Cit Media

It’s New Year’s Day in Japan, where I am today. Happy 2007 to all.

(Photo by mjzitek; published under a Creative Commons license)

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Tom Stites, a former newspaper editor and a deep thinker about the journalism craft, gave a speech last summer that won plenty of well-deserved attention. In that talk — which we guest-posted here, entitled “Is media performance democracy’s critical issue?” — he posed a key question about our future.

Now he’s back with an essay about the need for great journalism.Read it below:

(more…)

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What will happen in American journalism in 2007? Here, in the multiple-choice format borrowed from (and with grateful apologies to) columnist William Safire, are my own best guesses. Answers are at the bottom. (Note: “All” or “None” are valid choices.)

1. The biggest network-news shock will occur when:
A. A major broadcast network kills its evening news show due to low ratings and the prospect of making more money with a “reality” show
B. CBS replaces Katie Couric with Howard Stern
C. Google launches a highly viewed daily “newscast” featuring editor- and audience-selected YouTube videos, and syndicates the program to independent TV stations

2. CNN will:
A. Hire Ann Coulter to make itself even less distinguishable from Fox News
B. Restore its reputation for respectable journalism by firing Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck
C. Create a system for routinely paying citizen journalists for their videos

3. Local TV news shows will:
A. Start producing actual news reports
B. Create special segments featuring video news releases
C. Attempt to persuade citizen journalists to provide all the content without compensation
D. Collaborate with citizen journalists, and pay them, to produce more comprehensive reports

4. The first major American news organization to ask its audience for reporting help on a major project will be:
A. New York Times
B. Washington Post
C. NBC News
D. Fox News

5. Most newspaper executives will:
A. Continue to downsize their newsrooms without any real plan for the long term
B. Complain incessantly about competition from online advertising competitors
C. Remain suspicious of citizen media except as a possible way to save money
D. Innovate at the edges, not in the core functions

6. The number of top editors at over-100,000 circulation newspapers who will quit or be fired:
A. Fewer than 3
B. 3-7
C. 8-12
D. More than 12

7. Scandals will emerge with the disclosure of:
A. Inflated circulation numbers for magazines
B. Special-coverage deals between news executives and newsmakers
C. Widespread pay-for-play deals involving bloggers

8. Google will:
A. Pull more and more advertising away from other media companies
B. See its stock drop precipitously as unfixed click-fraud drives away advertisers
C. Offer an online marketplace connecting citizen media creators and media organizations
D. Start a print magazine called “Googling”

9. The most important journalism innovation will be:
A. The combination of reputation and popularity in selecting news that matters
B. Sophisticated “Web 2.0″ mashups
C. A major investigation, reported in part by the audience, leading to significant state and/or federal legislation

10. A prominent blogger will:
A. Lose his/her house in a libel judgment or settlement
B. Win a Pulitzer prize in journalism
C. Win a MacArthur “genius” grant

Answers: 1-C; 2-none; 3-C; 4-B; 5-all; 6-B; 7-all; 8-a; 9-all; 10-A.

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Tom Evslin explains how the alleged “concessions” by AT&T to get approval of its BellSouth buyout are a sham:

• at&t’s IPTV is exempted from the neutrality provision. It is the TV “pipes” that at&t CEO Ed Whitacre thinks are his. Trouble is, there are no separate pipes on an IP network. at&t has left itself full flexibility to favor its own Internet video offers over all challengers or to charge others a premium for equal treatment.
• Very carefully, the ACCESS network is defined as the part of the at&t supplied network between the customer premises and the nearest Internet peering point. But at&t owns huge stretches of Internet BACKBONE (the part of the Internet between peering points); there is absolutely no promise of neutrality here.
• Even this very weak concession sunsets in two years rather than the three and half years at&t has offered for their other “concessions”.

Sadly, people who should know better have been utterly taken in by this bait-and-switch.

The principles that made the Internet the most open and valuable platform — for everyone, not just the people who control networks — have been shredded. CItizen media is going to be hurt badly by this deal.

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Star Tribune: Star Tribune’s sale turns several new pages. The Star Tribune’s new chairman is a Wall Street investor who says he’s driven by public service. Chris Harte is also a resident of Texas and Maine and a former newspaper executive who’ll be advising an investment group that has never owned a daily newspaper.

Oh, sure, these investors made the deal in search of ways to contribute to public service. What insulting drivel. They did it to make money, and they bought the paper at a price that may well work out well for them.

Another possible outcome is this: The new owners a) pay themselves gigantic bonuses; b) milk what’s left of the cash cow; and c) unload the thing in a couple of years to someone who’ll slash and burn even more.

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Washington Post: Google Set To Expand Newspaper Ad Program. But to hear newspaper executives and analysts tell it, the outlook is more cautious. They said Google has brought in new advertisers, such as small companies outside their distribution areas looking to build more awareness for their products. But Google’s online ad technology is so new that it remains unclear how much it will help newspapers, they said.

Google is in business for Google, and in the long run it’s in direct competition with newspapers. If executives don’t keep that in high focus, they will regret jumping this particular shark in the end.

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Wall Street Journal: McClatchy’s Minneapolis Sale Aids Web Efforts. One of the biggest believers in the newspaper field sold its largest paper yesterday, as McClatchy Co. agreed to sell the Minneapolis Star Tribune to private-equity firm Avista Capital Partners for $530 million. The price is less than half of what McClatchy paid for the paper in 1998, when it bought the Star Tribune from Cowles Media for $1.2 billion. The value of papers has declined as they face declining readership and a fragmented media environment.

Yes, there were some favorable tax consequences, as the story notes. And, yes, there’s some other logic to this deal.

But half the price of the original purchase? And no interest from other newspaper companies?

Those are signs of deepening malaise, or worse, in the newspaper business. I still own some McClatchy stock (residual holding from Knight Ridder shares I owned before the company was sold last year), and plan to keep them. But this sale is not the kind of news a shareholder likes to hear.

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Whatever our faith or belief, let’s all work toward a better world. Happy holidays.

(Note: The picture is from Vermont, just outside of Montpelier.)

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A business-oriented website all but accused the editor of Men’s Health magazine, in a blog posting on Yahoo, of inserting an advertising plug into his copy. Oh, there was a disclaimer of sorts — maybe the blog writer “really loves the product,” suggested Dan Zoll in his posting — but the rest of the piece left almost no doubt in my mind about what he was thinking.

Reading the posting at issue, I confess I was also somewhat suspicious of the wording (and think the product plug raised a reasonable question). But, as I asked in a note to AllBusiness, which flagged the item in the first place: Did anyone ask the writer, or anyone at Yahoo, for a comment before essentially accusing the editor, his magazine and Yahoo of unethical behavior?

The AllBusiness writer said, no, he hadn’t. Uh, oh.

Later, he wrote again to say he’d posted this update, acknowledging that his initial posting had made an incorrect assumption. There was no business relationship. (As of this writing, the original posting was unchanged — it, too, needs an update.)

Seems to me this is an almost perfect example of a tendency that’s all too common in media today, and not just in blogs: People find it easy to fire before aiming. (I’ve done it myself, though I don’t think I’ve ever raised ethical questions about someone else in this way.)

A lesson here, I hope…

(Disclosure: I’m teaching a course at UC Berkeley with Bill Gannon, Yahoo’s editorial director.)

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NY Times: Saturday Night Live - Special Treat in a Box.

Given the subject matter, it was little surprise that NBC bleeped a recurring word in the chorus 16 times. But soon after the broadcast concluded at 1 a.m. Sunday, viewers who’d seen the bit on TV (and others who had just heard about it) could find the uncensored version online. That’s because the network itself had placed it on its own Web site and YouTube.com, under the headings “Special Treat in a Box” or “Special Christmas Box.”

The blue-noses of America want to turn broadcasting into a medium suitable only for children, and they’re having good luck with this campaign. To achieve their ends, they’ve turned the Federal Censorship, uh, Communications Commission into an agency whose job is frequently to assess big fines against broadcasters for all kinds of alleged violations of decency. Broadcasters, at long last, have begun to fight back, but late in the game.

Meanwhile, sensible adults are turning to cable, satellite and the Internet for video entertainment that has more of an edge. And so, it seems are the broadcasters themselves.

NBC tells the Times this kind of posting will probably be an exception. Maybe. But in the end it’ll be the rule, because as long as broadcasters have fewer First Amendment rights than other media, broadcast TV and radio will be less interesting media.

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