The Truth Scroll would be a new product that Google would sell to TV networks because it has the data and the technology to do so.
This isn’t my idea. It was first suggested by Head Butler creator and Huffington Post blogger Jesse Kornbluth, but it’s time now to be implemented because things have gotten out of hand, as evidenced by recent research.
On February 19, “On the Media” reported on a study conducted by The Nation that found that “many of the talking heads on cable news were found to also be working as paid lobbyists, often with stakes in the issues they're invited on-air to discuss.” On the same program it interviewed Terry Holt, a frequent guest on cable news programs. OTM indicates that, “He's a prolific talking head, and, also, frequently lobbies on behalf of health insurance companies. He says that he tells cable news producers about his lobbying work, but whether they disclose that to viewers is up to them.”
A Truth Scroll would properly tag these guests with all of their affiliations. For example, the Truth Scroll would indicate that news show guest Tom Ridge is a “former Governor of Pennsylvania, former head of Homeland Security, former advisor to Senator John McCain, and current consultant to several security firms vying for Federal contracts” or “Terry Holt is a Republican operative and insurance company lobbyist who often lobbies against health care reform.”
The Truth Scroll would also instantaneously fact check every statement made by news anchors, hosts, and guests. Google’s search technology is getting faster and better every day and its voice recognition technology is also improving rapidly. Therefore, Google’s smart algorithms should be able to quickly check if Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, or their guests are factual, and display the facts on the Truth Scroll.
Google would sell the Truth Scroll to cable companies and news-oriented Web sites, and these content providers could then charge people for not using it. Yes, reverse pricing or negative option pricing. The notion is that the Truth Scroll would be free to all viewers, but if people didn’t want the truth, they would have to pay to remain ignorant.
Because Fox News has the most viewers by far of any cable news network, this pricing scheme would probably make Fox even richer because most of its viewers are clearly not interested in the truth.
But a Truth Scroll is an idea whose time has come, and it would clearly be a public service. The only problem with it and my pricing scheme is that it would make those who don’t tell the truth even richer. But isn’t that the way it has always been?
Stephen Brill, founder of The American Lawyer and co-founder of Press+, an online pay method for news Web sites, in a sidebar to an article in the March 1 issue of FORTUNE titled “The Future of Reading,” writes “…Press+ has pioneered a metered approach: After someone a read five or 10 or 15 articles a month, say, you start asking him to pay something for it.” I’m not linking to the FORTUNE article because the magazine, which is fading fast from its past glory, does not have its own Web site and the article is not available on the Web.
By charging after reading 10 articles, the Times is virtually assuring that an unknown, but probably vast, number of readers will read nine articles and stop, then go somewhere else to get their news free – the wrong pricing strategy.
In shaping pricing strategy, the NY Times or any company, should begin by asking what its goals are and then what the strategies should be to achieve its goals.
One of the main goals of the online version of the Times is certainly to maximize revenue, both advertising and subscription revenue. These two revenue streams are obviously in conflict because charging subscription fees for content will reduce Web site traffic, which means there will be less traffic and, thus, less advertising revenue.
On the other hand, if a publisher does not charge for content, advertising revenue alone will not be sufficient to cover the costs of responsible, high-quality journalism to satisfy the needs discerning, well educated readers. Therefore, a compromise solution – a hybrid model or strategy – must be found.
Another goal of a publisher is to serve readers as many ads online as possible, which, in turn, means that a publisher wants readers to read lots of articles. The more articles that are read, the more page views there are, and the more ads that can be served.
Another goal of a publisher is to serve ads to a desirable demographic that advertisers will pay more to reach. However, if a publisher gives content away free, it tends to encourage mass sampling and tends to encourage “gluttony, hoarding, thoughtless consumption, waste, guilt, and greed,” according to Chris Anderson in his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Anderson bases his assertion to a large degree on the research of behavioral economists such as Daniel Ariely, and as elucidated in his book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.
Thus, if the goals are to encourage upscale readers to read lots of articles and to discourage freeloaders, who might read just a few articles and might well be less affluent, then wouldn’t it make sense to change a fee (say $1) per article, but after someone has read 10 or more in a week (equivalent to $520 a year), to rebate the per-article fees and price further reading would based on a yearly subscription fee of, for example, $199.
In addition, as readers consume more articles over the 10 weekly, they would receive Frequent Reader bonuses for each additional page they view. If readers click on ads and take action (buy stuff or register or whatever), they would earn triple bonus points. Then, if readers accumulated enough bonus points in such a loyalty program, they could reduce their yearly subscription costs to zero.
Such a system would reward readers for doing the right thing – being loyal to their preferred publications, reading more, and being loyal to those publications’ advertisers.
The NY Times could form a consortium with a limited number of other upscale publications such as the New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Weekly Standard. These publications would agree to aggregate their Frequent Reader reward points into a common pool that could be administered by American Express.
Such a system would allow readers to self-select quality content and advertisers would be willing to pay higher rates for engaged, upscale audiences that like quality content. Such a system would reward readers for purchasing or taking action through the ads in their preferred publications.
The NY Times and Brill have it bass ackwards. They are rewarding freeloaders and punishing frequent, loyal readers, and not giving any incentives to readers to take any action on ads.
It’s time for the Times to rethink its pricing strategy.
"NBC does not appear to understand the sophistication of its audience, or they are targeting a dumb audience, which contradicts Olympic aspiration. The usual offenders are there, working their spin magic on our psyches.
Diet Coke is a proud sponsor of Olympics, Special Olympics, Paralympics, etc. at a time when there is a big push to remove soda vending machines from schools due to an obesity crisis that is crippling our health care. It turns out that soda is as bad for us as cigarettes.
American oil and gas pledge too? They are at the root of the problem, also.
As usual, cars dominate the commercial breaks, and airlines also invest heavily on attaching their brands to our emotions. I hold out more hope for a sustainable future for cars than planes.
My daughters cover their hopeful eyes during NBC spots because their programs are mostly promoting sex and violence, and don't get me started on commercials for video games. Our girls (ages 4 and 7) idolize the Olympic heroes NBC slots between their commercials.
Most offensive is Clean Coal. There is no such thing as clean coal. It is unconscionable to broadcast healthy athletic competition and take money from the number one source of CO2, and allow them to outright lie about their product. Shame on NBC.
For the viewing audience, the Olympics is about sitting back and watching gifted youth passionately pursue their dreams. That is what makes us feel good and motivates us in our routines when we wake up energized. There are companies committed to being part of the solution that combine environment, ethics, and economics. Where is their message using accurate, appropriate and positive advertising? Certainly not in the Olympics.
We want to win, but victory is hollow if not fair. The IOC sets the bar high to level the playing field so aspiring athletes from all countries can try for their personal best, and NBC serves up the most heartwarming stories. Intuitively, the games and the commercials are at odds. Three days after seeing the clean coal spot, that insult of twisting the truth for profit is as enduring an image as any effort in the games.
Is there a profitable message of sustainability and hope to guide the 21st century generation beyond the broken model of 20th century business as usual? As Obama said about Wall Street, any business model based on fossil fuels needs adult supervision. Since the commercial media cannot be counted on to play that role, my and my family's precious viewing time is increasingly going to PBS, where dirty lies are not tolerated.
I ain't no saint, but we do still have a climate crisis that needs to be resolved so the Olympics can continue for another millennium or two, with or without NBC."
Thus, Trump proves he knows as much about climate change as he does about running casinos or having meaningful relationships with women. His knowledge in these areas rivals the expertise and intellectual depth of Sarah Palin on foreign policy and geography.
Why does the media continue to give publicity and celebrity status to Trump and Palin? The answer is the ultimate example of circular and media logic. They get headlines because they are famous, and they are famous because they get headlines.
Fame gets you on television, which in turn, gets you more famous – the celebrity circle.
Thus, their goal is not accomplishment, productivity, creativity, excellence, humor, expertise, or contribution to humanity, but to get headlines and to be famous.
Fame got Trump a prime-time television program on NBC (and we know how much that helped NBC, which owner GE is trying to palm it off on Comcast) and fame got Palin a gig as a commentator on Fox News.
Sarah Palin is imminently qualified to be on Fox News; she’s got a pretty face and nice hair, which probably explains why Donald Trump doesn’t have a gig on Fox News and might well explain why NBC eventually canceled “The Apprentice.”
What should the media do to stop creating these shallow monsters of fame? They should stop publicizing them, stop giving air time and ink to them.
So stop me from writing before I kill again.
It’s the same type of twisted thinking that causes right-to-life fanatics to murder doctors who perform abortions to stop them from what these self-appointed moral policemen consider to be the murder of a fetus.
The Tebow commercial was also a symbolic flag bearer for how low and twisted the thinking of television commercial producers, advertising agencies, and CBS have become. The only exception was the brilliantly conceived and executed Google commercial.
If you were not a thirty-something (or younger) chip-eating, beer-swilling, insensitive, immature, macho male, you probably noticed the distinctive misogynistic tone of many of the commercials.
Those commercials that weren’t stereotyping and insulting and doing violence to women, gays, little people, and the elderly, were over-the top, over-produced, dull, un-funny, illogical messes, most of which were embarrassed to show the name of their product until near the end of the commercial.
The only exception was the Google commercial that showed the product name from the beginning and intelligently demonstrated how to use the product to do something useful, romantic, and uplifting (which included moving to France, which, I suppose, implied getting away from American over-commercialization).
CBS made some counterproductive decisions to group commercials according to some supposedly (and weirdly) related theme. For example, there was an abuse-the-elderly pod in which Betty White and Tim Tebow’s mother were violently tackled. Or a no-pants pod with CareerBuilder.com and Dockers commercials in it. Or a magical-places pod with the coupling of Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland” film with KISS for Dr. Pepper featuring little people rocking out.
The half-time show was the best in years, not because of the aging members of The Who, who played OK (windmill moves and all), but because of the awesome computerized laser light show and mind-blowing, light-revolving stage – an exploding celebration for the eyes, not necessarily for the ears.
In the second half there was an Audi commercial that touted its green, energy-saving car, which was fine to promote, but doing so in a commercial with a cast of perhaps a hundred that must have cost over $1 million to produce wasted more energy to create than a 100 Audi’s could save in a month. This is another example of ad agencies reaching into the upper levels of cognitive dissonance to make a point.
If you want to promote green, do like Google did – show a demonstration of the benefits of using the product. It’s ironic and symbolic of Google that its commercial was the probably the least expensive to produce, most efficient in the use of resources, and was by far the most effective. It’s a lesson of rational and effective advertising – a lesson that probably went over the heads of Focus on the Family and most advertising agencies.
And, oh, by the way, it was a really good football game, which, of course, has become incidental to the over-the-top, materialistic, consumption-gorging culture of commercialism which I am hypocritically honoring by writing about Super Bowl commercials and not about the game.
More money from controversial advocacy commercials, but less money for CBS News, which includes its crown jewel “60 Minutes.” These priorities stink.
And the last reported compensation for CBS’s CEO Les Moonves was almost $21 million in 2008. Lay off news people and take a controversial ad from a conservative anti-abortion group so it can afford to pay the boss $20 million? That must make people who work at CBS really want to hold their heads up high and motivate them to work ever so much harder – to win one for the Gipper.
No wonder that in the February 8 issue of FORTUNE in which it publishes its annual list of “The 100 Best Companies to Work For” there are no old-line media companies on the list. A new media company, Google, is number four on the list (down from number one last year).
According to FORTUNE, most people in America would rather work at Wegman’s Food Markets, SalesForce.com, Whole Foods, Starbucks, or Nordstrom than old media companies such as Disney (ABC and ESPN), CBS, NBC Universal, News Corp. (Fox), Viacom, Time Warner, or any movie company, entertainment company, or music company.
These old media companies treat their line employees like they treat their audiences – like dirty dogs – and it makes their employees and audiences mean and ungrateful.
Americans hate and distrust the media almost as much as they do used car salesmen and politicians. The media they hate refers mostly to news media that don’t mirror their point of view and the politicians they hate applies to those who don’t reflect their views.
If media companies want to get back their reputations and their audiences, they might think about changing their priorities, starting with how they treat their employees and their audiences. How about beginning by respecting them both? Putting audiences and employees ahead of profits or CEOs’ salaries?
The background on the Blackberry screen is a medium-dark gray and the type is white, making it easy to read, and scrolling is easy, so the reading experience is pretty good.
“The Man With the Twisted Lip” is adventure number six of the twelve original Sherlock Holmes short stories that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote for the Strand Magazine and that ran from July 1891 to July 1892.
The story is an unusual one for Holmes because no crime is committed and part of the story is set in an opium den, which was a legal operation – there were no laws against smoking or selling opium in England at the time.
The story is about a Mr. St. Clair, who, as summarized by Wikipedia,
…has been leading a double life, one of respectability, and the other as a beggar. In his youth, he had been an actor before becoming a newspaper reporter. In order to research an article, he had disguised himself as a beggar for a short time, during which he was given a very large amount of money. Later in his life, he returned to the street to beg for several days in order to pay a large debt. Given a choice between his newspaper salary and his high beggar earnings, he eventually became a professional beggar. His takings were large enough that he was able to establish himself as a country gentleman, marry well, and begin a respectable family. His wife never knew what he did for a living, and Holmes agrees to preserve Mr. St. Clair's secret as long as no more is heard of Hugh Boone.
After reading the story, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the current state of the newspaper industry – that it is often more lucrative for reporters to beg (work freelance, for AOL’s Seed.com, or ask for donations on their blogs) than to work for a newspaper.
And begging isn’t limited to individual reporters or bloggers; it’s utilized by journalism institutions, too. The majority of the funding for the NPR affiliate WNYC in New York comes from listener support, as it does for all NPR affiliated stations, whose semi-annual “begathons” drive listeners nuts, but bring in the dollars.
Also, leading media scholar Robert McChesney and The Nation columnist John Nichols make a convincing case for journalism (legitimate news) organizations asking the government for subsidies in their book The Death and Life of American Journalism.
Subsides can come in many forms, such as tax breaks, changing the laws about Joint Operating Agreements (JOAs), free postage, or paid advertising and notices. Critics argue that government subsidies would mean government control – the specter of Pravda dances in their heads.
But our government is broken. It can’t pass a health care bill, it can’t limit outrageous bonuses to greedy Wall Street bankers, and it can’t create jobs. If it can’t agree on how to fix a system that is obviously broken and patently unfair, it can’t possibly censor the press to which it might give reasonable subsidies.
The government is broken and so is American journalism. However, like then man with the twisted lip, journalism will find a way to live and prosper. Some local newspapers are beginning to come back to life without begging by employing the principles using Wayne Reuvers’s theories and strategies as espoused in “Own Your Own Backyard,” available at LivePlatform.com.
Frankly, I have more hope for journalism than I do for the U.S. government. I never thought I’d say this, but most journalists are smarter and less self-absorbed than politicians – and that’s a twist.
]]>In Part II I suggested that The NY Times and other important newspapers had to realize that journalism was not about union-feather-bedded printing presses and distribution systems and that these papers had to start charging for content. One way to get paid for their content was to make a deal with Microsoft’s search engine Bing to pay them for links to their content and block Google from linking to it free. They can also charge based on a Wall Street Journal-type subscription model or a Financial Times-type metered model. (It is rumored that The Times has decided on a metered model and will start charging soon.)
But saving journalism needs more than getting funding from a foundation, being lean non-profit organizations, and getting paid for content, either from subscribers or from Bing. It needs financial support from local communities similar to what NPR and its local affiliates receive and to be given increased financial support from local communities and the Federal government in the form of subsidies and tax breaks.
In the January 25, issue of The Nation, communication scholar Robert McChesney and The Nation Washington correspondent John Nichols wrote an article titled “How to Save Journalism” in which they made a logical case for government subsidies.
The authors suggest that the Internet is not the answer to saving journalism: “There is no business model or combination of business models that will create a journalistic renaissance on the web. Even if the market and new technologies were to eventually solve journalism's problems, the notion that we must go without journalism for a decade or two while Wall Street figures out how to make a buck strikes us, frankly, as suicidal.”
They also write: “House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Henry Waxman was right when he told December's FTC workshop on journalism, “This is a policy issue. Government is going to have to be involved in one way or another. Journalism, like other public goods, is going to require substantial public subsidy if it is to exist at a level necessary for self-government to succeed. The question, then, is not, Should there be subsidies? but, How do we get subsidies right?””
The Founding Fathers knew the importance of a free press and an informed citizenry, which is why they set up the system that the Post Office delivered newspapers free and give publishers subsidies in the form of paying them to print public and legal notices. So, subsidies are nothing new.
Another way journalism outlets (we’ve got to stop calling them newspapers because they must be on the Web, not printed on paper) can increase revenue is to do what music companies are now doing – making 360 deals with talent. The music industry was decimated by file sharing on the Internet and by Apple’s iTunes and iPods, so record companies cut way back pressing CDs and selling them in record stores and found other outlets such as Starbucks. Today, when record companies sign new artists and agree to promote them, the companies insist that the talent sign a 360 deal that gives the record company a cut of all the money an artist makes in concerts, T-shirts, and other gear and peripheral items – anywhere and everywhere – 360º in other words.
So, for example, The NY Times could sign a deal with Frank Rich in which Rich agrees to give The Times a percentage cut of his off-the-job income from such items as speeches, books, and consulting gigs. The notion driving this concept is that Rich wouldn’t be famous and highly sought after if it weren’t for his exposure in The Times. He might be Rich, but he wouldn’t be wealthy if he wrote for the Point Reyes Light, even though it won a Pulitzer Prize.
Journalism outlets could do events and conferences that don’t appear to be influence peddling; their book reviewers could host book clubs and author readings, their movie reviewers could host movie preview events and discussions, their restaurant and food critics could host events and tastings, and cooking classes.
My wife, Julia, and I paid $75 each for a Dim Sum tour of New York’s Chinatown from the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE). We enjoyed it thoroughly and the guide, expert cook and teacher, Norm Weinstein, was terrific. But we would probably pay twice as much for a similar tour sponsored by The Times.
The Times and other newspapers in their state of journalistic head-in-the-sand ostrichitis would probably say that they are in the news business, not the tour or the event or the education business and that they have to remain “pure.” But they have forgotten what Harvard Business School’s Theodore Levitt said about the railroad business – that the railroads went out of business because they mistakenly thought they were in the railroad business.
Newspapers think like buggy whip makers thought in 1908, that they were in the buggy-whip business, but their business was killed by the automobile. If they had re-defined their businesses as the vehicle acceleration business, they might have survived. Newspapers need to similarly re-define their businesses and find multiple revenue streams to support their journalism.
These news outlets also need to exploit the new e-reader technology, as suggested by Alan Mutter in his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog on January 8 in a post titled “Holy Moses! Media need to gear up for tablets.”
The point is that journalism outlets have to explore multiple revenue streams, including government subsidies.
]]>The next step I suggested was to wrest The New York Times away from the Sulzberger family, force the paper into bankruptcy, and then get some smart business people committed to journalism, not to maximizing profits, to set up a non-profit organization similar to NPR, renegotiate onerous union contracts, and run the Times like a lean start-up committed to continuing its tradition of journalistic excellence.
What should be the JPF’s next step? What about other failing newspapers?
Saving journalism is not about saving newspapers; many don’t need or deserve to be saved. Saving journalism is not about perpetuating deprecated printing and distribution systems. Saving journalism doesn’t mean saving the jobs of high-paying executives and managers who had no clue how to innovate once faced with the disruptive technology that knocked down the barriers to entry to their precious monopolies. Saving journalism is not about anything on commercial television, which is about entertainment, not news or journalism.
Saving journalism is about establishing, sustaining, and rewarding news organizations that practice journalism, the first principle of which is accuracy, not profits. Therefore, the goal of the JPF should be set up non-profit news organizations which maximize revenue in order to produce relevant, important journalism, especially investigative reporting, written by experienced, qualified reporters.
So how do news organizations generate revenue? Depending primarily on advertising (online or offline) is not a viable model that will keep news organizations independent, impartial, and dedicated to accuracy. The NPR and local station affiliate model is a good one because it provides multiple revenue streams, with listener contributions being the main source of revenue for local stations (which in turn buy their programming from NPR), followed by underwriting (advertising) and funding from foundations. Also, the JPF could help fund many worthy news organizations.
Inevitably a viable news revenue model will have to include charging for content. Major newspapers must charge for their content or make staff cuts so deep that the few reporters they can afford to hire will become cheap stenographers rather than crusading journalists.
One way to charge for content would be to follow Rupert Murdoch’s lead and try to work out a deal with Microsoft’s search engine, Bing.
Apparently Murdoch is in negotiations with Microsoft to work out a deal by which MS would pay Murdoch a fee and his newspapers’ Web content, primarily the Wall Street Journal’s, would be available only via Bing searches. The WSJ would put a snipped of code on its content that would block it from being available via Google searches.
If the WSJ, the NY Times, the Washington Post, and major newspapers and magazines were able to make a deal with Bing and keep their content from Google, people would add a Bing search box to their toolbar and use it instead of or in combination with Google.
Such a deal is the only chance Bing has to compete with Google and one of several ways major news content providers (other than television news, which is entertainment, not news) have for long-term survival – a win-win for everyone but Google, which doesn’t really need another win.
Why? Mike Royko, the acerbic, blue-collar, Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist for the Chicago Daily News put it best, I think, when he wrote that “a reporter is to a politician as a barking dog is to a chicken thief.” The country needs these watchdogs not only for politicians but also for businesses, Wall Street, and the climate.
Many newspapers, magazines, blogs, commissions, and even the government have taken up the question of saving journalism. One report, “The Reconstruction of American Journalism,” by former Washington Post Editor Leonard Downie, Jr. and respected newspaper historian Michael Schudson and sponsored by the prestigious Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is the most extensive research I've seen that has been conducted on the subject to date.
Downie and Schudson are basically optimistic, especially for local journalism, but they are less optimistic for hard-hitting, responsible investigative reporting on national issues and put forth some ideas and suggestions for preserving this important type of journalism. See this video interview with Schudson to get a summary of the report.
Here are my specific suggestions:
Given that Obama, like Bush, Clinton, et.al are all career politicians, his actions should not be a surprise to anyone. Especially, if one has spent more than ten minutes examining the lists of broken presidential campaign promises.]]>No matter how seemingly sincere a candidate for the presidency may portray themselves on the campaign trail, once in office, campaign promise amnesia sets in about 30 seconds after being sworn in.
I disagree that Obama was elected by appealing to our "best instincts". He was elected because of the intense hatred and backlash towards Bush and a joke Republican ticket. It helped that Obama was an attractive candidate, preaching a message of harmony and peace while evidencing how racial attitudes have changed along with a sophisticated campaign management team.
How much difference a year makes! For those of us who voted for Obama on the basis of his campaign rhetoric, we overlooked that first and foremost, he is a politician, like any other politician. Obama is the product of a political system and political class elites. And we forgot that like all politicians, they will say and do just about anything to get elected and to stay in power. We are then stuck with them for two, four or six years with free reign to do just about anything they want, with a blank check, courtesy of us, the US taxpayers. We allow them to gerrymander their districts in ways that essentially guarantees lifetime job security short of being convicted of felonies.
Do we really expect 100 senators and 435 members of the congress to ever come together in a bi-partisan way about anything? The only show of a modicum of unity we ever see, is when something like 9-11 takes place. And even then, all 535 of those elected representatives begin exhibiting amnesia within six months after an attack, about the blood they were demanding in revenge.
Our founding fathers crafted a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that was just six pages long and has been the foundation of our republic for almost 300 years. Now look what we have: Healthcare Reform, Obamacare, whatever you choose to call it, is over 2000 pages long and Title 26 or the US Tax Code runs 5.6M words!
We will never know what took place in the Afghanistan War discussions over the past 11 months, despite the campaign promises for greater transparency in government. Michael makes excellent points in his essay, especially in regards to who should have been invited to weigh in on the ramifications of potential decisions by Mr. Obama. However, original ideas such as Michael's are not part of the psyche of our political class.
We have created a global geo-political welfare state over the past 60 years for almost every third-world conflict. Got a problem with your country or the country next to you? Call the US. They will send you billions and spill their young people's blood for you, without question or accountability on your part. Are you ripping off and subjugating your citizens? Murdering them too? Not a problem. Exporting narcotics? No sweat. It is the American Way!
We need to face the reality that we do not have a two party system that works in and for the best interests of the citizens of this country. We have one party, the political class, that exists for the propagation of their interests. This is why Mr. Obama and the Congress makes the decisions they do and pisses away our hard-earned monies and sacrifices the blood of dedicated military.
Many newspapers, magazines, blogs, commissions, and even the government have taken up the question of saving journalism. One report, “The Reconstruction of American Journalism,” by former Washington Post Editor Leonard Downie, Jr. and respected newspaper historian Michael Schudson and sponsored by the prestigious Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is the most extensive research I've seen that has been conducted on the subject to date.
Downie and Schudson are basically optimistic, especially for local journalism, but they are less optimistic for hard-hitting, responsible investigative reporting on national issues and put forth some ideas and suggestions for preserving this important type of journalism. See this video interview with Schudson to get a summary of the report.
Here are my specific suggestions:
That’s a start. I’ll have some more ideas in Part II, but in the meantime, I’d like to hear your ideas on how to save journalism and The New York Times
Concerning The New York Times editorial endorsing the Afghanistan buildup and Peter Baker's NY Timesarticle "How Obama Came to Plan for ‘Surge’ in Afghanistan," I respectfully I disagree.Mr. Baker’s story evoked the famous Yogi Berra line “It’s Déjà’ vu all over again.” By virtue of the culture lens of the NY Times,, once again the paper is playing the role of cheerleader for an administration's generals as they beat the drums of war. While reading I checked the byline several times to see if Judith Miller was the writer.
Public support for any military action is essential in a democracy. The "Intelligentsia" also must be brought along, at least in the initial stages. And once again, the NY Times seems to understand and dutifully fulfill its role.
Baker's article profiling the “lonely and difficult decision that the new president must face,” is a portrait of the corridor of power and of the agonizing decision and supports the notion that there is no alternative but to go forward with an escalation of violence. The article makes a persuasive case for war. If a free and critical press were truly at work, one might expect a bit more critical thinking and reporting of a decision that was apparently reached without the presence or appearance in the room of a single Afghan official, a citizen of a village likely to experience the violence, any opposition leader nor the head of state of any neighboring country in the Middle East.
During his speech on Monday, President Obama stated that the enemies are extremists that have hijacked a kind and gentle religion and are now its militant enemies.
If that is the case, then where are the Saudis, Egyptians, Kuwaiti’s, U.A.E., (the latter two could offer some financing if not much of a military contribution) and other peace-loving Sunnis, and Shiites, who are far more at risk than the western world? Why are they not participating in the struggle against militant Islam? The question is never even put on the table. Why are the economics of the financing of the Taliban and Al Qaeda not analyzed and reported on?
The poppy trade and the thugs that run it are part of a network of corruption that can easily be interrupted with military action against crops instead of people. It would seem likely that this strategy would do far more to destabilize and break up the militant groups than chasing them back and forth across the Pakistan border. Some of us would like to know if this option was ever considered as a strategy or tactic.
Finally, Pakistan has an army, it is already trained and, as we all know, Pakistan has more to lose with a Taliban controlled Afghanistan than any country, including the United States. If an escalation of war is the answer, why isn’t the Pakistan army the first line of offense in this surge, with U.S. soldiers securing their nuclear facilities?
Perhaps there are good answers to these questions, perhaps our government is acting in our best interests, but the arguments and reasoning put forth reflects the idea that fear, politics, and the military are running the day. The Military is not at fault, its job is to provide military solutions and to paint a worse-case scenario. It is the responsibility of a civilian controlled democracy to run the Military.
The opposite seems operative since 911. It is ironic that a president, who was elected by appealing to our best instincts, has bowed to fear and the illusion that we can somehow be protected against the threat of violence through increased force. There is virtually no difference in the rhetoric coming from this administration than that of his hapless and deceiving predecessor.
It is positively Orwellian that this president, after choosing to address this complex issue by caving in to his military advisors, would soon trot off to accept his Nobel Peace Prize.
Really? The newspaper Titanic is sinking fast and the journalism dinosaurs are arguing about the proper color of life preservers.
Dallas Morning News Executive Sports Editor Bob Yates said in a phone interview with Richard Prince of the Poynter Institute, "To me, this is nothing new for the newspaper. Editors of the paper report to the publisher. It's the same pattern."
And it’s been the same pattern in television and magazines for decades, but the arrogant journalism elitists who benefitted from newspaper monopolies that were sustained by massive barriers to entry looked down their noses on considering the interests of consumers and customers as crass. Journalists had no concept of or interest in the business of news and thought that people in management and, especially, in sales were the bad guys, which I know from first-hand experience because I taught at the oldest journalism school in the country for ten years.
As early as the 1970s television executives, including those in TV news at ABC and at local stations, realized they were not in the news business but in the advertising delivery business and that the goal was to attract eyeballs – get ratings – not necessarily to produce what newspeople thought was good journalism.
Time, Inc. launched People magazine in 1974 not because Time, Inc. thought it was great journalism, but because it realized that the People section of Time magazine was the most popular section in the magazine and celebrity and human interest stories were what consumers (readers) and customers (advertisers) wanted, and People soon became the most profitable magazine in the world.
The internet brought down the barriers to entry into the news business and eliminated the basis for many local newspaper monopolies. So what was the response of journalists at these papers? Often they decry massive layoffs. But the The Dallas Morning News is doing something radical; it isn’t crying, it’s on the right track and trying to deal with the problem.
Maybe the business people will suggest to the editorial people in the sports and entertainment sections, which are the only ones affected at this time, to think about what readers are interested in. Maybe they will encourage the reporters to start conversations with their readers, because that’s one of the things the internet does best, facilitate communication and conversations.
Salespeople know how to develop relationships with their customers, maybe the newspeople will learn to do the same thing with their readers like Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times is doing.
When I got up this morning, I wasn’t aware of the date, and I didn’t see a reference to Peal Harbor Day when I did my morning online skimming of The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and the blogs I subscribe to via Google Reader. Does this mean that everyone the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation has forgotten about Pearl Harbor?
As I walked back home, I thought that I should blog about my memories of December 7, so at least those who read or skim my blog will remember Peal Harbor and some of the lessons from 68 years ago.
I was nine years old on Sunday, December 7, 1941. It was before lunch on a bright, chilly winter day in Battle Creek, MI. Bobby Baker and I met on our bikes near Fremont School. I remember riding my Schwinn Classic Deluxe and that Bobby told me that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Neither Bobby nor I knew where that was or what the implications were, but I knew about the Japanese because my mother and father had scrap books of their trip to Japan in 1928 when my father worked for the W. H. Gary Company in Kansas City.
In our house we had Japanese glass flowers and a metal crane standing on a turtle’s back and pictures of Japanese women in kimonos. My dad also had a trunk in the basement full of maps wrapped in wax paper.
The next Monday, the 8th, my father sent a telegram to the War Department in Washington that read something like: “I have a trunk in my basement that has complete, detailed maps of the entire telephone communication system in the Japanese Islands.”
On Tuesday he got a telegram back that read, essentially: “You want your trunk get on a train to Washington, D.C. today.” And he did.
My mother and I joined him in June and we spent WWII living in Alexandria, VA. My father worked in the Japanese section of G2 (Military Intelligence) in the Pentagon.
Looking back 68 years and thinking about the lonely flag flying at half staff in Central Park, I came home and Googled “flags at half staff” and discovered there are only four days during the year that it is customary to fly flags at half staff: Peace Officers Memorial Day, May 15th; Memorial Day, the last Monday in May; Patriot Day, September 11th; and Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, December 7th.
Two of them commemorate all who died in the line of duty and two commemorate single-day events: December 7, when 2,402 died, and September 11, when 2,953 died.
In 1941 the United States declared war on the Japanese government to demonstrate that there were consequences for its terrorist, murderous behavior. We then occupied the country, disarmed it, and spent billions to help it become a world-class economic power, in part because it wasn’t allowed to spend on a military presence or on defense. We did the same thing with Germany with the same result.
It occurred to me that the 30,000 troops that Obama is sending to Afghanistan should probably be taught history so they could indoctrinate the Afghans, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda on the lessons of Pearl Harbor and World War II: Attack the U.S., let us declare war and then win, occupy their country, demilitarize it, pay to rebuild it, and get rich.
U.S. troops should be armed with guns to protect themselves, hammers and saws to build schools, and a DVD player to show the 1959 Peter Sellers comedy “The Mouse That Roared” that demonstrates step-by-step how to make war on America and prosper.
Unfortunately, from what I can see, the Taliban or Al Qaeda doesn’t have a sense of humor or the sense to learn from history, so they’ll have to learn the lessons of Pearl Harbor the hard way.
I remember the easy way – by seeing the flag at half staff.