Journalism versus “the other stuff”
The small daily Post Register of Idaho Falls, Idaho is not USA Today, and its editor Roger Plothow is not a famous media commentator, but he’s just written an inspiring little defense of the purpose of journalism from a principles perspective. It’s a nice relief from arguments about journalism’s role so often couched in terms of politics, technology, economics, specialized training, and even education.
An excerpt:
In a way, journalism can best be defined by what it’s not. It’s not a shouting match. It’s not just holding out a microphone. It’s not even just who, what, when, where, why and how. It’s the work of committed people who actually believe that what they do is important.
NY Times to staff: watch those anonymous sources
From Gawker.com: the New York Times’ standards editor, Phil Corbett, has issued a memorandum reminding writers to beware “boilerplate” explanations or no explanations at all when using unnamed sources. Corbett suggests that reporters include a “thoughtful sentence or paragraph” to illuminate the pressures leading to anonymous sourcing, and he lists sample explanations:
- “out of fear for his safety.”
- “out of fear of retaliation from X.”
- “because parties to the negotiations had promised to keep them confidential.”
- “because the company has threatened to fire workers who speak to the press.”
- “because Politician X insists that his aides not speak to reporters.”
- “to avoid antagonizing Official X.”
- “because disclosing grand jury testimony can be illegal.”
And how did Gawker get this memo, by the way? An unnamed source, of course.
The latest bad news
From USC Annenberg via Editor & Publisher:
Study: Newspapers Sink Below Internet and TV as Information Sources
“Newspapers continue to be seen as less important at their primary job — being sources of information – according to the latest edition of the nine-year-old Digital Future Project from the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism.
“The study found that just 56% Internet users ranked newspapers as important or very important sources of information for them, down from 60% in 2008 — and below the Internet (78%) and television (68%).
“And while newspapers also regard themselves as being in the entertainment business, just 29% of users consider them as important sources of entertainment, down from 32% two years ago, and last among principal media.”
Gannett Tries Pay Walls at Three Papers
Eagle-eyed Doug Fisher at South Carolina spied “a low-key announcement buried in the business briefs of my local (McClatchy) paper” announcing the coming of pay-per-view to Gannett’s Greenville News, one of three papers the chain is taking to pay-per-view on the Web. See his commentary.
Pay Walls Debut at Three Gannett Papers Testing ‘Journalism as a Service’ is the headline on Poynter Online’s NewsPay column by Bill Mitchell.
Included are The Tallahassee Democrat, The Greenville S.C. News and The St. George, Utah Spectrum.
Mitchell notes that Gannett called this "a small-scale test."
Gannett publishes 82 daily U.S. newspapers, including USA TODAY, the nation’s largest-selling daily newspaper, and more than 600 magazines and other non-dailies including USA WEEKEND. Gannett also operates 23 television stations in 19 U.S. markets.–Corp.HQ
At http://tallahassee.com, for an example of the pay system, the Web front page headlines and summaries are still visible, but clicking through to read a full local story results in a table of pay rates.
Original Tallahassee.com stories require one of several subscription plans or a $2 day pass. Options include a $9.95 monthly Web-only subscription or various Web/Print combinations.
Still free are stories from USA Today and other sources woven into the site, such as those under the heading “From our news network” on the “Topic: Oil Spill” pages.
It probably goes without saying that the local business directories and ads are still free, too.
The Future of News and the Internet, OECD version
The Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development offers a 98-page report on “the global newspaper market and its evolution, with a particular view on its economics, the development of online news, related opportunities and challenges and policy approaches.”
Some OECD countries already stepped in to financially help the newspaper industry, while others are debating whether government suppaidort can support a diverse and independent local press.
“Given that almost all OECD countries are currently reflecting on how to approach these issues, this study is designed to provide a platform for further exchange on immediate and longer-term policy development,” the report’s introduction says.
Information: OECD examines the Future of News and the Internet. Full text: “The Future of News and the Internet” (pdf).
Among the report’s observations:
- About 20 out of 30 OECD countries face declining newspaper readership, especially among younger people.
- The largest declines are in the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece, Italy, Canada and Spain.
- Elsewhere, country-by-country and title-by-title data “currently do not lend themselves to make the case for ‘the death of the newspaper,’ in particular if non-OECD countries.”
- “In terms of time spent, Internet users report a large increase in reading online newspapers, but most online readership is more ad hoc, irregular and sporadic than print newspaper readership used to be. The way news is consumed is also radically different on line.”
Newspapers ‘strange survival’ in Economist
“Newspapers have escaped cataclysm by becoming leaner and more focused” according to The Economist‘s Newspapers: The strange survival of ink, a story rich in European examples.
But even in the U.S., it says, “some companies are now worth ten times as much as in the spring of 2009, although they remain far from pre-recession heights.”
(See the article for some interesting details on McClatchy and Gannett, including a report that more Gannett papers using USA Today material.)
“The survival of newspapers is by no means guaranteed,” the article concludes, after discussing business strategies that involve iPads and smartphones, more local news and sports, etc. Emphasis added below:
“They still face big structural obstacles: it remains unclear, for example, whether the young will pay for news in any form. But the recession brought out an impressive and unexpected ability to adapt. If newspapers can keep that up in better times, they may be able to contemplate more than mere survival.”
Student press case educates prosecutor, $10,000 worth
Note: Watch for an insider account of the JMU Breeze case by James Madison faculty Mike Grundmann, editor of the Newspaper Division’s Leadtime newsletter. The summer edition will be on our website later this month.
Rockingham County, Va., Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Garst says her run-in with student journalists at James Madison University this spring “enhanced my understanding and re-enforced the role of a free press in our democracy.”
The experience also cost the state $10,000 — part of the attorney’s fees accrued after Garst’s attempt to seize hundreds of images student photographers shot during an off-campus party-turned-riot in April.
The Student Press Law Center and the Society of Professional Journalists issued statements in support of the paper, citing the 1980 Privacy Protection Act.
After lengthy negotiations, Garst and the JMU Breeze announced this week that they have reached an agreement under which the state will pay the paper’s legal fees, and the paper will turn over 20 unpublished photos — out more than 900 that Garst and police originally attempted to seize.
Garst said that in the future she will seek a subpoena, not a simple search warrant, if she feels a need to go after information or documents from any news organization, including the JMU Breeze.
“As a prosecutor, officer of the court, and elected official of the community I recognize the concerns of the Breeze and its staff, as well as other media sources, for the protection of the Constitution and First Amendment. I express my regret for the fear and concern that I caused the Breeze and its staff,” she said, in a two-page, single-spaced statement on the case.
Thanks to the Waynesboro News-Virginian for not only publishing a story on the incident, but including the full statements by Garth and the student newspaper’s editor, along with their 19 page settlement agreement:
News-Virginian: State to pay legal fees for student newspaper
• Statement by Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Garst (PDF)
• Photo seizure settlement (PDF, 19 pages)
Roanoke Times: Prosecutor, JMU newspaper reach deal over riot photos
US News & World Report: James Madison Student Newspaper and Attorney Reach Deal
Hampton U Prof Named Outstanding Teacher
An AEJMC Newspaper Division selection committee has named Rick Kenney of Hampton University the division’s 2010 winner of the Outstanding Teacher Award.
A former journalist with the Baltimore Evening Sun, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, St. Petersburg Times, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and other papers, Kenney was named Scripps Howard Endowed Professor of Journalism at the Hampton, Va., university last year. He teaches media ethics and media law and directs the school’s Academy of Writing Excellence. He has won numerous awards for both his journalism and his teaching, and also has been an Ethics Fellow with the Poynter Institute since 2003.
Kenney, former executive news editor at the Evening Sun, holds a doctorate in mass communication from the University of Georgia and has taught at the University of Central Florida, Troy State University and Florida Southern College. He also directed a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund intern residency program for copy editing interns from 2002 to 2008, and wrote COPY! The first 50 years of the Dow Jones newspaper Fund.
Brian Carroll of Berry College, co-chair of the Newspaper Division’s teaching standards committee, thanked Kenney’s nominators, Rick Brunson, John Gogick, Melissa Patterson and Tim Lynch. Presentation of the award will be made at the business meeting of the Newspaper Division during the AEJMC National Convention Aug 4-7 at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel in Denver.
Retroactive pay for interns in response to Times story
In response to a New York Times story The Unpaid Intern, Legal or Not, the publisher of The Atlantic, National Journal, and Government Executive magazines and related Web editions has decided to offer only paid internships in the future, and to pay last year’s interns retroactively, according to at statement at AOL’s DailyFinance.com (linked to by Romenesco).
Atlantic, which has a deadline this Friday for its July-December intern openings, said it felt it already had an appropriately educational plan: Interns work side by side with editorial and business staff, and there are lectures, case studies, homework and exercises. However, the company explained the change to Daily Finance’s Jeff Bercovici:
Thinking about the internship program through the lens of Saturday’s New York Times story, we found ourselves revisiting the concept. We had thought this was the way to structure unpaid internships but if it sits near a grey zone, it’s not for us.
The Internships link on Atlantic Media‘s own site, didn’t have a statement of the new internship policy today, presumably because the details are still being worked out. The ad for July-December and January-June editorial internship sessions doesn’t mention compensation. (A separate media research internship ad still uses the word “unpaid.”)
The Times story hadn’t mentioned Atlantic Media — or any newspaper internships — in its discussion of state and federal investigations not-very-educational unpaid internships, but did highlight an unnamed magazine with echoes of “The Devil Wears Prada”:
One Ivy League student said she spent an unpaid three-month internship at a magazine packaging and shipping 20 or 40 apparel samples a day back to fashion houses that had provided them for photo shoots.
A 2013 timeline for newspapers to go mobile
Clyde Bentley at the University of Missouri offers a timeline for “Mobile Newspaper Success”… The road to 2013: A timeline for newspapers.
Responding to a Gartner Research study that forecast mobile devices will replace PCs in Web access by 2013, Bentley built a timeline from the endpoint to the present.
Result: If you’re a “key editor” at a newspaper, you should get a smartphone this month, or you’re already playing catch-up.
By August-September, Clyde says, newspapers should be training their news and ad staff on “mobile potential,” if they want to stay on track with the Gartner deadline. Within a year, mobile reporters should be producing niche-market features for mobile customers. Clyde’s examples: “Smoke-break wraps, during-game scores, pre-commute weather.”
More on that, and my own dumb experience with smartphones, here:
Tell Clyde I’m on the road to Floyd with a Droid
