Four Friday

1. Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi gets slammed for arm-chair reporting on GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann - and the word "plagiarism" gets thrown about. City Paper

2. People like Andy Carvin and NPR wants to capitalize on that. Nieman Journalism Lab

3. Gene Weingarten skewers self-branding and journalists patronizing their readers. Washington Post

4. A Patch reporter doesn't break a story. fishbowlLA

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.

Four today

1. Typical elitism. The New York Times has a social media strategy: "Don't be stupid." Business Insider

2. Wired and Planet Money visualize what the (sputtering) economic recovery will look like. Wired

3. MIT has a lab that matches television and ad content to what is being said about them online. AdAge

4. You don't have that many friends: The 150 rule for social media. NPR

Ex-NPR chief lands at NBC

Vivian Schiller, who was forced out in January as president and CEO of NPR, will become chief digital officer for NBC News and MSNBC. From the press release:

...Schiller will lead the digital strategy for both NBC News and MSNBC to ensure future growth and innovation. Her responsibilities include strategic oversight of the network’s digital extensions on the web and in mobile, interaction with the Joint Venture that oversees the msnbc.com digital network, as well as providing direction to the network’s new emerging properties such as EducationNation.com and theGrio.com.

Schiller came to NPR from the New York Times, where she headed digital efforts there. Her departure from NPR came amid growing political pressures sparked by a series of management missteps, including the clumsy firing of commentator Juan Williams for insensitive remarks he made about Muslims. The NBC News job is considered by some to be a big step up for Schiller - perhaps proving the point that it's best to get fired in the public square.

Four in the afternoon

1. After turning Minnesota Public Radio into a powerhouse, Bill Kling looks for what's next. Citypages

2. NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard says goodbye, and remembers an ugly final year. NPR

3. Iraq and Somalia are the first and second most dangerous places in the world for journalists. CJR

4. Nikki Finke continues to rattle her keyboard at Mediabistro's Pandora Young. The Daily

A return from the rapture

New duties at work have led to (an obvious) slowdown on the blog. Hopefully I'll find my rhythm again in a few weeks.Until then, here are some links to tide you over:

1. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg only eats the meat that he kills. He's taken to cutting goat and pig throats in a nod to sustainable farming. CNNMoney

2. NPR wants to know your platform preferences. NPR

3. "Long tails" in support of long tales online. Nieman Lab

4. AOL-Huffington Post announces a financial reporting team and a Canada-theme. Huffington Post (via LA Observed)

5. FishbowlLA co-editor Pandora Young said on Facebook that she got threats of legal retribution for reporting what people said about Finke. The "offending" post is here: FishbowlLA

6. Food writing, like all other forms of writing, is being changed by social media, Internet platforms, and dying newspapers. Poynter

7. You'll go broke going broke. Tribune Co. has paid $157 million to lawyers, bankers and advisers working on its bankruptcy case. WSJ

Four Monday

The Los Angeles Press Club nominees are set. Some categories look surprisingly uncompetitive, but maybe that's not new. LAPC (.pdf)

2. As public media go online, the line that used to separate public and private sometimes blurs. PBS viewers, for instance, will see 15 and 30 second commercials if they watch PBS shows online. This should worry people depend on public television and public radio to avoid the pressures private companies have as they compete for ad dollars. PBS has already gotten into trouble over commercials from Goldman Sachs. Romenesko and PBS Ombudsman

3. Joe Biden goes a courtin' in the White House press room. NY Magazine

4. Turning every experience into a digital pose. NPR

Four Monday

1. David Grann is a fascinating journalist. Slate makes the wise decision to profile him and his work. Slate

2. NPR has a digital strategy that supposed to help local stations. If you have the patience to read about it, click: Nieman Journalism Lab

3. If you "like" the New Yorker, they'll let you behind the paywall. Bloggasm

4. Privacy isn't all that it's cracked up to be ... online, anyway. Farhad Manjoo

House votes to end NPR funding

The House of Representatives today voted 228-192 to end funding for NPR and its affiliate stations. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., is likely to stall in the Senate, but is likely to be used as pressure to carve out public broadcasting funds in a larger budget bill.

Meantime, Meghan Daum at the LA Times tells NPR to get a backbone.

(Disclosure: I work for KCRW, an NPR-affiliate station.)

Is an old hand going to be the new face of NPR?

There are whisperings (such as in this Guardian piece) that Kevin Klose will be offered the dubious job of president and CEO of NPR, replacing Vivian Schiller, who was forced out last week.

Klose previously served as NPR president from 1998 to 2008 and is currently dean of University of Maryland's journalism school.

House targets NPR funds in divide-and-conquer move

House Republicans wanted to end funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which stakes public radio and television stations around the country, in addition to giving funds directly to NPR and PBS (two-thirds of CPB money goes to public television).

The slow grind of the budget process and resistance from the Democratically controlled Senate have thus far made a complete gutting of CPB impossible. So, the GOP has a new strategy, with Republicans in the House planning an "emergency" vote to cut only the funds that go to NPR and its affiliate stations (this includes KCRW, of which I am an employee). The bill must first go through Rep. David Dreier's Rules Committee. That vote is scheduled for today.

The James O'Keefe heavily edited sting video of Ron Schiller is the impetus for the new strategy. By stripping PBS out of the fight, Republicans hope to peel off the more powerful public broadcasting lobby in Washington. It will be interesting to see whether public television folks will continue to stand with NPR given the embarrassing foot shooting NPR execs have done in recent months.

All of which puts an even uglier spin on David Carr's recent story noting the successes of NPR in a world of shrinking news:

According to the State of the Media report, NPR’s overall audience grew 3 percent in 2010, to 27.2 million weekly listeners, up 58 percent overall since 2000. In the last year, total staff grew 8 percent, and its Web site, npr.org, drew an average of 15.7 million unique monthly visitors, up more than five million visitors. Its foreign bureaus and global footprint continue to grow while other broadcasters slink home. 

And while NPR receives a small portion of its operating budget through government money, millions of people also think that its journalism is worthy enough to pay for through contributions, a trick that the rest of news media have had trouble figuring out, to say the least. 

Trouble is, NPR has often been better at breaking news than running a news outlet. The current problems started five months ago when Juan Williams, a longtime NPR commentator, was hastily fired for remarks he made about Muslims making him fearful in airports. Then in January, Ellen Weiss, senior vice president for news, resigned after a report to the board found her management of the affair wanting.

James O'Keefe's heavily edited version of the truth

James O'Keefe and his Project Veritas crew like to edit things.

For instance, in the surreptitious video O'Keefe made of NPR fund-raiser Ron Schiller and his lunch date with fake Muslims, Schiller says he thinks NPR will be fine without federal funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In the unedited video, Schiller says something quite different. Here's what NPR's David Folkenflik reported:

Upon their release last week, O'Keefe's videos gave fresh life to the push by Congressional Republicans to strip federal funding for public broadcasting. In the shorter video, Schiller appears to be saying that NPR would do just fine without federal dollars, though some stations would go dark. On the longer tape, it's clear Schiller says it would be disastrous in the short term.

There's more. In the edited tape, Schiller says very little about his role as a fundraiser who has no influence over the NPR news department (which O'Keefe and his cohorts were really targeting). But Schiller made repeated references to his role. Again, from Folkenflik:

"There is such a big firewall between funding and reporting: Reporters will not be swayed in any way, shape or form," Schiller says on that longer tape, in one of several such remarks.
Tompkins found that meaningful, noting that Ron Schiller was a fundraiser, not an official affecting the newsroom.
"The message that he said most often — I counted six times: He told these two people that he had never met before that you cannot buy coverage," Tompkins said. "He says it over and over and over again."

Most concerning, Schiller's comments about conservatives and the tea party - the comments that led to his and NPR President Vivian Schiller's being fired - were taken completely out of context. Folkenflik:

Take the political remarks. Ron Schiller speaks of growing up as a Republican and admiring the party's fiscal conservatism. He says Republican politicians and evangelicals are becoming "fanatically" involved in people's lives.
But in the shorter tape, Schiller is also presented as saying the GOP has been "hijacked" by Tea Partyers and xenophobes.
In the longer tape, it's evident Schiller is not giving his own views but instead quoting two influential Republicans — one an ambassador, another a senior Republican donor. Schiller notably does not take issue with their conclusions — but they are not his own.
-snip-
Menz, the digital forensics consultant, said he found some of Schiller's actual remarks disturbing. But by analyzing time stamps, Menz concluded that many of Schiller's remarks in that shorter video are presented out of sequence from the questions that were posed.
"For me, in my background, it immediately puts things into question," Menz said. "You really don't know what context these were in, what was going on in the 20 minutes before and after this question was asked."

In other words, the O'Keefe gotcha video is total bullshit. Nothing that O'Keefe has "reported" can be trusted. If he worked for one of the many newsrooms he simultaneously criticizes and says he's emulating (in terms of journalism standards), he'd be fired and left in a heap of shame. This is the problem with agenda journalism - the agenda drives the ethics (and usually runs them over) and very little in the way of journalism results.

The NPR board needs to do some serious soul searching over it's terrible crisis management. And everyone should do as Eric Alterman of CUNY suggested on "To the Point" the other day: Wait a couple days before reacting to an O'Keefe-style "scoop." You'll avoid embarrassment and severely stupid decision-making. I put myself in this group - when I first blogged about the O'Keefe video, I headlined my blog post: "NPR exec tells conservative pranksters exactly what they want to hear." Obviously, he didn't, or the conservative pranksters wouldn't have had to edit the video. And I failed to add my own context: O'Keefe is shady and his reporting is as crooked as a dog's hind leg.

Say what?

KCRW General Manager Jennifer Ferro talked to the Los Angeles Times about the threat to the station if Congress ends federal funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Her doomsday scenario hits kind of close to home.

If the station loses that government support and can’t raise the money elsewhere, it would likely have to cut its most costly operations—local news and information gathering, Ferro said. A couple of producers hired in November to create more local news stories would have to go, she said, as might some staffers who help create talk shows like “To the Point” and “Which Way, L.A.?” both popular mainstays, hosted by veteran newsman Warren Olney.

NPR chief resigns

NPR President Vivian Schiller has resigned in the wake of yesterday's release of an embarrassing video in which an NPR business exec is caught deriding tea party politics.

NPR exec tells conservative pranksters exactly what they want to hear*

Yesterday, NPR's president gave a speech about the future of public radio at the National Press Club. But no one is talking about that. Instead, it's the words of NPR fund-raising executive Ronald Schiller, that are ringing out across the interwebs today.

Here's a summary of what went down from the New York Times:

The executive, Ronald Schiller, was recorded secretly by the Republican filmmaker and mischief-maker James O’Keefe. On the videotape, Mr. Schiller tells people posing as Muslim philanthropists that the Republican party has been “hijacked” by the Tea Party and that Tea Party supporters are “seriously racist, racist people.” Mr. Schiller indicates that he is sharing his personal point of view, not NPR’s.

Dana Davis Rehm, a spokeswoman for NPR, said in a statement Tuesday, “We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for.”

The release of the video comes at a sensitive time for NPR. Republicans in Congress who view NPR as biased are trying to cut federal funding for its local stations across the country. They are likely to seize on the video as further evidence of their views and further reason to reduce funding for the stations.

Schiller, who is no relation to NPR President Vivian Schiller, was already on his way out at NPR after taking a job with the Aspen Institute. But, well, whatever.

*Update: If you want to see how conservatives are playing this story, here are two links the influential Heritage Foundation recommended in its daily email blast: "Bad Timing for NPR" and "NPR's Diversity Doublespeak". All of this comes as public radio advocates, including KCRW's Jennfer Ferro, urge the Senate to keep the Corporation for Public Broadcasting funded.

GOP vs. NPR

Republican lawmakers in the House want to pull all funding for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, which provides grants to NPR and PBS stations and serves as seed money for stations to raise money from listeners. This isn't the first time the GOP has gone after public broadcasting; this latest effort was spurred by the firing of NPR analyst Juan Williams over comments he made on Fox News.

On today's "To The Point," a discussion about what would happen if public broadcasting the loses the money, and a debate over whether the networks offer a valuable services, or biased news. Guests are Paul Farhi of the Washington Post; Laura Walker, president of New York Public Radio; Laurence Jarvik, author of "PBS: Behind the Screen"; James Rainey, media columnist at the Los Angeles Times, and Adam Thierer of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. A link to the program, which was produced by Katie Cooper, is here.

Four in the morning

1. The Pearl Project has completed its investigation into the murder of Daniel Pearl. Key finding: "Twenty-seven men were allegedly involved in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal bureau chief Daniel Pearl, but only four have been charged and convicted." The rest of the report is here: Pearl Project (found via LA Observed)

2. 25 essential writing tips you may or may not agree with. Guardian

3. NPR and its 1.4 million Facebook fans. Nieman Journalism Lab

4. The USC j-school news site Neon Tommy is having an open house "today from 3-4 p.m. in the West Lobby of the Annenberg School. All are welcome."

Four today

1. Michael Pollan ("The Omnivore's Dilemma") and Eric Schlosser ("Fast Food Nation") will join KCRW's Evan Kleiman on February 9 at USC to talk about the way we feed ourselves. LA Weekly

2. KOCE has rebranded itself PBS SoCal and plans to expand its staff in Los Angeles as it becomes the main PBS affiliate in Southern California, taking over from the PBS divorcee KCET. Franklin Avenue (via LA Observed)

3. When ordered to turn over information about several users in connection with the federal investigation of Wikipedia, Twitter successfully challenged the court's gag order and told the subjects of the investigation what had happened. Wired

4. Media organizations need to update their codes of ethics to keep up with the times. Poynter

NPR news exec resigns in wake of Williams firing

NPR released two memos today. The first says NPR must update its ethics guidelines based on an independent review of news analyst Juan Williams's firing. The second says Ellen Weiss, senior vice president of news at NPR and the person who called Williams to give him the boot, has resigned. The two memos are connected, obviously, though its not yet clear whether Weiss was forced out or bolted because of the NPR board's blatant meddling in news business.

Copies of both memos are here.

According to the first memo, the NPR board has demanded the news division establish a committee to review and update its code of ethics, both to ensure NPR journalists doing work for outside media outlets have more free rein and so the news division's "practices encourage a broad range of viewpoints to assist its decision-making, support its mission, and reflect the diversity of its national audiences"

The NPR board also gave CEO Vivian Schiller a renewed vote of confidence, but has withheld her bonus for 2010.

The second memo, written by Schiller, offers some background on Weiss's tenure at NPR and says who will step in for her until a new senior vice president of news is named, but it offers no detail on why she left. Was she forced out to give House Republicans their pound of flesh? Or is her exit a protest over how NPR has handled the Williams affair?

Here's more from NPR's news blog, which steps lightly around the connection between Weiss and Williams:

For background on the Juan Williams dismissal, you might start here. Alicia Shepard, NPR's ombudsman, previously said that the firing "was poorly handled." Williams previously said he thinks he was fired because "I appear on Fox." Weiss was the NPR executive who informed Williams of his dismissal, which came after he said on Fox News Channel that he gets nervous when he sees people in "Muslim garb" on airplanes. NPR said the remark was the latest in a pattern of problem comments made by Williams over recent years.

As NPR's David Folkenflik reports for our newscast, after Williams' dismissal "conservatives blasted NPR, and Fox News' most prominent opinion hosts made a cause of it. Republican lawmakers threatened to cut federal funding for public broadcasters."

As for the review done by Weil, Gotshal & Manges, David summarizes the findings this way: "It found that the termination of Williams' contract was entirely legal. But the board said the report called for a full review of the company's policies on ethics and outside appearances and for them to be applied consistently to all personnel."

He adds that Weiss "joined NPR in 1982 and rose through the ranks, holding a variety of key positions, such as executive producer of All Things Considered and national editor. She helped lead coverage of some of the biggest stories and highest-impact investigations in recent years. And she is credited with leading the network through an era of wrenching changes in journalism. But her dismissal of Williams — by phone — became a flashpoint in the debate."

Four today

1. Aggressive conservative bloggers get Nina Totenberg's Christmas comment exactly backwards. But we all know what those NPR really people think, so why bother asking? WaPo

2. They call him Mr. Sunday? Amazon

3. Perhaps you've seen the cryptic commercials for RT.com and wondered what the hell it was, but were afraid to go to the website for fear of what might pop up. Well, it's a Russian news service, formerly known as Russia Today. Wikipedia

4. Facebook update of the day comes from Joe Mathews of the New America Foundation: "...believes it's the sixth-day weather story that separates the pros from the amateurs."