Pasadena Now discovers the green screen

Pasadena Now, the online "hyperlocal" news site that purportedly pays writers in India to rewrite city press releases, and which has broken such hard-hitting stories as: "Prominent Pasadena business executives and community leaders are accused of 'Having a big heart for Jerry’s Kids'," is planning to launch a TV network, fishbowlLA reports.

James Macpherson, the visionary who founded Pasadena Now, told fishbowl's Matthew Fleischer that green screens plus L.A. talent equals high-quality productions for cheap:

One great example is the green screen + virtual set dynamic. Formerly the territory of CNN's and ESPN's, now this tool is common.

LA is loaded with talent and knowledge. Our objective is to produce compelling content with highest production value at lowest cost. We are very fortunate that a leading So Cal special effects studio has offered to assist us with technology and the use of a studio.

We hope to present a mix of video styles, from user-generated videos which we curate and edit, to studio-shot programs, to live streamed important civic events.

A new television guide in the LA Times

The Los Angeles Times plans to bring back its weekly TV book, after having dropped it three years ago. From the press release:

The Los Angeles Times will re-launch its TV Times™ guide on Sunday, June 13^th via newsstands and retail outlets throughout Southern California. Being undertaken as a tiered roll out, with an opportunity for subscribers to opt-in now for home delivery beginning September 5th, the TV Times joins the paper's Sunday line-up of news, opinion, entertainment, feature coverage and classifieds as a 44-page tabloid section. 


The new TV Times turns up the volume on The Times' former 28-page book, last published in April 2007, to now offer 24-hour daily grid listings spanning morning, afternoon, primetime and late-night programming, four pages of alphabetized TV/cable/satellite movie listings, a full-page cover story, a TV-related crossword puzzle, episode highlights and synopses, and a dedicated sports programming page. Ad units are available on the front and back covers.

The rise of online ad dollars

Internet ads accounted for 8 percent of total ad revenue in in 2005. The number jumped to17 percent in 2009. Ken Doctor reports:

...digital marketing, with better targeting being introduced around the clock, keeps pulling dollars away from traditional media — TV, newspapers, radio, and magazines. TV ($26.2 billion) and newspapers ($24.6 billion) are still ahead of Internet, but cable (at $20.4 billion) and TV networks (at $15.5 billion) are below. Radio pulls in $14 billion, while consumer magazines take in $10 billion and trades $7.5 billion.

Where we're getting our news - and what we're doing with it

Most people continue to get their news from local and national television broadcasts, but the Internet continues to surge as a source, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The survey finds that on a typical day 61 percent of people get at least some of their news online (weather reports are the top subject matter for online consumption).

The survey also claims that online is now the third most popular platform for news, behind local and national television. The finding isn't clear cut, however, since Pew splits local and national newspapers into two categories. Depending on the amount of overlap, the number of newspaper readers could be as high as 67 percent, although it's probably less. Online comes in at 61 percent and radio is fifth, with 54 percent of people getting some amount of news there during a typical day.

From the survey:

More than half of American adults (56%) say they follow the news "all or most of the time," and another quarter (25%) follow the news at least "some of the time." Asked specifically about their news habits on "a typical day," the results are striking -- 99% of American adults say that on a typical day, they get news from at least one of these media platforms: a local or national print newspaper, a local or national television news broadcast, radio or the internet.

Only local and national TV news, the latter if you combine cable and network, are more popular platforms than the internet for news. And most Americans use a combination of both online and offline sources. On a typical day:

• 78% of Americans say they get news from a local TV station.
• 73% say they get news from a national network such as CBS or cable TV station such as CNN or Fox News.
• 61% say they get some kind of news online.
• 54% say they listen to a radio news program at home or in the car.
• 50% say they read news in a local newspaper.
• 17% say they read news in a national newspaper such as the New York Times or USA Today.

The survey shows that online news consumption is often complimentary to more traditional media sources because it provides consumers with different experiences, such as the ability to get a quick news update (weather, headline, sports score, etc.), share an article or link, or offer an opinion in a comments section. Many people also find news updates on their computer's home page, in their email box, on Twitter feeds, and on social media sites - "more than 8 in 10 online news consumers get or share links in emails," the survey finds.

Traditional sources are less interactive and more reflective. They continue to be the headwaters of news, with their original reporting flowing out onto the web to be shared or hashed over in pools of social networks.

Interestingly, these social networks appear to be less interested in hashing over local news. From the survey findings:

The most popular online news subjects are the weather (followed by 81% of internet news users), national events (73%), health and medicine (66%), business and the economy (64%), international events (62%), and science and technology (60%).

Asked what subjects they would like to receive more coverage, 44% said scientific news and discoveries, 41% said religion and spirituality, 39% said health and medicine, 39% said their state government, and 38% said their neighborhood or local community.

*Edited

Just like the news on TV?

An economist at Hunter College says the Internet will reshape journalism so that there are fewer journalists overall and those who remain will be paid better. Since the former has already happened and the latter doesn't seem to be, what's her rationale?:

People who do read internet news focus on many fewer sources than what we see in the hard news or the old fashioned newspaper, physical paper world. That means that the journalist whose articles were at the back page of Section B at a middle of the road newspaper is probably not going to see too much readership in the future. Instead, some of the best reporters and the most insightful commentary will come from fewer and fewer sources. But these reporters will have national reputations, and those reputations will be well-financed both from media itself and also from books and speaking engagements.

That's basically the television model. Fewer faces needed to deliver a blander version of the days top stories in an easily digestible form. At first blush, the Internet version of this would seem to be more of a merit system, where the best journalists flourish and build a regional or national audience, and the weaker get left behind. But as we know from the television model, the best aren't necessarily the faces you see or voices you hear. That's television news companies see news as a secondary product. Higher pay isn't dolled out to the best investigators or strongest beat reporters, it's given to those who can handle exposure, know how to maintain a brand identity and have faces that can be marketed to the public. Corporations more often pick people not based on skill at doing journalism, but who are attractive enough to pull in audience.

If the Hunter College professor is right in her assessment, something similar could happen to written journalism. That doesn't mean good journalism goes away, but it means the career filters are controlled by companies more attuned to the TV model than the newspaper one. And big, tough investigations aren't the things I see on "Meet the Press" or "Good Morning America."

Four in the morning

1. Dead horse beat: Local news in Los Angeles is often an extended commercial for the network's entertainment shows. Robert Rector

2. Cluttertweet: There is no mailbox that junk mail will not find (and eventually fill). Twitter ads appear to be the latest iteration. Austin American-Statesman

3. DocumentClouds forming: The Atlantic, New Yorker, Mother Jones, MSNBC, WNYC and Washington Post have joined the nonprofit DocumentCloud. NYO

4. Buzz generator: Cliff Barney is psyched about reporting experiments at UC Berkeley's j-school. Calbuzz

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.

Entrepreneurial journalism

A prominent television news anchor in Las Vegas was caught on tape trying to play both ends of a newsroom investigation into a local tire chain, the Las Vegas Sun reports.

Nina Radetich, an anchor at station KTNV, introduced several stories about a state consumer affairs probe into customer complaints about Tire Works. Days before the first segment ran, Radetich tried to drum up a little business for Jack Finn, a former spokesman for Sen. John Ensign and Radetich's boyfriend. Radetich suggested Finn could help the owner of Tire Works push back against the negative publicity from the stories.

KTNV's general manager called Radetich's actions a lapse in judgment, but told the Sun that it had no effect on the station's reporting.

Finn said his girlfriend "did a pretty good job of upholding her ethical standards" - I'll assume he's only speaking of her standards, and not the ethical standards of others.

(via Romenesko)

More complaints about fire coverage

Los Angeles Times TV critic Mary McNamara scolds local television stations for failing provide more coverage earlier of the fast-moving Station Fire that has now consumed 122,000 and cost two firefighters their lives:

What do we have to do to get a little blow-by-blow televised coverage? "If only Kate Gosselin lived in La Crescenta," I found myself thinking Monday morning as I watched KTLA-TV Channel 5 (which is owned by Tribune Co., as is The Times) move quickly off a brief report of the fire -- it's spreading -- into a segment about decoding carbs, then we'd have the news crews out in full force.

Complaints about the lack of coverage started coming in over the weekend and were aimed mainly at local TV and national news outlets.

Times reporter Greg Braxton gets the local stations to respond to LA County Supervisor Mike Antonovich's charge that their coverage was "horrendous."

Jenna Bush reporting

A lot of thought has gone into trying to figure out why Jenna Bush Hager is a correspondent for "Today."

Antonio's 'Watergate'

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa gets caught watering his lawn outside the hours proscribed by the cities water conservation ordinance. From NBC4:

During the past month at the mayor's house, back yard sprinklers were running at 2 a.m. on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday -- all in violation of the law.

Other government got caught, too.

(via fisbowlLA)

Feds want to look under journalism's hood

The new chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, Jon Leibowitz, hinted to The Wrap that he might favor easing anti-trust laws for big media companies, but not until he takes a detailed look at all that ails the traditional news industry.

From the Wrap:

“We are strong believers in the antitrust laws and in opposing exemptions from the antitrust laws,” Leibowitz told TheWrap, “but when you think about other values, and you think about the First Amendment, this might be one of those rare industries where you must think about ways to ensure the vibrancy of news.” ...

He said, however, that the FTC examination will be “much, much broader” than simply whether an antitrust exemption is needed. The agency will look into other reasons for the current problems.

“We are going to have economists and journalists and bloggers and people from different parts of the news media, and we are going to think through [what is occurring] and what the future will look like and whether that future -- which might be a handful of newspapers and [TV] networks that don’t have nearly as much reach as they once did and 5 million bloggers -- is a good thing for American democracy,” he said.

I'm sure they'll get to the bottom of it.

(via Romenesko)

A tough first half

Some ugly numbers for traditional media in the first half of 2009, courtesy of the Vocus Media Database. According to the company's tally, 123 news television shows were canceled along with 186 radio shows, most of them in smaller markets. The magazine industry saw 154 launches and 556 closings.

Major daily newspapers have been shuttered as well, but much of the contraction has been seen in the bureaus. From the Vocus media blog:

The newspaper industry was hit by significant closings in the first half of 2009 (the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Baltimore Examiner and Seattle Post-Intelligencer all ceased publishing a print edition), but legions of daily newspapers haven’t folded. The vulnerability of the newspaper industry cannot be measured only by the number of shuttered papers, however. Newspapers across the country also closed 110 bureaus, according to the Vocus Database. Some of the bureaus were in Washington, D.C., but many were in areas close to the parent newspapers, a trend that would never have occurred during more robust times.

Night of the awards

The Los Angeles Press Club announced its awards last night. The full list of winners is here.

Another industry gets nervous

Cable and satellite television providers are beginning to worry about the rise of online TV sites, with Hulu leading the way. From the Los Angeles Times:

Hulu illustrates the quandary that media executives face as they weigh the potential of the Internet against their dependable, old-line businesses. If the television industry does not find a way to preserve its two pillars of revenue -- advertising and subscription fees -- the consequences could be dire. Analysts point to the rapid deterioration of newspapers, which traded paying print subscribers for the expectation of big bucks from online advertising that have not materialized.

Hulu counted 42 million viewers in March and Disney just decided to start putting shows on the site.

Switching off Mayor of Television*, **,***

I'm not sure if this means Daily News television critic David Kronke got laid off today, but he's saying goodbye to his "Mayor of Television" blog. Here's the final line:

Look out for mayoroftelevision.com soonish.

Editor Carolina Garcia did say Thursday night that the paper could no longer afford music and film critics. I guess she meant TV, too.

*Updated 2:30 p.m.: Kronke did indeed get laid off today.

**Updated 4:12 p.m.: I'm told film critic Bob Strauss will be moved to the news side, leaving Greg Hernandez (Out in Hollywood) as the newspaper's sole entertainment writer.

***Updated Feb. 21, 9:37 p.m.: Four other departures to report. The paper laid off photographer Andy Holzman and web producer Julio Morales. Picture editor Roxanne Kotzman and copy editor Sharon Kaplan took buyouts.

Iraq, uncovered

The Project for Excellence in Journalism did a study back in May that found coverage of the Iraq war accounted for only three percent of what American newspapers and broadcasters produced in the first months of 2008.

Now the New York Times reports that the major networks have "quietly" decided to stop sending full-time reporters to Iraq. From the story:

In Baghdad, ABC, CBS and NBC still maintain skeleton bureaus in heavily fortified compounds. Correspondents rotate in and out when stories warrant, and with producers and Iraqi employees remaining in Baghdad, the networks can still react to breaking news. But employees who are familiar with the staffing pressures of the networks say the bureaus are a shadow of what they used to be. Some of the offices have only one Western staff member.

The staff cuts appear to be the latest evidence of budget pressures at the networks. And those pressures are not unique to television: many newspapers and magazines have also curtailed their presence in Baghdad. As a consequence, the war is gradually fading from television screens, newspapers and, some worry, the consciousness of the American public.

As network and cable news outlets cut back in one war zone, there has been no corresponding increase in coverage of our other war zone - the one that's supposed to be the real frontline in the war on terror. Until CNN recently sent a full-time reporter to Afghanistan, no major television or cable news outlet had a full-time bureau there.

(via Romensko)

Not just newspapers

Broadcast news has been on a long, fast trip to bad for a long time, in my opinion. But shrinking budgets - and the commensurate shrinking of staffs - have starved television news divisions. Corporate concerns have taken precedence and left a dearth of tough-minded investigations of the rich and powerful in their wake:

Investigations of the rich and powerful, the multinational corporations and monopoly industries, have all but dried up, say a coterie of journalists still trying to ply their trade. To be sure, enterprise reporting on the network level is far from dead. Investigations are, for instance, still staples at 60 Minutes and PBS's Frontline. Brian Ross and his producers are a vibrant force in TV investigations that singlehandedly keep ABC News in the game. But the days of news divisions rich with staff and resources claiming multiple hours a week of primetime real estate with newsmagazines are now history.

The Insider wasn't a look back, it was a look ahead.

(via Romenesko)

Print-on-TV action

Gene Maddaus at the Daily Breeze continues his watchdogging of local television news with a story yesterday that Fox 11 got it wrong when they reported City Councilwoman Janice Hahn provided city funds to active gang members:

"But a review of the Fox 11 News story found major flaws that undermine its central allegations. Most notably, records and interviews show that the gang intervention workers identified in the report have not received city funding."

Indeed, that would seem a major flaw, given that the central allegation made by Fox was that Hahn provided "city funds to active gang members under the auspices of gang intervention programs."

This is not the first time Maddaus has questioned the reporting of a television news station. In 2006, he wrote a column for the Pasadena Star-News about KTLA "Morning News" anchors receiving free rooms, along with free wine and chocolate, in exchange for giving air time to the Ritz-Carlton, Huntington Hotel in Pasadena. Turns out shilling violates certain ethical standards, even for TV. Maddaus won several awards for his work.

Incidentally, the Ritz is now the Langham, and the KTLA "Morning News" is now the KTLA "Morning Show."