Category Archives: Journalism

“Shovelware,” “repurposing” and facing reality

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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.”

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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

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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.

iPhone users love mobile web

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Iphone150NYT Bits Blog reports the results from a January survey (of 10,000 adults) of media habits of iPhone users:

84.8 percent of iPhone users report accessing news and information from the hand-held device. That compares to 13.1 percent of the overall mobile phone market and 58.2 percent of total smartphone owners – which include those with Blackberries and devices that run Windows.

74.1 percent of iPhone users listen to music on their iTunes-equipped device. Only 27.9 percent of smartphone users listen to music on their phone and 6.7 percent of the overall mobile-phone-toting public listens to music on their mobile device.

Ron Paul: Still a candidate, but no longer a “contender”

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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

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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”

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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

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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.”

Apple wants to be your news and information station

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“An Apple patent reveals that the company is working on a podcast aggregator that would dynamically collect the news that you are interested in and deliver a personalized news podcast. In other words – Apple wants to be your news and information station. The system would allow you to:

* Subscribe to and personalize a podcast with software like iTunes;
* Select news segments selected from a variety of categories; and
* Automatically download the personalized podcast to your Apple TV, iPod or iPhone.

The custom news show could consist of a 5 minute segment from CNN on the day’s national news, a 5 minute segment from a local news station, and a 10 minute segment on sports highlights from ESPN.

Once you select the playlist of content that you’re interested in, Apple’s servers would request the latest podcast content from content creators, stitch the segments together and then deliver the personalized podcast to iTunes or other podcast software. As part of this process, Apple could insert targeted advertising dynamically.” – Apple Insider via Podcasting News

Hmmm. A listener in the states served by our networks could include one of our 4 minute state newscasts, a three minutes sports report and a farm report. That “stitching segments together” part is what I find intriguing. Terry Heaton wrote about the “unbundling” of media. Is this a “re-bundling” of media?

If I were programming a local radio station, I’d be damned sure I had a killer local newscast/podcast up on iTunes.

Candidate conference calls

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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.”