab

4. LA>FWD, a collaboration by Radio Bilingue and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is scheduled to launch Sept. 16. LA Observed

Another Times reporter departs

Los Angeles Times political reporter Janet Hook has left the Los Angeles Times to work for the Wall Street Journal, where she'll cover Congress (Talking Biz News via LA Observed). She's the third reporter to leave in recent days. Former Times Sacramento reporter Michael Rothfeld also landed at the WSJ as well. He's covering legal issues for the paper's Law Blog. Jim Tankersley, who covered energy and environmental issues, went to the National Journal to cover economics.

Plot a massacre, pass the adobo

Planning murder will apparently make one hungry. From the New York Times:

The clan accused of orchestrating the Philippines’ worst political massacre — also considered the single worst killing of journalists on record — plotted the attack over a family dinner, a longtime housekeeper testified at the start of a long-delayed trial here on Wednesday.

The patriarch of the clan that has long controlled the province of Maguindanao in the southern Philippines, Andal Ampatuan Sr., gathered his sons, brothers and other guests at the dinner table six days before the killings of 57 political rivals and journalists last November, the witness, Lakmudin Salio, said.

The revolution will be covered in ivy

Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News, commented on the resignation of David Westin as head of ABC News:

The thing to watch is who ABC appoints as Mr. Westin’s successor, Mr. Heyward said. (No names have yet emerged as serious contenders). Someone with formal corporate training, like a person from ABC’s stations division, would most likely forecast a decision to manage costs in the short term, he said. Someone with a digital background, like a former Google executive, could signal a radical and more long-term approach.

 The choice ahead will require an extremely diverse pool of applicants, as Mr. Heyward pointed out:

“I think you’ll either see someone from Harvard Business School or a Harvard dropout.”

(via Romenesko)

Los Angeles Times loses two reporters*

The Los Angeles Times has lost at least two talented reporters in recent days, according to the media site Gorkana. Michael Rothfeld*, who covered Sacramento issues, including the state's prison reforms, is out. No word on where he's gone, only a note that "all inquiries" should be directed to Sacramento bureau chief Evan Halper.

Also leaving is Jim Tankersley, who had covered energy and the environment for the Times out of the Tribune Co.'s Washington Bureau. He was snapped up by the National Journal, which has gone on a hiring spree of sorts in recent weeks to beef up its economic coverage. Tankersley will be an economic correspondent for the Journal.

*Update: Rothfeld has headed back to New York to work on the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog.

Credit when credit is due

Kevin Roderick at LA Observed complains that his old employer, the Los Angeles Times, has repeatedly failed to credit him for stories and tips taken from his blog.

Westin, head of ABC News, leaving

David Westin, president of ABC News, told staff that he's ready to "move on." From the New York Times writeup:

In his e-mail, Mr. Westin said, “There are some other things I want to do professionally — things that I cannot explore while fulfilling my responsibilities here.”

Of course, it's never as simple as that. Most reports say Westin was forced out because he wasn't forward thinking enough. Again, from the NYT:

[An] ABC News staff member informed of the decision said that Disney and ABC managers had pressed Mr. Westin for years to make the division more profitable, but had been unhappy with his efforts to accomplish that goal. ABC announced in February that it would reduce its staff by up to 400 employees, about 25 percent of its work force.

Facebook localizes the Internet with news searches

Facebook has installed a new feature that lets users search for news updates while on the site. As this post notes, it is not exactly clear how the search results are chosen, but this is expected to be a challenge to Google's efforts to expand into social networking.

Publisher out at the Desert Sun*, **

**Just getting word that the publisher of the Desert Sun, Rich Ramhoff, is out of a job and the newspaper's editor-in-chief, Rick Green, will step in as interim publisher. The Desert Sun is owned by Gannett and based in Palm Springs.

*Update: A press release from the Desert Sun says Ramhoff " is taking a new assignment within Gannett Co." The release does not specify what the new assignment will be.


**Update II: Jim Hopkins at Gannett Blog offers a little perspective on Ramhoff's sudden departure. His take: This was no promotion, as Ramhoff's reassignment comes amid financial struggles in Gannett's western division. From Gannett Blog:

The Sun is part of Gannett's West Group, a portfolio of community dailies whose financial performance has been unsatisfactory to Corporate, one of my readers says. Revenue is down at several of the papers, my reader says, and rumors are flying that some directors have been asked to offer contingency cuts that could take effect sometime in the last quarter of this year.

West Group President Laura Hollingsworth, who also is publisher of The Des Moines Register, personally delivered news of Ramhoff's reassignment to staff yesterday, three of my readers say. According to one of those readers, Hollingsworth told staff, "there is money sitting on the table" -- a reference to untapped advertising dollars the Sun hasn't been aggressive enough in chasing.

Gannett's four California papers were hit especially hard in the real estate bust. The Sun's circulation is about 46,000 Monday through Friday, and 52,000 on Sundays.

Disappearing investigations

In a story funded by an outside nonprofit, former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Mary Walton writes about the disappearance of investigative reporters - and the fact that bad people get away with bad things when they go.

From the story:

Kicked out, bought out or barely hanging on, investigative reporters are a vanishing species in the forests of dead tree media and missing in action on Action News. I-Teams are shrinking or, more often, disappearing altogether. Assigned to cover multiple beats, multitasking backpacking reporters no longer have time to sniff out hidden stories, much less write them. In Washington, bureaus that once did probes have shrunk, closed and consolidated.

The membership of Investigative Reporters and Editors fell more than 30 percent, from 5,391 in 2003, to a 10-year low of 3,695 in 2009. (After a vigorous membership drive, this year the number climbed above 4,000.) Prize-seekers take note: Applications for Pulitzers are down more than 40 percent in some investigative categories, a drop reflected in other competitions.

"There is no question that there are fewer investigative reporters in the U.S. today than there were a few years ago, mirroring the overall loss of journalists at traditional media outlets," says IRE Executive Director Mark Horvit. While he concedes that the situation is alarming, Horvit points to positive developments. New organizations dedicated to investigative and watchdog coverage have sprung up, and some mainstream news outlets are renewing a commitment that had been lost.

(via Romenesko)

Test bias

"Tests Are Biased Against Kids Who Don't Give A Shit" The Onion (via FishbowlLA) *naughty language alert*

"Combat" isn't a policy position

The Associated Press has cautioned reporters against reporting uncritically on the Obama administration's declaration that "combat operations" in Iraq are over. Poynter

When a power elite turns on himself

In the wake of the Shirley Sherrod dustup, the Los Angeles Times has a short profile of ultraconservative blogger Andrew Breitbart. The story, by Robin Abcarian, is here.

Comings and goings*

I'm told Aldrin Brown, city editor for the San Bernardino Sun, has decided to leave his job. Rumor is he's going to work for AOL's Patch, though I haven't been able to confirm this.

On the national side, Peter Orzag, heart breaker and former director of the office of management and budget, will be writing a column for the New York Times.

*Update: Newsweek's business and economics columnist, Dan Gross, is the latest to leave the magazine. Gross is moving over to Yahoo Finance, the Business Insider reports.

Four in the morning

1. The judge in the Tribune Co. bankruptcy case has appointed a mediator to work through the impasse. LAT

2. Media critic Jack Shafer says hostage situations should not be covered as de facto breaking news. Slate

3. Press freedoms in Latin America are being chipped away despite the democratic reforms. Newsweek

4. The Associated Press has released new guidelines for giving credit to news organizations that originally reported information that's been assimilated into AP stories. AP

For what it's worth

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon has bought back the Washington Times from his sons for $1 and an agreement to assume the paper's debt, US News reports.

The Deseret News cuts nearly half its staff, and other riddles of language

The Deseret News, a daily newspaper in Salt Lake City and owned by the Mormon Church, has announced that it will axe 43 percent of its newsroom staff - 57 full-time and 47 part-time employees. But rather than let the obvious shock settle in over the fact that the 143-year-old paper is hacking at its bones, management threw up all kinds of flares, fireworks and fancy neologisms to cast the layoffs as part of a creative disruption reinvention system that will add to and improve the paper's coverage.

Less is more, in other words, using the latest in media jargon. Here's one of the executives, quoted by Ken Doctor, explaining why layoffs won't hurt coverage:

“That’s an Old Media world view,” Deseret News President and CEO Clark Gilbert told me today. “We have access to more journalists, hyperlocal contributors, national sports figures than ever before.”

Doctor's piece goes on to explain all kinds of things the Deseret News is up to, from its values-based missionary journalism to its labeling of journalists as Rewrite/First Responders.

Some of the ideas might work. But I suspect most of these overly intellectualized plans are going to fail unless and until the Deseret News, and all other expand-by-shrinking media companies, can figure out what they want to do and explain it to themselves in plain language (can you imagine putting Rewrite/First Responder on your resume?). Words that describe actions, not words meant to convey the idea of activity.