August 2006 Archives

In the summer of 2005, I spent almost the entire summer interning at the NBC affiliate in St. Louis. Ratings wise, it is the most watched local news in the country; but, inside the studio, you would never know it.

Producers and anchors weren't getting along; everyone in the newsroom seemed at odds with the news director, and it was all for a pretty simple reason. No one knews how to keep up with the new news and information era.

Reporters would get annoyed because, after working on a package for hours, maybe days, they would then have to figure out how to put it on the web. Even then, the web was really becoming more important than the actual news content for the television cast.

At the time, YouTube wasn't that popular, but already news directors across the country knew they were losing their audiences. It does seem that old people are the only people watching the news these days; but, it's not because of YouTube.

Sure, YouTube is part of ther problem but the site is used more for entertainment than news at this point. Of course, that could change and YouTube and other websites like it could soon become the one-stop shop for news.

Bloggers across the world are already talking about how the site is changing political campaigning. One blog, 11D, talks about how YouTube ruined one senator's bid for re-election by showing an off-colored comment he made when he thought no cameras were rolling. Now, that video is surfacing everywhere and you won't be seeing George Allen on any ballots any time soon.

YouTube definitely is a cool website with a lot of entertainment-filled content. It is quite possible that it could become some people's source for news. But local news was failing long before YouTube came along. TV news will need something revolutionary (and that doesn't mean bringing in Katie Couric) to catch the younger, hipper audience like myself.

I've seen Benji boogie and watched the Jayhawks jam. I've born witness to the weird and been privy to the perverse .

And it's all thanks to YouTube.

Many claim this viral video vixen may hasten the demise of television news as we know it.

I'm not one of them.

Is YouTube entertaining? Absolutely! Newsworthy? You tell me. Go ahead and take a look at YouTube's news category. I'll wait. Back? Now, tell me: what does this have to do with news? Nothing, as far as I can tell. Yet, it – and many other priceless gems just like it – pop up under the site's news and blogs category.

That's the problem with YouTube. You have to sort through plenty of trash before you can find the occasional treasure. And I'm just not sure I want to get my news from the same place that considers this worthy of my time.

YouTube is a lot of things. What it's not is a credible news source. And that's a shame … especially, when you consider the site's incredible marketing potential.

In fact, the site's now 30 million visitors a day rival the total number of viewers who tune in to all three network newscasts.

While It's easy to be blinded by the hype surrounding YouTube, the site has yet to unveil a profitable business model or a plan to fend off other, more reputable film aggregators.

If YouTube wants to take a bite out of the mainstream news market, it'll need to do some major marketing and perhaps, undergo a bit of a redesign.

Because if I'm searching for the news, I really don't want to wade past this to get it.

When the 2006 MTV Movie Awards aired Thursday, June 8, I was at work. The following weekend, my buddy Nelson asked me if I had seen Gnarls Barkley's performance. The answer, of course, was no. The group's latest appearance on MTV, had been a characteristically quirky performance where they dressed up in Star Wars costumes and rocked their hit single "Crazy."

So I turned to YouTube for help. Within moments of booting up my computer I was already watching the clip. And yes, the Star Wars costumes were just as amazing as my buddy had described. I wasn't alone, either. More than 100,000 other people also went to YouTube for a second chance to watch the clip. That number has since grown to more than 770,000.

Essentially, this means the timeline of television is no longer sufficient. People all over the world, like me, didn't want to wait until MTV replayed the show. People are taking video matters into their own hands. The intriguing thing about YouTube is that it's completely user-run. It's a forum for people to upload, watch, share and discuss their own homemade videos. For the first time, individual people—not the network execs or the collective masses—are controlling video content, in every aspect—creation, production and distribution. People can watch clips of live video they missed, find videos and share information on their favorite interests, and simply be entertained, any time of day. Add to that the technological advances in wireless Internet access, and now, along with immediacy, YouTube has portability on its side too. That spells trouble for not only TV news, but for all of television in general.

There's just something so liberating about being able to watch Chewbacca play the drums any time I want, as many times as I want. It's infinitely more satisfying than being told what to watch on TV.

For those of you who don't know me, you probably should. I'm kind of a big deal.

Over the past four months, 3,572 people have watched my high school show, the Maize News Break, on YouTube. Doing some quick math, that leaves only 254,996,428 Americans who have not seen the Maize News Break bloopers.

With ratings like that, it's stunning that CBS would choose an aging dinosaur like Katie Couric to take the nightly news chair instead of an up-and-coming celebrity like myself.

Of course, shows will reflect their demographics, and Couric is the right person to deliver news to the crowd that still watches network news.

Network news isn't dying because of its lack of relevance or because of any truth-telling issues. It's dying because people aren't home at 5:30 p.m. anymore.

Americans are working longer than ever, but not harder than ever. Their evening time in front of the TV has been replaced with workday time surfing the internet. It's not good or bad, it just is. And it has certainly taught us a thing or two about our society.

You see, we're not the politics-loving Renaissance men that our forefathers assumed we would be. It turns out we'd rather vote for an American Idol than an American president.

That's why news coverage can't just move online. It's not that TV is doing a poor job covering the news, it's just that America would rather watch a cat on a wheel than a politician on a stump.

People have a powerful tool now: they can choose what they want to watch.

And if they want to watch me do a bad John Walsh impersonation…I'm going to let them.

The usual disappointment settled in when I first read about "Reutersgate."

"It was an honest mistake; I probably would have missed that, too," I thought. After I learned that the dark plumes of smoke hanging over Beirut were enhanced by Photoshop, I realized I was part of the problem, along with Reuters and the New York Times.

I haven't yet acquired enough technoknowledge to determine whether someone had doctored the photo. Sure, I know that Tom Cruise would die if he took the 20-foot plunge on a motorcycle like his character did in Mission Impossible. Anyone could tell that the film's producers used special effects. But the subtlety of the changes in the smoke photo required a trained eye.

Not to mention the blatant photo fabrications, which even casual readers pegged as fakes.

The problem goes deeper. The news media's excessive cost cutting has decreased the quality of journalism. How can these lapses in judgment occur when the industry boasts 20 percent profit margins? The news media certainly have the money to hire technologically savvy workers.

Tim Rutten writes that a year ago, Reuters decided to save money by consolidating all three of its operations into one photo desk in Singapore. Washington D.C.-based Reuters employees refused to relocate to the Southeast Asian country, where they would have earned a fraction of their former salaries.

Recently, the freelancer sent the sham photos from his laptop in Lebanon to a Reuters' photo desk in Singapore where employees reviewed them and added cutlines before they were sent to news organizations throughout the world. Shareholders may be receiving sizable dividends, but at the expense of quality journalism.

And whatever happened to employee background checks? Problem is, it's harder to manage freelancers.

Reuters could have avoided the embarrassment if it had doled out the dough for some decent, fulltime correspondents. But I guess I'll have to deal with the news media's ineptitude until I'm willing to stare at photos in Singapore for $18,000 a year.

Every day I sit in journalism class and hear the professors tell us about how our professions are changing. I agree with them. I bet in my lifetime newspapers will not go to print, but will be only on the Internet. The public will constantly access the news through their cell phones or ipods. Journalists are going to have to change with these technologies. The question is…How is journalism changing?

The new news media, bloggers, are an important key to the changes that journalists are facing. Newspapers, TV stations, and magazines are starting to have writers produce blogs for their audiences to read online. Bloggers, can also be considered journalists, but a different type of journalist. The old media has traditionally presented objective news. The new news media is more opinionated.

While some argue that the new news media is bringing down the old media, I believe that both need to exist. Both the old news and new news media will be working together to appeal to the public and keep journalistic standards high.

While bloggers usually link to traditional news sites and use material that traditional reporters have found, bloggers play a vital role in making sure that journalists stay on track. In fact, it was bloggers who were the first to question Dan Rather's fabricated sources in the "Bush goes AWOL" story. Without bloggers acting as watchdogs, more fabricated news might be out there.

In this changing world , only a greater power can truly know what the news media will be like in a few years. I do know one thing, however. News is here to stay and traditional journalists, bloggers and citizen journalists are going to play key roles — together.

Bloggers would love nothing more than to take a seat at the table of mainstream media. If you ask some of them, they're already there.

I've got some bad news for them: not only are they not at the table, they can't even get a reservation.

For all the self-aggrandizement that goes on among bloggers, their main contribution to journalism at this point seems to be trashing journalism. That would be fine, if they offered an alternative.

Instead they want to be taken seriously when they offer nothing more than commentary, fact checking and poorly-researched speculation on stories being reported by the real media.

At Technorati, a website that classifies what's popular among bloggers, the hot topics on Sunday were the Reuters doctored photo controversy, the JonBenet Ramsey murder case, and the hit movie "Snakes on a Plane."

All three of these are mainstream media. Bloggers can't be taken seriously until they provide original content and research. So far the best they've done is Gawker Stalker, a map that let's you report where you've seen a celebrity.

Their claim that newspapers are dying is also greatly exaggerated. If every new media killed an old one, that wouldn't leave much room for radio or magazines, both of which found ways to survive in a changing society.

It's time for bloggers to quit puffing their chests and start working on something useful. Only then will people think of the internet as more than just a place to see reporting done by TV stations and newspapers.

When I arrived at graduate school last year, I found myself embroiled in a bitter debate: new media or old?

You'd think the decision would be an easy one. A former print journalist, I've grown up reading the newspaper and still have it delivered to my door. Quite frankly, there's nothing I enjoy more on a Sunday morning than a good cup of coffee and hearty dose of newsprint.

But there's something about traditional journalists that makes me embarrassed to admit I am one. The latest Reuters scandal is a case in point. A Lebanese freelance photographer, Adnan Hajj, digitally manipulated photos he'd shot in Lebanon, making the fighting there look worse than it actually was.

It didn't take long for a blogger to catch on to the controversy and out both Reuters and Hajj. And it's not the first time bloggers have lifted the veil of mainstream ignorance.

Time and time again, bloggers point out the foibles and faux pas of the traditional media. It's the bloggers now who check and recheck their facts, who read the mainstream media and the not-so mainstream, who scour their beats for news. They are what we traditional journalists used to be: passionate, accurate, confident, credible.

Somewhere along the way, the mainstream media lost its mojo. Now, we're just sore losers, hoping to discredit the new kids on the block. Instead of shoring up our own weakening credibility, we try to destroy theirs. Instead of listening to our audience, we try to lecture it. Instead of pulling ourselves up, we continue to give bloggers the ammunition they need to put us down: Dan Rather, El Nuevo Herald, and now, Adnan Hajj.

We in the traditional media spend a lot of time pointing fingers. What we should be doing is looking in the mirror.

So, until that happens, I choose new.

It's so long and goodbye for me.

Ah the memories. Like our first go at a breaking news story with the robbery at Emprise Bank. Or the gruesome coverage of a squirrel who jumped to an untimely death and took out power for most of campus. Or the time that Adam, Jimmy, Rylan and I covered the Boardwalk fire in the wee hours of a Sunday morning. Good times, good times.

I will truly miss the Multimedia Newsroom and working with the students, faculty and staff. I learned a lot about journalism, new media, and myself in the three years I have been at the J-School.

I look forward to seeing where we go with new media. IMHO, this is an exciting time to be a journalist, the world is changing, technology is evolving and our jobs as communicators, data miners and information managers are more important than ever. As young journalists in 2006, we tend to forget where we came from, how hard journalists have struggled and how important the First Amendment is to democracy and our society. If you find yourself ever wondering why you want to be a journalists, stop and look at history.

This is my last post on eHub, but I will still be around, lurking...reading your posts. Goodbye and good luck.

In early August of 1999, as a mere 17 year old preparing for my senior year of high school, I packed up all my earthly belongings and moved to Florida all by my lonesome to attempt playing professional soccer. That didn't work out as planned. Now it's early August of aught six. I've spent the last five years living in Kansas, which is something I never imagined would happen. Yesterday I once again packed up all my earthly belongings and began driving halfway across the country to Cliffside Park, New Jersey. I never thought I'd be moving to New Jersey either.

I still think the idea of playing professional soccer was a good reason to move across the country, but most people would probably argue that my reason for moving to New Jersey is a better one. It turns out that a college degree can actually help you get a job. Well, at least it helped me. I will be working as a web videographer for MSN Money.

My career goals have changed at least six times since 1999. After five years of college I somehow became interested in multimedia production. There seems to be something fun about multimedia production, in a nerdy sort of way. I'd love to tell you all the great responsibilities I'm going to have, but I don't even know. I'll do some stuff with video and some stuff with computers, but there will be some room for experimentation.

In a field of journalism that really hasn't come together quite yet, I hope this position will allow MSN to set a new industry benchmark for multimedia reporting. Regardless of what type of product I end up producing, I'm sure the work will be shown to the students in J694. And that's a good thing in my mind.

After spending a lot of time in an empty newsroom this summer writing the input/output tutorials, I hope my time and effort pays off for the next round of students. I do know for sure that the work I put into the turorials and all the other multimedia work I did at KU will pay off with my new job.

If nothing else, at least I know how to put pretty purple boxes around my pictures. Cause everyone loves pretty purple boxes.

This summer, I took up bike riding. My favorite route runs on the levee along the Kansas River in North Lawrence. Bike riding on this particular path inspired me to reflect more closely on my water story assignment.

On one side of the levee the river twists and turns steered left and right by the walls of the levee, all neatly contained and managed. On the other side, a trailer park, the railroad tracks and crops of corn bravely butt up against the slope of the levee. Every few hundred feet I pass a USGS marker that measures the height of the water. It's very peaceful and really quite beautiful. It was during one of my weekly rides that I suddenly realized, water is all around me, I've just never really noticed it before.

Eight weeks ago, if you would've asked me to define a watershed, or explain where my water comes from, I wouldn't have been able to. Thanks to our assignment, all the guest speakers, web sites and reports, I now have a better understanding of how important water is to our society.

My story originally began as a quest for data. I was tasked with comparing how Clinton Lake stacks up to other reservoirs in Kansas. Easier said than done. In fact, many of the scientists, environmentalists and engineers I called to ask for numbers laughed in my face. It wasn't a mean or snarky laugh, it was usually a chuckle, followed by a sigh and something along the lines of, "Well, you might try contacting so-and-so at the XYZ office. I think they collect that kind of data." So-and-so usually didn't provide me with very useful data. In the end, I discovered that the real story lies in the perception of what constitutes important and relevant data when it comes to water resources in Kansas. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, the Kansas Water Office, the USGS, Kansas Geological Survey and Kansas Biological Survey all measure different aspects of the water. For people who live in eastern Kansas, the relevant data is all about water quality, does it taste or smell bad? For people out in western Kansas, its all about water quantity, is there enough water to go around?

Over the Fourth of July weekend, I traveled to north central Kansas to visit friends in Mankato, which just so happens to be near Lovewell Lake, a Bureau of Reclamation reservoir.

The drive to Lovewell Lake from Mankato is an easy 15 minutes on a relatively smooth Kansas Highway 14, through the hills, past the rows of corn, milo and soybeans and across the Republic River. I was eager to document how much this small community loved their lake.

The state park manager agreed to meet with me however, everything was to be off the record. I obliged, figuring I would still get information from him. Boy, did I. In a community where a trip to Walmart constitutes a day-long affair, and the park manager labels the quest for toilet paper a "recreational experience," you would think a lake like Lovewell would be a welcome source of entertainment and recreation.

The park manager told me otherwise. His tale was a classic conflict between the farmers who had owned land around the site of Lovewell Lake and the hunters, fishermen and outdoorsmen who travel for miles to use the lake's facilities. The lake was built in 1958, but apparently most of the businesses and farmers around Mankato still despise it.

In this sense, Clinton Lake is a stark contrast. The overall consensus of most local citizens and some of our expert sources, is that Clinton Lake and the dam are a good thing for our community. It has prevented flooding, it provides recreational activities that help boost the local economy, and it supplies drinking water for Lawrence residents. Without Clinton Lake, Lawrence would probably not have grown like it has.

In eastern Kansas we might think we are too busy to worry about big issues like water management. It often isn't until we have a real problem with our water quality that we suddenly "see" water.

Now that all is said and done with the class, I'm happy to report that I have learned a lot, and I think everyone's stories turned out great. The interactive charts and graphs should be posted along with the stories sometime around Labor Day on LJWorld.com.