Center for Citizen Media

Mark Cuban: The Google Brilliance applied to Newspapers and Local Media. You might not be as efficient in monetization as Google, but most of your customers will never know the difference. All they will know is that you have earned their trust as the company that handles all their advertising and website ad publishing needs so that they can focus on selling Pizzas, laser surgery and cars. That is huge for any small business.

Mark Potts: Rolling a Hand Grenade Down the Hall. Let’s roll a hand grenade down the hall. Let’s try blowing up the very concept of a metro newspaper and thinking about it in an entirely new form. Instead of a big, one-size-fits-all newspaper/Web site, let’s reimagine the local news product as a group of much smaller papers or sites, each aimed at a very specific segment of the local audience.

NewsTrust, where people rate the quality of news stories, has launched a beta site. The potential of this approach is terrific: community involvement in understanding how well journalists — including bloggers — do at their jobs (whether it’s a professional or amateur activity or something in between).

Clearly, this is an early iteration. But the promise is clear.

Join up and help out.

(Disclosure: I’m an advisor to NewsTrust.)

Earlier this week I posted this piece about video news releases (VNRs) and their undisclosed use by TV “news” programs. I loathe the practice, but worry more about the negative consequences of federal intervention, which some favor, than the good it might do. Diane Farsetta, senior researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy, one of the organizations calling for intervention, sent me the following rebuttal, which I post in full here. I’ll respond in another posting.

By Diane Farsetta

1. Why VNRs aren’t like print press releases.
A verbatim reprint of a print press release, with a reporter adding her/his byline to it and falsely presenting it as her/his own reporting, is an occasional misuse of the material. With VNRs, both the explicit goal (of the PR firm and paying client) and the overwhelming practice by TV stations is to wholly replace reporters with publicists, without disclosure. Between our two reports — which include every single instance of VNR usage that we were able to document — nearly 90 percent of the 140 VNR broadcasts were “news” segments where all of the video and all of the information presented came directly from the VNR package.

In addition, video is information dense, allowing for multiple sub-texts which make it a far more persuasive medium than the printed word. Even a cursory reading of the PR trade press makes clear that broadcast PR firms use these sub-texts to the hilt. Or, just look at some of the examples in our two VNR reports — the omnipresent Allstate logo lurking behind spokespeople in that company’s VNRs (one example here), the presentation of a corporate-friendly (if not -funded) climate change skeptic as an authoritative “expert” in an academic-looking setting (here, or filling the screen with cute children that “need” the protection offered by the VNR funder’s products (two of several examples here andhere).

2. Why FCC involvement is appropriate.
Undisclosed VNRs have been flagged as a serious and contentious issue several times, going back to at least 1991. Each time VNRs have come to the public’s attention — be it due to a Consumers Union report, a GAO finding that undisclosed government VNRs are covert propaganda, or an ongoing FCC investigation — PR firms and TV stations have paid lip service to disclosure but have done little, if anything, to ensure viewers’ right to know where their news comes from. This is exactly when regulation is warranted — when private entities have repeatedly proven themselves unwilling or unable to act responsibly.

The FCC is the agency responsible for overseeing U.S. media and communications systems and, as you know, it already has sponsorship identification requirements that apply to VNRs, as the agency stated in its unanimously-passed April 2005 Public Notice. Moreover, there is long historical, legislative and judicial precedent affirming the FCC’s responsibility to act in the public interest. Your column states that “broadcasters have fewer First Amendment rights than other media creators,” but it’s important to note that there is no First Amendment right to breach federal regulations, to systematically mislead viewers, or to renege on the responsibilities detailed in broadcasters’ FCC licenses.

Most importantly, what we’re talking about is just disclosure of VNRs — something like an on-screen label reading, “Video provided by General Motors.” Disclosure does not keep TV stations from airing VNRs, or PR firms from producing them. What it does is avoid the wholesale deception and manipulation of news audiences.

As a side note, the analogy to indecency cases is wholly inaccurate. Whether broadcast material was funded by and provided on behalf of an outside party is a black and white question; indecency involves shades of gray that depend on community norms and personal values. In addition, FCC enforcement of its sponsorship identification rules with regard to VNRs, would result — at most — in stations being fined not for airing VNRs, but for airing VNRs without disclosure.

Lastly, relying on “public-spirited nonprofits, bloggers, and others” to watchdog the broadcast news industry is utterly impractical and a recipe for an industry race to the bottom. Our two reports — which took a year and a half and significant funding to produce — looked at less than two percent of the total number of VNRs being offered to TV newsrooms during that time. Would you ask environmental groups to take sole responsibility for monitoring illegal industrial waste dumping? Independent watchdog groups play an important role in our national system, but their information and advocacy supplements government’s legislative, regulatory and police functions. Watchdog groups do not, could not and should not be called upon to replace government functions.

3. Why TV news is important.
Television remains the number one news source in the United States. It is truly massive mass media. While there are a growing variety of media options today, TV remains the dominant news source. No blog, podcast, radio station, cable access TV station, newspaper, etc, reaches as large an audience.

When researchers, reporters, commentators, federal agencies and others turn their collective back on TV as not “serious,” what are the implications for the tens of millions of news viewers? What are the implications for other forms of journalism, which are also targeted and infiltrated by deceptive PR, marketing and propaganda? Should broadcasters have any responsibility to serve the “public interest, convenience and necessity,” as currently mandated by the Communications Act?

Manchester (NH) Union Leader: Gingrich raises alarm at event honoring those who stand up for freedom of speech. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.

Gingrich is voicing what all too many Americans believe, that free speech is for themselves but not for others deemed sufficiently dangerous. There are limits — such as falsely shouting “Fire” in a crowded theater — but Gingrich’s remedy goes much further.

Free speech is the foundation of self-government. This ambitious politician’s willingness to curb it is frightening.

UPDATED

Long Island Business News runs an op-ed column under former U.S. Sen. Al D’Amato’s byline entitled, “Newsday’s new day: Murdoch or consortium?” It’s basically a suggestion that Tribune Co. sell its Newsday newspaper to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Two things to consider. First, as the New York Daily News’ Ben Smith notes, “D’Amato is a registered lobbyist for News Corp. in Washington. (Not disclosed in his op-ed.)”

UPDATE: The paper’s editor comments in the blog that disclosure is policy and that one appear in the next issue.

That’s not the only problem. It’s highly improbable that D’Amato actually wrote the piece in question. More likely, someone who works for him (or Murdoch?) wrote it. (This practice was a topic in my piece yesterday.)

Sounds like Long Island Business News has some lessons to learn in basic journalism.

San Jose Mercury News: YouTube, Verizon announce video deal. YouTube plans to announce a deal with Verizon Wireless today to bring user-submitted videos from the Web to mobile phone customers nationwide, marking the biggest marriage yet between a video Web service and mobile phone carrier.

This makes some sense, but it also tells you where media are heading in a not-so-good sense.

Verizon is one of the telecom companies that wants to control our media experiences on the networks it provides. The mobile networks are already pretty much walled gardens — you take what they give you, for the most part, or pay through the nose (or both).

Now the telecoms want to extend this metaphor to the Net, where they are creating a duopoly on wired broadband. The pattern is clear: Control the pipes, make deals with “content providers,” as media owners are called — and the providers will have the deepest pockets.

GooTube, at least, doesn’t discriminate between commercially created videos and the ones created by regular folks. Let’s see how long that lasts in this brave new age of re-centralizing media.

(This is a column I wrote for PR Week.)

The VNR mini-scandal took a sadly predictable turn earlier this month.

Two media and marketing watchdog groups issued a new report showing that the use of unlabeled VNRs by local TV “news” programs was continuing even in the face of heightened scrutiny.

The report, from Free Press and the Center for Media and Democracy, was an updated litany of behavior that runs from queasy-making to flat-out unethical. No doubt, it’s lamentable to cheat the viewers in this way. The practice should stop, pronto.

But does it justify serious government intervention? Here’s where we can have some doubts.

For one thing, since when has media misbehavior in this regard been new? Since never.

Newspapers have taken material from press releases and corporate “statements” and run it verbatim without attribution as long as I can remember. No, this isn’t a universal practice, but it isn’t uncommon, either.

Some magazines have been known to kowtow to advertisers, doing what amounts to pay-for-play in their articles. When I see an advertisement for a product in close proximity to a story about, or referring to, the product or company, I always wonder about less-than-pure motives on the part of the publication.

And what about the tendency of newspaper editorial pages to print Op-Ed pieces under the bylines of the rich, famous, and powerful? I speak here, in particular, of Op-Ed policy columns allegedly written by politicians, but in reality crafted by their staffs. If papers were truly passionate about truth in packaging, they would refuse outright to print ghostwritten material of this kind, or insist on labeling it more honestly.

Still, broadcast “news” – I use quotes because local TV news typically lacks serious coverage – is different, at least in theory. This is because, also in theory, the airwaves are a scarce public resource.

The Federal Communications Commission is a ham-handed enforcer in many situations. Take, for example, the inane war on so-called indecency, which for the most part is a politically motivated attempt to make broadcast programming suitable only for children.

When it comes to VNRs and the like, the FCC requires broadcasters to tell viewers when “such matter is sponsored, paid for, or furnished, either in whole or in part; and by whom or on whose behalf such consideration was supplied.” Good idea, but why should the government be the enforcer except when the cheating becomes outright fraud?

It assumes this role because broadcasters have fewer First Amendment rights than other media creators. The broadcasters deserve equal free speech. The scarcity argument no longer makes sense, if it ever truly did in the first place. We have more than enough media channels of all kinds now.

The best solution to shady VNR tactics is sunlight. It would be great if professional journalists blew the whistle more frequently on each other, but for now we have to rely on public-spirited nonprofits, bloggers, and others to do it. But in the absence of genuine swindles, government should keep its distance.

Bruce Drake, managing editor of the new Capitol Leader journalism project in Washington, writes:

Allbritton Communications, here in Washington DC, is starting a Capitol Hill newspaper and has brought aboard John Harris and Jim VandeHei of the Post, and myself, to launch that as well as a robust website dedicated to politics and government…

Key to this is finding a solid person to help build and oversee the site (this is a permanent job) and the ideal candidate obviously would have be a command of what works on the web, imagination to look for new ways to use the web and have journalism in his/her blood.

The job is in the Washington area, and they’re looking for someone who is already living there.

Check out the site’shome page for contact information.

Here’s the latest way to annoy people online — hotlinks to words in articles that go to advertisements.

The pictured item (click on it or here for a full-sized image) is a from a PC Magazine column by John Dvorak. The word “computer” is highlighted in green, and underlined. Put the mouse over the word and up pops the little window touting Microsoft’s new version of Office (with some highly misleading text that only becomes clear if you click through to the actual advertisement on Microsoft’s site).

Oh, and the column itself bemoans newspapers’ foolish unwillingness, until very recently, to put links outside their own sites into their online articles. This is one case where the link absolutely, positively, does not belong in the story.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal has a thorough story on this unpleasant trend today.