Category Archives: Journalism

“I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it.”

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“Your authority starts with, “I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it.” If “anyone” can produce media and share it with the world, what makes the pro journalist special, or worth listening to? Not the press card, not the by-line, not the fact of employment by a major media company. None of that. The most reliable source of authority for a professional journalist will continue to be what James W. Carey called “the idea of a report.” That’s when you can truthfully say to the users, “I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it.” Or, “I was at the demonstration, you weren’t, let me tell you how the cops behaved.” Or, altering my formula slightly (but retaining the essence of it…) “I interviewed the workers who were on that oil drilling platform when it exploded, you didn’t, let me tell you what they said.” Or, “I reviewed those documents, you didn’t, let me tell you what I found.” Your authority begins when you do the work. It should be obvious from this that if an amateur or a blogger does the work, the same authority is earned. Seeing people as a public means granting that without rancor.”

— An excerpt from a post by Jay Rosen, advising the next generation of journalists:

“Why network news hasn’t mattered since the seventies”

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Matt Taibbi opens up a family-size can of whup-ass on CBS Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan. Here are a couple of grafs:

“Anyone who wants to know why network television news hasn’t mattered since the seventies just needs to check out this appearance by Logan. Here’s CBS’s chief foreign correspondent saying out loud on TV that when the man running a war that’s killing thousands of young men and women every year steps on his own dick in front of a journalist, that journalist is supposed to eat the story so as not to embarrass the flag. And the part that really gets me is Logan bitching about how Hastings was dishonest to use human warmth and charm to build up enough of a rapport with his sources that they felt comfortable running their mouths off in front of him. According to Logan, that’s sneaky — and journalists aren’t supposed to be sneaky.”

“As to this whole “unspoken agreement” business: the reason Lara Logan thinks this is because she’s like pretty much every other “reputable” journalist in this country, in that she suffers from a profound confusion about who she’s supposed to be working for. I know this from my years covering presidential campaigns, where the same dynamic applies. Hey, assholes: you do not work for the people you’re covering! Jesus, is this concept that fucking hard? On the campaign trail, I watch reporters nod solemnly as they hear about the hundreds of millions of dollars candidates X and Y and Z collect from the likes of Citigroup and Raytheon and Archer Daniels Midland, and it blows my mind that they never seem to connect the dots and grasp where all that money is going. The answer, you idiots, is that it’s buying advertising! People like George Bush, John McCain, Barack Obama, and General McChrystal for that matter, they can afford to buy their own P.R. — and they do, in ways both honest and dishonest, visible and invisible.”

I’ve stopped watching television news for the same reason I’ve stopped donating to political campaigns and answering our land-line phone. Almost all bullshit.

TV station gets iPads, saves on paper and looks hip

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Last week, news anchors and producers at Barrington Broadcasting Group’s WFXL Albany, Ga., replaced their paper scripts with electronic versions displayed on the iPad. They project the move will save nearly $10,000 a year in paper costs. From the original story:

“Newscast scripts are composed as usual. But rather than printing to paper, the final version is formatted as a PDF file and transmitted to each iPad via e-mail. The PDF translation is handled by iAnnotate by Aji.LLC, a $7 program sold and downloaded via Apple’s App Store.

Although WFXL doesn’t employ iPads as teleprompters, it could if it chose to. Apple’s App Store already offers two third-party applications for scrolling copy on the iPad: Nairo Techology’s iPrompter for $2.99 and Bombing Brain Interactive’s Teleprompt+ for $9.99, which allows any iPhone to double as a remote controller.

In addition, hardware vendor Bodelin Technologies offers a new version of its through-the-lens ProPrompter HDi display, which mounts the iPad as a prompter monitor on both studio and field cameras. The $850 device includes “professional” display software, which is also controllable through an iPhone or iPod Touch.”

And they look pretty cool. No small thing in the world of TV news.

I predict it will become common practice to cover the Apple logo with the station logo.

Why radio news guys don’t do social

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Papper: Radio News Does not Make Use of Social Media from Poynter Institute on Vimeo.

From Mashable: “Although Facebook and Twitter are popular with TV stations, only 27% of radio newsrooms use Twitter and 1% have a Facebook page. The survey’s conductor, Robert Papper of Hofstra University, said the contrast in usage is due to staff size. “If you had a staff of three or more, you were involved in a number of social networking things. If you did not hit that magic number you were not involved.” He explains why radio stations do not participate more in social media in the video clip above.”

Steve Safran on RTDNA@NAB 2010

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“The future of broadcasting” is the title or subtitle or subtext of nearly every panel here. But I’m not seeing a lot of the future. I’m seeing and hearing people who want to keep a hold onto the past. They want to do it in some futuristic ways, sure, but using a template that has passed its expiration date.”

“…as the RTDNA winds down its relationship with NAB, I’m a little sad. When I first started coming to this convention in the early 2000s, the discussions were about “the future.” The discussions are still about “the future” except it’s all Back to the Future. 3D. Protecting journalism from the hoards of camera-toting iPhoners. Broadcasting television in a slightly different way. Fundamentally, the discussion may be about the future, but it’s not nearly futuristic enough.” — Full post here.