Current TV to go pro

Now that Keith Olbermann is on board at Current TV, where he'll host a show and lead the political coverage, the Al Gore-owned channel wants to hire more professional staff and reinvent itself as a mix of MSNBC and the Discovery Channel. TV Newser

MSNBC and Olbermann part ways

From the New York Times:

Keith Olbermann, the highest-rated host on MSNBC, announced abruptly on the air Friday night that he is leaving the show immediately.

The host, who has had a stormy relationship with the management of the network for some time, especially since he was suspended for two days last November, came to an agreement with NBC’s corporate management late this week to settle his contract and step down.

Scarborough suspended*

MSNBC proves to be fair and balanced when it comes to handing out suspensions for violating its campaign contribution policy. Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman and host of "Morning Joe," got suspended today for unreported donations to Florida GOP candidates. It's the same violation that turned Keith Olbermann redder than normal.

*Rick Newman at US News has a solution: "MSNBC could solve its donation problem by employing ordinary journalists. They can't afford donations."

Olbermann suspended*

MSNBC has suspended Keith Olbermann indefinitely for donating to three Democratic candidates (two Arizona liberals and Democrat Jack Conway, who was running for Senate in Kentucky). The donations violated NBC ethics guidelines for the station's journalists and came, in at least one case, right after one of the candidates appeared on Olbermann's show.

MSNBC, led by Olbermann, is striving (in a leaning-forward fashion) to be the anti-Fox of op-ed TV. Fox's parent company, News Corp, gave money directly to Republicans. Which leads me to wonder: Can you hold hosts or entire companies to the standards of good journalism when they're not practicing good journalism?

*More: Jamies Poniewozik at Time magazine says the donation merely reminds people that the liberal talk show host is liberal. True - to a point. The donations were given to guests, meaning Olbermann used the soap box provided by MSNBC to boost hand-picked candidates. That's clearly a problem for MSNBC.

I also disagree with Poniewozik's opinion that journalists should let their partisan bias fly. Impartial journalism isn't about some belief in "objectivity," or a deluded belief that near-objectivity can be attained; it's applying a rigorous method to how you gather and dispense information. Boosting political candidates conflicts with this method. Following the method, however, is voluntary. Unless you work for a company that says it will suspend you if you don't. (And, yes, I think it is somewhat hypocritical for MSNBC to apply such standards given what it's become.)

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.

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.

Little news

Newsweek chronicles the "hyperlocal" movement's attempts to gain a foothold in three New Jersey suburbs. It appears that even though the business model has yet to pay off that the homegrown efforts started by local journalists already are being supplanted by sites owned by national media giants - the New York Times, AOL and MSNBC among them. Why would the majors want to play in the minor leagues? From Newsweek

[I]f an operation like AOL's Patch can link together a network of $200,000-a-year sites each run by a single reporter, and then amortize big expenses (like technology and ad sales) across multiple sites, you could start to see decent profits. The low overhead is crucial: not only are startups like Patch using less costly labor, but they also believe readership and revenue will grow as networks of hyperlocal blogs link to each other, and as they become adept at persuading small businesses that never advertised in newspapers to give online advertising a shot—a key to Patch's strategy.

This model would probably only work in heavily populated suburbs. But it does seem logical that the chain websites would end up chasing revenue from the other types of chains that grow up in suburban landscapes: Starbucks, Ruby Tuesdays, Barnes and Noble, and the like. That, in turn, is likely going to shape how these sites develop.

Advo-torial

A new kind of advocacy journalism has taken hold, most prominently on cable television: self-advocacy journalism. Instead of standing up for populist principles or society's downtrodden, shows stand up for whatever turns a profit. Speaking of which, a leader in self-advocacy journalism, Fox News, got caught with its ethics down at the recent "tea party" rally in DC.

The deal that wasn't was the worst

Keith Olbermann last night named New York Times reporter Brian Stelter the third worst person in the world for reporting that the heads of GE and News Corp. had brokered a deal to end the bickering between Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly. Stelter earned the ignominy, Olbermann said, because no deal was ever made. Olbermann then went on to name News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch as the very worst person in the world for meddling in O'Reilly's show. James Poniewozik at Time sums up the logic here.

Harman talks about wiretap*

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell scored the first interview with Rep. Jane Harman, D-El Segundo, about yesterday's Congressional Quarterly story. An NSA wiretap (some say it was the FBI) recorded a conversation in which Harman allegedly discussed a quid pro quo deal with a "suspected Israeli spy" while she was trying to get appointed chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee. Harman adamantly denies doing anything wrong.

*Update: Gene Maddaus at the Daily Breeze is following every twist at turn at the paper's Pipeline blog.

Fuckin' Joe

Apparently the left-wing elitist media is such a bad influence that former Republican Congressman turned talk show host Joe Scarborough was tricked into speaking the word "fuck" when retelling a tale told him by Time's Jay Carney about the potty mouthed White House chief of staff-elect, Rahm Emanuel.