future-of-journalism

ORGINAL URL:
http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?SectionID=84&SubSectionID=777&ArticleID=28234&TM=34798.95

PUBLISHED:
Friday, October 27, 2006

ORIGINAL HEADLINE:
Online weblogs can trace their roots to colonial press opinion publications

By Carl Sampson
Capital Press Managing Editor

Carl Sampson is managing editor of the Capital Press. His e-mail address is csampson@capitalpress.com. Capital Press is an independent farm and ranch newspaper that serves California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and other western states. It is published every Friday by Press Publishing Co., 1400 Broadway St. NE, Salem, OR 97303. Phone: 503-364-4431

The advent of weblogs - known as blogs in the language of the Internet - is seen by many as a revolutionary invention. It is, but not in the way they think. In the 1700s, every American newspaper was a collection of letters and opinions. In short, they were blogs that were printed and distributed by enterprising publishers. People wrote their feelings and opinions about the British government, the king, the colonial governors and other issues of the day and newspapers printed those opinions verbatim. There were no news stories as such, only opinions.

Benjamin Franklin was one of the first "bloggers" of that era. He wrote some of his articles under pen names such as "Poor Richard." One revolutionary blogger, a printer named John Peter Zenger, was arrested and put on trial for sedition for his criticism of the governor of New York. His trial, in 1735, marked a milestone for American journalism. It set the precedent that established the truth as an absolute defense against libel lawsuits. Even today it is the legal cornerstone upon which every editor, writer and blogger relies.

More than commentary was printed in early American newspapers. Their "blogs" mentioned such radical ideas as "no taxation without representation" and the right to life, liberty and property." Pamphleteers such as Thomas Paine and orators such as Patrick Henry further stirred the embers of freedom with "Common Sense" and statements such as "Give me liberty or give me death." The ultimate result was the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War, which cut the chains of servitude that had bound Americans to Britain and its king.

Yes, blogging is nothing new in America. If anything, it is among many great American traditions, one to which all of us in great part owe the freedoms we enjoy. Today, in addition to the articles they write, some Capital Press staffers post blogs on our website on issues and events that relate to agriculture. To find them, go to the left side of our homepage, www.capitalpress.com, and click on "Blog." There you will see the posts along with readers' comments about them.

We at Capital Press hope to continue the tradition of a free and unfettered press by also continuing to provide a variety of forums for our readers to express their opinions. Letters to the editor, opinion pieces, comments on the articles on our website and on the blogs we post offer our readers that opportunity. We ask that comments being posted be done in good taste and refrain from personal attacks and profanity. Letters to the editor may also be edited for length.

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The article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 9:44 PM

ORIGINAL URL:
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/061009niles/

Put up or shut up: Newspapers aren't the only forum for great journalism

Commentary: Some critics want to buy the Los Angeles Times from Tribune to protect the quality of local journalism. But there's another way to do that.

By Robert Niles
University of Southern California

Posted: 2006-10-09

Plenty of commentators have expressed their anguish over Tribune Company's management of the Los Angeles Times. The controversy over further cuts in the paper's newsroom this month has cost the publisher his job. Several super-rich Californians have made overtures to buy the paper from Chicago-based Tribune. Yet in all the commotion, one question remains unaddressed: Since when is the Los Angeles Times the only place anyone can do great journalism in L.A.?

Obviously, The Times has done its share. Over the past decade, the paper has distinguished itself with multiple Pulitzer Prizes, as well as engaging daily stories that expose injustices from crooked judges to L.A.'s pathetic Skid Row. Yet failure balances The Times' recent triumph. Tribune-mandated cutbacks have reduced the newsroom from about 1,200 to a little more than 900. That's led to the closure of most of The Times' suburban bureaus and a massive reduction in neighborhood coverage.

Word from the newsroom reports that Tribune wants the newsroom even smaller, to about 800 or so. That's sparked concern from local business leaders, who fear, along with most Times reporters, that a smaller Times newsroom won't be able to properly cover Southern California. Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson and Editor Dean Baquet have protested, too. Now, Johnson's off the job. One might think that business and government leaders would enjoy having fewer eyes looking into their affairs. Writing in Saturday's Los Angeles Times, media critic Tim Rutten pointed out that an aggressive local press has helped communities grow, by exposing the inefficiencies of graft and corruption. Rutten correctly credited newspaper managers for helping enrich America, and themselves, over the past half century.

"The astonishing financial success of postwar American journalism rested on a recognition that an educated and increasingly urbanized readership demanded more sophisticated information on a broader range of topics than ever before and on newspaper managers' willingness to invest in covering them."

But established newspapers are not, and need not be, the only actors in the news industry. Rutten acknowledged that "the era into which we now are moving will involve new ways of distributing journalism . new combinations of print and online venues and, surely, avenues we cannot foresee."

If the Tribune Company wishes to cut the Los Angeles Times' newsroom into irrelevance, that ought to be the Tribune's right as the LAT's owner. Johnson and Baquet deserve credit for fighting for their newsroom. But there's no need for those who have expressed interest in buying The Times to keep their money in their pockets, should Tribune continue to refuse to sell.

Want to protect and improve the quality of local journalism in Southern California? Great. Then go hire some of those folks that Tribune's about to lay off and start up your own newsroom. Worried about the high cost of starting up a new print newspaper, in an era when print's losing readers to the Web? Why bother? Simply start a Web newsroom instead. Worried about the loss of influence publishing online instead of in print? Um, didn't we just say that print was losing readers to the Web?

Many local journalists already have made the switch to online publishing. Just scan the dozens listed on Kevin Roderick's LAObserved.com, under the headings "Media In or About Los Angeles" and "Selected Blogs and Websites." Contrary to the attitude of some within the Times building, many blogs and independent websites feature smart, original reporting. And many more would if they could cash a check from the likes of Eli Broad to support their efforts.

Take the $1 billion that analysts have estimated The Times could fetch, divvy it among the paper's 900-some newsroom employees, and you've got a cool million-plus. Per employee. How many sharp, local investigative websites could be funded with that kind of cash? Heck, maybe a little competition might better get Tribune's attention.

Don't want to run a charity? Fine. Why not hire a few soon-to-be-out-of-work ad reps to go out and find advertisers for these existing and prospective local indie news websites? I've lost count of the number of journalists who want to start their own original reporting news websites but have not out of fear that they won't be able to sell enough ads to support themselves. They shouldn't have to. Let the ad folks sell the ads, and the reporters do the reporting. A smart, well-funded local ad network for indie websites, run by experienced local sales reps, could help sustain the quality of local reporting more effectively than any amount of op-ed handwringing will. And make a bundle of cash for its investors, too.

The point is, Los Angeles has a strong, entrepreneurial business community that shouldn't have to beg to Chicago for tough, local news coverage. If the Tribune Company doesn't want to fund that the way folks around here think it should, then fine. Now's the time for Tribune's critics to put up, or shut up.

The Web is waiting.

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// posted by newshare @ 12:27 AM

ORIGINAL URL:
http://pjnet.org/weblogs/pjnettoday/archives/001336.html

Posted by Leonard Witt at 01:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 15, 2006

Will Giving More People Voice Help or Wreck Community?

Interesting debate at the San Francisco Chronicle between "Chris Anderson,
editor of Wired magazine and author of "The Long Tail," an economic
analysis of how technology is changing our world for the better," and
"Andrew Keen, a Web entrepreneur and author of the book "The Cult of the
Amateur," to be published in May, (who) is not convinced that technology
is bettering us or our society. He believes the new, freewheeling Internet
is diluting our culture by celebrating mediocrity."

I side with Anderson, but Keen has some things that must be pondered as we
move forward.

Here is the final question and their answers:

Q: I wanted to wrap things up by asking where are we going to be in 10
years and where is this movement taking us?

Anderson : I think that the genie is out of the bottle and is going to
stay out of the bottle, hat people given a voice won't give it up. The
tools of the spoken text and video and music and democracy are only going
to get more powerful and we're going to have more freedom to do so, and I
suspect that more people will find a voice. That's a trend that's not
going to stop.

How it changes our culture overall as we become less and less of a
cultural lockstep of shared culture and more and more of a tribal culture
where we have our niche interests? I think the jury is out as to what
that's going to do to us.

Keen: I think we are seeing more fragmentation. I think we are seeing more
anger. I think we are seeing this radicalization of culture and life. I
think that technology seems to be almost coincidental and has exploded
around this at the same time that Americans are very angry about many
different things.

It has nothing to do with blogs or technology, but all these things are
coming together in a way that concerns me and I think that if our
traditional institutions of politics or culture or economics continue to
be undermined by this personalization and radical individualization of
things, then I think we will be in trouble.

I think that if the Internet becomes more and more of a soapbox to trash
elected politicians and mainstream media figures and to conduct these
witch hunts on anyone who ever makes a mistake, then I think that
eventually we are going to find ourselves in a world where we're just
going to be staring at a mirror.

It's going to result in what I call cultural and economic anarchy, and I
don't think that is a good thing. I think it will result in less
community, which is ironic given the fact that this thing is supposed to
be about community.

Here is another good exchange about advertising:

Anderson: People misunderstand free. Most media is, in fact, already free.
Television is free to air. Radio is free to air. Newspapers are basically
free. What newspapers sell is advertising.

The nominal price we charge for products, which by the way you are losing
money on, is simply to qualify the reader or someone who is inclined to
read the advertising. So, we're essentially already in a world of free
content.

Andrew suggests that music revenues are declining and actually that is not
true. CD sales are in decline, but if you include digital singles sales
including ring tones and then include ticket sales for live shows, the
music business has been relatively flat and actually rising of late.

You have to see it in a much broader perspective of the business. Selling
the product is only one way to make money. Selling around the product is a
much better way to make money.

Keen: Other than a normal business model, how would you feel if
advertisements were sold in your book?

Anderson: Online, fine. If it doesn't interrupt the flow, I have no
problem with it.

Keen: I think one of the most pertinent things about what I consider to be
a cultural golden age in the 20th century of mass media was that
advertising was not packaged in movies. It was not packaged in music and
only marginally packaged in newspapers.

I think what's happening is that increasingly you have this collapse of
advertising in culture so that you have more and more product placement in
movies. You have more sophisticated ways of tying brands into music so
that ultimately, you're right. Obviously, there will be a music business.
There will be a culture business, but advertising will be so central to
it, that the value of culture is going to be profoundly undermined.

When you buy a piece of music, which in some sense is being paid for by
Wal-Mart or McDonald's, then I think its core value is much less than if
you buy a disc which simply contains music. I see with digital downloads
this becoming an increasingly central part of the business model, because
if you can't sell the thing, you have to figure out a way that advertising
sells it.

Anderson: What does that mean? Buy music being paid for by Wal-Mart? What
does that actually mean?

Keen: It means, for example, on YouTube there seems to be more and more
sophisticated ways of building brand placement into cultural sales of one
sort or another.

Anderson: Give me an example. I don't follow you.

Q: Smirnoff's "TeaPartay" ads on YouTube would be a good example. They're
watched for comic value, but advertising is implicit.

Anderson: Do you have an objection to people watching Smirnoff ads on
YouTube?

Keen: I don't have an objection to any of those things. What I would like
to defend is cultural sales independent of advertising, which I think that
the digital revolution is undermining.

Anderson: Are you against advertising?

Keen: I'm not against advertising. I'm against the collapse of advertising
in context.

Anderson: Let's talk about the last 20 years. Your concern is that
advertising is more pervasive in our culture in the last 20 years,
something, by the way, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with.

Keen: Again, I'm not against clear advertising. What I'm against is
content, whether it's music or movies, being sold as movies or music but
really being financed somehow by a business looking to advertise.

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// posted by newshare @ 12:08 AM

ORIGINAL URL:
http://www.snpa.org/circuitaddon/ebulletin/10.19.06.htm

HEADLINE:
"Why We are Still Buying Newspaper Companies:
Their Value and Their Future"

From the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association website

Despite the difficult times ahead for the newspaper industry, MediaNews Group continues to feel very bullish about the future of newspapers and will continue to buy newspapers, William Dean Singleton, MediaNews vice chairman and CEO, said at Tuesday's general session at the SNPA Annual Convention.

He acknowledged that there are some who believe that newspapers are a dying business. "We find ourselves in difficult times," Singleton said, but "we're not a dying business. We're in a changing business...and it's changing very rapidly."

He says part of the reason Wall Street isn't convinced that the next business model will be more exciting than the old one is that newspapers haven't proven it economically yet. "This will be a down year for the newspaper industry," he said. "Most newspaper companies will have down revenue from last year and certainly . if not down revenue . down profits, which isn't something that happens very often in our business. Wall Street's not accustomed to that so they're punishing newspaper stocks."

He said that, while print readership is still very dominant, it is declining somewhat. And, print advertising is declining as readers change the way they reach customers. "So, we are going to have a period between the old and the new that's going to be a bit choppy. And, it may last a year or two or three or four." But, he said the bottom line is that . as consumers begin to depend on interactive media for their daily lives . "we'll be there."

As the business model changes, Singleton says newspapers will continue to depend on the things that have made them successful:

-- Good solid local news coverage
-- Being close to customers in their markets
-- Providing those customers with the advertising tools they need -- whether it be in print or interactive, through cellular telephone or ipods, or however they want it.

"I think the future is promising and the business we end up in 10 year from now, in my view, will be far better than the business we have today," Singleton said. "But, we have to be somewhat patient in getting there."

For information about ordering a CD with audio presentations from the SNPA Annual Convention, click here.

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The article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 10:53 PM

ORIGINAL URL:
http://www.itworldcanada.com/Pages/Docbase/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=idgml-b33bc80a-973c-48cb-88a7-49e73e4b48e7

IMPORTANT CROSS LINKS ARE IN ORIGINAL URL
http://www.spamhaus.org/archive/legal/e360/kocoras_order_6_10.pdf
http://www.cdt.org/press/20061012press.php
http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-10oct06.htm
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1075
http://www.spamhaus.org/legal/answer.lasso?ref=3

Court ruling may spark 'constitutional crisis' for Internet

By: Robert McMillan
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau) (17 Oct 2006)

Internet experts are worried that a U.S. court decision against antispam black-lister Spamhaus Project Ltd. could trigger a "constitutional crisis" for the Internet.

Last month, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled against the antispam project in a lawsuit brought by e-mail marketer E360Insight LLC. The court ordered Spamhaus to remove the company from its database of spammers and to pay US$11.7 million in damages, but Spamhaus initially ignored the ruling, saying that the U.S. court had no jurisdiction over the U.K.-based project.

On Friday, the judge in the case upped the stakes. He issued a proposed order that told both the Spamhaus.org domain name registrar, Tucows Inc., and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to pull the project's domain name, a move that would shut down the Spamhaus Web site. That proposed order can be found at this website.

Though the order is only proposed, and does not have the force of law, observers worry that any attempt by U.S. courts to exert control over ICANN could be bad for the Internet. ICANN, in Marina del Rey, California, has already come under fire for lacking transparency and being U.S.-centric.

"It's a delicate time for ICANN right now," said David McGuire, director of communications with the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a public interest group focused on Internet issues. "If a court were to order ICANN to remove a domain name, we think that would be a bad precedent because making ICANN a tool of the U.S. legal system in matters such as these would sidetrack ICANN from its very important duties."

The CDT has issued a statement on the case, which can be found at this website. McGuire believes that companies in e360's position should go to U.K. courts to ask them to enforce the U.S. court's judgement, or, failing that, approach the domain registrar.

ICANN has agreed that only registrars can suspend individual domain names. It believes that there is no way it could enforce the proposed court order. But as the organization responsible for the Internet's top-level domains, ICANN does have the authority to accredit registrars like Tucows, based in Toronto. ICANN's statement on the proposed order can be found at this website.

Princeton University's Edward Felten believes that it is possible that ICANN could be forced to comply with this type of court order. "Suppose a U.S. court ordered ICANN to yank a prominent .com name belonging to a non-U.S. company," wrote Felten, the director of Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy, in a blog posting. "ICANN could fight but being based in the US it would probably have to comply in the end." Felten's blog can be found at this website. "Such a decision, if seen as unfair outside the U.S., could trigger a sort of constitutional crisis for the Net," he added. "The result wouldn't be pretty."

Tucows, for its part, says that it has been asked to remove domain names in the past. But Vice President of Marketing Ken Schafer declined to comment on whether his company planned to comply with the Illinois court's proposed order. "Nobody's asked us to do anything," he said. "Right now it's just statements flying around."

Spamhaus says that the ruling shows how U.S. courts can be "bamboozled" by spammers and that it plans to appeal the court ruling "in order to stamp out further attempts by spammers to abuse the U.S. court system in this way." Representatives from the organization were not immediately available to comment for this story. The Spamhaus statement on this matter can be found at this website.

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The article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 9:43 AM

More than jobs are at stake

PUBLISHED: Oct. 7, 2006

ORIGINAL URL:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-rutten7oct07,1,2420450.column
Other links: http://www.sltrib.com/old/opinion/ci_4453378
http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=311970&Category=14
COMMENT:
http://belowthefold.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/10/the_end_of_los_.html

Regarding Media
By Tim Rutten

NEARLY 90 years ago, Walter Lippmann wrote, "The newspaper is in all its
literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people
determines its conduct."

One need not share his predilection for Olympian overstatement to believe
that there's a great deal at stake in the distress and turmoil through
which American newspapers now are passing. Nowhere is that truer than in
Los Angeles, where The Times' publisher, Jeffrey M. Johnson, was forced
Thursday to resign because he resisted the Tribune Co.'s demand that he
further cut the staff that produces this paper. He has been replaced by
the Chicago Tribune's publisher, David D. Hiller, who . like Johnson . has
had a long career with Tribune, including service as the company's general
counsel and as manager of its interactive business.

Dean Baquet, The Times' editor who also resisted the demands
for reductions in staff, was asked to remain and has agreed to do so,
telling people within the paper that he intends to argue that further
diminishing the number of journalists he directs will undermine The Times'
ability to provide its readers with a newspaper of acceptable quality.
Since acquiring this paper as part of its purchase of Times Mirror six
years ago, Tribune has cut the number of reporters, editors, photographers
and designers from about 1,200 to 940. The paper's editors say that
Chicago believes that about 800 would be a more appropriate number. At the
same time, Tribune has reduced the number of people employed in producing
and distributing the paper from 5,300 to 2,800.

Johnson has said that his differences with Tribune turned not only on his
belief that "newspapers can't cut their way into the future" but also on
his frustration over Chicago's unwillingness to spend on initiatives
designed to arrest the paper's decline in circulation from 1.1 million
daily in 1999 to 852,000 this year.

Much that is of consequence to this paper's future will turn on the
relationship between Hiller, the third publisher installed by Tribune
since acquiring The Times, and Baquet, the second editor. Thursday, Hiller
told the Wall Street Journal that he and Baquet had "decided that we would
spend time in a conversation about the future of the newspaper. And then
we would know after those conversations whether we saw the way forward
with the newspaper going to the same place. And if it was going to the
same place we would go together, but we wouldn't know that until we had
the conversation, and I want to be very open and take a good fresh look at
everything."

Hiller's two predecessors, of course, did just that and came to
conclusions about this paper and its future that were unacceptable to
Tribune.

Lippmann's sentiments notwithstanding, it cannot be argued that a
newspaper's mere physical persistence is a guarantor of democracy or the
common good. On the eve of the Civil War, Americans were, per capita, the
greatest newspaper readers in the world. Yet those papers, little more
than vehicles for advertising and partisan vitriol, encouraged rather than
arrested a democratic society's slide into fratricide.

It was the memory of that searing descent that led the American historian
Henry Adams to muse in his memoirs that this nation's "politics, as a
practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic
organization of hatreds."

So it seemed 100 years ago to one of the American nation's greatest
interpreters, and so . as these days of bitter red state-blue state
division suggest . it could seem again. Newspapers have a vital role to
play in preventing that; indeed, it is the very essence of their
obligation to a society under the protecting wing of whose Constitution
they conduct their business. However, they can play that role and meet
that obligation only if they're up to the job. The remarkably constructive
and, not incidentally, lucrative part that major American newspapers have
come to play since World War II rests on three hard-won achievements:

One is the transformation of editorial pages from organs of mindless
partisan propaganda to civil voices of opinion. Papers still may lean
left, right or toward the center, but they overwhelmingly do so with an
attention to rules of argument and civility unimaginable in the
not-very-distant past. More important, they routinely make space for other
points of view and are rightly criticized when they fail to make enough
room. (It's interesting that the most striking of such transitions from
partisan rag to nonpartisan analyst occurred at the Chicago Tribune and
Los Angeles Times.) The second change involved the provision of adequate
resources to inform readers about local, national and foreign news.
Without facts there are no opinions that count for much, however well
expressed.

In some large part, the astonishing financial success of postwar American
journalism rested on a recognition that an educated and increasingly
urbanized readership demanded more sophisticated information on a broader
range of topics than ever before and on newspaper managers' willingness to
invest in covering them. Finally, by stripping muckraking of its
ideological component, big-city newspapers created modern investigative
reporting. In doing so, they unwittingly cut the ties that long had bound
them to their cities' moneyed establishment. It's now taken for granted
that it is through vigorous investigative reporting that a newspaper
demonstrates that it holds the interests of its community as a whole above
those of any narrow faction or class.

Doing all these things costs money, but by investing in civil and
reasonable editorial pages, in truly serious local, national and foreign
reporting, and in vigorous, nonpartisan investigative journalism, the
owners of American newspapers not only enriched their communities but also
made themselves wealthier than even they ever had dreamed. The era into
which we now are moving will involve new ways of distributing journalism .
new combinations of print and online venues and, surely, avenues we cannot
foresee. There is nothing to suggest, though, that readers' expectations
regarding the scope of major news organization's journalism or the demands
of service to the common good will in any way diminish.

To borrow a homey image from Henry Adams' agrarian America, the smart guys
among our newspaper managers will not be the ones who eat their own seed
corn simply to fatten themselves through another fleeting season.

Whether newspapers belong to individual proprietors or corporate
stockholders, the future . and its profits . will belong to those who are
both socially responsible enough and financially hard-headed enough to
carry what is indispensable about the present into the era now struggling
to be born.

Los Angeles will be one of the places where we'll eventually find out
whether newspaper journalism's current distress is a birth pang or a death
rattle.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
timothy.rutten@latimes.com
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The article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 11:51 PM

ORIGINAL URL HAS IMPORTANT ADDITIONAL LINKS:
http://poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=112061
Poynter Institute Online

Posted, Oct. 12, 2006 / Updated, Oct. 12, 2006

Wake Up, Newsies:
Stop Fretting and Start Building

A veteran editor and journalism activist argues that there are plenty of
ways to save good journalism -- but somebody has to pursue them.

By Geneva Overholser

To all who anguish about the prospects for journalism, here is an invitation: Let us turn our energy toward possibility. There are many opportunities to help ensure the survival of good journalism -- various steps that could be taken by different individuals and organizations. But focusing on those possibilities requires a change of perspective.

For one thing, it is difficult to embrace new prospects while clinging to the past by our fingernails -- however natural a reaction that has been to the fearsome developments of late. To champion journalism effectively, we will have to distinguish between our traditions and our principles. We have wonderful memories of all the things that once were, but few of them are essential to democracy. We must concentrate on those that are. If we spill our passion on keeping ads off the front page, will we have enough fight left in us to champion investigative reporting?

In these days of fast-paced change, we will have to give up on looking at things as simply as we have in the past. Similarly, we must open our minds to the possibility that some activities we have held ourselves resolutely above may now in fact be required of us. Our journalism must speak for itself, we have said. But nowadays the sound of journalism is easily lost amid the din of the many who scorn, misportray and revile it. Who, if not we, will make journalism's case? We must be prepared, too, to work together with people whom we have always kept at an "appropriate" distance. (A local citizens' group is worried about media ownership? That's their business, not ours. Or is it?)

And we will most assuredly have to get it through our heads (and hearts) just how exciting and full of possibility for journalism's future are today's new venues -- all those new digital platforms that so many have simply wished would go away. What could be worse than having journalism on iPods? How about NOT having it there? Take a cruise through some of the Web sites that, say, give ethnic news a well-deserved wider hearing. Or that enable people to search crime news by type, time and location. Or that pay the sort of loving attention to what's going on in a particular neighborhood that only an old-fashioned weekly once knew how to do. How wondrously they put us to shame, all of us with our endless reasons why we can't possibly fit something in our newspaper or newscast.

In these days of fast-paced change, we will have to give up on looking at things as simply as we have in the past. Take media ownership, which is fast becoming a much more complex picture. Nonprofits are an increasingly key source of everything from international investigative reporting to local-local news. And consider this: Given the way newspapers are changing hands, perhaps former editors and publishers should offer their services as a kind of traveling think tank to some of these folks who've suddenly ended up as local newspaper owners. Meanwhile, should public policy be shaped so as to make it easier to take publicly held companies private?

The bountiful opportunities to affect the future of journalism are available to people in all kinds of different positions. Board members could demand that the health of their companies' journalism be audited as avidly as its fiscal health -- and that their executives be rewarded as richly for the one as for the other. Shareholders could band together to exert pressure for corporate responsibility among media companies, much as they have pressed for corporate environmental responsibility.

We'll have to open our minds to new possibilities, take risks, experiment and engage one another (and lots of others) in lively discussions about new and unsettling prospects.Elected representatives could pass tax legislation to make it easier for news companies to be organized as nonprofit, tax-exempt corporations. Colleges could make civics and news literacy classes part of their entrance requirements. The journalism academy could turn its massive research capability toward questions of practical import for journalists: How can the concept of objectivity best be formulated to serve journalism today? How can journalism's enduring values be translated even more richly online? Journalism organizations could recognize excellence in ways that strengthen the craft: Master copy editors, say, anointed by the American Copy Editors Society, would have responsibilities to nurture the craft back in their newsrooms. The opportunities go on and on. Some are easy to ponder, others immedi!
ately discomforting: Should the government provide tax breaks for under-heard voices? Should an independent council be established to track, promote and define the news function in the United States?

But here is something truly unsettling: the prospect of a journalism hollowed out by corporate dictates, undermined by rants gone unanswered and swamped in a sea of "media outlets" meeting every need but democracy's.

To ward that off, we'll have to move past a lot of givens. We'll have to figure out what is really essential, and prepare to jettison what isn't. We'll have to open our minds to new possibilities, take risks, experiment and engage one another (and lots of others) in lively discussions about new and unsettling prospects. We'll have to take responsibility for our future -- and for the future of this craft we love.

We can save journalism -- if we open ourselves to the possibilities.

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http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=112061
Copyright © 1995-2006 The Poynter Institute

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The article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 11:26 PM

Google Pays $1.65 Billion for Popular Video Web Site YouTube

Google announced Oct. 9, 2006 9 it would pay $1.65 billion in stock for the
popular video repository and search engine YouTube. Technology and financial
analysts discuss the implications of the ground-breaking deal for the future of
the Internet in a PBS Lehrer Newshour segment.

LINK: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec06/youtube_10-10.html

ALSO COMMENTARY BY JEFF CHESTER of Center for Digital Democracy:
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/42988/

// posted by newshare @ 7:07 AM

ORGINAL URL:
http://www.journalism.org/node/2390

FROM the Project on Excellence in Journalism website . .

Brave new world: Citizens and cell phones?

It's the year 2010, and an underground subway station in the center of London has been bombed.

Within minutes, a British businessman leaving on a trip receives a text message on his cell phone alerting him tothe incident. Consequently, he directs his cab driver to take an alternative route to the train station so he willmake his connection. En route, he logs onto BBC News.com via a computer portal that is now standard equipment inLondon cabs and sees the first pictures of what appears to be a major terrorist attack in the heart of the city.After boarding his commuter train, he checks his phone throughout the journey for instant updates.

On the scene, one of the first victims of the attack, a 20-year-old college student, staggers out of the subway station. Though dazed and shaken, she contacts the BBC News and goes on the air live, reporting via a camera on her phone even before the emergency responders arrive. As the week unfolds, she will produce a video blog each day that documents her recovery, an online feature attracting many well-wishers from around the world.

This is the brave new world of information technology in the year 2010 - according to a video that aired Oct. 6 at the Online News Association conference in Washington DC. In a keynote address at the event, deputy director for BBC News Adrian Van Klaveren sketched out a scenario in which a mix of citizen participation and emerging technologies will increasingly shape the future of news.

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This article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 10:22 PM

ORIGINAL URL: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061030/alterman
Posted October 11, 2006

By Eric Alterman
The Nation Magazine

There is a specter haunting American journalism; well, dozens actually, but today's specter is the purposeful abuse of the anonymous website comments board. In the past, when a journalist, or even a partisan, wished to attribute a quote to an individual or an organization, it was necessary to obtain some form of evidence that the person being quoted actually existed. No longer. Thanks to the proliferation of e-mails, instant messages and Internet message boards, our most august journalistic institutions are now quoting people who may well be imaginary. Worse, they may have assumed a phony identity for nefarious personal or political purposes.

The problem has arisen in a variety of contexts of late. When discussing reactions to the news that Bob Dylan appears to have borrowed lyrics from nineteenth-century Confederate Henry Timrod, the New York Times quoted an anonymous denizen of a Dylan web fan forum complaining in a juvenile and malicious fashion as a counterpoint to the more learned quotations from genuine Dylan scholars. Who was the guy? Who knows? He didn't even have a name. The Bobster's reputation may have suffered microscopic degrees of damage, but the primary casualty was the Times's reputation for veracity. Similarly, when the Washington Post, in one of its periodic sex panics, printed the salacious instant messages of Representative Foley and two former Congressional pages, the article noted that "attempts by The Post to contact the two former pages were unsuccessful." Nor did the paper reach Foley. Given that almost anyone can fake an IM exchange, to go to press with such damning words whose auth!
enticity is unverified is recklessness itself. (Remember the good old days of the "Watergate rule," which required two corroborating sources for the publication of information based on anonymous sources? That went out the window with Monica Lewinsky's blue dress.)

To see how easily this lazy practice can be exploited, we need look no further than a recent article in the New York Post. The story, according to its author, Maggie Haberman, was fed to her by aides to Joe Lieberman's senatorial campaign and accused the liberal organization MoveOn.org of promoting anti-Semitism on its message boards. Posters on MoveOn's ActionForum had written of "media-owning Jewish pigs" and "Zionazis" and called the Senator "Jew Lieberman." The story contained quotations from the Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman taking MoveOn to task for the message board's "hateful content." In what could have been mere coincidence, I suppose, the story, which was also covered by the Moonie-owned Washington Times, was quickly seized upon by Lieberman supporters like Marshall Wittman of the Democratic Leadership Council and William Kristol of the Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, Fox News, etc. Writing on his Bull Moose blog, Wittman asked, "Shouldn't lef!
ties ask themselves why the anti-Semitic haters are attracted to their sites?" and wondered "why Democratic leaders continue to collude with the anti-Semitic appeasing left." In a widely reprinted Wall Street Journal column provocatively titled "Anti-Judaism," Kristol took up this same theme and concluded, "Jews are under attack. And no one seems very concerned. Liberal Jews are more concerned about Mel Gibson than [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad."

In fact, none of the people reporting, discussing or pronouncing on the MoveOn comments had any idea who made them or why. It would have been easy, for instance, for a Lieberman supporter to post the comments and then complain to the campaign's friends in the Murdoch and Moonie empires, feigning the kind of shock, shock Captain Renault made famous in Casablanca. And shouldn't it be obvious that anonymous posters on a public bulletin board do not represent anyone or anything but their own silly little minds? When critic Lee Siegel donned his sock puppet to praise himself and attack the character of those who questioned his brilliance on The New Republic's comments board, no one blamed the magazine for Siegel's miasmic mishigas, since its editors acted quickly and suspended him. And Siegel was actually employed by TNR; the morons who posted on MoveOn may not even exist.

When I took the apparently unthinkable journalistic step of contacting the organization itself to discover what it knew about the incident, I learned that the postings were deleted immediately after MoveOn was informed of them. Many of the organization's key staff members, including its executive director, Eli Pariser, and communications director, Jennifer Lindenauer, are proud Jews and take no less offense at such things than, say, neocon pundits. Even the censorious Foxman, who ran to the media to complain without first talking to anyone at MoveOn about the postings, admitted that the organization had acted appropriately and that the incident was now "resolved satisfactorily."

The attempt to blame MoveOn for these illiterate scrawls is about as credible as blaming a presidential candidate for graffiti near a campaign stop. That Kristol would employ so slender a reed to slander a liberal organization is hardly surprising; this is, after all, a man who admiringly quotes his father Irving's kind words for Joe McCarthy. But Wittman's stance is more puzzling. Leaving aside that his own recent employment by a genuine lunatic anti-Semite, Pat Robertson, leaves him on rather thin ice, Wittman cannot have forgotten how his friend and former employer John McCain was undone by the same kind of unsourced slander by the Bush forces in South Carolina in 2000. What's more, Wittman is now employed by the DLC, which may not like MoveOn.org but should at least be respectful of its 3.2 million likely Democratic voters. Nevertheless, when I e-mailed Wittman to ask if he had reconsidered his blog post, he politely replied that he had not. Too bad.

Ultimately, however, it's the journalistic questions that loom largest: How can mainstream media organizations maintain that they hold themselves to higher standards than the Drudge-driven political blogosphere when they ape its most irresponsible practices? Time for another blogger ethics panel, perhaps?

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The article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 11:29 PM