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.

"The AOL Way" is to get hits

AOL has a feverish case of hit-count lust. After creating Patch and investing in content creators, as it likes to call journalists, AOL has developed an aggressive plan for profitability that seems sure to grind the hell out of its editorial employees. The Business Insider got a copy of memo (really an excessively jargon-filled power point presentation) that outlines ways to boost traffic. Here's part of BI's summary (the "he" refers to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong):

By April, he wants AOL editorial to increase its stories per month from 33,000 to 55,000.
He wants pageviews per story to jump from 1,500 to 7,000.
He wants video stories to go from being 4% of all stories produced to 70%.
He wants the percentage of stories optimized for search engines to reach 95%.

All of which means many more "stories" from AOL staffers (five to 10 a day is the goal), with a keen eye on money metrics. The plan includes almost nothing about editorial goals, quality, or better coverage. It's machine journalism at its rawest - or what AOL management would call "The AOL Way," a name that rightly deserves to be ridiculed.

One journalist who joined AOL offered this response to Business Insider:

"AOL is the most f-----up, b------t company on earth," says one, who joined AOL in what he calls, "the worst career move I've ever made." 

An October 2010 study argues against turning online editorial into a content farm, saying better stories generate better ad revenue. But the insane valuation of Demand Media, said to be worth more than $1 billion, is certain to change minds.

****

Speaking of AOL's Patch network, I received a message from a Patch contributor who told me AOL plans to cut 30-50 percent out of freelance budgets. I'm not sure whether "The AOL Way" applies to Patch writers, but a smaller freelance budget means community editors will have fewer resources to create more content. Doesn't that sound familiar?

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)

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.

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."

Times makes blogger a deputy editor

As Kevin Roderick at LA Obsvered noted earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times has hired “Top of the Ticket” contributor Jimmy Orr as deputy editor for online, which involves coordinating “online news and features efforts.” 

Orr has solid experience in this realm, having worked as online editor at the Christian Science Monitor. He also has a history as a strict Republican partisan, serving as an internet strategist for both Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and President George W. Bush (Orr is to blame for those “Barney Cam” videos, apparently). 

Orr’s conservative past does not disqualify him for the job of deputy online editor. However, it is odd that the Times asked him to write partisan opinion in/on its own pages before promoting him to an ostensibly impartial editing job - it seems a disservice to him and to the reporters under him. Is this the kind of thing the Times has done before?

Ask them if they want to buy an ad while you're at it...

Some media critics have never liked the idea that newspapers insulate their newsrooms from the business side of the operation. In the critic's mind, this unnatural division has created rooms full of dreamy, soft-headed writers and editors who, in their veal-like state, simply don't get the pressures real people (such as publishers and ad managers) face in the real world - as though prohibiting reporters from taking story ideas from the advertising staff makes them unable to comprehend where the money for paychecks come from.

Of course, journalists are no more ignorant about, or insensitive to, financial issues than anyone else who doesn't make enough money to have a mortgage or a diversified stock portfolio. It's not the line drawn around advertising that keeps journalists in the dark, it's insufficient salaries. If journalists aren't watching the market, it's because they can't afford to be in it.

But even that is a stereotype - one that holds truer for younger reporters; not so much for veterans who cover complicated financial matters, from area real estate and business deals to government budgets and pension funds.

Which is why the argument, made by some media watchers, that removing the wall separating business and news we will create an entrepreneurial journalists better able to hopscotch through the fractured mediascape, and keep their own publications thriving, is complete nonsense. Unemployment and shifting opportunities will inspire the so-called "entrepreneurial" journalist. But no reporter benefits from learning how to tie stories to big ad buys, or write compelling advertorials, or keep the "important people" happy. This isn't going to remake journalism more authentic or more valuable.

One way newspapers are accelerating the business-editorial mashup is to employ editor-publisher hybrids. Already big in MediaNews Group's LANG chain, the role seems to be catching on and is likely to trickle own the management ladder.

Michael Sigman at Huffington Post writes about some of the predictable consequences when business and editorial freely mix. His examples, including the recent Los Angeles Times' "Despicable" ad wrap and a firing at the Chicago Reader, drive home the point that when the wall is removed, only one side compromise and only one side benefits.

If publications want to blow up the boxes and rewrite the standards by which they operate, then by all means experiment - honestly and transparently - and see how readers react. But don't rationalize that it's going to lead to better coverage. Shifting/blurring the line is simply shifty/blurry ethics.

Agenda journalism

In an earlier post, I stated my opinion that the Dave Weigel affair is less interesting for what it says about Weigel and the Washington Post than what it says about the inevitable celebrification of bloggers. But Joshua Benton at Nieman Journalism Lab points out that, in this case, it may be more about the role raw partisan agendas increasingly play in America's newsrooms.

Benton read through Weigel's account of his firing from the Post and picked up on the fact that Weigel is part of a class of reporters who entered journalism through internships paid by ideological groups - in Weigel's case, the Collegiate Network.

Benton writes:

I was familiar with the Collegiate Network from my own college days; it funded a conservative publication on campus, and that’s what I thought the extent of their work was. But I didn’t realize that it also pays for journalists to work at mainstream news organizations.

-snip-


The Collegiate Network describes these jobs as year-long fellowships, with stipends of $24,000 to $30,000 paid by CN, and along with USA Today lists Roll Call among outlets where it’s placed journalists. Their Wikipedia page also lists a wide variety of conservative publications and outlets, but also US News & World Report. The application form also lists the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the News & Observer, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and my old paper The Dallas Morning News — although that form doesn’t differentiate between summer internships and the year-long fellowships. And based on this post, fellows aren’t just on the editorial board — they’re also writing news stories.

LA Times attacks its own image*

The Los Angeles Times has, once again, sold an ad that's designed to look like a real story. Charles Apple, LAO

*Update: The five members of the County Board of Supervisors signed a letter to Tribune Co. chairman Sam Zell to protest the ad.

Yahoo! style

Yahoo has published an online style guide that promises to teach you how to write for a global audience and to use the magic words that get you listed high in the search results.

And remember:

Text that works best on the Web is text that gets to the point fast and that makes it easy for readers to pick out key information.

Personality journalism

The resignation of blogger David Weigel from the Washington Post has the commentariate in an uproar: Was the Washington Post fair to accept his resignation (de facto firing)? Should fishbowlDC have published emails written on a listserv that wasn't meant to be public? What is the role of a blogger versus a "normal" columnist?

To me, this is the predictable consequence of the celebrification of journalism, as papers looking to increase traffic turn to personalities (brand-name journalists) who are able to rise up through the fractured mediascape. In this case, a well-known libertarian writer was caught sending untoward messages about well-known conservative commentators on a server used by well-known liberal commentators. In a media world context, this was a celebrity cat fight, with name brands facing off in the newest electronic bubble.

Expect it to be a trend.

The new journalism? Or just good journalism?

In defending Michael Hastings and Rolling Stone against complaints from media "hacks," of which National Review's Rich Lowry is the only one named, Barrett Brown of Vanity Fair offers an interesting, and wrong, analysis of what the Hastings piece shows about the future of journalism.

Brown writes:

Yes, Rich; the most impact-laden story of the year, the one in which General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and his aides talked trash about President Barack Obama and members of his administration, appeared in Rolling Stone, not National Review. And it was written by a perfect specimen of the new breed of journalist-commentator that will hopefully come to replace the old breed sooner rather than later, and which has already collectively surpassed the old guard by every measure that counts—for instance, not being forever wrong about matters of life and death.

First off, National Review is chock-o-block full of new-breed "journalist-commentator"s and that's precisely why it would never have done the McChrystal story - N.O. likes the military too much. Second, despite the occasional opining in Hastings's profile, the greatest impact of the article comes from the unadorned quotes, when he lets the subjects in the story speak without a filter - the reader gets the comments in their raw form, and that's why they matter so much. Indeed, that's what the "old guard" media is supposed to be doing, according to its own standards. It often fails because it wants to maintain access or has to agree to ridiculous rules under military embed rules.

The point is, Hastings did not do a modern-day Hunter S. Thompson job on McChrystal, nor did his opinions about the war effort lead President Barack Obama to relieve McChrystal of command. It was the fact that McChrystal and his top aides expressed such open contempt for civilian authority in front of Hastings - had Hastings decided to be a commentator instead of a journalist, a participant or columnist instead of a faithful witness, the story likely would have flopped. He got access, he got close to his subjects, he listened and he reported. Just because the story appears in Rolling Stone and contains some cuss words, or because Rich Lowry said something silly, or because Hastings called the Marja offensive "doomed," shouldn't overshadow what really matters about the story.

(h/t fishbowlLA)

Ethics not wanted

A Bay Area-based online business site has a job listing for journalists willing to write high-quality copy at $155 per story. Only one catch: If you're interested in ethics, they're not interested in you. From the ad:

Seeking a group of 2-3 former or current journalists who are willing to write high-quality freelance pieces for our Web site.

Important: This is not "traditional" journalism in the sense that the articles you will be assigned will be partially advertorial. You will be given potential leads to call and information on how the story should be written. We understand if you desire to maintain journalism ethics, but this gig would not be for you.

The AP bows to the public will

From the AP Style Book Twitter feed:

Responding to reader input, we are changing Web site to website. This appears on Stylebook Online today and in the 2010 book next month.

Ailes to Fox staff: Don't talk about Fox

After the Washington Post reported on a rift within the Fox News staff over the rise of host Glenn Beck, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes told his employees to shut up about family matters. Or, as Mediabistro quoted him saying:

"I was brought up to defend the family. If I couldn't defend the family I'd leave. I'd go to another family."

In other words, family values means sharing opinions about your political rivals, even in newscasts. Sharing opinions about the way in which these opinions shape Fox News and its overall coverage is anti-family.

An inquiry into an investigation of an investigation of a church

The Church of Scientology dislikes the St. Petersburg Times. And pretty much every other news outlet that looks too closely at its operations. But especially the Times.

And, so, church officials hired a couple of well-respected journalists to investigate the Times' 2009 coverage of the church. The well-respected journalists hired a well-respected editor, Missouri journalism professor Steve Weinberg, to oversee the project (Weinberg distances himself from the church here). The report is now complete and in the hands of the church, which is supposed to either release it whole and unedited, or not at all.

Much debate has focused on whether journalists should hire themselves out to push back against the work of other journalists. In defending their work, the church's investigative team says they maintained editorial independence and followed strict ethical guidelines.

But the real test of whether this project serves as journalism will be in how the report is used. Already, the church appears to be making selective use of the findings in a public-relations assault. Here's part of a statement from Weinberg and team:

During an interview with the Washington Post, Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis discussed a portion of the findings of our independent review, and, in doing so, did not accurately portray the full scope of our work. We have urged the church to release the complete report of that review.

Because our full report has not been released, any characterization of our work is premature and purely speculative.

Why would anyone expect the church to act like a newsroom and disseminate the findings in a fair and impartial manner? The project is and always was about PR.

Atlanta mag objects to "objective reality"

The Atlanta Progressive News recently fired senior staff writer Jonathan Springston because he had the temerity to believe that reporters could be objective.

From the APN press release (via Creative Loafing):

At a very fundamental, core level, Springston did not share our vision for a news publication with a progressive perspective. He held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News. It just wasn’t the right fit. ...

We believe there is no such thing as objective news. Typically, mainstream media presents itself as objective but is actually skewed towards promoting the corporate agenda of the ultra-wealthy.

APN certainly has a right to pursue its political vision as it sees fit (although it's opinion about objectivity in news seems highly subjective). But we should expect these fissures in reality to grow and to consume more professional journalists.

The idea that there is a field of reason where all sides can meet is falling out of fashion. Increasingly, journalists are being asked to choose sides (usually partisan), which is especially difficult for people who subscribe to the belief that all sides are equally flawed.

Why some conservatives think journalism is liberal

Why do conservatives think journalism is, at its heart, a liberal enterprise? Aside from the fact that journalism's biggest takedown happened to be of a Republican president, the "conservative" journalism movement thinks most investigative reporters want the government to come in and solve any problems they uncover - at least according to columnist K. Daniel Glover:

Much investigative journalism has at its core a belief that government is the solution to whatever problems the investigations uncover. Conservatives who have seen how government creates more problems than it solves don't have any interest in doing work that will promote more government interference and less freedom.

Turning to cable news for political, corporate recruitment

The number of guest panelists on Fox News, as well as MSNBC, who plan to run for office is a bit alarming, the New York Times finds. This follows a story in the Nation about the number of panelists with outside contracts - lobbyists, corporate ties, PR consultants - who appear as pundits on cable news shows.

Profiting from the take down

Bill Lobdell, former religion writer for the Los Angeles Times, and Barry Minkow, former con man, have a novel idea for an online investigative operation - invest in companies, look for fraud, and then short sell the stock of the ones that are found to be corrupt.

Newspapers strictly forbid reporters from profiting off the subjects they cover, much less giving reporters a profit motive to take a company down. Lobdell and Minkow believe the answer to this ethical barrier is more disclosure. To prove the point, the website includes gems like this:

Minkow was his (sic) released from prison in 1995, and has made restitution to all his victims (and he's making payments on his one outstanding debt). Now, in addition to his work at the institute, Minkow serves as the senior pastor of Community Bible Church in San Diego.

The idea of transparency as an enabler of unethical behavior is troubling. Telling someone you're going to punch them in the eye doesn't give you the right to punch them. But is the ibzireporting.com unethical on its face?

It is if it wishes to judge itself according to the standards and ethics of traditional journalism, practiced by newspapers and other major media. Then again, there's a lot of perfectly legitimate behavior out there that traditional journalist's wouldn't be allowed to pursue.

So maybe the best way to approach this is to say that, however Lobdell and Minkow describe their venture, they're not doing journalism - neither are private investigators nor insurance claims adjusters, although all of them might uncover wrongdoing in the course of their business. What Lobdell and Minkow are doing is running a short-selling enterprise that might provide journalists with important tips, but is primarily designed to provide interested investors with a way to make money. Because the company will need to turn a profit, which means finding a reason to short sell a stock, readers will have a reason to be suspect of stories until verified by other sources. But if they want to say they're journalists first and foremost, they'll need to rely on more than simple disclosure to win the argument.

Read James Rainey's profile of the righteous-investor/reporter model in today's Times.