AOL Patch finds another leafy town

AOL's Patch has added South Pasadena to its growing network. Sonia Narang, who's worked as an online producer for PBS Frontline and NBC News, will cover the leafy city known for its parks, virulent opposition to the 710 Freeway extension, and public schools that attract discouraged couples from Pasadena.

Indeed, Patch sites are springing up with greater frequency across the Southland, and mostly in towns with that single-family, real-estate rich, suburban feel. (You can find the list here.) Whether the Patch network ever earns a reputation for digging or watchdog reporting, it increasingly seems to me to be a stable model for a form of hometown news.

By hopscotching over cities that are too big to be covered by one person, or present challenges with low readership or lack of business (cities that deserve and need to be covered, by the way), Patch can avoid "wasting" resources. By paying a better wage than most area newspaper chains, it will earn a reputation among reporters as a step up, even if the coverage is softer and less newsy. And, most importantly, it has the ability to become the local newspaper, for lack of a better term, in cities with populations that have the time and inclination to read and talk about hometown news. Indeed, many of these places once had city papers before the chains came in to gobble them up.

The drawback - and the biggest challenge - is the mission. Single editors are being asked to do a lot with a little, including that fancy multi-platform journalism, which requires video and sound and images and words all neatly and compellingly sewn together by one person. Additionally, hometown papers often thrive because they are owned by a local with a deep investment in journalistic standards and civic life. For Patch, some editors will get it and others won't.

And as someone who started at a twice weekly in a leafy town (Claremont), I know how easy it is to beat the bigger guys and earn local respect. If AOL encourages this kind of journalism to flourish (and I have my doubts, having read some of the Patch work produced in West Hollywood, for example) this could be a useful service. If AOL sees Patch as a series of straws to siphon local ad dollars into a national bank account, it will only add to the misery visited upon local journalism by newspaper-chain gangs.

Of course, I still lament the loss of tough city reporting, whether it be South Pasadena or South Gate. Patch isn't a solution to this, but it can be something more than over-the-fence gossip and the latest senior center press release.

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.

ZevPost launches

You don't need two hands to count the number of reporters who cover the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors - which governs most populous county in the nation - on a daily basis. And, since L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky now has a staff of former journalists working for him that rivals some local newspapers, he's unveiled his own site to chronicle county doings.

From his inaugural blog entry:

Let me be clear, we’re not purporting to be a journalistic organization or to end-run traditional news outlets with propagandistic content. We are simply offering you another stop on your daily journey through the web for deeper coverage in areas we’ve long considered priorities: health, transportation, the environment, arts and culture, public safety, social services and the economy.

As long as readers (who I'm sure will mostly be media types and other government officials) take the above statement to heart and approach the site with a healthy dose of skepticism, ZevPost should be a net positive to county coverage. And if it further reduces press-release journalism in our staff starved newsrooms, all the better.

There are pitfalls, of course. How does the site operate during campaign season (and how is it paid for)? Does Zev restrict access to journalists in favor of his own friendly writeup - or point reporters to his site rather than agree to answer tough questions? Do news sites disseminate his reports, spin included, and call it news?

The big worry is that this type of site lets a politician leap frog the media filter. But I think this just makes the filter more vital. And given the fact that some of the other supervisors live inside protective bubbles, let's hope this experiment increases the level of scrutiny given to all five members of the board.

(found via LA Observed)

The Platinum treatment

The Boston Globe profiles Beverly Hills-based Platinum Equity, which bought the San Diego Union-Tribune in March and has put in a bid of $35 million to buy the Globe from New York Times Co.

Tom Gores is the billionaire owner. He's 45. He's used the cash he's made from his private equity investments to produce a Lindsay Lohan slasher film.

Good taste aside, the description of what's going on at the Union-Tribune should have the Globe staff frightened. In addition to the 192 layoffs instituted shortly after Platinum Equity bought the San Diego newspaper, the company has barred employees who leave from recruiting current employees for new ventures and hired "consultants" to monitor the productivity of reporters and editors.

The private equity firm brought in Ed Moss, a veteran downsizer who's worked at both the Akron Beacon Journal and the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, to become Union-Tribune publisher.

The Globe reports that another round of layoffs is expectd at the Union-Tribune next week.

Then there's the aggressive manner in which Platinum's attorneys tried to squash a story about two sexual harassment lawsuits that, along with those productivity consultants, raises serious questions about editorial independence and ethics.

Many argue Platinum only got into the newspaper game for the real estate - and the Globe has some prime real estate of its own.

From the Globe:

“They don’t care whether it’s a newspaper or a dairy or a gas station or a small engine manufacturer,’’ said the person close to the transaction. “They’re looking at the fundamentals of the business. If they think they can make money at a certain transaction price, they’re interested in that business.’’

Platinum Equity already has a regional office in Boston.

Pop goes the news

Iran led the media coverage last week, according to a study done by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, but the death of Michael Jackson came in a fast second - and almost certainly will take the top spot for this week:

For the week, the protests in Iran ended up being the biggest story, totaling 19% of the newshole studied during June 22-28 by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Though he died Thursday night, Michael Jackson’s death was nearly as big, filling 18%, and Governor Sanford’s story, which fully broke on Wednesday, was third at 11%.

Cable television went nuts with the Jackson story and ignored almost everything else:

All media sectors covered Jackson heavily, but it was cable news channels that led the way. Fully 93% of cable coverage studied on the Thursday and Friday following his death was about the King of Pop. On the front pages of Friday morning newspapers, 37% of their coverage was Jackson-related compared to 55% of the leading online coverage.

The social networks were all atwitter with Jackson as well:

So many Google users searched for information about the dead singer that the popular search engine mistook the interest as a potential malware attack. For a short period of time, Google users were greeted with a message that read, “We're sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application.”

The popular communication site Twitter crashed, and Wikipedia experienced more than 500 edits to Jackson’s profile in less than 24 hours. AOL’s popular instant messenger service went down for approximately 40 minutes and the company released a statement that read, “Today was a seminal moment in Internet history. We've never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth."

CNN's medium is a mess

I've watched a fair amount of CNN's coverage of the Iranian protests today. Between the giant CNN ads at the bottom of the screen (BREAKING NEWS!) and the fetishistic fascination with Twitter, iReports and camera shots of computer screens showing videos and photos posted on various websites, I'm left to wonder if the entire network has gone fucking insane.

Are the producers there more interested in showing how they're getting information - and advertising that they're hip to the new social-networking tools - than in figuring out what the hell is going on in Iran? Can important reporting escape this self-referential echo chamber anymore?

The Iranian people aren't protesting because they have access to Twitter, they're using Twitter (and emails, and phone calls, and word of mouth, and chants, and blogs) to help organize their protests.

Four in the morning

1. The New York Times looks at the different standards bloggers are bringing to the world of reporting. NYT (and TechCrunch responds.)

2. Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post reports on True/Slant, the website that helps turn journalists into entrepreneurs (and raises a few ethical questions in the process). WaPo

3. Some changes in the local media landscape, including Mark Ficarra's move to San Diego, at LA Observed. LAO (also from LAO: former Daily News headquarters available for filming.)

4. More on the sentencing of Current TV journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling in North Korea. NYT, WaPo, LAT

Bringing the watchdogs inside

As James Rainey of the LA Times pointed out a few months ago, there are fewer full-time reporters covering the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (4) than there are supervisors (5); and there are almost as many former journalists (2) working for a single supervisor, Zev Yaroslavsky.

Now LA Observed reports that Yaroslavsky's staff has looked out onto the new media landscape and decided to overhaul the supervisor's website to give it a more newsy feel. The office plans to hire a part-time writer "with sharp editorial skills" to produce stories on a variety of topics that will "connect and communicate with constituents on issues that impact their lives and intersect their interests."

The opening is listed on JournalismJobs and Joel Sappell, former reporter and editor at the LA Times, is heading up the project.

Combining political savvy with journalistic talent is certainly nothing new - David Axelrod might be the best and latest example of that. But as professional journalism and impartiality diminish, we're likely to see much more of this partisan-institutional journalism filling the void. After all, they're willing to pay for it.

Tucker's immodest proposal

Conservative pundit and bow tie aficionado Tucker Carlson plans to launch a right-leaning website, called TheDailyCaller.com, to cover the policy decisions of the Obama administration. Carlson wants to combine the advocacy-approach of Huffington Post with the pay-per-click model of Gawker to create a site that simultaneously drives the news, beats Drudge Report to the punch and upholds basic journalism standards.

From The Hill:

"We are a general-interest newspaper-format style site," Carlson told conservative bloggers at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. "There just aren't enough people covering this administration and telling the people what's going on." ...

Carlson said that the site's reporters would share in the profits based on how much traffic is drawn in by their work. He said the site would seek to "drive" the news, similar to the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and other major news outlets. (The site's motto, Carlson said, is "every seven minutes," and seeks to be "even faster than Drudge.")

Who's coming to dinner*

The White House Correspondents Dinner is tomorrow and the invitations have already gone out. If you think you have to be a White House Correspondent to attend, think again.

Fox News has Todd Palin. The Houston Chronicle has Alberto Gonzalez. CNN has Ashton Kutcher and Janet Napolitano. Sully Sullenberger chose to dine with the New York Daily News and George Lucas chose Fortune. ABC News has David Axelrod and Meghan McCain, among others, and the NBC News tables will include Samuel L. Jackson, William H. Macy, and Mike Myers.

Read the complete list of invitees to tomorrow's White House Correspondents Dinner here.

*Updated: Frank Davies at the Mercury News had a story about the tarting up of the correspondents dinner:

"It used to be a rock star at this dinner was the White House chief of staff, not Steve Tyler of Aerosmith," said Carol Joynt, a former TV producer who chronicles Washington society.

She has attended two dozen dinners and seen them evolve from low-key events where reporters chatted up government sources to a series of "circus acts," with strange juxtapositions of power and fluff. "It's become just a mashed-up free-for-all," Joynt said.

MediaNews plunked down $4,000 for a table. The guest of honor was Carol Williams, White House director of media affairs.