Media Curmudgeon

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June 27, 2005

Reaction to My J School Conference Posts

I must have hit a aore point in my summary of the the two-day summer conference for the J School's online masters students. Here is one e-mail I received from the organizer of the conference:

"Hi everyone:

Thanks to all of you who helped make our seminar for the online students a great success. We’ve received very positive responses to the program and the students found it to be exceptionally helpful in form and content. Not surprisingly, the students are excited about what’s happening at the School of Journalism and with the Reynolds Institute.

Most importantly, they very much appreciated your taking the time to present your ideas and to meet with them regarding their programs of study. I’m pleased to report that we have five or six students who are ready to begin work on the thesis so in the very near future we can expect several new online graduates.

Several of us involved in the seminar were rather amused by the online comments of one of the presenters, Charlie Warner, who evidently has a blog at www.mediacurmudgeon.com. It isn’t among the blogs any of us read, but we were aware of it since he referred to the students. If you access his most recent blog, you may be surprised to learn that as a faculty we are ignorant of blogs and their potential impact on journalism and we are mired in the past. Those of you who have blogs of your own or who do research in new media will be particularly surprised, I imagine.

In the spirit of accuracy, I did correct the record for the students with a post to the online portion of the seminar.

Thanks again for helping make this a great experience for the students. Bye for now— it’s Sunday morning, and I have an early tee-time.

Best, Margaret

Margaret E. Duffy, Ph. D.
Chair, Dept. of Advertising"

Pretty defensive, I think, particularly if you re-read my summary. However, the following e-mail was sent to student participants, which was even more defensive, but I'll let you form your own opinion:

"Hi everyone: For those of you who were able to attend our seminar, thanks for your smart and enthusiastic participation. It was great to be with you and I'm looking forward to seeing your progress in the master's program.

I should make a quick point: I think our friend Charles Warner is confused. Please go to mediacurmudgeon.com and read his comments about the seminar, particularly in regard to blogging. I suggest you read it first, but my response is as follows: I think this blog entry highlights several issues related to blogging: first, the bloggers are frequently inaccurate in their statements and don't base their comments on well-researched evidence. For example, a number of J-School faculty have blogs including at least one of the presenters; many do research in new media for major corporations. In addition, many media experts do not agree that blogs are the linchpin of the journalism of the future. Second, bloggers contribute to a culture that sacrifices civility and doesn't value reasoned discourse. I guess this underscores why we need thoughtful journalists, citizens, and academics. Oh, and I think accuracy, spelling and grammar are good ideas as well."

OK, let's hear it for civil discourse!

But because it's my blog and, therefore, I can have the last word, I still believe what I said in my summary of the conference is right, that several of the presenters, who are journalism academics, were mired in issues in the past, the recent past to be sure, and that the students at the conference were much more up to date on the rapidly changing world of journalism and technology than the academics who presented were.

In spite of the defensive posture of Professor Duffy, many of the students attending the conference told me privately that they agreed with me.

Posted by Charles Warner at 2:46 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

June 25, 2005

...More

June 25, 2005, COLUMBIA, MO - The final session is about "Saving Journalism." The students are divided into groups of four and are supposed to come up with answers to the following questions:

1. What should the news media responses be to the challenges of news credibility?
2. How should news look into in the future so that the media can reach demographics now apparently alienated from traditional media?
3. As a team, develop the following:
a. The top five threats to news credibility.
b. Your team's top five ideas for restoring news credibility.
c. Your scenario for what news will look like in June 2010.

SUMMARY

The conference has been very good--the best of the three summer conferences for the online masters degree program that I have attended. It was thematically well organized and the presenters (other than myself) were excellent. They were more interactive than in the past, which is a lesson well learned, as the faculty presenters must have learned from feedback that participants don't like to be lectured two for two days and prefer to give their input to problems and questions.

The best session was Lee Wilkins's ethical role-playing case study and then George Kennedy's session on the reasons for the decline of media credibility.

Several weeks ago, in preparation for the conference, I suggested that we allow students to blog about the conference and have a bulletin board on the Web set up so that they could all post their blogs as the conference proceeded. The powers that be turned it down. During the two days of listening to the conference, blogs were mentioned minimally. It is clear that the faculty at the J School neither understands what blogs are nor what impact they have had or will have on journalism. It was also clear that the journalism academics are mired on issues in the past, the recent past to be sure, but the students are much more up to date on the rapidly changing world of journalism and technology than the faculty is. It is too bad that the faculty didn't turn the conference over to the students and learn more from them. This final session might go a little way toward correcting this.

Posted by Charles Warner at 4:04 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

More....

June 25, 2005, COLUMBIA, MO - Saturday afternoon. Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, Esther Thorson, is giving a presentation titled "News Credibility from an Advertsing Point of View." Journalists converege from public opinion. The public as a whole considers itself more conservative than journalists do. This comes from an Annenberg study. For example, 59% of journalists favor same-sex marriage, versus 28% of the public. Seventeen percent of journalists attend religious serives weekly, versus 40% of the public does.

From the study, journalists ae seen as arrogant. For example, 86% of journalists think media get their facts straight; 45% of public says they do. Scandals and anonymous sources have damaged credibility. Bloggers have damaged mainstream news credibility (hooray for bloggers!).

The conservative campaign against the media is working, according to Eric ALterman's What Liberal Media. Thorson quotes Nicholas Lemann's New Yorker arricle: "Conservatives take it as axiomatic that if most reporters employed in this mainstream media are liberal, that's all you need to know about them."

She also quotes Phil Myers's Societal Influence Model for the Newspaper Industry that shows that a newspaper's quality leads to credibility, which leads to both circulation increases and societal influence, which both lead to profitability. Thus, quality journalism is profitable.

When news was a monopoly and people had few choices, there was no need to develop preferences. As news media proliferated, evaluating them and deciding among them became necessary. This meant the credibilty became Attitude Toward the Brand. Thus, attitude toward an ad drives the purchase. Thus, attitude (liking, emotion toward) drives purchase of a newspaper.

An experiment in a PH.D dissertation showed that news is much more credible than an ad. A news story about a brand is much more credible than an ad for that brand. Unfortunately, the unintended consequences of this study is that it indicates that advertisers should not spend money on advertsing but spend it on PR and prodcut placement, like Toyoto's recent attempt to get magazine editors to include their products in editorial content.

Thorson and Peng did a study that looked at attitudes about "Foxified" news. Foxified news was patriotic, supportive of Bush. Both left- and right-leaning respondents prefrred the Foxified news. The news makes people feel better, thus they like. Left-leaning news is more complex, more pessimistic, thus people don't feel good about it, feel it's negative.

Esther suggests that newspapers: 1) Don't measure just credibility; add attitude toward the media. 2) Quit subtracting resources from newsrooms so that news quality increases. 3) Profile news audineces in more sophisticated ways. 4) Diversify news products to respond to audience profiles. Esther believes that newspapers, therefore, must do a lot more research, whcih is to be expected from a researchiner. But she is right. Arrogance can be overcome by doing and paying attention to research about the needs and likes of their audiences. 5) Educate K-12 about how news helps citizens govern themselves, serves as a watchdog over government and business. 6) Encourage audiences to participate in creating news. She is advocating citizen journalism, I think.

She reinfoces George Kennedy's point about objectivity being impossible and that it is vitally important for journalists to be transparent--tell audiences where you are coming from--from what point of view or orientation. Also, news organizations should be open to input from their audience, readers. E-mailing newspaper ombudsmen is an example.

Posted by Charles Warner at 2:09 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

Even More

June 25, 2005, COLUMBIA, MO - George Kennedy's session at the J School conference. Geroge is an even bigger curmudgeon than I am, so he's fun. He's discussing bias, negativity, and objectivity in journalsim.

He reported on a recent survey he and the J School conducted. The public believes that journalism is too negative, too politically biased, but generally credible and useful. These conflicting opinions pose many dilemmas. George asks the students to comments on the survey findings.

One of the students, who is an anchor on a local cable television channel, said that he got the feeling from responses from viewers that people who shop at Wal-Mart view a lot more than people who shop at Nordstrom's.

One lower income family in the survey said they had stopped watching TV because there was too much screaming and were now relying on Time magazine for news and they thought that the rich and powerful had too much influence on the media. The family were also outraged at what they perceived to be the pervasive invasion of privacy by the news media.

A question came up about "who is a journalist?" Geroge says its anyone who reports on current events to the public is a journalist--a broad definition. George preferes a broad definition, like James Carey's definition that journalism is a "society's conversation with itself." Thus BIll O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, sports writers, gossip columnists are all part of journalism. Thus, Geroge believes that the public, as reflected in the sruvey he's reporting on, beleives in this broader definition of journalism is embraced by the general public. He believes that Bill and Rush must be part of the conversation about journalism because they are perceived to be journalists.

Bottom line of the survey is that people generally fell that what journalists do is important but that they don't do it well. Journalists are not living up to their own standards. THus, the need for journalism is not diminishing but the form of that journalism is up for grabs--the pipeline is changing.

In the survey, 85 percent of the people beleive that the media is biased and the bias is a liberal bias. People tend to see themselves as conservative. Geroge believes that this liberal dias is real and that it is built into the definition of journalism, which is to help the afflicted, to catch the crooked politician, to question authority. Journalists ought to exercise the watchdog role, to give voice to the underdog.

The other problem is that people few journalism as negative, but, this too is bult into journalism's definition. For example, "airplane lands safely; no busnesses lied today." News is about events that are different, so it is a fact that news will be, in as sense, negative.

Objectivity is also misapplied by journalists today. Objectivity should mean that you have an open mind, that you look at both sides, that you are transparent, especially about your methodology. Kennedy quotes the book The Elements of Journalism who says that the atuhors claim that journalists are not transparent enough, never say, "here are the limits of this report." Don't talk about our limitations. Thus, the biggest problem is that we, as journalists, are not living up to our own standards. Thus, we can't criticize our audience for not understanding us if we haven't expalined our standards.

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:02 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

Even More on J School Conference

June 24, 2005. COLUMBIA, MO - More this afternoon in journalism credibility from professor Stephanie Craft. She talked about the importance of news sources' expectations about the coverage they will receive. When a reporter interviews a source, the perception of accuracy of the eventual story that appears is based on the sources expectations of what the reporter was going to write. The story is almost never the story the source had in mind.

Therefore, it is vital that reporters control the expectations of sources because to reporters their story is just another one of a thousand stories, but to sources it's the biggest thing in their lives this week, this month, this year. Sources will look at the story through a microscrope and scream if they see any perceived errors or any perception of the wrong slant or of important facts left out.

There is no universal consensus as to what constitutes acceptable practices and standards in quoting sources. Most journalists think their standards a re great, it's other news organizations' standards aren't as good. In other words, my newspaper doesn't make mistakes, but other newspapers do.

Another problem is a hierarchy of perceived credibility: The media are awful, not credible. TV as a news source is farily credible; more credible than newspapers. Peter Jennings is credible. When credibility is specified and personal, it is higher. The farther it gets away from a person (thus, the more abstract--like "the media"), the less credibilty there is.

THus, the question is, how do we make the media and journalism more credible. We have to manage our audiences' expectations: Tell sources where the story will appear in the paper, that they are not the focus of the whole story, what the focus of the story is. Also, reporters must anticipate sources' reactions to a story, which means that reporters must have in-depth knowledge of their sources and their past reactions, prejudices, and tendencies.

Credibility isn't a thing, it isn't tangible like a hat, it's a perception in someone's mind. Therefore, these perceptions are molded by advertising, promotion, and marketing of media organizations. THus, the perception of Fox is not that it is a conservative mouthpiece, but us "fair and balanced" because that is how Fox has sold its perception.

The news media can try to overcome its credibility problems by being more transparent--admit mistakes, correct errors, and hold back on nothing. For example, tell readers and viewers that they don't like to use anonymous sources, but when they do to tell people why they are using anonymous sources such a swhistleblowers.

It was a good session, but left some participant confused because there didn't seem to be any solid ideas on how to imporive credibility. Several participants from the military made the best case fro developing respectful relationships between sources and reporters. The result would be responsible reporting instead of gotcha reporting, which is prevalent today.

June 25, 2005. COLUMBIA, MO - The conference continues on Saturday morning. The first session was on the new J School Reynolds Institute and how it plans to do research and projects that will help journalism credibility. Pam Johnson, the director the Institute made a presentation that was not terribly dynamic, but it motivated some energetic and intelligent discussion on how to get media ownership involved in seeking change.

I pointed out that the best medium for infecting ownership with the change virus was throguh viral marketing of the ideas from inside the host--from inside media organizations by the mid-career online students attending this session. Change and quality initiatives boling up from inside an organization can have a profound effect. Let's hope some of the students can do this. The group is very smart and dedicated to change, maybe a little viral marketing for change can work.

The next session is being conducted by professor Lee Wilkins, who teaches ethics at the Journalism School. The session is a role-playing exercise.

Excellent exercise on how to make ethical journalism judgments. It was based on a real-life situation of a newspaper in Spokane who outed a mayor who was bisexual but abused power. Fascinating exercise. The conclusion was that it's OK for a newspaper to lie in roder to do a story that it is, ultimately in the public good. Another thing that comae out the role-play expercise is that it is impossible to do journalism and do no harm. Journalism causes harm to someone even though they may be crooks, abusers of power, or pedofiles.

Posted by Charles Warner at 9:42 AM | Comments (0) | Print |

June 24, 2005

“Solving the Problem of Journalism Credibility: May The Force Be With You.”

J SCHOOL SUMMER CONFERENCE, 2005

“Solving the Problem of Journalism Credibility: May The Force Be With You.”
Remarks by Charles Warner

I am here today to talk about journalism and media credibility. To look at this issue, let’s look at some of the unique attributes of the media.

First, the media can bestow unholy amounts of power, money, and fame to those who are successful.

Add to this fact that the content of the media is developed, produced, and interpreted by creative people who typically have a huge need for attention, love, and self-expression. Thus, the media attracts people who crave power, money, fame, attention, love, and self-expression like a flame attracts moths.

It's an obsessive, instinctual, and deadly attraction. When a month finally achieves the object of its insatiable obsession, it gets burned, but it keeps coming back for more. The obsessive goals of those who choose the media as a career are not merely to achieve power, money, fame, attention, love, and self-expression but always, ever always, for more--their craving is insatiable, for there is never enough power, money, or love.

This craving is not new to the modern media; it's as old as human nature. Those yearnings for power and love fill every human story from the beginning of time and will continue to drive stories far into the future…and in galaxies, far, far away.

In "STAR WARS III: Revenge of the Sith" the latest and last of the "Star Wars" series in which George Lucas neatly brings together the threads of all of the other five "Star Wars" films, he depicts Anakin Skywalker's decent into the Dark Side of the Force. Anakin is tricked and manipulated by a powerful politician and he transforms from a Jedi knight into the evil Darth Vader.

Lucas has acknowledged that his story model for the first "Star Wars" (“Episode IV: A New Hope") came from Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces, in which many ideas are borrowed from Carl Jung. According to Campbell and Jung, the hero is flawed and has to overcome huge obstacles, often with cunning as well as inner and outer strength. “Flawed” means that no one is perfect and that every person has both a good side and a bad side. However, the hero manages to fight off the inner demons and opt for good. The villain is often the mirror image of the hero, flawed, with a good side and a bad side. But, the villain gives in to inner demons and goes over to the Dark Side of The Force.

By the way, what do you think The Force is Lucas’s metaphor for? … I think The Force is Lucas’s metaphor for creativity. If you substitute “creativity” for “The Force” in the original “Star Wars,” in “The Empire Strikes Back,” and in “Return of the Jedi” you’ll see that creativity fits perfectly, which makes sense because Lucas was implying that the Evil Empire—the big movie studios and big corporations—killed creativity. So keep this metaphor in mind.

Well, there is no need to go into detail about the crisis in journalism today—I’m sure others will cover those details—and how, in the perception of the public, the press is evil and has gone over to the Dark Side of The Force. We know that the credibility of the news media, to summarize the Pew Center research, is lower than whale shit. But I do think we need to look into why the news media, journalism, and reporters have reached these depths, and then to look at what needs to be done for redemption. The "Star Wars" epic is about the eventual triumph of good (and creativity) over evil (and institutional control and corruption) and about redemption. Darth Vader redeems himself in the final “Star Wars” episode, “Return of the Jedi,” by killing Emperor Palpatine to save his son, Luke. So, how can “evil” journalists redeem themselves?

Journalism researchers and philosophers a lot smarter than I am will give you many reasons for the decline of journalists’ reputation and credibility. I'm just a salesman. I spent 30 years as a salesman, sales manager, and general manager in broadcasting, whose main focus was the same as it was when I was a salesman and sales manager--selling advertising. When I was a general manager, I hired programmers to create the content that would deliver advertising and I made lots of sales calls. As a general manager I also learned about creative people and how not to manage them--neither I or nor anyone else knows how to manage these valuable, crazy people; give me salespeople any day. I then spent 10 years studying, researching, reading about, and teaching media sales, management, and economics here at the Journalism School. I've written three books about media selling and sales management. I spent four years at AOL helping reorganize its sales effort and developing strategies for selling online advertising.

What I learned in those 45 years of selling, managing salespeople, and teaching sales is what motivates salespeople, what motivates advertisers, what motivates creative people (especially talent), and what motivates people at the top of the media companies I worked in.

It is not just one or two things that motivate salespeople, that motivate advertisers, that motivate creative people (especially talent), and that motivate people at the top of media companies. It is a highly complex mix of needs, desires, and fears that motivate them, and all people have a blend of needs and fears that is unique to each person. What a good salesperson or a good manager does is to find the two or three things people need, want, or fear the most and then appeal to those desires and fears. Salespeople generally appeal to the desires and fears of individual people. Communicators such as journalists, propagandists, marketers, and politicians appeal to the needs and fears of the aggregate--whoever the target audience is, and it may be the nation as a whole.

Needs and fears shift, too. That's why advertisers and politicians conduct focus groups and surveys-- to find out what people want, like, and fear. Before 9/11 people wanted freedom and peace more than they wanted security. After 9/11 they wanted security more. Needs and fears changed, so the appeal of politicians changed.

In “Star Wars,” when Anakin Skywalker became a Jedi, he embraced the values of the Jedi. He renounced material goods and dedicated his life to service—to serving freedom and democracy. He had immense courage and no fear. But Chancellor Palpatine, like Iago, sowed a seed of doubt that was fertilized by a growing fear that Anakin harbored about his beloved wife, Padame, dying in child birth. Palpatine played on that fear and turned Anakin away from focusing outwardly on service but inwardly on himself and his fear.

When I first came to the Journalism School in 1988, I used to ask students why they came to the J School, why they wanted to be journalists. The answer I got most often in 1988 was, "To make a difference" or "To change things." I loved their idealism. I thought it was admirable. I think that in 1988, 15 years after Watergate, Woodstein, Deep Throat (excuse me, I mean Mark Felt), and the film "All The President's Men," that the religion of two creative reporters and a newspaper saving democracy and bringing down a crooked president was still thrilling to idealistic, aspiring journalists. But the religion, the idealism changed.

Five years later, in 1993, when I became interim chair of the Broadcast News department, one of the things I instituted was for the faculty to interview undergraduate students at the University who wanted to get into the Broadcast News department. I and the Broadcast News faculty at the time thought there were too many undergraduate students who wanted "to be on television." I remember one student, who just barely had the grade-point average to get in to the Broadcast News department saying to me, "Ever since I was Miss Teenage Ohio, I've always loved being on TV." She wanted attention, she wanted what she thought was the glamour of television. She, like too many others, didn't want to make a difference or change the world, she wanted to be famous.

When I got my masters degree in journalism, I remember one of my professors quoting the great columnist from the Chicago Daily News, Mike Royko, who wrote that "reporters should have the same relationship with politicians that a barking dog has to a chicken thief." I thought that was right. When I first came to the J School, I remember reading the Walter Williams Creed on a plaque on the wall and welling up with pride -- I was a teacher at the greatest journalism school in the world. I read the first two lines of the Williams Creed over several times, "I believe in the profession of journalism. I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of their responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of a lesser service than the public service is betrayal of this trust." If any of you read the first column by the New York Times’ new Public Editor, Barney Calame, a J School graduate, you will see that the tenants of the Williams creed are reflected in Calame’s column—those values and principles are still alive.

George Lucas could have read the Walter Williams Creed and adapted it as the creed for the Jedi knights in “Star Wars.” (I can just hear Obi-Wan Kenobi saying something like “being a Jedi is a public trust.”) But I believe that too many journalists today have turned to The Dark Side, as Anakin Skywalker did when he became Darth Vader. Too many reporters have been seduced by power, money, fame, and the needs for attention, love, and self-expression…and seduced by fear. Too many are focused inward on their own needs and not outward on serving or preserving democracy.

Too many reporters in Washington are too close to their sources, too desirous of sitting at the table of power--of being on the Evil Empire’s A list--and too fearful. Too many are filled with fear of losing access to the White House or to their government beat sources, too fearful of losing their jobs, too fearful of losing their salaries, their fame, and their power.

The power of the press has turned from an opportunity to make a difference to an aphrodisiac for personal gratification for too many journalists.

If there is a craving for power, money, and fame in too many reporters, multiply that by a thousand and you have the motivation for top media executives. Because of that unholy, Dark Side confluence of power, money, and fame that the media can offer, obsessed people lust for those trappings of success. I’m not sure what causes that lust. It may be their family backgrounds or the American culture of materialism and narcissism that lures people in the media to the Dark Side, but lures them it does.

Therefore, when we want to know what happened to journalistic credibility, as Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and it's us." It's the reporters who want bylines, scoops, and ultimately the fame and power those bylines and scoops give them who are at fault. It's the greedy media executives who want more who are at fault. That's right, not just power and profits, but simply more. They are addicts of power and money and the more they get, the more they want--the bigger toke it takes to satisfy them.

A former student of mine was fired from a TV station, where he was in charge of news. He was fired because the corporate owner needed a scapegoat because the newsroom was about to vote to unionize. The issue the newsroom was up in arms about was year-after-year layoffs ordered by corporate headquarters. The newspeople wanted some job security and they felt the union might give it to them. Why were there layoffs year after year, which caused everyone to put in more hours? Because corporate insisted that the station maintain a 30 percent profit margin! Supermarkets think they are doing a superb job if they hit a three percent profit margin. Thirty percent is unconscionable. Thirty percent profits have nothing to do with serving the public.

Or how about this story from www.citypages.com in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and I quote: "When Par Ridder was named publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press in March 2004, some might have wondered how a 35-year-old managed to rise to a position of such eminence. Not that long before, after all, Ridder had been a mere advertising manager (and then publisher) at a small California daily, the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

The answer, of course, lies in the last name: Par Ridder is the son of Tony Ridder, who is CEO and chairman of the board at Knight Ridder, the giant, penny-pinching newspaper chain that owns the Pi Press.

But nepotism, young Par learned recently, isn't without its downsides. Under rules designed to protect shareholders, Knight Ridder is required to disclose compensation figures for family members of company office holders. In other words, folks like Par. Consequently, after Knight Ridder released its proxy statement last month, rank-and-file Pi Press employees learned for the first time what their leader actually earns.

Par, it turns out, is making pretty nice coin: In 2004, he hauled in $394,045 in annual salary, plus a quarter-million-dollar "relocation bonus" to cover his moving expenses. If he has a few bucks left over, this might be a good year to send Dad an extra nice Father's Day card."

That kind of nepotism is unconscionable, too. What do you think happened to the credibility of the press when news of Par Ridder’s compensation became public?

And also remember, because of the religious fervor of journalists and their over-supply, the masters of corporate greed are not paying the reporters who wear down their shoe leather a decent wage—they are keeping the unconscionable profits for themselves.

So what is the solution for this epidemic of corporate greed -- this lust for power and profits and, perhaps even more motivating, the fear of losing them? Some people think the solution is to be found in convergence and rapidly advancing technology.

Those who look to technology for the solution hope that media in the long tail (the long tail of the normal distribution curve)--or a multitude of small, niche media--will break the stranglehold of the mainstream media and allow for a diversity of opinion and more courageous journalism. Let’s hope.

I believe that blogs, for example, are an important development in the media and in journalism, but it will be at least a decade before the majority of people of all ages get their news online from news sites and blogs as younger people do now. The newspaper is not as big a dinosaur as many prognosticators think. One thing that will help newspapers is that soon papers downloaded as PDF files will count as circulation, as they are in Spain. However, newspapers must find a way to move their content online and a way to monitize that online content so they can afford to cover global stories in depth.

It was interesting that Rupert Murdoch made a similar point in a speech about the future of newspapers on April 13 to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Here’s what Murdoch said:

“Scarcely a day goes by without some claim that new technologies are fast writing newsprint’s obituary. Yet, as an industry, many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably complacent. Certainly, I didn’t do as much as I should have after all the excitement of the late 1990’s. I suspect many of you in this room did the same, quietly hoping that this thing called the digital revolution would just limp along.

Well it hasn’t … it won’t …. And it’s a fast developing reality we should grasp as a huge opportunity to improve our journalism and expand our reach.”

Do you believe that Rupert Murdoch wants to “improve journalism?” I don’t. Do you believe that he wants to “expand” his reach?” I do. Do you think he’s Darth Vader in a business suit? I do. Murdoch wants more…more reach, which leads to bigger audiences, which leads, inevitably in Murdoch’s world, to more profits. He’ll find a way to monitize news content on the Web, I just hate to think of what that content might be…celebrity porn? Paris Hilton on the front page every day? So, your best news sources in the future might well be those who fulfill the promise of the real “Deep Throat,” and I don’t mean Mark Felt.

Porn or entertainment- and celebrity-oriented soft-porn journalism, the type Murdoch specializes in, might be the digital answer. The Pew-Center funded Annual Report on American Journalism, “The State of the News Media 2005,” on www.journalism.org, listed five major trends in the media. The first one was: “There are now several models of journalism, and the trajectory is toward those that are faster, looser, and cheaper.” In other words, the trajectory points directly at the Web, which is perfect for “looser” material.

If newspapers don’t find a way to migrate and monitize their content, they will wind up as costly newsletters for the old and the wealthy, as suggested in the online video, EPIC 2015, I asked you to watch.

But blogs and news sites will continue to hurt the ratings of the three network evening newscasts—news sites such as Google, Yahoo, MSNBC, CNN.com, and the best of them all in my view, the BBC Web site, which this two weeks ago became the most linked to news site on the Web because it made all of the BBC content available for anyone to use.

As a result of network audience declines, I predict that one of the networks, probably CBS, will pare down its news division considerably and move its news programming to cable, as Fox has done, and that ABC and NBC will substantially reduce expenses by getting rid of high-priced news readers such as Katie Couric. The networks have two choices: One is to emphasize cute, personality enhanced, glamorous, very expensive news readers (talent who “want to be on TV”). Is Paris Hilton the next CBS Evening News anchor? The other choice is to emphasize less expensive, expert reporters who know what they are talking about. I think CBS will try the glitzy, entertainment-oriented approach, which will fizzle, and then the pendulum will swing and CBS will bail out of news and NBC and ABC will go the route of using less expensive, expert reporters (young reporters—Bob Schieffer isn’t the answer).

The same trend will be exacerbated at local television stations: More coverage of Paris Hilton, smaller newsrooms, more use of Video News Releases, especially in smaller markets where the profit pressures are extreme. The only hope for local TV stations is when they go digital and can program multiple channels. But multiple channels of what?

There are two other trends that will affect the news business—notice I didn’t say journalism, but the news business, emphasis on business. Those are publishing and sharing. Everyone in the world today can be a publisher—can publish whatever they want on the Web. In five years, as content proliferates and ordinary people participate in creating and publishing content, including news content, the era of the citizen journalist will arrive. Citizen, or grassroots, journalism has arrived in the form of Oh My News in South Korea where 90 percent of the homes have access to the Web via very high speed broadband connections (and where J School Professor Clyde Bentley is currently giving a seminar). It has arrived in Columbia via the innovative My Missourian. I urge all of you to go to My Missourian at www.mymissourian.com and look at grassroots journalism in action.

What I’m urging you to do is to use the Force—your own innate creativity—to find new ways to define and practice journalism. So, get involved now. Start contributing in creative ways: start blogging and start podcasting via radio stations such as KYOU in San Francisco, which just announced an all-podcasting format, or via Open Source at www.radioopenscource.org.

When people publish, they want to share what they publish with friends and others in their interest and affinity groups. Thus, the next important software innovation will be something that allows Web users to share their content easily, simply, and quickly.

The two trends of publishing and sharing will further fragment the news media—more content in the long tail, more niche content, which means less reach for the mainstream media, thus putting more profit pressure on them, thus leading to more cost cutting.

But cost-saving maneuvering will be to maintain high profit margins, not to increase the quality of the news, Rupert Murdoch’s posturing aside. The only way that the quality of news will increase is for top media executives to emphasize quality journalism, view the media as a public trust, and be dedicated to the values that Walter Williams articulated, not dedicated just to high profits and their own outrageously high compensation. But do you think that Les Moonves of CBS and Tom Freston of MTV, who are being paid over $20 million a year apiece (not counting huge housing allowances for staying in their own places instead of a hotel), care about quality journalism? Of course not.

It will come as no surprise to those of you who have taken my management courses that I believe that the problems journalism face are primarily management problems. I believe what will save journalism’s credibility and redeem journalism is better management. Things will change only when committed journalists, who view their profession as one of public service, become CEOs of major media companies.

Therefore, I urge all of you not to make your goal to be the editor or publisher of your newspaper or news director or general manager of your TV station, but to be CEO of your parent company. When you are the CEO, tell your board of directors that you want to make only five times what the average employee makes, that you'll target a profit margin of 10 percent, and that you'll invest in a quality news product for the coming year and the coming decade, even if it means going below that 10 percent profit margin. Quality journalism that serves the public, that catches chicken thieves (even if it has to use anonymous sources such as Deep Throat), and that has relevant, personalized content delivered on the Web can be profitable (but not 30 percent profitable). When you become CEO, also get a piece of the action instead of a high salary so that you can wind up making some money—not $200 or $300 million, but maybe $2 or $3 million, which you can live on quite nicely after you give 25 percent to the J School.

Journalism’s problems will only be solved when journalists become CEOs and top executives in media companies, and by excellent journalism education. You must strive to become leaders in your profession and leaders in giving money to or being involved in journalism education, because it, too, like the media, cannot exist without money.

And, on your journey to become CEOs and major donors and committed teachers…may you find new definitions for journalism and new ways to create and distribute news and the truth, a new religion, as it were…”May The Force be with you...always.”

Posted by Charles Warner at 2:07 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

More On J School Conference

Daryln Moen, a professor at the J School is giving a session on media credibility. He's talking about the problem of accuracy, which hurts media credibilty. He reported on a study fro The Oregonian which indicated that the sources of errors in newspapers were: 1) Working from memory (rather than notes), 2) Making assumptions, 3) Dealing with second-hand sources.

The Solutions, Moen proposes, are: 1) Journalsits acknowledge errors in newspapers, but they believe "others" make them (other papers, not theirs). 2) 33% of journalists overall and 47% of top editors see facts of errors in their newspapers once a week. Thus, the solutions are to Make Journalists Accountable by: 1) Sending random sampling of clips of sources from every issue along with a questionnaire asking if the clips and quotes were accurate. 2) Notify reprters and editors of any errors cited in responses to the survey. 3) Make error record a part of every journalists' employment record.

Moen suggests that newspapers Develop a Culture of Accuracy by: 1) Create a written policy on verification standards and 2) Enforce Standards. He also suggests doing accuracy checks:
1) Deep-seated aversion to pre-publication checks in our industry, 2) If we can't defend our stories before publication, how can we defend them afterwards, 3) With your agreement, sources can change quotes to make them clearer or more accurate--your decision, 4) Reporters must acknowledge that not everything in their notes is accurate (tape record interviews is better tahn notes), 5) Pre-publication checking with sources allows you to check context and errors of omission (context of quotes is often vital), 6) Checking often results in additional information. Plus, Keep a Database of Errors: Keep a record of all errors, categorize them, reports results to staff and readers, develop training sessions to show how to correct common errors.

Moen suggests using fewers anonymous sources: Readers don't believe anonymous sources, use them only when you have to (whistleblowers, Deep Throat, etc.)

He says: "Write it down, get it right, Every little detail, day and night." Lyric from "Corps of Discovery" opera about Lewsis and Clark. He also says being first is not as imprtant as getting it right--readers seem to agree.

Pre-publication checking is important to producing more accurate jounalism if journalists don't get defensive, take input objectively, abut don't lose editorial control.

More later this afternoon.

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

Missouri J School Conference

Friday, June 24, 2005. COLUMBIA, MO. I am attending the 2005 Summer Conference for online masters degree students in the Missouri School of Journalism. This is my last such conference because I will not be teaching in the online program any longer, so I thought I'd blog my last hurrah.

The topic of the conference is the decline of media and journalism credibility and what can be done about it. The frist speaker is Dean Mills, dean of the J School. He is going over a nine-point list of research findings that detail the problems facing journalism today. There are not a lot of solutions in the list, but one of the ppoints of emphasis is to increase the newsroom training in ethics by academics.

Good luck. My experience is that that top management in media companies are not interested in or willing to pay for ethcis training in a business that top media executives believe is the entertainment business.

A student asks a question about how the list was established. The dean said that it was researched based and that a group of experts in a recent conference came up with the list.

A student asks what is the value of a masters degree. Good question. Dean says not to see a degree as a license to practive journalism--not a credential. Journalists must not separate themselves from the people--like lawyers or doctors. Journalists must represent the people.

There is a discussion now about credentialing--who is a journalist? Bloggers have complicated the question. One student is saying that the credential is the person's reputation. Buat what does a new person in the filed do? How do you establish a reputation?

A discussion about professionalism is going on. The students seem to want some clear-cut rules, some clear defininitions, but the dean says that attempts to license journalists have failed in the past.

More later...after I give my "May the Force Be With You Speech."

Posted by Charles Warner at 9:49 AM | Comments (0) | Print |

June 9, 2005

Fathers Day

Fathers Day is coming up June 19 while I am on vacation in Spain. So, there are two pieces of good news: 1) I'm going on vacation and will enjoy myself and 2) there will be no more Media Curmudgeon blogs until July.

There are several media moguls who should give their dads huge thank-you gifts for Fathers Day because the odds against them getting big media jobs are about a trillion to one without pop.

Longest odds go to idiot son James Dolan of Cablevision. He's not only dumb, but he's mean and nasty to boot. I don't need to go into the details about how awful he is, because they are in the news every day.

Rupert Murdoch's son, Lachlan, is chief operating officer and executive vice president of News Corporation and expected to succeed his father. What are the odds of him getting that job if his name were, say Jackson? I do hear that Lachlan is smart and a pretty good guy to work for, so he might have become a VP by now if his name were Jackson.

Or how about Shari Redstone, Viacom's Sumner Redstone's daughter? She is expected to be named vice-chairman of Viacom this week. She has no experience in the media, except for running the Redstone-owned National Amusements, Inc, a big chain of theaters. How do you think she'll be accepted in the male-dominated media mogul club? Her gift to dad should be really huge.

How about Par Ridder, the topic of an article in Citypages by Mike Mousedale, who wrote:

"When Par Ridder was named publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press in March 2004, some might have wondered how a 35-year-old managed to rise to a position of such eminence. Not that long before, after all, Ridder had been a mere advertising manager (and then publisher) at a small California daily, the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

The answer, of course, lies in the last name: Par Ridder is the son of Tony Ridder, who is CEO and chairman of the board at Knight Ridder, the giant, penny-pinching newspaper chain that owns the Pi Press.

But nepotism, young Par learned recently, isn't without its downsides. Under rules designed to protect shareholders, Knight Ridder is required to disclose compensation figures for family members of company office holders. In other words, folks like Par. Consequently, after Knight Ridder released its proxy statement last month, rank-and-file Pi Press employees learned for the first time what their leader actually earns.

Par, it turns out, is making pretty nice coin: In 2004, he hauled in $394,045 in annual salary, plus a quarter-million-dollar "relocation bonus" to cover his moving expenses. If he has a few bucks left over, this might be a good year to send Dad an extra nice Father's Day card."

The sadness of these sons and daughters getting ahead is that they probably think they desere their jobs (unrealistically reinforced by their doting parents). Even worse, this nepotisim raises the expectations of spoiled children of media executives who think it's all matter of "who you know" and not about talent.

Well, anyway, happy Fathers Day to James, Lachlan, Shari, and Par. If readers can think of some others who should be sending their dads big Fathers Day gifts, please post them as comments and I'll approve them after June 27.

Posted by Charles Warner at 4:30 PM | Comments (0) | Print |