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.

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.

Mysterious contrail just a plane

Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told Warren Olney last night that the media can call off the missile search. The mysterious contrail that some surmised resulted from an errant or secret missile launch was mostly likely a jet liner (US Airways Flight 808 from Honolulu to Phoenix, to be precise) flying across the horizon on an unusually clear day. WWLA

NPR wants to expand statehouse reporting

National Public Radio has accepted a $1.8 million grant from the Open Society Foundations, a group started by billionaire and liberal activist George Soros, as part of an effort to hire 100 reports in 50 states to keep an eye of state politics. NPR president Vivian Schiller described the project to the New York Times, which summarized it this way:

The journalists would not be part of typical statehouse coverage, but instead would work on enterprise journalism that looks at how state government decisions play out over years, and extend beyond a single state’s borders.

KPCC news staff could grow by leaps and bounds

Bill Kling, the soon-to-be retired president and CEO of American Public Media, wants big boosts in reporting staff at four APM stations, including KPCC in Pasadena. If his fund-raising dreams come true, he'd flood the L.A. market with as many as 100 reporters, each with salaries that will make most journalists in Southern California drool.

This could all be pie in the sky, of course. But even if he's only half successful, this could be a major shift in how L.A. gets covered. Ken Doctor at Newsonomics has the story, and here's an excerpt:

The initial four stations involved in the alliance planning are WNYC in New York, WBEZ in Chicago, KPCC in Los Angeles and Minnesota Public Radio, in the Twin Cities, says Bill Kling, current (and now retiring, ”MPR’s Bill Kling Steps Down — and Up — From Public Radio“) president and CEO of the American Public Media Group (APMG), the parent of the L.A. and Twin Cities stations, as well as a major syndicator of public radio programming.

One hundred “public media” reporters and editors in a market is a huge increase. Among those four stations, the news staff now ranges from 12 to 30 each. It’s tough to count precisely because these are legacy radio operations, and radio requires different job descriptions than digital news. Still, at those numbers, the alliance members are aiming at adding more than 300 reporters and editors in four markets, if the plans succeed. Kling says the positions created “would be a very good job for people who love journalism,” in the six figures with full benefits.

Kling and his colleagues are strategizing their plans and foundation asks — and his hope is that funding can be locked down by next June, when he formally steps from his APMG post. He says his post-retirement plan is to focus on the building out of public media. If it is, hiring could commence by mid-2011.
How much funding?

The plan will cost about $5 million per market per year, says Kling, or $25 million for a five-year funding plan, which is what the group aims to obtain. So that’s $100 million if four markets can be launched; $150 million, it it’s six markets. After the first four markets, Kling says, “we’d go on to five, six, seven, eight.”

The social and the anti-social networks

Why go to an entertaining movie when you can listen to an informative radio program? On today's "To The Point," we discuss the rise of online social networks, starting with Facebook, and consider the ways our logged-on lives are changing society and culture. With Judith Donath of Harvard's Berkman Center, Walker Smith of The Futures Company, Fred Vogelstein of Wired, and Michael Kaiser of the National Cyber Security Alliance. Listen to the show here.

Public radio and film reviews

Roger Ebert is reviving "At The Movies" and has selected Elvis Mitchell, who hosts KCRW's "The Treatment," and Christy Lemire of the Associated Press as co-hosts.

Al Jazeera could join the Pacifica Radio network

Pacifica Radio, which runs KPFK in Los Angeles and four other public-radio stations around the country, is in talks with Al Jazeera Network to broadcast the Persian Gulf-based news service in the United States, the Washington Post reports.

From the story:

If an agreement is reached, Pacifica would become the biggest American broadcaster to air Al Jazeera, whose news reports have at times drawn criticism from Western governments, including the Bush administration during the early days of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Al Jazeera is perhaps best known for being the first network to broadcast video communiques from Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Four in the morning

1. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is building a "newspaper" for your iPad and mobile phone. LAT

2. The science of the crime lab isn't so scientific. News Observer

3. Marketplace described as Twitter on radio (meant in a good way). Nieman Journalism Lab

4. Blogger goes inside Mexico's drug war. AP

MPB: Terry Gross is gross

Mississippi Public Broadcasting's executive director issued a statement to explain why the station dropped "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross: Apparently Terry is just too damned filthy.

Here's the statement (via Gawker):

Mississippi Public Broadcasting strives to deliver educational, informative, and meaningful content to its listeners. After careful consideration and review we have determined that Fresh Air does not meet this goal over time. Too often Fresh Air's interviews include gratuitous discussions on issues of an explicit sexual nature. We believe that most of these discussions do not contribute to or meaningfully enhance serious-minded public discourse on sexual issues. Our listeners who wish to hear Fresh Air may find it online.

Local radio stations can choose to broadcast whatever shows they want, but one has to be slightly deranged (or willfully ignorant) to describe "Fresh Air" as "too often" including "gratuitous discussions of an explicit sexual nature." Indeed, once seems to be "too often" enough for MPB. It was a portion of an interview with comedian Louise CK that seems to have triggered the whole hullabaloo. Here's the exchange (again, via Gawker):

Louis CK: But if I'm with a woman and she wants to be with me, she must like me. I definitely have sex with my T-shirt on, always. I haven't had sex without a shirt on, God, since I was about 23."

Terry Gross: Is that true?

Louis CK: Yeah, I just don't think that's fair. I mean, you know, let her think she's with somebody decent, you know? ... I do have sex sometimes on the show, and there's a rule that I have to be on my back.

Terry Gross: Why, because your stomach flattens?

Louis CK: Well, no, God, no. I'm not laying back in that bed thinking, "I look awesome right now." It's because I think I should always be the victim of the sex. I don't think anyone wants to see me looming over her. I think that's an upsetting image. And then also, the mother-dog stomach that I get when I'm ... you get the point.

Get me the smelling salts!

Mississippi public radio doesn't like Fresh Air

The station director at Mississippi Public Broadcasting has dropped "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross from its lineup, citing "recurring inappropriate content.” It's a given the content is recurring, but inappropriate? A blogger called A Unitarian Universalist Minister In The South thinks recent programs dealing with homosexuality might be the cause:

Couldn’t possibly be the interview with Colin Firth regarding his role in “A Single Man.”  He plays the part of a gay man grieving the loss of his partner. The story line of grieving the death of a loved one is as old as the story of David and Jonathan in First Samuel of the Hebrew Scriptures. And it certainly could not be the movie review of Cholodenko’s “The Kids Are Alright.” That story line of parents dealing with their rebellious teens goes all the way back to Adam and Eve.  Oh wait, the parents are both lesbians. Nah, it couldn’t be that.

(found via Romenesko)

Four today

1. Dan Gillmor says the press needed to say "torture" more. Salon

2. Paywalls won't pay, according to Clay Shirky. Guardian

3. Public radio on the web. Nieman Journalism Lab

4. The L.A. Times goes app happy. Press release

Greatest tennis match ever?

The longest tennis match in history, between John Isner of the United States and Nicolas Mahut of France, ended today, after 11 hours and 5 minutes of play, with Isner winning 70 games to 68.

Was it the greatest match in Wimbledon history? Who knows? But the greatest tennis report, with Guardian editor Xan Brooks, about the longest match ever can be heard on today's "To The Point." The interview, which can be downloaded here, starts at about the 45 minute mark.

Brooks live-blogged yesterday's portion of the match. Scroll down to about 2:45 p.m., when he starts to take notice of the marathon session taking shape on Court 18.

Masters to THR

Kim Masters, host of KCRW's "The Business," will become an editor-at-large for The Hollywood Reporter. fishbowlLA

Ferro on the future of KCRW

Newly anointed KCRW General Manager Jennifer Ferro talks about her vision for the public radio station:

... one of the challenges that all radio faces is this idea of relevance. There are so many other ways that people get information. And there are a lot of people (especially young people) that don’t really listen to the radio anymore. They listen to other devices. So one of our goals is just trying to get our programming where people are – mobile interests, being online, on social media. But the other thing is that – if you want to stay relevant, you just have to keep delivering great programming, whether that’s on the air, online, in-person, or through these really great events that we do.

We have this idea of this “independent producer lab.” In public radio, there are people who put together these amazing pieces. They’re like journalists, who are telling amazing stories &…they’re struggling to make a living. Like this one guy Joe Richman (who I love), did this thing called “Prison Diaries,” where he got prisoners to carry around these tape recorders. And everyday, they’d just talk into them, tell these stories and talk about their lives. And he edited them together and made these really powerful vignettes of people incarcerated that you’d never hear otherwise. He spends a lot of his time trying to raise the money to be able to do that. And I think that’s just a shame. We should be doing that. So that’s what we want to do at KCRW – be the distribution partner, go out and raise the money, support these people and commission them to go do stories about Los Angeles.

I just want us to continue to act as a sort of community center. I really love this idea of membership. We have members who contribute anywhere from $5 a month or $5000 a year. But it’s sort of this pledge that says “I’m down with what you guys do.” And we have 52,000 people who do that. I want it to be like 100,000 people. That’s my big goal. It’s a huge goal but were working on reducing all the barriers to being a member – whatever donation you can give…makes you a member. Just being able to say that there are 100,000 people, who want to be a part of it…would be really amazing.

Schiller on public radio's future

The team at Nieman Journalism Lab interviewed Vivian Scihller, head of National Public Radio, about the nonprofit's "public media platform." Here's her description of it:

So the idea is: What if it wasn’t just NPR content, but a vast amount of public media content and data that could be available in a large — you know, sort of an API on steroids, a public media platform. Think about NPR content: all the content from the public radio stations, all the content from the other radio producers and distributors like PRI and APM and PRX, all the content from PBS. Now imagine all the content from the other new media players, all the new not-for-profits, like the ProPublicas of the world, and all the local, online journalism startups. And then you can go on and imagine data.

The full interview is here.

Mantle's silver anniversary

KPCC's Larry Mantle celebrates the 25th anniversary of AirTalk today. Don Barrett has a writeup of the show and the man behind the mic. LA Radio

More public broadcasting money for local journalism

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has $7.5 million to pay public radio and television stations to do original reporting on issues of local interest, the New York Times reports.

The seed-money-to-foster-local/national-collaboration sounds quite similar to NPR's Project Argo, which was launched last summer with money from CPB and the Knight Foundation.

Also, "collaboration" is the trendiest word in public broadcasting these days.

KPCC into expansion

The Pasadena-based pubic radio station KPPC has moved into a new building, plans a new morning show, and has expanded its newsroom. From the LA Times:

At a time when many public broadcasters are financially strapped -- reliant on shrinking government funds, meager college support, and subscription drives dreaded by listeners -- KPCC has thrived by tapping a board willing to write big checks and hit up their rich friends for contributions. Taking the lead are Gordon Crawford, managing director of the Capital Group, the Los Angeles investment fund manager, and Jarl Mohn, who built E! Entertainment Television.

-snip-

In the last 10 years, KPCC has won more than 230 regional and national journalism awards, and grown from a weekly audience of about 200,000 to nearly 600,000, second in size only to WNYC-FM in New York among news and information public radio stations and consistently ahead of KCRW-FM locally. (Classical music programmer KUSC-FM is the top rated public radio station in Southern California.)

SCPR has about 30 reporters, with bureaus in L.A., Orange County, the Inland Empire and Washington. (Times columnists Patt Morrison and David Lazarus and other staff members are frequent contributors to KPCC programming. Times reporters and editors appeared on KPCC programs about 150 times in 2009.)

A new show in town

KPCC has tapped former "Day to Day" co-host Madeleine Brand to host a new one-hour show that will run in her old time slot, starting at 9 a.m. Currently, KPCC runs BBC at that time.

From the press release:

SCPR will immediately begin building a staff for this currently unnamed program. The staff will include producer/reporters, online, technical and support staff. The program itself will cover a wide range of topics, but all with a distinctive Southern California perspective.

I expect that a flurry of resumes from former NPR West producers and unemployed/underemployed/unhappy L.A.-area reporters is already on its way to KPCC's new Pasadena offices.

(found via LA Observed)