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

McClatchy sells Miami Herald property to casino developer

A Malaysian casino company has bought the beachfront property that houses the Miami Herald for $236 million. McClatchy, which owns the Herald, said the newspaper will be moved to a new home sometime in the next two years. The developer plans to build a resort with retail and housing components.

Miami chop house

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

Not plagiarism, just mixed up

Back in the olden days, when a writer took an author's words and pretended they were his own it was called plagiarism. Helene Hegemann, a 17-year-old writer in Germany has, with the ascent of some book critics, redefined this act of wrongdoing as one of authenticity.

A blogger first uncovered the fact that Hegemann's "Axolotl Roadkill" contained whole passages taken from another book called "Strobo." Hegemann's novel is up for a $20,000 prize at the Leipzig Book Fair.

From the New York Times:

Although Ms. Hegemann has apologized for not being more open about her sources, she has also defended herself as the representative of a different generation, one that freely mixes and matches from the whirring flood of information across new and old media, to create something new. “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,” said Ms. Hegemann in a statement released by her publisher after the scandal broke.

An ingenious defense. "Originality" doesn't exist, but "authenticity," a word whose very meaning depends on the concept of being true to the original ("not false or imitation"), does.

Journalist Gerald Posner, who had to step down from his gig at the Daily Beast after acknowledging he had plagiarized the Miami Herald, will be pleased to know that he was actually being authentic by taking someone else's words. And the person who wrote the words he lifted was apparently unoriginal.

Four today

1. Steve Lambert at the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group is merely asking for suggestions; the Miami Herald is asking readers for donations. NBC Miami

2. Dan Kennedy defends journalists' use of anonymous sources (and I agree with him). The Guardian

3. Layoffs at the New Republic. Politico

4. Edmund Andrews, the New York Times economics reporter who wrote about his mortgage problems, has taken a buyout from the paper (but not so he can make his mortgage, he says). NYO

Four in the morning

1. Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times, is looking to diversify its advertising dollar with Tribune Hispanic. Ed Padgett

2. The Los Angeles Times has hired Jack Dolan of the Miami Herald to beef up its database journalism in Sacramento. LAO

3. Newspapers' silver lining rides on a big gray cloud. Alan Mutter

4. Are we all becoming pawns on a vast digital chessboard? Newsweek

The service industry

As newsroom budgets suffer blow after blow, it seems logical to conclude that shrinking revenues are partly a result of shrinking demand for the product newsrooms provide - namely, the news. And isn't it logical then to consider altering the product to stoke demand?

But there's a reason that response feels so wrong. It's because newsrooms are not creating a product - not in the traditional sense. They're providing a service, much in the way doctors and teachers do. If education were a product to be sold, none of us would know a thing about algebra. When doctors "give them what they want" people end up addicted to Oxycontin.

Edward Wasserman at Washington and Lee University helps explain why the temptation to spice up the news to match the consumers' appetite is bad for the news and the consumer:

...for journalists the hitch has always been that news, if done honestly, is routinely unwelcome and, more to the point, that it isn't just another consumer product. It's kind of civic good.

Sure, it must be bought, but if success were measured solely by marketability journalists could safely ignore vast areas of coverage that help keep leaders honest and the public conscious of significant realities.

Hence, the paradox: If all you do is give the public what it thinks it wants, you aren't doing your job. But if you ignore those wishes, you won't have a job. ...

I've long argued that news is best understood not as a consumer product, but as a professional service. People buy a paper or go to website not to consume a good, but to renew a relationship with an informant they trust.

That's not to say readers don't want to be amused or don't like reading the comics and hearing about celebrity bust-ups or money-saving recipes. And they aren't passive receptacles: They'll make vigorous use of new media feedback channels to dispute, correct, redirect and enrich the news they get.

But what this suggests is that ultimately, people look to journalists for a special service -- keeping them on top of what they need to know. They can't say exactly what that is, any more than journalists know in the morning what they'll report that day. But they trust the news source to tell them.

Conscientious objector

Humberto Castelló, executive editor of El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language sister to the Miami Herald, has decided to resign his post rather than implement staff cuts at the daily newspaper.

Castelló said he worries El Nuevo Herald will lose its independence, and the first staff moves made after his announcement seem to bear him out. From the Miami Herald story, which explains why he resigned a mere 13 paragraphs in:

Castelló, addressing his staff in Spanish, said he resigned because he was unwilling to make the mandated cuts ''whether they are justified or not.'' He said a reduced staff would mean El Nuevo would likely have to share more stories from The Miami Herald.

''In the end, it's going to be something else,'' he said, urging the staff to do their utmost to provide its readers "a unique newspaper designed for the community, which deserves that.''

(h/t Romenesko)

Three things I read on Romenesko today

The Associated Press countersues Echo Park-based artist Shepard Fairey, who sued AP after AP claimed he had infringed on its copyright for using an AP photo as the basis for his "Hope" Obama poster.

The Miami Herald slashes its workforce, becoming the latest McClatchy newspaper to do so. The paper will cut 175 employees and eliminate 30 vacant positions. The employees who remain will see a pay cut of either 5 or 10 percent, depending on how much they make. Also, the paper plans to shrink its print edition. In December, McClatchy put the Herald up for sale.

Lastly, a law professor at the University of Montana wants to shut down the college paper's weekly sex column because she doesn't like it. She's threatened to take her case to the Board of Regents... even the state Legislature if necessary! Apparently the professor doesn't teach constitutional law.