Newstradamus

The Sacramento Bee and the Miami News, both owned by the McClatchy Co., say they are going to outsource some of their advertising production work to an outfit in New Delhi, India, called Mindworks.

The story said that Mindworks also would monitor reader comments posted to the Herald's stories online. That created an image in my mind if the Times-Standard did that — somebody in Delhi trying to make sense of some weed-raddled raving from Humboldt County about Jesus, Bush and Arkley.

This is all fallout from the tight advertising squeeze being faced by newspapers. I suspect on some of these routine types of computer jobs, they can save a lot of money by doing this — and digitally it's quite easy to do.

Except for the language problem. Yes, people in India speak a British-inflected English from the days of the Raj, but as someone who was on the line getting some advice on a home network setup yesterday, I had to say "Pardon?" a lot. He got it fixed for me, though.

Newspaper outsourcing is not all that new in other parts of the world. Years ago, a friend who works at the New Straits Times in Singapore said his paper had a copy desk in Australia and a graphic design desk in (as I recall) Hong Kong.

In this country, it may work for graphic design but not for news content (or web comments), especially at community papers where a deep understanding of local issues and lifestyles is crucial to success. The Herald's story hinted at this when it noted that www.pasadenanow.com, a news Web site, was flamed after it hired two reporters in India to cover the L.A. suburb. Admittedly, one was a Berkeley grad, but still . . .

Posted by Rich Somerville at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Los Angeles Times' David Lazarus focuses on the guillotine hanging over the head of the news business in his article about free information in the digital age. He interviews a bunch of teens who say they would never pay for news online.

He quotes Phoebe, 15: ""My grandparents subscribe to a lot of newspapers. If I want to read a newspaper, I go online, but I wouldn't pay for it. Our generation doesn't pay for things on the Internet."

Says Lazarus: "What Phoebe meant, of course, is that her generation doesn't pay for information on the Net. Music, movies, games — all those things have clear monetary value. Anything you take in by reading, not so much. 'Information should be free,' declared Corey, 18, echoing a sentiment I encounter a lot online, particularly among bloggers, who feel a perverse sense of entitlement to other people's work."

People think advertising sustains news online, but far from it. While a few daily newspapers make as much as 15% of their overall revenue from Web ads, most are in the 5% range. Sure, there are free print dailies that can make a profit on advertising alone, but they are either in large metro areas or non-competitive markets, or — because the greatest expense at news-gathering companies goes for people who do the gathering — have bare-bones staffs.

"Rely solely on the Net for circulation and revenue, as some pundits have argued, and the unavoidable fact is that you can't support a news-gathering operation this large or resourceful," says Lazarus, one of 890 on the L.A. Times editorial staff. "You'd have to make do with significantly fewer people, fewer (if any) overseas bureaus, fewer investigations, less original content, less of the watchdog sort of thing that readers consistently say they rely on newspapers to provide."

People will pay through the nose for a broadband connection, but not for the information that is accessed on that connection. The New York Times seems to have been unable to sustain a payment plan for its unique content, and the Wall Street Journal may give up making people pay for its Web site. If they haven't figured it out, then a revenue model that can sustain professional news-gathering operations in the digital age remains to be found.

If there isn't an answer soon, then by the time Lazarus' teens are in their 40s and their parents and grandparents are gone, professional news organizations may be, too. What will that mean for the free flow of information that is the lifeblood of a democracy? I shudder to think. The blogosphere says fine, the "people" will provide the news. Sure ... between doing their regular jobs, I suppose.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Like every field, journalism has its internal catfights, and there is one going on now about a story on page one of the Washington Post by Perry Bacon Jr. on right-wing rumors about Barack Obama and whether he has a secret Muslim past. First a Boston University journalism prof (and former Post free-lancer) named Chris Daly blogged about how awful a story it was and wondering why such a young reporter was writing about a national campaign.

Daly's comments hit Jim Romenesko's journalism news blog, Washington Post editor Len Downie sent a letter to Romenesko asking why he posted junk like that, and the Columbia Journalism Review campaign bloggers had their shot at Downie. Daly did a half-hearted mea culpa. The Post's ombudsman and Slate also threw in their two cents on the whole stinkfest.

My 25 cents (worth more because, of course, this is my blog):

— The Bacon story WAS lame in that it seemed to give credence to the smears rather than clearly debunking them. This, however, is the usual detritus of horse-race campaign coverage.

— Youth (or lack of it) has nothing to do with the quality of a person's journalism. If you've got what it takes, age doesn't enter into it. Rightly or wrongly, Daly's crack sounded like sour grapes because he wasn't hired on full-time by the Post when he was a youth — a tone which Daly recognized and apologized for.

— Daly's wondering whether Bacon was being "fast-tracked" by the Post seemed like its own smear, especially to those who know the details of the New York Tims/Jason Blair scandal. Like Blair, Bacon is black. Unlike Blair, nobody claims Bacon makes things up — and in fact, he received vocal support for his skills.

Jihad, anyone?

Posted by Rich Somerville at 08:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm no fan of media consolidation. For much of my career as a journalist, I have worked for family-owned newspapers or groups rather than big corporations, and much prefer it that way. (That's not to say, however, that some family owned newspapers or broadcast stations aren't penny-pinching, low-quality efforts. It differs community to community, company to company.)

However, the action this week by the FCC by a 3-2 vote along party lines (with the GOP appointees prevailing) raises some interesting questions. Basically, it voted to ease in the 20 largest cities the 32-year-old ban on ownership of a newspaper and a broadcast outlet in a single market. Thirty-six newspaper-broadcast combinations grandfathered in under the earlier law will be exempt, as will six applications that were pending before the FCC.

There was a roar of protest from consumer groups and some members of Congress, guaranteeing that the last hasn't been heard about this law. But it made me wonder:

— Considering that so many people say that MSM (mainstream media) are dying, who cares who owns newspapers and TV? Heck, broadcast TV is hemorrhaging viewers faster than newspapers are losing readers. That's why media companies wanted the rule change — they need every edge they can get to stave off threats from Internet and cable.

— Do we REALLY want government telling the news media how to run their businesses? Seems like a slippery slope. Look how well it worked for broadcast TV — I predict their news operations will all switch over to cable within the next 5 years. Will anyone care about monopolies for cheesy sitcoms?

— Everybody is worrying about newspapers and TV, but what about radio? There are no limits on the radio stations you can own in a market — Clear Channel practically has a stranglehold nationwide, not to mention there are just two satellite radio networks. Cable television? Ninety-nine percent of the cable markets in the U.S. are served by only one cable company. Internet? If they wanted to, Microsoft, AT&T and AOL Time Warner could shut it down tomorrow.

There is no doubt, however, that media consolidation is scary. The Media Reform Information Center points out that Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" in 1983 when he pointed out in"The Media Monopoly" that 50 corporations controlled almost all the U.S. media. By 2004, his revised and expanded book showed it was down to five: AOL Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS).

However, none of them own American newspapers except for Murdoch, and he only has two — both in New York City. So what's the fuss over this FCC rule change about again?

Posted by Rich Somerville at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1882)

Dave Lewis

I am at the age where many longtime friends are reaching milestones in their lives. Retirement is fine; death just seems too soon, especially for friends younger than I am.

Dave Lewis was the deputy director of photography at the Baltimore Sun. He died a few days ago from a heart attack while receiving kidney dialysis. He was 57 years old.

He and I worked together for years at the Des Moines Register, and moved on from there about the same time. We both grew up in Des Moines — he graduated from North High and I went to Roosevelt, but we both got degrees from Drake University. He was a terrific photographer, but his claim to fame was as one of the earliest pioneers and a leader in electronic picture editing.

But my strongest memory is of Dave's presence — a big man who always had a huge smile on his face. My highest accolade for any journalist is that he or she is a professional — always eager and willing to do whatever is needed to get the story or photo out to the readers. That was Dave Lewis.

Although I only saw him once (when I attended a conference in Baltimore) since he left the Register 22 years ago, none of his former colleagues, including me, could ever forget him.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Blog Admin at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Former Times-Standard editor Charles Winkler started the "Coffee With the Editor" series of community chats, and I have continued them, accompanied by publisher Greg Stevens since his arrival last spring. We move around the times and locations, hoping to find the right formula for attracting as many interested people as possible. Sometimes just a few show up; sometimes more than 20.

Yesterday's was at the Hot Brew in Fortuna, and although the coffee was scheduled before a Times-Standard editorial about conflict of interests and Fortuna's mayor, it was timely because many (or most) of the dozen or so attendees had that on their minds.

We had heard the debate could be heated, and I felt guilty arriving late (I'd never been to the Hot Brew before and drove past it twice, looking on the wrong side of the street), not wanting to appear to be ducking the issue. When I joined the conversation, Greg was engaging the group in a discussion about what makes the Eel River Valley communities distinctive from others in Humboldt County. But soon one of the readers brought up "the elephant in the room," kicking off a wide-ranging discussion about that editorial specifically, as well as how editorial stances are determined and written.

I can't speak for everyone there, but I felt it was a respectful dialogue in which I acknowledged why they had problems with the editorial — its tone and background research as well as its conclusions, They listened as I assured them that a prime goal of the T-S opinion page is to give ample opportunities for all perspectives to be heard, and encouraged the writing of letters to the editor.

One of the questions was why the editorial appeared to be missing from our web site, www.times-standard.com. I didn't know the answer at the time, but sometimes the file-coding that must take place for a story or editorial to be posted online is not done correctly. A check with the webmaster when I returned to the office indicated that's what happened, and the editorial was posted.

All in all, Greg and I spent an enjoyable couple of hours in Fortuna, and look forward to our next visit.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (28)

A followup to the previous posting about "The Vagina Monologues":

A voicemail was left for me on Saturday, complaining about having to read the word "vagina" in the newspaper. It was a very, very angry (and of course anonymous) voicemail, in which the caller invited me to "stick your vaginas up your .. . ." — well, it prompted a very strange visual image. That aside, the extent of his rage gave me a small but significant insight into some of the issues Eve Ensler refers to in her play.

No doubt that "The Vagina Monologues" has its detractors. Not only social conservatives but some femnists have called it anti-male, and it's certainly an in-your-face bit of theater that is not for the faint of heart. There obviously are many people out there who would not agree that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me."

Posted by Rich Somerville at 03:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Eve Ensler

The current fuss over “The Vagina Monologues” being too much for the Arkley Center to handle leads to musings about how the way we regard language in the media versus at a personal level. Remember the euphemisms our parents used about bodily functions and parts: “Wee-wee,” “No. 1 and No. 2", "down there" and the like? My ex-wife once told me that when she was a little girl and needed to have a bowel movement, the protocol was to tell her mother that “Dookie is knocking on the door.”

But even euphemistically, in polite company, I don’t recall a substitute word for vagina, although I’m sure girls had one they used among themselves in private (I know boys did). One just didn't go there. Today, although the words vagina and penis can be heard on television sitcoms every week, not just on "Saturday Night Live," they’re still too icky for some people — at least on a marquee, as letters to the editor in the Times-Standard about the “V-word” indicate.

Note the current vogue for “vajayjay,” the euphemism of choice on “Oprah” or celebrity shows featuring Britney’s latest clothing indiscretion. A New York Times story said the popularity of “vajayjay” reignites the argument forcefully made by Eve Ensler over a decade ago when she created “The Vagina Monologues”: “’What we don’t say becomes a secret, and secrets often create shame and fear and myths.’ Vagina, her widely performed series of monologues declared, is too often an ‘invisible word,’ one ‘that stirs up anxiety, awkwardness, contempt and disgust.’”

I suspect it is this same societal disgust that sustains the tradition in the news media of keeping names of rape victims secret. Rather than a crime of violence, rape is seen as an act of sex in which the victim was somehow a participant, although unwillingly, thus bringing down society's shame upon her. (Elsewhere in the world, this is taken to extremes, as in the recent Saudi Arabia case where the court sentenced a 19-year-old victim of a gang rape to 200 lashes and six months in prison. Her crime: Being in public with a man not related to her before the two were noticed by several men who kidnapped and raped both of them.)

Former Des Moines Register editor Geneva Overholser has observed: “Most people feel that this (secrecy about rape victims) is the humane thing to do. I wonder if it has not prolonged the stigma, and fed the underreporting. Certainly, in the past dozen years, we have made progress in reporting on, and understanding, the crime of rape. I am certain that this is in large part due to the courage of women who were willing to come forward and tell their stories.”

Posted by Rich Somerville at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When it comes to televised debates, I’d much rather read a summary of the high (or low) points, since the full programs are a snooze. First of all, they’re not really “debates,” but a string of questions offered by a moderator to candidates individually. The White House hopefuls usually reply with stump boilerplate “talking points,” while weary reporters wait to pounce at any misstep or any perceived insult.

And as the silly season nears its “official” kickoff in few weeks at the Iowa caucuses, it seems as if the moderators’ questions are getting more lame, such as the trend toward such questions as “Raise your hand if you believe in Darwin's theory of evolution."

This week’s Republican and Democratic debates in Iowa sponsored by a paper I used to work for, the Des Moines Register, had the rare distinction of being both stultifying boring and unintentionally funny. On Wednesday, the schoolmarmish moderator, Register editor Carolyn Washburn, tried to keep the unruly GOP candidates in line, but they refused to play her hand’s-up game about whether they believe "global climate change is a serious threat and caused by human activity." Fred Thompson said, “I'm not doing hand shows today.” Then Alan Keyes (where did he come from?) hijacked the show for a while, leading the editor to mutter an audible “Sheesh!”

With the Democrats on Thursday, she announced up front that she didn’t want anybody to talk about the war in Iraq. Wrote the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, “This created a scene reminiscent of the ‘Fawlty Towers’ episode in which innkeeper Basil Fawlty, trying not to offend his German guests by mentioning the war, keeps blurting out war references inadvertently: ‘So, that's two egg mayonnaise, a prawn Goebbels, a Hermann Goering, and four Colditz salads.’”

According Susan Milligan of the Boston Globe, Washburn had been boning up for nearly a year to be ready for these debates, and Milligan quotes the Register's longtime political reporter, Dave Yepsen, as warning the candidates to expect a grilling. "She asks tough questions and pointed questions,'' he said. "She doesn't mess around."

Right . . . .

Posted by Rich Somerville at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Some think it should be illegal for new organizations to publish information not received via "official" sources, and in many totalitarian countries it is. In Britain, the news media are prohibited from publishing or airing any story about a legal case until it has gone completely through the court process, which of course can take years.

In the ostensibly democratic United States, freedom of information laws can't prevent government agencies from withholding information that is supposed to be available to any citizen, not just the press. Periodically, the California First Amendment Coalition checks to see if officials are obeying the law. They teamed up with the Society for Professional Journalists and sent university students out to ask for public records at more than 130 local government agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties.

The survey revealed that "local California agencies turned down initial requests for records 77 percent of the time. Law enforcement officials were the worst violators of the law, managing to deny 80 percent of legitimate requests." In one case, a police department demanded that a requester sign an affadavit stating she had never been arrested within the department's jurisdiction.

A similar survey in Humboldt County would be a good idea. It would not be surprising to find a similar percentage of denials.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota this week, another example of what happens when law enforcement agencies try to make up their own laws. A TV reporter working on a story was denied access by St. Paul police to a seven-year-old traffic arrest report — a public document — so he got a copy from a county employee. The police obtained an administrative subpoena (from a DA, not a judge) to seize the reporter's cell phone records in an effort to identify the employee who had the effrontery to obey the law.

The TV station's lawyers think this is not only a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution, but of state law as well. According to an AP story, University of Minnesota media law and ethics professor Jane Kirtley said Minnesota law makes it very hard for police to force reporters to turn over their notes and sources. But she added, "If you're going to pursue a story the government doesn't want you to pursue, you're going to have to be very prepared for the real possibility that they will take any steps they can to unmask your sources."

Posted by Rich Somerville at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

People under 30 may not realize that less than 20 years ago the creation of the Web browser turned the Internet from a text-only labyrinth of BBS's, Gophernets and FTP's into the amazing World Wide Web that we almost take for granted today.

That transformation accelerated changes already taking place in the information, news and communications fields that not only continue, but are gearing up for another quantum leap that some have called Internet 2.

This blog is intended to track and try to understand these changes, particularly how they affect my lifelong field, journalism, as well as public life both on the North Coast and elsewhere.

One example is an article by Matt Bai in the New York Times Sunday Magazine on Dec. 9. His main point: It's becoming clear that presidential candidates have failed to grasp the key lesson of Howard Dean's soar-and-crash 2004 campaign. "Dean's campaign didn't explode online because he somehow figured out a way to channel online politics; he managed this feat because his campaign, almost by accident, became channeled by people he had never met."

Bai says that "in this new and evolving online world, the greatest momentum goes not to the candidate with the most detailed plan for conquering the Web, but to the candidate who surrenders his own image to the clicking masses, the same way a rock guitarist might fall backward off the stage into the hands of an adoring crowd."

That's why it's fun to watch Ron Paul, this year's darling of the blogosphere, looking stunned — like a deer in the headlights — as he goes from a "who's he?" to a guy who can raise $4 million online from 21,000 individuals in a single day. Or to watch Hillary Clinton's handlers work so hard to create a "hip" Web site that is painfully lame. Or analyze how the "Obama Girl" YouTube video may have affected Barack Obama's public image.

The Web users' campaign of 2008 could have as much impact on the future of politics in this country as television did with the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)