Fake news written by fake people

Scandal stories about water districts in Southern California (and maybe everywhere) often involve the cloistered ways in which the boards do business - and the generosity with which they pay themselves for doing shady business.

The Central Basin Municipal Water District has found an original way to make scandal news. The public body hired a "news" outfit to write favorable articles about the district and then got them posted on Google News as though they were legitimate. Essentially, the stories were thinly disguised public relations pieces.

Now the Los Angeles Times, which broke the Google story, has discovered that the hired-gun journalists being paid to write the water district's PR weren't really journalists - and, in fact, weren't really people.

Mike Adams, the lead writer for a company calling itself News Hawks, appeared to be imaginary. From the Times:

News Hawks also presented a picture of Adams, showing a stoic man with a gray beard and a black cowboy hat. A reader notified The Times that the photo was a stock image used to demonstrate editing techniques on websites such as deviantart.com.

From there, the picture was traced to photographer Leroy Skalstad, who said he took the shot at a Milwaukee food bank last year and posted it to several photo-sharing websites. He said the subject of the picture is a man nicknamed "Cobra."

BANG goes boom

MediaNews Group announced today that its Bay Area News Group will undergo a major consolidation that will merge 12 newspapers into three and eliminate 120 jobs - 48 of the positions are in the newsroom, KQED reports. When all is finished, BANG will consist of the Mercury News, The Times and East Bay Tribune.

BANG is using words like "streamlining" and "rebranding" to describe the merging and cutting. The actions should not come as a surprise given the decision MediaNews made in June to consolidate editorial control of the papers.

Here's part of the story (which appears to have been written by an ad agency) published on the soon-to-be retooled Contra Costa Times website:

Bay Area News Group (BANG) today announced a rebranding of many of its newspapers to better reflect the scope of its regional coverage. The changes - which include a streamlining of its print operations - primarily involve its East Bay newspapers, and will result in greater emphasis on providing high-impact, regional and local coverage. 

-snip- 

The streamlining of its print operations will also result in a reduction of approximately 120 jobs - primarily in the production and editorial divisions - out of a local workforce of 1,500 employees.

Management at MediaNews will argue, as it does in the story, that this consolidation is about much more than job cuts; that its a necessary step to position the BANG as a competitive news outlet in the rough and tumble 21st century. And maybe this smaller knot of news power will get the job done. But we cannot overlook the fact that this recently bankrupt company is trying to raise $350 million to buy newspapers from Freedom Communications. And we know editorial power wanes when you eliminate four dozen news staffers.

Or as the San Francisco Chronicles' Carla Marinucci tweeted: “Corporate PR spin: Release from CA’s Bay Area News Group, announcing decimation of its newspaper/staff chain tday, calls it ‘rebranding.’” (found via Romenesko)

Rupert Murdoch has a way with news

Carl Bernstein, investigative reporter of Watergate fame, and Roger Cohen of the New York Times debate the media legacy of Rupert Murdoch in the wake of the News of the World implosion. Bernstein begins ...
 Has Rupert Murdoch changed the news of the world? by KCRW

News of the World scandal leads to new arrests

British police today arrested the former spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron in the ever-worsening scandal over phone hacking at News of the World. The family of Rupert Murdoch has already vowed to shutter the 168-year-old tabloid on Sunday.

MySpace is a bargain

The Wrap reports that News Corp. has unloaded MySpace.com for $35 million to Specific Media. Layoffs are expected to be part of the deal. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought the social network in 2005 for $580 million.

Fact-finders as artifacts

Chris Hedges take his turn trying to articulate what's being lost as newspaper newsrooms shrink:

We are losing a peculiar culture and an ethic. This loss is impoverishing our civil discourse and leaving us less and less connected to the city, the nation and the world around us. The death of newsprint represents the end of an era. And news gathering will not be replaced by the Internet. Journalism, at least on the large scale of old newsrooms, is no longer commercially viable. Reporting is time-consuming and labor-intensive. It requires going out and talking to people. It means doing this every day. It means looking constantly for sources, tips, leads, documents, informants, whistle-blowers, new facts and information, untold stories and news. Reporters often spend days finding little or nothing of significance. The work can be tedious and is expensive. And as the budgets of large metropolitan dailies shrink, the very trade of reporting declines. Most city papers at their zenith employed several hundred reporters and editors and had operating budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The steady decline of the news business means we are plunging larger and larger parts of our society into dark holes and opening up greater opportunities for unchecked corruption, disinformation and the abuse of power.

Layoffs in San Gabriel Valley

At least five, and as many as seven, newsroom employees have lost their jobs in the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group. Layoff notices went to three from the copy desk, one photographer, and the city editor at the Pasadena Star-News.

The layoffs come as the papers' owner, Denver-based MediaNews Group, is being asked to up its offer for the Orange County Register.

The newspaper group includes the Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune and Whittier Daily News.

Four today

1. If you like the smell of news print (and who does) you can buy a candle and pretend its still 2004. refinery29

2. We were already a curation nation. Nieman Journalism Lab

3. Gannett axes 700 employees from its newspaper division. Romenesko

4. David Carr reviews James O'Shea's tell-all about the Tribune Co.'s disastrous deal to buy the LA Times. NYT

Four Monday

1. Andrew Breitbart tells the L.A. chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition that objectivity in journalism means surrender, and unveils plans to start a Big Jerusalem site. fishbowlLA

2. An ad in today's Miami Herald congratulations the Miami Heat, which lost the NBA championships. Miami New Times

3. AOL's Patch sites are busy, but not with muckraking stories. LAT

4. ABC's Chris Cuomo embarrasses himself as he rationalizes paying sources. Poynter

The FCC discovers local journalism is (f)ailing

A report commissioned by the FCC finds what everyone in the journalism business already knows: There is a dearth of good, in-depth local reporting. AOL-Huffington-Patch is not going to reverse the trend, either (though AOL-Huffington-Patch disagrees). From a Poynter summary of the report:

The FCC report says that newspapers and TV news networks have half the staff that they had in the 1980s and that newsrooms now stand at pre-Watergate employment levels. As a result, local news coverage is in trouble. Courts, schools, legal affairs, environment, state government and education once were priority beats. Now they lack reporters to cover them. The number of newspapers with bureaus in Washington has declined. Local news coverage of religion “is all but gone[.]”

While NPR gets good marks, local radio news coverage is following the trend of having too few people following the reports of other outlets. Again, from Poynter:

Despite the abundance of local media outlets, Waldman said, there is “a shortage of media reporting.” In Baltimore, for example, there are 53 news outlets, but a Pew study  said most of the content came from one TV station and The Baltimore Sun. “So far the news media is not filling this key need” to report news and not just repeat what others have reported, Waldman said. About 15,000 reporters have left newsrooms in the last decade in America, he said.

Florida dislikes public broadcasting

Florida Governor Rick Scott has eliminated all state funding for public broadcasting, amounting to a $4.7 million, the St. Petersburg Times reports. From the story:

The GOP-dominated Florida legislature had already budgeted a 30 percent reduction in the funds provided to the state's 26 non-profit public radio and TV stations, forcing organizations scrambling to deal with a long-expected downturn in donations and memberships to conserve further. But Scott's veto zeroes out funding completely, ending a funding arrangement which has stood for 35 years, beginning with the start of the state's fiscal year on July 1.

NYSE says trading floor trademark protected

The New York Stock Exchange sent the editors of Talking Points Memo a cease-and-desist letter to stop the online publication from using wire photos of the trading floor. The NYSE argues that the floor is trademarked, so any images of the floor are a violation of NYSE's trademark rights. Which is nonsense. TPM republished the photo that triggered the threat letter, alongside a sassy blog post from TPM Editor Josh Marshall.

Layoffs at the North County Times and Californian

The North County Times and The Californian have laid off twenty workers between them, according to the Press-Enterprise. The Lee-owned papers cover parts of San Diego and Riverside counties. The layoffs hit multiple departments; the story does not say how many newsroom employees got the axe. Said the dejected source who emailed me the article, "A few years ago people actually cared about stuff like this..."

AOL puts the "free" in freelancing*, **

AOL plans to fire all of its freelancers at Moviefone and Cinematical, but wants them to know they're still welcome to write for the sites - for free. In other words, the Huffington Post blogger model. Here's part of the email (via fishbowlLA) to the freelancers:

We will, indeed, be moving away from a freelancer model and toward one relying on full-time staffers. Sometime soon -– this week, I believe –- many of you will be receiving an email informing you that your services as a freelancer will no longer be required. You will be invited to contribute as part of our non-paid blogger system; and though I know that for many of you this will not be an option financially, I strongly encourage you to consider it if you’d like to keep writing for us, because we value all of your voices and input.

AOL-Huffington, redefining "value" one website at a time.

*Update: I'm told AOL Patch freelancers still get $50 a pop, so this policy has not hit them yet.

**Update II: The AOL editor who sent the above email was fired for its "erroneous" tone, the Wrap reports. Apparently, freelancers aren't being invited to become unpaid bloggers. They're being invited to apply for paid positions. However, if they don't get them, and they want to continue writing for Huffington Post or another AOL platform, they are free to do so. For free.

Texas paper spikes column critical of major advertiser

Romenesko has linked to a troubling story about the Hearst-owned San Antonio Express-News and its decision to spike a column from a veteran writer that took the HEB supermarket chain to task for the dilapidated condition of stores in predominantly black neighborhoods, and the shoddy quality of meats sold there.

Challenged by a writer for the Plaza de Armas news site, Express-News Editor Bob Rivard said this:

You are free, of course, to campaign against us by asserting without any evidence that we are not publishing what you want us to publish because H-E-B is a major advertiser. I’d suggest instead that we approach any story about H-E-B based on its long-standing and well-deserved reputation in the city, region and state as a best-in-class business, leading corporate citizen, and a company and ownership with an unrivaled record of philanthropy and support for public education in Texas.

So... it's not the company's money that led to the column being spiked, it's the company's influence that led to the column being spiked... influence that stems from making lots of money.

Circular logic does not get the paper around its responsibility to keep a watchful eye on all powerful corporate citizens, even the "leading" ones - "without fear or favor" does not work well when editors pick favorites.

(Let me disclose that I tried to buy a six-pack of beer at an HEB grocery store in Elgin, Texas a couple years back and was refused because I had an out of state ID. Pointing out that the beer also came from out of state did not change the manager's mind. So, one could argue I'm less than objective about the chain.)

Tired of bad press, city of Vernon buys the good kind*

To ensure a long and lucrative life in political office, city officials Vernon reportedly handpicked their constituents. So, it comes as no surprise that these same officials, faced with mounting scrutiny over alleged self-dealing and outrageous salaries, would feel justified in handpicking their news coverage.

Which is what happened when former state attorney general John Van de Kamp was asked by Vernon City Administrator Mark Whitworth to talk to a local newspaper about proposed city reforms. Van de Kamp, who was hired by the city to improve its image, later discovered the reporter wasn't a reporter and the story wasn't a story. It was an "advertorial," better known as a paid advertisement.

The ad, which can be seen here, is made-up to look like a news story, complete with photos, columns and a byline. The ad ran in several Los Angeles Newspaper Group (LANG) publications, including the Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Daily News, and Long Beach Press-Telegram.

From the LA Times:

Van de Kamp said the city arranged for him to be interviewed by a reporter. But officials did not tell him it was for a large, full-color advertisement touting the virtues of the embattled city. He said he didn't know about the ad until he saw it in Pasadena Star-News on Thursday morning. 

"I'm not here to…flak for the city," Van de Kamp said. "We're out here trying to do a straightforward, objective job. So that format is a problem for me."

This isn't a case where a government agency bought space from the paper and then created its own promotional ad. Instead, the newspaper's advertising department hired a writer to "report" on Vernon's supposed reform agenda and then ran the fake story in a way that misleads readers into thinking it went through the normal editorial process. Adding to the confusion, the byline belongs to Edward Barrera, a former editor and reporter in the LANG chain.

Asked about the confusion over the ad, Barrera told the Times that he never identified himself as a reporter to Van de Kamp. He elaborated in an email to me:

I get why the Times asked the question. Someone should have told Van de Kamp (including, probably, me). But it was a simple mistake. This was a generic and transparent promotional Q and A. It's why my name is on it.

Why would a newspaper even consider such an ethically fraught service? The money cannot be worth the negative publicity and newsroom hair pulling. And if Vernon is truly on the path of reform, a real reporter could do a real story about that. Thus far, LANG's newsrooms have done little reporting of any kind about Vernon, save an uncritical Star-News column about a state plan to disband the city.

(Full disclosure: I worked for the Star-News as a reporter and later served as an editor in the San Gabriel Valley alongside Edward Barrera.)

*I should note that this isn't my first experience with a LANG advertorial. In the early 2000s, while working at the Claremont Courier, I broke a story about mismanagement at the Three Valleys Municipal Water District. The Los Angeles Times followed up on the story and ended up funding a public records lawsuit. The LANG chain, represented by the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, largely ignored the story, even though a reporter there had the goods. However, Three Valleys did buy several promotional ads in LANG papers for tens of thousands of dollars.

Pulitzer winner plagiarizes at Washington Post (*updated)

 The Washington Post has apologized in an editor's note for a case of "substantial" plagiarism in two of its stories. In both, passages were lifted from the Arizona Republic. The author of the reports, Sari Horwitz, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, received a three-month suspension, Washington Post media writer Paul Farhi has reported.

Four today

1. Four New York Times journalists are missing in Libya, including two-time Pulitzer-winner Anthony Shadid. NYT

2. Pew's State of the Media report for 2011. Pew

3. KPCC is looking for a web designer/developer. APM

4. A neo-Nazi rally is planned for March 19 in Claremont to "respond" to a pro-immigration rally at the Claremont Colleges. Daily Bulletin

Sports teams increasingly doing their own publicity*

Sports journalism has carried more than a few newspapers through fat and thin times. Readers might intend to care about Congress or city council, but somehow they jump right to the sports page. Television and radio news have similar rhythms. Which is why the push by professional and college sports leagues to hire their own reporters to cover their own business has led to court battles and First Amendment arguments, as Paul Farhi reports in the Washington Post.

Aside from the money issues, this burgeoning battle raises questions about what sports journalism should look like. Is there a more adversarial form the non-team media could employ to counter the in-house PR? Would it keep the audience? Perhaps this new reality could free reporters from the PR transcriptions no one likes to do. But there are risks: After all, people root for "their" teams, they don't often root for Congress. Adversarial coverage could drive people away.

From the story:

“The larger picture is that sports lives in this uncomfortable space between news and commerce,” says Rich Gordon, a journalism professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School. “Journalists want to think of sports as news, but at the end of the day, it’s about entertainment and making money.”

This isn't strictly true. There are cultural and social identity issues tied to sports. Human drama, too. People spend lots of time thinking and watching sports teams for reasons that go beyond simple entertainment. Which is why, having the "entertainment and making money" side of the equation controlling coverage is a bad thing - and why self-reflection is a good thing.

The relationship is already troubling, however. News organizations sometime make deals to ensure their coverage does not impinge upon the money making. As professional sports grow in profits, these conflicts are going to multiply. A possible concern: Do news organizations start making deals to run the sports team-owned coverage on their websites or on air. After all, if the Lakers inside news crew gets the best photos and footage, wouldn't there be a temptation for, say, KTLA, after being shunned from the building, to run it?

More troubling still is the fact that this proprietary coverage is reaching down through college and into high school. Prep sports are the bread and butter of local papers, so this could sting badly. Then there's the nauseating thought of "monetizing" sports teams at public high schools - something budget-crushed districts are likely to consider. But, hey, then newspapers will have something else newsworthy to report on.

*Update: Former colleague Edward Barrera sent me a story that illustrates what happens when sports teams own their own news. From the New York Times:

Chris Botta, who publicized the Islanders for 15 years, had his credentials to cover the team on his blog revoked Tuesday, a day after the last-place franchise fired Coach Scott Gordon. 

“I was about to leave for practice, and I got a text from Kimber saying they would never issue me credentials for games and practices,” Botta said by telephone Thursday, referring to Kimber Auerbach, the team’s manager of communications. Botta said the only reason that Auerbach cited was management’s increasing concern that he had gone from “reporting the news to making the news.”

Oh, and in case you were hoping for some AOL convergence:

Botta spent 15 years in public relations with the Islanders before leaving in 2008 to start his blog, NYI Point Blank, which the team financed for a year. The blog has helped fill a media void for the moribund, publicity-starved team. 

The blog is now sponsored by AOL FanHouse, where Botta is a senior N.H.L. reporter.

Four today

1. Ever wonder why some news stories sound like press releases? Sometimes it's because the news stories basically copy huge blocks of text from press releases. A new site, churnalism.com, will help watchdog this shameful habit. PBS

2. Governments employ many layers of lawyers to figure out how not to tell people what's going on. ProPublica has gone through the excuses used to skirt the Freedom of Information Act to show just how its done. ProPublica

3. What's in a name? In the case of Medill journalism school, way too much. Daily Northwestern

4. AOL/Huffington Post is becoming fair and balanced. fishbowlLA