smays.com

Online future of journalism?

Here's what Mindy McAdams foresees:

1. Breaking news will be online before it’s on television.  
   
2. Breaking news — especially disasters and attacks in the middle of a city — will be covered first by non-journalists.
3. The non-journalists will continue providing new information even after the trained journalists arrive on the scene.
4. Cell phones will be the primary reporting tool at first, and possibly for hours.
5. Cell phones that can use a wireless Internet connection in addition to a cellular phone network are a more versatile reporting tool than a phone alone.
6. Still photos, transmitted by citizens on the ground, will tell more than most videos.
7. The right video will get so many views, your servers might crash (I’m not aware of this happening with any videos from Mumbai).
8. Live streaming video becomes a user magnet during a crisis. (CNN.com Live: 1.4 million views as of 11:30 a.m. EST today, according to Beet.tv.)
9. Your print reporters need to know how to dictate over the phone. If they can get a line to the newsroom, it might be necessary.
10. Your Web team must be prepared for this kind of crisis reporting.

She concludes by wondering "...whether the mainstream media are superfluous in these situations — or can they perform a useful service to the public by sifting and filtering the incoming reports from the center of the events?"

I hope Ms. McAdams will forgive my reposting here. She, like Seth Godin, is a blogger who deserves not to be edited or excerpted.

People with news, and people who want news

Those are two points of view examined in a recent post by Dave Winer.

"If the people with the news can publish it themselves, and they can; what's to stop the people who want the news from reading it directly."

Which puts me in mind of High Street Beat, a blog written by the mayor of Jefferson City. Ultimately, his readers get to decide if what he writes is "fair and honest," but he can speak directly to them, as well as through MSM.

"When professional news people consider the Internet they think of it replacing them. Not so. It reduces their role to a bare minimum, makes them less necessary. I still want soundbites from the sources, but I want them to link to the full blog post behind the quote."

"If reporters are to remain relevant they have to recast themselves, more humbly. Don't think about "deputizing" us to do what you do. Instead think of the value of your rolodex, your sources. Cultivate and develop that rolodex. To the extent that you know who to call when a bit of news breaks, that's the extent of your value in the new world, the one we live in now."

Most of the reporters I've known and worked with work very hard. For not much money. But more than a few of them have viewed the companies they work for a the necessary infrastructure that makes it possible for them to report the news.

While the people running those companies viewed the newsrooms as a cog --a BIG cog, but a cog-- in a machine whose purpose was to turn a profit. A classic dog and tail situation.

I'm reminded of that classic scene in Network where Arthur Jensen explains things to Howard Beale:

Jensen: The world is a college of corporations, inexorably deter- mined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime, and our children, Mr.Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and famine, oppression and brutality --one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you to preach this evangel, Mr. Beale.

Howard: (humble whisper) Why me?

Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

One thing, not the only thing, but one important thing that has distinguished reporters from their readers/viewers/listeners is the reporters had a platform or medium from which to report. That distinction has blurred, if not disappeared.

Future of mobile news?

Kim Pearson (E-Media Tidbits) wonders if Sprint's "Now" widget might be the future of mobile news:

"What if a mobile Web page like this was truly customizable, so that you could arrange the content of the boxes to suit your interests, and you could save that widget to your desktop, phone and blog? Your cell phone provider becomes your ubiquitous information provider. The feeds become something like the programming on basic cable. Instead of news as a product that delivers eyeballs to advertisers, it's news as part of your basic broadband information package. Perhaps, continuing the cable analogy, it's a platform for developing premium news services as well."

I'm convinced the future of all media is mobile. And I'm gonna have to break down and get an iPhone. If our accountant says I can deduct it as a business expense, I'll probably take the plunge. Not having a smart phone is like not having a TV in 1960.

Newsroom change

I only snapped one photo of Bob Priddy in action on election night. Through studio glass (you can see my reflection in this larger image) with producer John Simms in the background. MacBook Pro and video camera are streaming live video to Ustream. Big screen TV's on the walls, high-speed connection to the Secretary of State's website with up-to-the-minute returns.

When I joined the company in 1984, Bob was still writing stories on this manual Royal typewriter (below). Audio was captured on reel-to-reel tape recorders and "dubbed" to analog carts. We had a UPI printer spewing out the news (on long rolls of paper), and election returns were phoned in by a reporter sitting in the Secretary of State's office.

Can't imagine what we'll have in four years.

Bob Priddy's memory of those days is better than mine: "Actually, we were using cassettes, not R2R in '84. We relied on UPI for election returns with reporters at various gatherings of candidates. We didn't put anybody in the SOS office until the Presidential primary of '88, after studying what AP and UPI did in the 86 general election."

Putting Ana Marie back on the plane

Ana Marie Cox was covering the McCain campaign for Radar Magazine until it shut it's doors on Friday. AMC tweeted us to her blog for the story:

"It will cost about $1500 to cover just the last day of the campaign, and over $1000 a day for each day leading up to it. While I still blog for TIME's "Swampland" * -- and I will for as long as they let me! -- I am without a source for travel funds. So, you know, anyone interested in sponsoring a foul-mouthed blogger, slightly used?"

Like a public radio fund drive, she offered premiums for different levels of giving.

"Over $100: My instant message screen name, regular personal updates via email and/or instant messages on election night."

I kicked in$150 because I'm a fan and liked the idea of helping a blogger. Seems like I wasn't alone.

"At the moment, donations come to about $2500 -- a thousand past my goal of simply seeing the McCain campaign off into the gentle night come Nov. 4 (literally! sort of!), and just about enough to cover spending election eve out on the trail as well."

Ana Marie is hardly the first blogger to ask her readers to support her work. But I think I would have been willing to pay $5 or $10 a month for a year to fund her efforts. Is this some kind of model for the future? 

Update: 10/28/08

If the boat is leaking, learn how to swim

Had a chat with an acquaintance who now lives and works in another part of the country. He's a long-time radio news guy and he called to get my advice on how his newsroom can better take advantage of "new media" (which ain't that new anymore).

As he talked about his newsroom and the company he works for (a good one), it became clear there was no clear direction for making the transition from Old Media to New Media. And unlikely to be one. So what can he do?

First, what he cannot do. He probably cannot change (or provide) the larger online strategy his company needs.

But he can begin learning the skills he needs to survive. In no particular order:

• Start blogging (any topic)  This includes reading other blogs
• Start using an RSS news reader
• Set up a twitter page (get a grasp of social networking)
• Get a smart phone and learn how to use it (see above)
• Keep a small digital (still/video) camera on his person at all times
• Get a YouTube and flickr account and start using them. (any subject)
• Begin the process of creating your brand

To an old radio dog, all of this sounds like a lot more work than it really is. But here's the question I posed to my friend:

If your current job went away overnight, what would you do? Try to get a job at another radio station? A newspaper? TV station?

What kind of skills to you think they're looking for these days? Will it be enough to give them a cassette tape of your best work? Maybe a list of the RTNDA awards you've won?

The skills he learned in J-school are important. His many years of "radio" experience are valuable. But it's a new game, that demands new skills. You got 'em or you don't.

Blogging: "A basic right of being in the media business"

The always-plugged-in Amy Gahran insists your blog is "Media Career Insurance" for journalists.

"Because in a professional environment where staying findable equals sustained opportunity and flexibility, search engines are a key arbiter of your career. The more findable and linkable you are, the more search engines will reward you. ... And search engines really, really love blogs."

"Having your own blog is media career insurance. It will serve as your "home base" where you establish your personal reputation, track record, abilities, interests, and aspirations."

Ms. Gahran offer some tips for starting a blog. Read her post where she explains each:

1. Get a good domain name.
2. Map your domain to your site, so every page on your site bears your domain.
3. Stick with your domain.
4. Don't work for anyone who won't let you keep blogging.
5. Join the conversation, and link back to yourself
6. Keep your blog going even if you also blog elsewhere

I particularly liked: "Consider blogging a basic right of being in the media business."

Most of the journalists I know and work with do not have a personal blog. I think most of them would insist they don't have time to blog. A few don't think it's "appropriate" for a journalist to blog.

"How important is local, really?"

"I'm not saying local doesn't matter. Local is important. It's especially important for people who are newcomers to communities. It's especially important for identifying accessible resources and services that people might need in their daily lives. But in many senses, "local" is just one set of ripples on the lake of information -- especially when it comes to "news." And for many people, it's not even the biggest or most important set of ripples." [Amy Gahran/E-Media Tidbits]

And it occurs to me that "local" is much more important to people with children than to those of us without.

"News is a business, not a public service"

I recently asked my friend Bob (a really fine journalist) about an idea I came across in a WSJ column by Peggy Noonan. The following line sort of sums it up:

"Great reporting is what every honest person wants now, it's the one ironic thing we have less of in journalism than we need."

Bob responded with this quote by Alex Rohr, President of Rohr News Network, a fictional character in a novel (The Race) by Richard North Patterson:

"The old model was that news is fact, and objectivity the ideal. Today's truth is that "news" like anything else we sell to the public, is a product. Our news product isn't some abstract notion of truth, or even reality. It's a story--consistent and repetitive, with a message that's emotionally fulfilling to the viewer. We mislead no one. Turn on (our news), and you're getting exactly what you want. I can help you feel better about this war, or fighting terrorists, and you don't have to think about them anymore. If we also use that power to promote our friends and advance our interests, so be it. News is a business, not a public service."

And our nation is poorer for it.

Terry Heaton post on "media elitism"

Terry Heaton takes a thoughtful look at the charge the media has a liberal bias. I've pulled two paragraphs from his thoughtful essay:

"I believe the press is inherently biased towards a liberal perspective, because educated people, among other things, are generally more exposed to the value of tolerance than those who are not. Chesterton wrote that “Tolerance is the virtue of people who don’t believe anything,” and that is a core component of conservative thinking. It’s not that conservatives aren’t tolerant; it’s just that it isn’t elevated to the status of core value as it is with liberals."

"One issue I do see is that because conservatives are predisposed to law-abiding and put faith in hierarchy, they are more open to direction from the top. In that sense, the qualities and character of the person at the top are critical."

"Conservatives ride the wind of the esoteric when it comes to certain issues, but liberals have their feet firmly planted on the ground and in the middle of those issues. In this sense, the two never talk with each other, because they’re not even in the same space."

Which reminds me why I decided to stop discussing politics. A vow I quickly broke but now renew. It's like getting off crack.

Sports journo sees future on the web

Big time sports journalist Jay Mariotti has resigned from the Chicago Sun-Times:

"It's been a tremendous experience, but I'm going to be honest with you, the profession is dying,'' Mariotti said, "I don't think either paper [Sun-Times or Chicago Tribune] is going to survive. To showcase your work ... you need a stellar Web site and if a newspaper doesn't have that, you can't be stuck in the 20th century with your old newspaper.''

His bosses have a different take on things and you can read what they have to say at CBS2Chicago.com.

Reporting from the road

Our company has three reporters in Denver (for three different networks) covering the state delegations for their respective networks. Where they were once strictly radio reporters, today they're also posting stories to websites; blogging and Twittering.

I could be wrong, but I seem to recall one convention when we actually shipped a couple of cart machines so the reporter could produce his/her reports that where then phoned back to the network for broadcast to affiliate stations over the satellite network. We still distribute by satellite but a lot of our affiliates get a lot of our reports on the web.

I was reminded of these Dark Days by a photo O. Kay Henderson took of her equipment set-up (annotated) in her hotel room in Denver. Blackberry, wireless data cards, laptops, minidisks... it all fits in a couple of carry-on's.

Reporting from the road

Our company has three reporters in Denver (for three different networks) covering the state delegations for their respective networks. Where they were once strictly radio reporters, today they're also posting stories to websites; blogging and Twittering.

I could be wrong, but I seem to recall one convention when we actually shipped a couple of cart machines so the reporter could produce his/her reports that where then phoned back to the network for broadcast to affiliate stations over the satellite network. We still distribute by satellite but a lot of our affiliates get a lot of our reports on the web.

I was reminded of these Dark Days by a photo O. Kay Henderson took of her equipment set-up in her hotel room in Denver. Blackberry, wireless data cards, laptops, minidisks... it all fits in a couple of carry-on's.

Journalists in demand at SEO companies

"You can try all kinds of tricks to improve how highly your site ranks in Google and other search engines, but ultimately it comes down to linked content -- which generally correlates with good content. And in order to get good content, you need journalists." [from post by Paul Bradshaw on E-Media Tidbits]

"Looking past the death of newspapers"

Amy Gahran points to (and comments on) an essay by news industry consultant Vin Crosbie (Transforming American Newspapers.) that includes some dooms-day predictions:

"More than half of the 1,439 daily newspapers in the U.S. won't exist in print, e-paper, or Web formats by the end of next decade. They will go out of business. The few national dailies... will have diminished but continuing existences via the Web and e-paper, but not in print. The first dailies to expire will be the regional dailies, which have already begun to implode. Those plus a very many smaller dailies, most of whose circulations are steadily evaporating, will decline to levels at which they will no longer be economically viable to publish daily."

Ms. Gahran sees a somewhat brighter future:

"I think that people who want news will still get it through other means, possibly less directly, probably more collaboratively. It may not look like what journalists think news "should" look like. It may include a strongly automated, algorithmic component layered with human insight. It may look more like bullet points than stories. It'll probably be strongly focused on mobile and social delivery channels. It may not even call itself journalism. But will it offer people the benefits they currently seek from news orgs? I think it could -- maybe even better, in some cases."

Jarvis: "Covering conventions a waste"

From the BuzzMachine: "Forbes.com reports that the number of journalists covering the conventions this fall will remain at the same level as 2004 and 2000: 15,000 of them. What a waste. The outcome of the conventions is known. There will be no news. Why are these news organizations sending so many staffers there?

Ego. That’s it, pure ad simple: Our man in Denver. Instead of your woman. It’s for bylines, bylines the public couldn’t care less about. The coverage will be no different outlet to outlet. We can watch it all ourselves on C-SPAN.

The conventions aren’t news. Anymore they are only staged events to get media coverage. And it works. But it’s not for the public good that they’re covered.

Don’t try to feed me that line about how they’ll be covering their local delegations. Their local delegations never make news — not since 1968 anyway — and their actions couldn’t be more predictable, less newsworthy. If you want to cover the locals, cover them at home — before the event. But you still won’t get any news from them."

Ouch. That's a little close to home. Each of our networks send reporters to the Big Show. I'll leave it to the real journalists to argue Jarvis' point.

I will offer one other rational for sending a reporter to the convention. It's kind of cool. I know, I know... it's a hell of a lot of work... certainly no vacation. But for reporters below the national level, getting to go to a Big Event like this is something of a spiff. There I said it. Now where did I put my Shit Storm helmet?

News bureau redefined

From NYTimes.com: "CNN announced on Tuesday that it would assign journalists to 10 cities across the United States, a move that would double the number of domestic cities where the cable news network has outposts.

But in a reflection of the way television networks are reinventing the way they gather news, the journalists will not work from expensive bureaus — rather, they will borrow office space from local news organizations and use laptops to file articles for the Internet and TV. When news happens, they will use Internet connections and cellphone cameras to report live.

A new breed of reporter, sometimes called a “one-man band,” has become the new norm. Though the style of reporting has existed for years, it is being adopted more widely as these reporters act as their own producer, cameraman and editor, and sometimes even transmit live video.

Marcus Wilford, vice president for international digital at ABC News, recalled that when he was hired 20 years ago, the news division’s Paris bureau had three camera crews, three producers, two correspondents, drivers, and a chef in a house with a view of the Eiffel Tower. Today the ABC News presence in Paris consists of a lone staff producer."

Keep your Blackberry under your pillow

Former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach -- a Republican -- endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday morning. I think my friend and co-worker Kay Henderson broke the story. It got a lot of national play and her blog post generated 3,000+ page views. I'm sure we got a bunch more at RadioIowa.com. I asked Kay how she got on the story so early:

"I sleep with my blackberry. I woke up at 6 o’clock, checked the ‘berry, and went back to sleep.  As I sort of floated out of dreamland I must have heard or sensed the vibration the ‘berry makes when there’s an incoming email. I pulled the ‘berry from underneath the pillow and read the email sent at 7:14 a.m. from a source in the Obama campaign, alerting me to the fact that former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach would be endorsing Obama in a few hours, during a telephone conference call being organized by the Obama campaign.

I called the newsroom and gave Matt – our morning anchor – the details for him to include in our next newscast, then roused myself from bed and walked into my home office.  I started blogging by feel, as I hadn’t found my glasses yet.  By 7:45 a.m. I had a fairly complete blog post up about the news.  It included text from a speech Vice President Dick Cheney gave at a Leach campaign fundraiser in 2003, explaining the Leach-Cheney-Rumsfeld connection.

I kept updating the post through the day.  An addition at the top – the opening Leach quote -- came from a noontime interview.  The McCain folks emailed responses, which got to my email box by 1:50 p.m."

A couple of things in Kay's account stand out for me. If she had waited until she got to the office to check her email, she might not have had the jump on the story. Should all reporters sleep with their Blackberry under their pillow? Well, yeah, if you expect to beat Kay on a story.

And that she blogged the story before having her Cheerios. A whole bunch of political reporters follow Kay's blog.

And while the technology is cool, there's no substitute for having the contact in the Obama campaign.

When nobody controls the cameras

NYTimes.com: "When Congress adjourns, so do C-Span’s live broadcasts because the sole cameras that record the sessions of the Senate and the House of Representatives are controlled by the members of Congress.

On Friday, when several dozen Republicans decided to stay on the House floor and discuss energy legislation after the House adjourned for a five-week summer recess, the cameras and microphones were turned off. So the first source of video was a congressman who streamed live pictures to the Internet using his cellphone camera."

Just one more (small) example of how things are changing. If any feature prompts me to break down and buy a real mobile phone, it will be the ability to stream live video when there's no wifi.

Arianna Huffiington on journalism in the 21st century

"A lot of the discontent with traditional journalism is because too many reporters have forgotten that the highest calling of journalists is to ferret out the truth, consequences be damned. Unfortunately, this is a concept that has fallen out of favor with too many journalists, who are obsessed with a false view of "balance" and "objectivity" and have become addicted not to the tireless pursuit of truth, but to the tireless promotion of the misguided notion that every story has two sides. And that the truth is supposed to be found somewhere in the middle. But not every story has two sides and the truth is often found on one side or the other. The earth is not flat. Evolution is a fact. Global warming is a fact. And there are definitely not two sides to the proposition that Iraq is our generation's greatest foreign policy disaster. It is. Period." --Full interview at Poynter Online

This post is about technology and media, not politics.

I "follow" Barack Obama's Twitter feed. If you don't know what that means, it's okay (unless you happen to be a journalist). A few minutes ago the campaign "tweeted" that the senator was getting ready to speak in Springfield, Missouri and I could watch it live by clicking the included link.

It took me to the "live" page on the Obama website where a USTREAM player was feeding live video. As I write this there are 830 viewers. Only a fraction of the number watching on the cable news channels that might be airing this speech.

I mention this only because no "traditional media" were necessary to make this happen. The Obama campaign has an email address for each of the millions (?) of people who have contributed to his campaign. We all got a ping that he was about to speak.

[901 viewers]

I think this is huge. Sure, a campaign still need MSM to get elected. Today. Will that be as true four years from now? Will it be true at all 8 years from now?

[1,045 viewers]

Of course it is not just the live stream. This speech --and all of the others-- will be available from now until election day. And beyond?

[1,095 viewers]

"The web is your future"

"A lot of experienced news people — whether broadcast or print — feel
like they’ve been baited and switched, that they were trained and hired
to do one thing but are now being required to do something else. That’s
understandable, but it’s also completely irrelevant." -- Terry Heaton

"Go-to device for local information"

Lost Remotes Corey Bergman predicts the iPhone (and the apps that will be written for it) will have huge impact on local news and information:

"...the location-aware phone (and similar phones that follow) will become
the go-to devices for local information. In fact, I believe local
information ultimately will be consumed more on mobile than PCs."

Where have we been getting our local information? Oh yeah, radio.

Reality spill on aisle six

From a recent post on Jeff Jarvis' Buzz Machine:

"Janet Coats, editor of the Tampa Tribune, sat down in her newsroom to tell the staff about layoffs, reorganizations, new ways of doing business, and harsh realities and an intern named Jessica DaSilva recorded the event with appropriate admiration.

My favorite bomb: “People need to stop looking at TBO.com [the newspaper's affiliated web site] as an add on to The Tampa Tribune. The truth is that The Tampa Tribune is an add on to TBO.”

If this is true for newspapers today, will it be equally true for TV and radio tomorrow? And when that day comes, what will it mean for networks and others who provide programming (content?) for those stations.

"Computer Jesus"

From a Mindy McAdams post on setting up a team for online journalism: "Sure, it would be great if you could hire one single person who could do everything. We call that “computer jesus” — and you need to accept the fact that there really are not many people in the world who can walk on water.

Blogosphere as "giant wire service"

Clyde Bentley, a Missouri School of Journalism professor who researches user-generated news, speaking at the Future of Journalism conference at Harvard, June 20-21:

The debate over bloggers' influence "is over," he said. "Blogging is a numbers game. It's there and we'll just have to deal with it." Noting that 120,000 new blogs a day dwarf the country's 1,427 dailies, he said editors should treat the blogosphere like a giant wire service. Bentley said that while consumer demand for content decreases, their demand for content navigation increases. "There will always be a place for the journalist who can craft a story better than anyone else, but there will be a bigger place for the journalist who can help media consumers find the information they want."

Poynter: Centerpieces

"The Beltway-Blog Battle"

Writing in Time Magazine, James Poniewozek has an interesting take (The Beltway-Blog Battle) on the passing of Tim Russert.

"...the press lost its most authoritative mass-market journalist, just as it is losing its authority and its mass market."

The New Meida vs. Old Media argument got tiresome a long time ago, but Mr. Poniewozek offers a fresh take. A few paragraphs to wet your whistle:

"In their original division of labor, the old media broke news while the blogs dispensed opinion. But look at two of the biggest stories of the Democratic primary: Barack Obama's comments that working-class voters are "bitter" and Bill Clinton's rope-line rant that a reporter who profiled him was a "scumbag." Both were broken by a volunteer for the Huffington Post website, Mayhill Fowler.

Traditional reporters were aghast at Fowler's methods--the Obama meeting was closed to press (she got in as a donor), and Fowler did not identify herself when speaking to Clinton. But mainstream media had no problem treating the scoops as big news; if she had overheard both quotes in the same way but told them to a newspaper instead of publishing them, that would have been considered a coup.

The case against Fowler, in other words, was about process and credentials, not content. If sources stop trusting us, reporters asked, how will we do our jobs? But however sneaky her methods, Fowler's stories prove that one reason sites like Huffington have an audience is the perception that Establishment journalism has gotten better at serving its powerful sources than its public. Fiascoes like the Iraq-WMD reporting gave many the impression that the old rules mainly protect consultant-cosseted public officials who need protection least."

[For more on the Mayhill Fowler story, here's a bit of audio with Arianna Huffington, speaking at Guardian News & Media's internal Future of Journalism event on 18th June 2008.]

Mr. Poniewozik poses this rather rude question regarding MSM: "...if 3 million people read Drudge and 65,000 read the New Republic, which is mainstream?"

HuffPo starts local news push

Guardian.co.uk: "The Huffington Post is planning to expand into local news across the US, founder Arianna Huffington said last night, beginning with a site edited for the community of Chicago. Huffington said the Chicago site would aggregate news, sports, crime, arts and business news from different local sources as well as contributions from bloggers in what will be the first of a series of projects in "dozens of US cities". The Chicago site will initially be curated by just one editor."

I'm a bit bothered by "aggregate news, sports, crime, arts and business news from different local sources." This suggests (to me) that a HuffPo editor in St. Louis, should they expand to that city, would link to stories from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website. Or even our statewide news network, when we do a story with St. Louis relevance.

Which is way the web works, of course. I'm not quite sure what about this plan bothers me. Maybe it's: What can a single Huffington Post editor provide that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website cannot?

Is it a matter of putting an editor in each of the top 50 markets... have them aggregate stories and links to local news sources... and building an online audience that is smaller while accomplishing all of this at a fraction of the overhead?

Or is it that the people behind the Huffington Post just get the web better than most of the other guys?

An army of photographers

Our news networks in Iowa and Wisconsin have been scrambling to cover the flooding in those states. Unlike newspapers and TV stations, we don't have photographers and videographers to supply "pictures" for the stories we post to our websites. And a flood is a very visible event.

I didn't have to look long on flickr to find literally thousands of photos (and video) of flooding in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids. I pinged one of the photographers (James Lewin) for permission to use some of his images and he graciously agreed.

This is a small example of how reporting might happen from this point on. A loose collaboration of professionals and non-professionals. The news organizations that understand how to tap into these "citizen journalists" will be the winners.

Old radio dogs learn fun new video tricks

Reporters for our ag radio network (Brownfield Ag News) were recently issued Casio digital cameras. They've been using them for still images for the most part but Dave Russell got a minute-and-a-half of first-rate video showing flooding and erosion in an Indiana corn field.

Dave is new to the world of hand-held point-and-shoot video but notice how he gets in a few questions (recorded on the Casio) while panning across the field. I have no doubt we'll be seeing more good video from Dave and his fellow reporters.

If bloggers aren't journalists...where's YOUR video?

Lightning started a fire at the Magellan Petroleum factory in Kansas City, MO and uber-blogger Chuck Zimmerman share this video shot form the downtown Marriott hotel.

Is that a camera crew in your pocket?

Mark Halperin and the folks at Time have their digital shit in one neat pile. Check out this exclusive video with David Axelrod, just after learning that the Associated Press has declared that Obama has secured the majority of delegates to the Democratic convention and will win the nomination.

Looks like Halperin is shooting with a small, hand-held camera. No mic (except for the camera), a little jerky but talk about immediacy.

PageCast: Short, sweet and real

There are just so many things I like about The PageCast, I'm not sure where to begin. First, what is The PageCast.

It's a 60 second video by Time Magazine's Mark Halperin, previewing the three stories that he thinks you should be watching for today. You'll find it on the top/right of The Page. Big whoop, right? Okay, here's some of the things I like about this simple idea (and this particular PageCast):

• It maximizes the reach of a popular, plugged-in political reporter.

• It's short. One minute. Easy to watch, easy to produce.

• It's real. Or at least it appears real. Today's PageCast was recorded in what appears to be Mr. Halperin's hotel room in South Dakota (prior to Tuesday's primary). And he obviously just came from the gym or a run. (Note to TV and Hollywood directors: THIS is what real sweat looks like. Not the little spritz you put under your star's arms and on his chest. Save this image for future reference). And Mark hasn't shaved yet. The guy looks like we all do on a Sunday morning.

• Zero production. If I had to guess, I'd say he recorded this with his Mac Book sitting on the hotel desk. Probably in one take. He emails the file to some web monkey who uploads to The Page and it's done. No crew, no director, no editing.

The news directors of our radio networks would be great at this. And their listeners/readers/viewers would eat it up.

UPDATE: My buddy Kay reports that Mark Halperin records PageCast between 7-9 a.m. (usually), wherever he happens to be and in whatever he happens to be wearing. If he's on the West Coast, he usually records them at night. He thinks of what he wants to say just before he begins recording (or in the shower or at the gym), on his MacBook Pro (edits with iMovie).

The idea was prompted by the desire to put video on The Page, while keeping it easy to produce and watch. Just as I suspected. Simple idea, well executed.

New media can't get here soon enough

Proto-blogger Dave Winer thinks the real problem revealed by Scott McClellan's new tell-all book is that the press was complicit in beating the Iraq war drum:

"But corporate-owned media isn't interested in helping us make decisions as a country, they're only interested in ad revenue. That's why it's so important that we're creating new media that isn't so conflicted, and why the question of whether bloggers run ads or not is far from a trivial issue."

When it comes to national media, there really are not that many outlets that need to be manipulated. Four TV networks; maybe that many cable news channels; a handful of newspapers with national reach. If you can juke them, you've got a lot of the country juked.

The sooner their influence is diminished, the better. There will no longer be even the illusion of "national media" and people will have to work (a little) at being informed. Sure, the willfully clueless will still head for blogs and news sites that confirm their view. But the rest of us will stop trusting (if we haven't already) news organizations that are child's play for political spin-miesters.

Old dogs and new tricks

Mindy McAdams (Teaching Online Journalism) always seems to have fresh insight into the state of journalism:

"I see a few people in almost every newsroom (usually less than one-quarter of the staff) embracing the new ways of communication and trying to spread their journalism and enhance their organization’s outputs via new channels and techniques. I see a lot more people who are worried, even frightened, that there will be no place for them in this new world.

The latter group interests me a lot more than the small number of chained-to-the-barricades dinosaurs (who also exist in every newsroom) — because they are very different from the dinosaurs. They are not resistant because they think the Internet is a short-lived fad, or because they fail to see its potential, or because they are in love with the smell of ink on paper. Rather, they are resistant because they don’t know how to train themselves — they are waiting for someone to hand them a tool and show them how to use it."

This is a point I tend to overlook. And journos --if I may generalize-- aren't the type to admit they don't know how to do something and ask for help.

Goodnight, Chet. Goodnight, David.

Lost Remote's s Cory Bergman thinks J-schools should downplay anchor careers:

"Journalism schools, as a public service, should strongly discourage students from pursuing an anchoring career. The emphasis should be on the “do-it-all” multimedia journalist who can produce, report, write, shoot and edit both on TV and the web. Flexibility is key."

And if you need another reason to be discouraged from pursuing a career as an anchor...

It's not whining if we have a good reason

Amy Gahran is a former full-time journalist, editor, and managing editor. Today, her work mainly involves conversational online media (weblogs, forums, wikis, e-mail lists) as well as feeds, podcasting, and e-learning. Here are a couple of excerpts from her recent post at E-Meida Tidbits:

"I've been getting quite aggravated at the close-minded and helpless attitudes I'm still encountering from too many journalists about how the media landscape is changing. I realize that right now is a scary time for journalists who crave stability. I have immense sympathy for good, smart people (many of whom have families to support and retirements to plan) who fear the unknown. Many of the news orgs that have sheltered and supported these journalists as they ply their craft are crumbling due to their inability or unwillingness to adapt their business models -- leading to layoffs, buyouts, attrition, dwindling resources, overwork, and general demoralization.

I also know -- first hand -- that the prospect of learning new skills can be daunting. Plus, many of us have spent lots of money on j-school and many years in professional journalism honing our writing and reporting skills. We don't want to learn how to think like an entrepreneur, or an information architect, or a community manager. We just want to keep doing what we know how to do; we didn't sign up for all this extra stuff."

This is an insightful post, worth a full read. (Shirts available in S, M, L, and XXL)

"Small town loses paper, residents fill gap online"

Lost Remote: "When the town of Orting, WA lost its hometown weekly - several residents banded together to keep the information flowing online. The Orting Gazette turned off the presses in March - but now the new Orting News online site features community news submitted by the public, with a special emphasis on high school sports."

Pretty much what I had in mind with this earlier post.

The Daily Bugle

The local newspaper here in Jefferson City has been locally owned for a long time. It was recently sold to a group with headquarters in Arkansas. As George and I discussed this over coffee a couple of weeks ago, he wondered why someone would buy a newspaper when it seems like --nationally-- their profits are in free fall (I love that expression).

During our chat, George said he thought the local paper only had four full-time reporters. I have no idea if that's accurate but, for the purposes of this post, let's assume it is. It started me thinking. What if the local paper just shut down? What sort of online alternative would be possible? Could you create one using volunteers?

You might start by evaluating what's currently in the paper: Local news, state news, world and national news, features, business and finance, entertainment, opinion, sports, community, obits, weather and classifieds.

I certainly won't be the first to point out that much of the information in the local newspaper is available from other sources (weather, state news, national  news, etc). The one area a local paper can and should do better than anyone else is local. Local news, sports, business, entertainment... local, local, local.

What if you had one, maybe two "professional journalists," coordinating a group of volunteers. Could you do a credible job of covering local news and events? For example, could a dozen highly motivated volunteers --armed with digital cameras and recorders-- cover the local news as well as four paid staffers?

Hey, no question it would be different but I see no reason it couldn't work. We're already seeing a growing number of examples around the country. And, yes, a number of these efforts have failed.

Even the smallest newspapers have massive overhead. Paper, ink, printing presses, etc. That means you need LOTS of advertisements. What I'm envisioning has virtually no overhead. A few hundred dollars a year for web hosting. You could cover a lot of local news for the tiniest fraction of what a "real newspaper" costs.

I suspect that some small town papers are morphing in this direction already and one day the print edition will just disappear and the transition will be complete.

"I'm mad as hell and... anonymous!"

One of our reporters stepped on blogger toes earlier this week. Steve Walsh is a reporter for The Missourinet, a radio network headquartered in Jefferson City. He took over the network blog a few weeks back and has been doing a good job with it. The post in question attempted to make some "distinctions" between MSM bloggers and "political" bloggers.

"...while the MSM bloggers represent their media outlets and, therefore, must be truthful and accurate ... the vast majority of the political bloggers are unaccountable ... and sometimes fall short of telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

Ouch. That's a commonly held view by a lot of reporters. And a lot of folks --bloggers and the public alike-- would question the "must be truthful and accurate" part but that's not what this post is about.

One of the blogs Steve "called out" is Fired Up Missouri. The blog represents the Democratic view of things and the blogger goes by the pseudonym "Howard Beale." Howard Beale was the fictional news anchor in the film Network.

"Howard Beale" fired back and called Steve to task for a story he did some months ago. Your normal blogosphere kerfuffle.

Steve responded and made what I consider the check-mate move. He pointed out one key difference between MSM blogs like his and Fired Up Missouri. Steve signs his posts and the blogger at Fired Up Missouri does not.

This point trumps all others in my opinion. And adds heavy irony to the choice of the pseudonym "Howard Beale."

"I want you to get up out of your chairs... go over to your computers... and post an angry rant to your blog... anonymously." See? Doesn't work.

But as luck --and some good detective work-- I have discovered the identity of "Howard Beale" and will reveal it here at 5:00 p.m. this Friday. I think you'll be shocked.

Disclosure: The company I work for, Learfield, is the parent company of The Missourinet, the company Steve Walsh works for. I should also point out that I have come out here as supporting Barack Obama. I don't think of myself as a Democrat because if he wasn't running I wouldn't be voting for the Democratic candidate. But if I have a leaning, it's more toward the views expressed on Fired Up Missouri.

"Shovelware," "repurposing" and facing reality

Found an interesting idea at "Teaching Online Journalism":

"It is time to stop talking about repurposing and instead to start a discussion on how to re-imagine journalism."

She proposes a radical (but obvious) shift in priorities:

"What some newsrooms (e.g., The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) have done is turn the workflow around — in a way that makes sense when the number of subscribers to the print product is decreasing and the number of online visitors is increasing: Make “Web first” the rule, in all cases. Produce for online, write for online, shoot for online, design for online. And then “repurpose” for the dying media — the print newspaper and the local TV newscast."

Dying media?! Yikes! I don't want to be in the staff meeting the first time someone blurts that out.

"If the news is that important it will find me."

This just in... the young process information differently. According to this story at NYT.com, "...younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well — sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter — reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com — with a social one."

"A December survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press looked at how media were being consumed this campaign. In the most striking finding, half of respondents over the age of 50 and 39 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds reported watching local television news regularly for campaign news, while only 25 percent of people under 30 said they did."

"Rather than treating video-sharing Web sites as traditional news sources, young people use them as tools and act as editors themselves."

One quote in the story really jumped out at me:

“If the news is that important, it will find me.”

What does this mean for those of us in the news business?

Sound bites, talking points and YouTube

Really interesting story at Politico by Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej about how YouTube is helping move us away from sound bite coverage to something more substantial.

"In the 1968 presidential election, the average amount of time given to a sound bite from presidential candidate on the network news shows was 43 seconds. In 1972 it dropped to 25. By 1988, it had shrunk to 9.8 seconds, and in 1996, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs and the Brookings Institution, to just 8.2 seconds. By 2004, a study by USC and the University of Wisconsin found that it had risen slightly to 10.3 seconds, but for all intents and purposes this was hardly much of an improvement.

Until now, all of national politics has operated within the context of those shrinking numbers. Since TV was the only way to reach millions of voters, and the only way to get your message across was to a) buy expensive airtime for 30-second TV ads or b) get free airtime by saying something memorable (and not damaging, unless aimed at your opponent), successful politicians have gotten very good at sticking to their talking points, speaking in sound-bites, and avoiding gaffes or detailed conversations as much as possible."

My man Obama is proving these assumptions are out of date:

"So far, Obama's videos have been viewed more than 33 million times on YouTube.com — and that's not counting partial views, since YouTube only reports a full viewing as a “view.” His campaign has uploaded more than 800 video clips, and adds several more a day."

In a pre-Internet era, the endless replayings on television of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sound bites denouncing America would probably have deeply damaged Obama's candidacy. But millions of voters have been flocking to the web to watch his 37-minute response to the controversy.

Our longest newscast on our four state radio networks is 4 minutes. Only three of those being news. Even more popular --with affiliates-- are our one-minute "capsules." Formats which demand shorter and shorter sound bites.

But we now routinely post longer --sometimes complete-- interviews with the stories we post to our websites.

I have to believe everyone is better served by new media alternatives.

Ron Paul: Still a candidate, but no longer a "contender"

A reporter for one of our networks referred to Ron Paul the "former GOP presidential candidate"  in a story we ran on Saturday and posted on our website.

It didn't take long for Paul supporters to discover the error launch an obviously coordinated email blitz. Some were nicer than others.

This evening Bob Priddy --the news director-- posted a response on the network blog. I think he struck precisely the right tone. I'm sure we'll find out if Ron Paul supporters agree.

But, all in all, this is a good thing. Our story was technically wrong. Ron Paul is not a "former" candidate. And his supporters let us know about, quickly and in larger numbers. And our network corrected the mistake and responded.

More than half of Americans say they tend not to trust the press

That's one of the findings of a nationwide Harris Poll of 2,302 U.S. adults surveyed online between January 15 and 22, 2008 by Harris Interactive.

"Looking at the press in general, over half (54%) of Americans say they tend not to trust them, with only 30 percent tending to trust the press. Just under half (46%) of Americans say they do not trust television, while one-third (36%) do trust them. Somewhat surprisingly, Internet news and information sites do slightly better as a plurality of Americans (41%) trust them while just one-third (34%) tend not to trust them. And, radio tends to do best among Americans as 44 percent say they tend to trust it and one-third (32%) tend not to trust radio."

As for "trusting radio," are they referring to radio news or radio in a broader sense (talk shows, etc). And why does radio (and the net) earn higher trust than TV and newspapers?

Zogby Poll: 67% View traditional journalism as "out of touch"

Two thirds of Americans - 67% - believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, a new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll shows.

The survey also found that while most Americans (70%) think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, two thirds (64%) are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities.

Meanwhile, the online survey documented the shift away from traditional sources of news, such as newspapers and TV, to the Internet - most dramatically among so-called digital natives - people under 30 years old.

• Nearly half of respondents (48%) said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, an increase from 40% who said the same a year ago.
• Younger adults were most likely to name the Internet as their top source - 55% of those age 18 to 29 say they get most of their news and information online, compared to 35% of those age 65 and older.
• Overall, 29% said television is their main source of news, while fewer said they turn to radio (11%) and newspapers (10%) for most of their news and information.
• Just 7% of those age 18 to 29 said they get most of their news from newspapers, while more than twice as many (17%) of those age 65 and older list newspapers as their top source of news and information.

Web sites are regarded as a more important source of news and information than traditional media outlets - 86% of Americans said Web sites were an important source of news, with more than half (56%) who view these sites as very important.

Most also view television (77%), radio (74%), and newspapers (70%) as important sources of news, although fewer than say the same about blogs (38%).

Why a journalism class leans toward Obama

The Clinton campaign has been complaining they aren't getting a fair shake from the news media. No idea if that's true or not. But Cory Bergman at Lost Remote shares this story:

"This is fascinating. A University of Washington journalism class is aggressively blogging the 2008 campaign. They’re attending primaries and caucuses, cameras and laptops in hand. The professor, David Domke, says he’s noticed a lean towards Obama among the students in part because of the way Obama’s campaign staff respected the bloggers.

“The Obama campaign treated us like pros — they called us back within minutes, set up interviews, got us press passes, went out of their way to make the campaign accessible,” Domke writes. “The Clinton campaign, in contrast, didn’t return a single phone call, didn’t provide press access, and did virtually nothing to encourage our coverage.”

Domke concludes: “The Clinton campaign has made the case that Obama is nothing but rhetoric; he’s supposedly all words, while she’s all action. Our experiences showed us that their campaigns — at least in Seattle — were exactly the opposite. In their treatment of my students, Clinton’s campaign was all talk, while Obama’s was all walk.”

Candidate conference calls

Dave Winer wants to listen to those daily conference calls the candidates have with reporters;

"It seems much of the real action in the campaign happens here, but we (voters, taxpayers, citizens) have no access. I listened to an MP3 of one of the calls, with the chief strategist and communications director of the Clinton campaign. It was fascinating, gave me a picture of how the press and the candidates relate that I had never seen before."

A few years ago I asked one of our reporters to post the audio of one of these conference calls where a bunch of reporters are on with the news-maker.  She was shocked that I asked and explained that the call was "just for reporters" and they decided which portions were news-worthy. And the reporters would not want "just anyone" to hear their questions.

I'm with Mr. Winer. I'd love to hear these calls, raw and unedited. I'll decide what's news and what's spin. No filtering, please. I have to wonder if some reporters might be concerned this could raise questions about their editorial judgment. What they decided to include in the story and what they left out. I fail to see how that could be a problem if their story ended with, "...you can listen to the entire conference call on our website."

Fifty-four pages of pissed off news folk

AngryJournalist.com asks, "Why are you angry today? Tell us what's making you upset at your journalism job. Anonymity guaranteed. No real names."

Google gets into local news

Google News now allows you to localize a section of the stories. Scroll down just beneath the fold for the box to type in your city or zip code. I plugged in my local zip code for Jefferson City:

“This is pretty huge, folks, and it spotlights the need for everybody in the local news business to adopt best practices when it comes to unbundled distribution,” writes Terry Heaton. True enough, as Google News ranked #9 in Nielsen-Netratings for December — higher than USAToday.com and WashingtonPost.com.

If you're a local news guy and look at this and say, "Ah, but they missed some stories!" ... you're missing the point.