The Three C's of Convergence

Unbelievable (?) tabloid headline: "Newspaper thinks it can beat TV stations at the video news game."

Mebbe. Depends on how soon the TV stations wake up and smell the online moofrappolattechino.

Reports from the National Association of Broadcasters, whose convention and toy show has been going on in Las Vegas, paint a bewildered picture of the TV business as it confronts the Internet. Not bewildering. Bewildered.

Warning. Way-long post after the jump. I wrote 700 words for the news directors' trade magazine, RTNDA Communicator, and this opus runs almost 1,000 words more than that. Curl up with a printout.

TVNewser at MediaBistro has been tracking TV's Web angst. While news directors are united in their agreement that the net is Priority Number 1 with a bullet, Scott Baker says their general sense is "what the heck do I do now?"

Well, the Kansas City Star, of all places, seems to have an idea. And it's not even a TV news department. But it has hired a TV news reporter -- and a good one -- to start driving a wedge into that giant piece of hardwood called the WWW, to pry out a chunk it can call its own.

The Star hired Dave Helling (here for E&P's coverage of his hire, if you can get past that little subscription problem) when the station he was working for decided it didn't need his particular services. Many would say you don't have to be a reporter of Helling's stripe to go live from fires and crime scenes, and I would be among them. Helling in turn decided he didn't much need the TV news business anymore. He had another offer to stay in TV but turned it down.

Working for the Star put him squarely in a newsroom that prides itself on being the dominant newsgatherer in the city. There's little room for argument that newspapers have the most actual reporting muscle; how they use it is another issue for some other blog to beat into the ground through over-analysis. Point is, that's their primary business, focus and purpose.

As we ponder how the future news audience will get its news, a strong smell of obviousness hangs in the air. It's obvious people are deserting the dead-tree newspaper product. (It's also obvious that they began doing so long before the Internet, but that's another story for some other... etc.) Truth is, people are deserting TV news, too, partly for structural reasons. The evening news is no longer appointment television. It ceased being appointment television before the term "appointment television" came into vogue. And they're deserting for reasons of substance, too. The useful information comes from elsewhere. Even some of my friends in news management admit that when they take their rare vacations and stop obsessing over what's in their rundown, they don't feel they've missed a thing when they come back.

Readers and viewers are going to wind up on the Internet -- a further tang of obviousness clings to that. That's like saying that if you drive north from Laredo you'll see lots of Texas.

The Star's bet is that there'll be one major info-provider in a city like KC. The editor, Mark Zieman, sees that day coming and wants to take steps now to make the Star that provider... five, six years down the road. That means combining what TV news can do best (show the news) with what newspapers can do best (collect bits and tips from all over the community and dig into them). If the Star can work TV news stories into a newspaper Web site, without the baggage TV news departments carry, it will take a big step toward being that one major provider. TV news departments have to keep in mind -- constantly -- that most of the audience that's watching the program preceding the news is somewhat unlikely to hang around for the newscast. The Star's Web readership is far more likely to be looking for news per se, and the site probably has double the number of hits of the most-looked-at TV station Web site in KC.

Without really dissing Helling's work (he's a widely respected reporter), the television news directors in town pooh-pooh the whole thing (all except KMBC-TV, which wouldn't tell me anything about it on the record, and just for that, I won't link to the station's site).

Primarily, they downplay the production values. Regent Ducas at KCTV said: "Right now they might go and get the state of the state address or something, and put the whole thing on their site. Whenever I've seen it, it's been very long, just raw. Unless I'm wrong, I don't think they go back and edit their things."

Bryan McGruder at WDAF-TV took a similar tack, calling the Star's video "basically raw video out of a handycam. It's just him standing on camera doing question and answer with folks."

For some stories, where the video runs alongside newspaper text on the same subject, that is true. But it's not the complete picture, as I've learned from a visit to the Star a couple of weeks ago and from keeping an eye on its Web site. The video is carefully edited, but not always at the same rapid pace -- short shots, quick sequences and we're done here -- as TV news. At least good TV news, which needs to have energy and fast pacing, should have that kind of push. But that's an audience-driven production value, and the audience of TV news is decreasingly news-oriented. Helling does his share of TV-style stories; one that's been on the "top picks" list is a story about deterioration in a tunnel designed to redirect flooding in Turkey Creek. It's practically straight ol' news style, and the pictures work very well in the Web's constricted video.

When Helling does stay with unedited or relatively unedited pictures, there's usually a reason. It's to show the entire animation of the proposed rolling roof at Arrowhead/Kaufman, or all the available footage of a "slugfest" in the Jackson County Legislature, or the complete news conference announcing Bob Huggins' hiring as Kansas State University basketball coach.

The Star has an edge on TV news in an important way: It's not tied to the traditional, familiar packaging of stories with video and voice-over narration. TV, as it gets into direct-to-the-Web news, is going to stick close to that format because, well, that's the way you do video stories. Helling is right when he says, "Anyone who tells you they completely understand how to adapt TV forms to the Web is lying. We just don't know. We don't know how people are going to watch. We don't know how long they're going to watch. What they're going to watch." Approaching it from a fresh perspective could be important for finding the new ways of storytelling in the Web environment, the right ways.

From Zieman's and Helling's perspectives, the TV stations' Web sites are offering precisely diddly-squat -- that is not a quote -- in the way of original and timely news coverage on their sites. They're not too far wrong. If you're actually looking for news, a local station's Web site is likely to be one of the last places you'll find it. That's changing, though.

KSBH news director Debbie Bush says the station gets strong hits for its longer stories -- or investigations. (That use of the term may run counter to the way the Investigative Reporters and Editors organization defines it, but that's another story for some other... etc.) KCTV reports that it got major hits for a recent car chase, streamed live (yay, KC turns into LA). And it did original Web news programming when it streamed a speech by President Bush in Columbia, Mo. Any KC program director who pre-empted soap operas for that one would be fired instantaneously. Or faster. The Web can and should carry it. It's low-resolution video, high-immediacy stuff for a certain audience segment.

KCTV is working out a deal to become the first local provider of on-demand news for cell phones, an important step. TV on a telephone could be a lot like electricity in a guitar: a marriage made in either heaven or hell, depending, and we'll see which you think it is. But it's coming as sure as text messaging is popular with the younger set. KSHB has a "stack your own newscast" feature, a step in the right direction but still serving leftovers.

Helling and the Star are well aware of the limitations of today's Web video: the slow load times for streaming, the low-resolution picture, the small size. As Scott Baker puts it at TVNewser: "Video On-Demand will continue to explode and be really cool. Except for when it doesn't play, you just get audio -- or it crashes your browser." (Sorry, can't find a permalink to the item.) But, I'll add, it's a level playing field -- the TV stations' video doesn't look any better on the Web than the Star's.

Still, news and video aren't the primary reason people go to a local television station Web site. And if they do, what they mostly get is AP stories -- thrill to the excitement -- and re-hash of stories already run on the air. The crux of the Star's strategy is this: No TV station in the local market is putting fresh stories on the Web every day. Only the Star is doing it regularly. And first can be foremost. To back up Helling, the newspaper is training its photographers in doing video, one-by-one on a rotation. And it's hiring (probably already has hired) a full-time videographer. Within weeks, the plan is to have five video stories, of varying lengths and story formats, in the Web paper every day. That's a doable proposition.

The Star's timing on getting into the video news business may be great, but its recent expenditure of $200 million on a new press seems oddly timed -- or extravagant. The building itself looks more like a post-mod performing arts palace. Lots of glass, non-90 degree angles. The paper seems to be hedging its Web bet, and $200 mil is one hell of a hedge.

With the erosion of its print-newspaper readership, the Star is typical of newspapers in needing to bank on the Web. It's something of a race against time: establish your online lifeline before the ink-and-paper boat sinks. The fragmentation of online readership also threatens, and it's an open question whether the Web's revenue will continue to support the 300-person newsgathering operation the paper has now. Any newspaper like the Star will need to be king of the local online revenue hill to keep that big a newsroom going,

If the people at the Star think it can shoulder its way past the TV news departments without a pretty good fight, they're over-optimistic. One thing is clear and unarguable: The Star's video presence will hurt the TV stations' Web efforts. We don't know how badly. The longer the TV stations take to get serious about the Web, the worse it'll be for them as the old-fashioned broadcasting business shrivels.

TV and newspapers actually resolved their news competition some years ago, when TV decided that its news viewers didn't read the papers anyway, so why even worry. That was in the days of fat TV ad revenues, days that are likely to become bygones. Now, papers and stations are headed for another confrontation. How it turns out comes down to whether Helling is right when he says of the TV station Web sites: "They're just not where they need to be."

Posted by Professor John Broholm at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

While researching our group project, I came across a very interesting report on convergence journalism. It was completed in 2003 by a couple of SMU professors, and presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Conference in Kansas City, Missouri on July 30, 2003.

To conduct the study, they surveyed three different groups, TV news managers, newspaper executive editors and J-school deans or department chairs. The focus of the study was to determine the extent to which journalism schools and the media are embracing convergence.

I encourage you to read the entire report at the link above, but here are the key findings:

1) Convergence is important to media organizations and journalism educators.
2) Almost all of the newspapers and TV stations had already forged convergence partnerships (sharing of content or staff with another media platform).
3) University journalism programs have begun incorporating cross-platform training into their coursework.

This is all stuff that we know, but the report suggested another interesting finding in that it said that the results suggested that for media execs the most important role for the Internet was as a research tool. I found it kind of hard to believe myself. That perception almost certainly has to have changed with the emergence of blogs, which were not discussed at all in the report. I would think that even just a few years later that the media would be more concerned with blogs for a couple of different reasons. First, by now they must have seen how news sites are using blogs. And secondly, blogs can make the real facts harder to get to.

Posted by at 5:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I am still perplexed by this notion of facebook and myspace being blogs. I guess you can blog on a myspace account. I didn’t know that because I don’t have my own “space.” However, I still don’t think that things like facebook or even personal websites are blogs.

I was talking to Staci Wolfe about this. She works in the Multimedia newsroom in Dole and is more versed in the world of blogging than I am. I asked her if facebook was a blog and she said yes. She said that a blog doesn’t even really have to be words. She said there were even “blogs” where all people posted were photos. I think that is so weird!

Where did I come up with my perceptions of a blog? What gave me my ideas? Why do I have such a limited view of what a blog can be? Obviously, they have more potential than I have ever given them. My perceptionst had to have come from my classes and this journalism school. I didn’t really think about blogging much before graduate school. Also, I have never thought about blogs more in my life since being in this class.

So maybe we are being exposed to a very narrow view of blogs. I feel that all semester we have been looking only at blogs dealing with politics and journalism. But really, there is so much more out there, this class has barely scratched the surface. Maybe this is something a new blogging class can bring to the table. Maybe a new class could look at the world of blogging, past journalism and politics.

As journalists we shouldn’t only be focused on how new media effects our lives, we should be looking at how the public is using this technology. If we don't understand how Joe Average is using his blog, how will we relate a story about blogging to our audience?

Posted by at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, thanks to Steve "Blogjacker" Lynn, I'm forced to come up with another topic for this week's posting...let's see, what can I write about...look around for clues...keyboard...window...walls...hungry...I gots nothing!

Dazed and confused, strumming aimlessly like a coke-caked Neil Young during "The Last Waltz", I think I've finally come up wtih it ("I've got it now, Robbie...")

It just so happens that the cover story in the most recent edition of The Association of American University Presses newsletter, The Exchange, details the growing trend of university presses to use blogs as marketing tools for their books.

Now, we've discussed the use of blogs in marketing practices already--they are often transparent sales tools that have more to do with advertising than with--what I believe is--the true nature of blogging ( uninhibited, personal or citizen-journalism postings).

The article points to a number of blogs offered by some of the larger university presses:

Oxford University Press (It features a pretty interesting entry from one of their authors debunking some of "The DaVinci Code.")

MIT University Press's blog, whose lead posting currently localizes a story from the LA Times.

Yale University Press, which simply showcases their new book on the Empire State Building.

There's been some talk in my office about starting a blog, and I suppose that would fall under my jurisdiction.

While that could no doubt be a fun exercise--and perhaps even effective, I do have some reservations about this type of blogging.

Specifically, for whom does the blog toll? Are you trying to reach newspaper reporters? Book reviewers? The average customer? Potential authors? Can a single blog entry simultaneously appeal to all of these groups?

Second, who dictates the content? I already have a ton of ideas for how we could tie in our current books to ongoing news stories. For example, we have a book about former Attorney General John Ashcroft, and just today a judge ruled that Scooter Libby's case cannot be dismissed simply because Ashcroft delegated the investigation to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

This is no doubt a big tie-in to our book, but it's also an extremely delicate political situation. How does one effectively blog about it without presenting a severe political bias, for example? Of course, my idea of a successful blogs includes holding no punches, tackling the tough issues the MSM won't, and managing to do all of that with a sense of humor. Can that really be done in this particular case? That is, a university press such as ours depends to some extent on funding from the Board of Regents--and ultimately the state legislature. Any politicizing could lead to serious repercussions for our Press. Conversely, will a watered-down blog interest anyone?

I admire these presses for tyring to incorporate new technologies, but I wonder how successful these blogs truly are. Do reporters check these blogs on a daily basis? Although they are proactive in their use of technology, is the blog itself a passive entity? It requires others to visit, rather than actively seeking folks out (unless you get into RSS and alerts, etc...but I doubt many people sign up for alerts from a univ. press blog). It'll be interesting to see how this trend plays out--and to see how publishers use blogs in a way that makes it different than just a typical Web page. For example, these blogs didn't seem to have many (if any) comments or trackbacks, so are they officially blogs or just glorified Web pages?

Who knows, perhaps soon you'll see me blogging about our Antonin Scalia book...man, they're just trying to get me fired, aren't they?!!

Posted by at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Balancing Internet free speech and indecency might get a little trickier. The Bush administration is calling for a new rating system that would require Web site operators to put "official government warning labels" on any page that has sexually implicit content.

The punishment for those who don't comply? Prison for up to five years.

The regulation, proposed earlier this month, would require "marks and notices" created by the Federal Trade Commission on each sexually explicit page. The definition of sexually explicit is broad: everything from sex and abuse to close-ups of fully clothed genital regions.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the regulation would "prevent people from inadvertently stumbling across pornographic images on the Internet." He called on Congress to take up the issue.

Always concerned about our constitutional rights, Gonzales also called for legislation that would require Internet service providers to retain records of their customers' activities to help criminal investigations. Provider say they already cooperate with police and feel the new regulations are intrusive.

The ACLU calls the new regulation "antithetical to the First Amendment." In 1996, after the Clinton administration passed the Communications Decency Act, the ACLU sued to have it ruled unconstitutional. The ACLU eventually won a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows the Internet freedom we enjoy today.

Now that it's 10 years later and the Internet has taken on a new life, some people are calling for the Communications Decency Act to be revised. They point to discriminatory postings on sites like Craigslist as a reason that more regulation is needed.

What's scary is some legal scholars believe the Bush administration's new ideas are going to pass muster.

Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA and First Amendment expert, said the Bush administration's proposal may be more likely to survive judicial scrutiny because the definitions of sexually explicit material have been used elsewhere in federal law. "it has the virtue of relative clarity. I think that's probably constitutional."

Let's hope David Greene, director of a free-speech advocacy group called The First Amendment Project, has a better hold on the future. He believes the new Bush administration regulations would not survive a court challenge.

"I believe the law would be struck down as impermissible compelled speech," Greene said. "The only times courts allow product labeling is with commercial speech--advertisements."

Or we can hope that Bush is just having a bad day. His administration has previously supported the opposite of these new regulations. Last January, James Burrus, the FBI's deputy assistant director, told a Senate committee that there was no need for new laws to deal with child exploitation on the Internet.And the Justice Department has said it has "serious reservations about broad mandatory data retention regimes."

I have some serious reservations of my own.

Posted by at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

This week's post will be a two for one. Some bloggers promise "20 percent more BLOG in every bite." This blog doesn't boast a slick marketing slogan, but if you click to read more, you'll, uh, get more. (Any help here IMCs?) After all, bloggers are one-man bands: advertisers, marketers, writers. I've carped about the ethics of this ad nauseam.

The most recent ethics violation involves Michael Hiltzik, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who blogs on the Los Angeles Times' Golden State. The paper suspended the blog because Hiltzik "posted items on the paper’s website, and on other websites, under names other than his own." (Does anybody think it's odd that no one has commented?)

The paper's spokeswoman won't comment until the investigation is complete.

But the inquisition is underway on the right-wing blog Paterrico's Pontifications, where Hiltzik commented using both a pseudonym and his real name. Hiltzik makes an unconvincing argument on the use of anonymity and pseudonymity here.

Jeff Jarvis writes, "This reveals a more fundamental issue in the relationship of mainstream news to blogs and interaction: Journalists have lost the ability to interact as people...The bottom line: Journalists who are afraid to speak as themselves in public. They thus separate themselves from the public they serve: scared of us or feeling superior to us, but not among us in any case. That is a mistake and an insult."

Jarvis later writes that journalists should stand behind what they say.

I agree to an extent. Where opinion-editorial writers are considered journalists, they should be allowed a greater latitude to articulate their opinions .

Reporters and editors, however, are not always free to express their opinions, despite whether or not Jarvis thinks they should be. Should this change? No. News reporters and editors depend on the public's perception of their objectivity to safeguard the newsgathering process and to maintain independence and fairness. Ideally, they should adhere to objectivity, just as teachers, professors and judges should.

Blogs are a whole new animal that I'm not sure newspapers can or should handle. To work for a newspaper and not to disclose one's identity when dealing with the public is unethical. However, even if Hiltzik had consistently identified himself properly, the nature of the blog still seems too hot for newspapers.

Perhaps Hiltzik put it best in his print column and blog last October: "Can a company that derives economic value from its reputation for literacy, judiciousness and taste comfortably lend its imprimatur to an unfiltered online diary? Blogs are by nature almost impossible to censor." Source.

Hiltzik will still be allowed to write his biweekly print column in the Los Angeles Times. That says a lot about the power of the blog.

Geeks' privilege

News.com reported last Thursday that judges asked Apple tough questions as the company tried to gain access to electronic records from Mac geeks' sites that published leaked trade secrets.

The Mac geeks published details and diagrams of a product that is used to plug a guitar into a computer.

According to the article, the judges will weigh the journalists' right to protect their sources and Apple's right to protect its trade secrets.The case is important because it addresses whether online journalists deserve the same rights as traditional reporters.

This issue reminds me of what one of our speakers said about reporter's privilege. He posed the following question: Should the courts allow bloggers to have the same rights as reporters and if they did, wouldn't that mean that everyone could be afforded reporter's privilege (at least that provided by state shield laws)? The speaker warned of the harm that could be done to our legal system if a large segment of society were not required to testify.

On the other hand, what Justice Byron White wrote in Branzberg v. Hayes lends posthumous support for the argument that online journalists are essential to democracy.

White wrote, “Freedom of the press is a ‘fundamental personal right’ which ‘is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. … The press in its historic connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion.’ … The informative function asserted by representatives of the organized press in the present cases is also performed by lecturers, political pollsters, novelists, academic researchers, and dramatists.” Source

I think that online journalists should have the same rights as traditional journalists and the courts must protect their speech even if companies like Apple have to be sacrificed.

Posted by at 1:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Is it ethical for a TV station not to run a particular news story because the story is about a mjor advertising client. This account just happens to spend a ton of money on the station. Well, believe it or not, this was the case last year at a local Kansas City TV station. I can not mention the station by name. The GM and the local sales manager told the news director that this story does not go on the air. The GM did not want to lose any station revenue, and of course more importantly, his portion of the hefty sales commission. What does this tell you about news coverage? Is it all about money?

Posted by at 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I saw a disturbing show on PBS the other night about global warming and the environment Article about PBS show
Link to site for show

One of the most disturbing finds was that Glacier National Park in Montana used to have about 110 glaciers (when they started counting back in the 1800’s) and now there are about 27 left. Glacier information What’s that say about our children’s environmental future? If we have no land to live on, what are we living for? I pretty much have no faith that my grandchildren will enjoy the outdoors, the changing seasons and the climate the way we know it now. Glacier geology

A recent CNN article cited a leading meterologist saying that the 2005 hurricanes were, in large part, due to global warming. Cause of Hurricanes It’s not in our future, the article says, it’s here now. So what does this have to do with convergence? Well, I find it disturbing enough that I hope me and others like me will do their part to pass the word along via our technical and social savvy – this is a serious and potentially deadly problem for humans and animals alike. So, get out you cell phones, blog to your hearts content, text message the world that we are done for.

Okay – perhaps I’m exaggerating a bit… but not by much. Polar Bears are drowning en route to their search for food because it takes too long for them to find solid ice caps to capture find the seals they need to survive. As a result, seals will overpopulate and begin dying as well from eventual starvation. It’s a vicious cycle.

I’ll say it again. If you care about our future tell everyone you know and ask them to tell everyone they know. What can we do? Write your congressmen and representatives. Insist and lobby for term limits (until the political professionals get out of the way, nothing worth while will get done). Recycle. Think before you use. Educate yourself on the environment. Be your own advocate.

Posted by at 7:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It looks like the Washington Post syndicated columnists and cartoonists have started their own blog. These are certainly other writers than the ones who performed “cyber disobedience” a few weeks ago. So these guys don’t have enough to do just writing for their own columns, so they are contributing to a Groupblog?

In announcing "Groupblog," WPWG Managing Editor James Hill wrote: "We'll post items about our writers and cartoonists, and share many anecdotes about their experiences in newsgathering. We'll also try to stay on top of developments within the news business, including highlights of the major conventions such as the upcoming annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors or next fall's gathering of the National Conference of Editorial Writers."

Hill also noted:
"We'd also like to think, depending on where this goes, that Groupblog could eventually become a conduit for some interesting roundtable discussions on the state of the media and the role of syndicated writers and cartoonists in it."

By reading the article by the Editor & Publisher staff, you get the impression that it isn’t much of a group at all. They say that Hill will be doing most of the posting, but there will be entries from others.

Posted by at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We've all seen them, the Hardee's/Carls Jr. commercials. The ones that make you want to slap the skinny women that are in them who pretend to eat the 1,400 calorie burgers the fast food giant is pushing these days. (because you KNOW they're not eating them...)

In a time when McDonald's and Burger King are trying to be more health conscious, how in the world does Hardee's get away with selling you a $4.95 heart-attack on a bun? Easy, they're not number 1. Heck, they're not even #2 or #3. Although CKE Restaurants, Inc., the parent company of both Hardde's & Carl's Jr. has approximately 3200 stores nationwide, they're still not even in the same league with McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy's. Nobody got famous making a movie about eating all the garbage Carl's Jr. peddles because it wouldn't be as sexy.

So, while nobody is paying attention, Hardee's has unapologetically become a heart clogging, cholestrol raising, media converging fool! Hey, if you don't believe me, just go to their web-site. Hardees You can check out “nutritional” information, watch a trailer for an upcoming movie, win an iPod, listen to music and more!

Hardee's is so sure they won't have the kind of backlash McDonalds has experienced, it even introduced a new Philly Cheesesteak Monster Burger earlier today. St. Louis Post Dispatch reports "Hardee's newest burger gives health critics plenty to chew on", but come on! This burger only has 930 calories compared to the 1,420 calorie Monster Thickburger Hardee's introduced last year, so what's the big deal? St. Louis Today

Although I can guarantee you I will never eat one of these creations myself, I have to say I admire Hardee's marketing approach. While McDonald's is back-peddling and trying to put as many healthy options as possible on their menu, Hardee's has an in your face attitude about its products and is using every means possible to promote them. I'm just wondering when Hardee's is going to hire some high priced athlete to start blogging on their web-site about food and sports like Subway did.

Posted by at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A huge real estate development in Brooklyn is facing enormous scrutiny, and most of it is online.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that the development might be the first to see opposition “advance most visibly in the blogosphere.” The attacks are coming from a group of bloggers, and they are gaining steam. The most recent round of criticism addresses security risks at a planned, 18,000-seat arena. The project, called Atlantic Yards, will include 8.7 million square feet of residential and commercial space.

One of the bloggers, Norman Oder, says he started blogging last September because the media took little note of the project. He told The Times that Brooklyn would be among the largest cities in the nation – if only it were a separate city instead of a Manhattan borough. “It would have its own daily newspaper, which would pay a lot more attention to the largest real estate development in its history,” Oder told The Times.

Oder’s most recent post on his Atlantic Yards Report accuses The Times of “stretching the truth.” About a dozen blogs keep close tabs on the project. The mix of blogs provide technical discussion, community advocacy, opinion, and even comedy. The Times said that most of the bloggers are from Brooklyn. Some are experts in urban development and related fields and some are amateurs. “But even the amateurs among them have boned up on arcane zoning provisions and planning-law quirks that can induce headaches among the less devoted,” Nicholas Confessore wrote in The Times.

The developer of the project concedes that some of the blogs are informative and even well written. “There is, however, a sense of self-importance and anger that often pops out," spokesman Joe DePlasco told The Times.

Self-important? Well, if nobody felt a twinge of self-importance we wouldn't have any blogs, especially ones that take on a big developer. At least these guys sound informed. And while they may rant and rave more than our favorite newspaper, they are adding to the public discussion.

Posted by at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am a Graduate Assistant for J301 Research and Writing. It’s an undergraduate class with mostly sophomores and juniors. Recently they did a unit on blogging and writing for the web. Rick Musser was our guest lecturer for the week and he said something that really struck me as interesting.

He said that things like Myspace and Facebook were blogs. I’m not sure I agree with that at all. I think blogs should be more writing and less party pictures. Maybe if the blogger is writing about their party pictures it would be okay.

I think blogs should be intellectually stimulating and more importantly, held to some form of journalistic integrity. Especially if people presume to call bloggers citizen journalists.

When I look at my Facebook page, I do not see blog worthy material. I see a personal site that would allow someone to get to know me. I also see something that helps me keep in touch with my friends at other universities.

I understand there are sites like Xanga and various other places that could be categorized as a blog. One of my friends has one where he writes about his vacations or classes and posts pictures of his friends and family. It’s a great way for me to keep up on what’s going on in his life, but it’s not Facebook or Myspace.

There is no room on a Facebook page to blog about what you did that day. If you chose to write anything longer than a short paragraph you would have to do it elsewhere and then link to it from your page.

I think one of the biggest problems with blogs is that there is no clear cut definition. What exactly is a blog? I have no idea. What do you guys think? Are there certain criteria that constitute a blog? Just wondering.

Posted by at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Thinking a little about Steve's presentation and some attempts to find a back episode of a radio program I missed, I started to wonder why the present is free but the past is $9.95/month or $19.95 for three months at the much better rate.

Who would want to pay for archives from the New York Times when news is happening right now? I don't see the market for things that have already happened, unless it's something huge that people would want to preserve in a frame on their wall.

And as far as paying for past radio programs, such as Jim Rome or Phil Hendrie, I can see how they charge for access since their shows are more entertainment than news. But I have no clue why Sporting News Radio would want to charge for past shows when sports news changes so quickly and the shows are absolete within at most 12 hours. Additionally, if you want to hear one show, like I did, they have a 10-day free trial, so you give them your credit card number, get the show and cancel your account. I'd be interested to see the revenue numbers on something like what Sporting News Radio does, charging for past episodes.

ABC, on May 1, will offer free encore episodes for download. I've never seen Lost and maybe I'll download it and start watching the show on television. Sounds like a better plan for consumers.

Posted by at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Just thought I'd share some thoughts generated by a fascinating column I recently read on the Editor&Publisher site.

The column (Creeping Democracy of Web Influences Print Coverage), by David S. Hirschman, looks at the difficult time newspapers are having as they try to adapt to the digital age. He paints the picture of a time when a handful of print newspaper editors had control over the stories we all read. Of course with the advent of the internet--and later blogs--that quickly went out the window.

The story goes on to demonstrate that editors are not only losing power over setting the news agenda, they're losing power over story placement within their own papers. Online newspapers are quickly finding out that what print editors decide is Page One material isn't necessarily what most people are reading--they're able to figure this out by monitoring the "most viewed" or "most emailed" stories for a given day:

Even if [New York Times Editor Bill] Keller buries a story deep in the paper, it can get more hits (and thus be more important) than what he thought was worthy of page A1 that morning in print. The next day, having noted the reaction, and the spike in traffic, an editor like Keller can't help but reevaluate the importance of the story; people care, so it is (more) important... In fact, the newly redesigned New York Times site now features a greater emphasis on "most popular" lists, creating a counterpoint to the decisions of editors.

This "democratization" of news, of course, has its advantages and disadvantages, as the story points out:

A scoop on The Smoking Gun about a celebrity drunk driving accident can yield a zillion clicks, while a New Republic story about the growing number of Americans without health insurance can pass virtually unnoticed.

Of course, this is not a new phenomenon--"sexy" and shocking stories have always always found more readers than stories about public policy or complex social and cultural issues. Still, all trends indicate that Blogs will continue to proliferate (actually, maybe we should preemptively strike the Blogosphere...isn't that somewhere in the Central Asia?), so this problem won't just disappear for newspapers any time soon. However, as the story concludes, there is a way out:

Likely the best that newspapers can do in adjusting to the new digital reality is the same thing they've always done: create fresh, unique, and credible, content that will draw the attention of an ever-wider audience while they figure out how to measure and monetize it.

Sure, that's kind of an easy answer...but I think he's on to something. Newspapers shouldn't try to be like blogs--they should strive to be the exact opposite (of the blog stereotype) by giving us the serious, in-depth reporting blogs simply don't have the resources--or in many cases the talent--to pull off. We might demand our "news candy" stories, but remember, there's an obesity epidemic in this country and it's not just related to food. Sooner or later the sugar rush of Natalie Holloway and TomKat stories is bound to wear off, and we're going to need something with substance...a big fat "Medicare Prescription Plan analysis" smoothie, if you will.

Posted by at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

On Friday, JB and I attended the Media and the Law Seminar in Kansas City, organized by Professor Mike Kautsch. We learned a couple of things that day that relate to blogs:

* A panel looked at the government's subpoena power. Part of the discussion involved the possibility of a federal shield law and the problem with defining what is a "journalist." In the words of attorney Kurt Wimmer, "we've heard from the blogging community." The current proposal from Senator Dodd doesn't, in my opinion, appear to cover bloggers.

* We also listened to a panel that discussed responding to government retaliation and threats. Courts are increasingly discouraged from finding in favor of the media when the government retaliates against them. The main point I took out of that lecture was the phrase "never mess someone that buys ink by the barrel." The point being, when the government stops talking to a journalist there is recourse by pressuring the government in the editorial pages. That pressure, obviously, comes from the readers. But how does this affect the blogging community? Are blogs so specialized and splintered that there won't be enough pressure to affect the government?

* We also ate a delicious lunch including chicken with some type of sauce and an oddly shaped au gratin type potato.

Posted by at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Depending on who you talk to these days, "characters" writing blogs can help or wreak havoc on a successful business, television show, radio station, etc. Apparently several prime time television shows such as Lost and How I met your Mother are using character blogs unapologetically and it's not hurting them a bit. Prime Time Blogs

Other successful, non-entertainment sites say character blogs can be the kiss of death, however. Just read the scathing reviews a popular gourmet food-site received its marketing experts decided to have its imaginary mascot start his own blog. When Good Blogs Go Bad

I personally don't see how a character blogging can hurt a web-site but the people upset with the Gourmet store certainly took it personally. I don't know if it's because they view themselves as "serious" bloggers and they felt the gourmet store was making a mockery of their "art" or what, but I tend to think that if there's a character blog on a site I'm visiting and I don't care for them I just won't read it. Maybe I'm over-simplifying (which I am prone to do) or maybe these "serious" bloggers are just seriously pathetic and need to get a hobby they won't be so upset about!

Posted by at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesturday (Wed) on the KMBZ morning show http://kmbz.com, Darla Jaye discussed rape victims and suspects. She quoted information that related to several items regarding the FBI. She mentioned today that a lot of her information came from a web site. Darla said that she was later questioned for several hours last night by the FBI. Apparently the web site contains a lot of information that was not true. Darla appologized sacastically on her show this morning - believe me, it didn't sound very sincere. She also included the song "I'm sorry....so sorry."

This story emphasises why we need to check out every single fact before broadcasting it to a large radio audience in Kansas City. In this case, why didn't KMBZ call the FBI to confirm it? Just because it's on a web site doesn't mean it's fact!

Posted by at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I was at a meeting last night and ran into a friend of mine who is a promotions writer for a local TV station. He was just heading in to work and said to me "I gotta go see if there is any news that I need to promo for the late news." (Or something close to that- I'm papraphrasing.)
"Well you could just make some news up," I offered jokingly.
"Oh, you mean like last night?"
Now I was intrigued. "What do you mean?" I asked.
"Didn't you hear about the Grain Valley couple who were supposed to have had sextuplets?"
I hadn't and I said so.
"It was all a hoax. We ran the story and didn't check it out. It made us look really bad."

This morning I read about the hoax and thought I would bring it up as it relates to Samantha's blog about gossip.

Is this another example of poor reporting and poorer factchecking? Is it gossip gone wild? Or, was the hoax done so elaborately that they fooled everyone?

And ultimately, how did the couple think they were going to pull it off?

Posted by at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I was reading this column on Poynter Online about gossip columns in newspapers. Gossip columns have always been kind of shady to me, for all the reasons Kelly McBride points out in her column. Gossip sections rarely print anything of truth, they are always about things that shouldn’t really have a huge effect on anything in society, and the use of anonymous sources is more prevalent than one dollar bills in a strip club. The biggest thing newspapers are concerned about is their effect on its credibility. If a newspaper prints a gossip section, how do we know what is gossip and what is news? I don’t really by into the argument of people not being able to distinguish between news and gossip. If the gossip column is clearly marked, there shouldn’t be a problem. However, should a credible news source be printing gossip at the same time? And furthermore, should the people working the gossip columns be called journalists?

When I was an intern at a television station in Sioux Falls, I had an interesting experience regarding this topic. During this time, one of the biggest stories in our area was a baby that had been thrown away after it was born. I don’t remember the specifics, but I do remember that volunteers were searching in a land fill for the baby’s body and nobody knew who the parents were. We did, however have an idea of what town they lived in. When I went into work one day, they didn’t really have anything for me to do. All the reporters were out covering stories and they just needed to keep me busy until they came back. So my producer told me to start calling gas stations and churches in the suspected area where the parents lived. I was supposed to find out anything I could about the parents under the pretense that I was looking for funeral arrangements for the baby.

I was told gas stations right away, but I switched to salons and beauty parlors, because I know that women probably like to gossip more than men and also, women, especially in a small town, will spill it in the salon. The ladies in the salon told me that they heard there was going to be a memorial service soon. So then I started calling churches and asking for memorial service information. Finally one of the church receptionists told me that she heard something in the grocery store about who the father was. Jackpot!

She was very hesitant in giving me the name, however I assured her that I didn’t know who she was and had also forgotten what church I had called. In all honesty I really wasn’t lying. I just kept dialing down the phone book and I spent so much time on the phone with this lady that I had completely lost my place on the list.

Anyways, as soon as she gave me the name and I assured her she wouldn’t be in the news in any way, I got off the phone and ran to tell my producer. We googled this name and found an address and phone number. A reporter called and I’m pretty sure she heard expletives on the other end. So she and a photographer drove out to this person’s house and had the front door slammed in their faces. I’m pretty sure I gave them the right name.

The whole point to this story is that gossip can help news organizations. It’s not entirely bad. I think that as long as gossip doesn’t become the news, it definitely has a place in the newsroom. The gossip of a small town, gave me a name and when we followed up on the name, it turned into a lead. As a journalist I don’t see anything wrong with that. Had the name been fake or wrong or whatever, nothing would have been reported. I think blogs add a lot to the element of news. There are tons of blogs that are nothing more than gossip, but sometimes they discuss things that no real news service has thought about. Even if it is gossip, it doesn’t mean it’s not talking about something news worthy.

Posted by at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I just learned about what I would term the ULTIMATE conversion tool - Internet browsers that are installed in the floor of bathroom stalls. No longer will individuals need to take their newspaper or magazine into the restroom, since everything will be at the tip of your toes. You can view the installment at Fresh Creation.

I guess we now know how people will be getting their news and in what time lengths we will have to begin writing stories to capture their attention. I think someone should come up with a way to forward a story back to your desk so you can finish reading or complete more research on the topic. Personally, I don't want to touch the floor of any public restroom I use, so I will forgo any forwarding.

From an advertising perspective, this makes for interesting discussion. For certain clients and products we have stayed away from floor clings, seat covers and other types of advertising where the product name will be walked over or sat on. With the Internet screens now in restroom stalls, we will have to discuss how to more effectively place Internet advertising.

Posted by at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

...THAT is the question. At least, that's the question several Washington Post reporters have been asking now that they have been ordered to blog. As this Washington City Paper story reports, the Post has come under scrutiny from its own staff for choosing to pay some bloggers while ordering other staffers to blog without additional compensation:

Around the time the first posts were to fly, D.C. political correspondent Lori Montgomery did some reporting about her own workplace. Among her findings was that some newsroom bloggers were receiving extra compensation.

The staffers asked to delay the blog’s debut, pending an explanation as to why some get paid and others don’t. The answer came straight out of an Office Space management summit: Solo bloggers get paid because their names give the blogs a sense of franchise; group blogs don’t share this dynamic, and there’s less work for each reporter.

As the article states, even when the reporters offered a compromise: Pay the group bloggers the same sum paid to an individual blogger--and let the reporters split that amount--management still refused to ante up. As a result, the reporters contemplated what could be called cyber disobedience:

Could they simply refuse to blog? Not according to top Metro editor Robert McCartney. In a meeting with the staffers, McCartney explained that Post lawyers had determined that the paper could compel its employees to blog. However, he said, top managers preferred to refer to it as a voluntary duty, so as to buoy newsroom morale. Rick Ehrmann, a representative with Local 32035 of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, says that the question of whether blogging is mandatory remains “unsettled.” “We don’t believe that they have the right to require that,” says Ehrmann.

Can you imagine the nerve of some people?!! Forcing others to blog against their will--on a regular basis--and for NO MONEY?!! (No offense, JB, but we really should be paid handsomely for making this blog such a success!)

At any rate, I think this article (and incident) raises some very important questions for journalism in the digital age. Should newspapers be able to force reporters to blog? Should additional compensation be required (after all, we know that blogging is not automatically synonymous with reporting, so to some extent these reporters are fulfilling an entirely different duty). And finally, if a blogger refuses to blog, and no one notices, does an angel still get its wings?

Posted by at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

This week's installment may be interspersed with a little more invective than usual, considering the havoc that I wreaked on my computer while attempting to download a free RSS feed reader while simultaneously changing my default Web browser from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox a half hour ago. You have been warned.

Recently, online publications have been rushing to incorporate blogs in their content that will limit their journalistic integrity.

You've already seen blogs on washingtonpost.com and the links to "related blogs" on nytimes.com. Other media have followed suit. BlogBurst, a syndication service from a blog technology company, will begin delivering commentary from 600 bloggers to print and online editions of newspapers today. The blogs will be carried by Gannett Co. Inc., Washington Post Co., San Francisco Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman and San Antonio Express.

The article's author tosses in a meek counterargument, which doesn't hold up to scrutiny considering it's not backed up by any sources: "For their part, traditional journalists have seen the lack of editorial oversight over individual bloggers as a danger to impartial news reporting."

And now for the long-awaited invective: They're going to print this nonsense? Yes, the oft-mentioned "post first, ask questions later" journalistic methodology of the blogger is making its way onto the front page of your favorite newspaper.

It's a hell of a time to be a editor at a newspaper. The publisher forces you to run a couple blogs per week because that's what the audience wants. Another top-to-bottom decision based purely on investment returns, you think, so you're skeptical. Then you read a couple posts and it seems like these bloggers lack any formal journalistic training. That is, after all, what journalists go to school for, right?

It's unfair to assume that these bloggers lack or should posses a journalism degree to blog, but credible news organizations ought to think twice before publishing "unproven" bloggers, especially considering the Washington Post's Domenech debacle. (There's your trackback, Ranjit.)

Byron Calame, public editor for The New York Times, writes that readers can benefit from blog entries, even if those blogs don't deliver Times-quality news content. "The crucial factor is that The Times has to clearly distinguish blogs from its traditional news content — and readers have to keep in mind that they are different."

But is this enough? To be fair, the Times has done a better job than any other publication by both mostly providing links to related blogs and allowing mostly its staffers to post blogs. However, Calame writes that Dealbook, a financial blog, provides insight to Times' readers, but "much of the information hasn't gone through all The Times's journalistic filters."

In a funny critique of the Calame's article and the Times, Jeff Jarvis writes, "many of us can point to many things that could have used a little more verifying and confirming. That’s the case for any newspaper."

I predict that the problem of verification and confirming that newspapers have experienced will only increase with the advent of a syndicated blog service.

Posted by at 1:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Rolling Stones ventured into Shanghai this weekend for a concert they had been trying to book for 30 years. They made quite a few compromises for the gig. Tickets were priced higher than the average Chinese monthly income so that mostly foreigners would attend. And just in case a few Shanghai residents had enough dough to buy tickets, Chinese censors made sure they weren’t corrupted by cutting the Stones’ song list.

Among the classics Mick Jagger wasn’t allowed to play: Brown Sugar, Beast of Burden, Let’s Spend the Night Together, Honky Tonk Women, and Rough Justice. The title of that last one seems absurdly appropriate.

Jagger said the censorship “didn’t really matter” because he could choose from more than 400 other songs. I guess he thought he thought copying the hypocrisy shown by Google and others wouldn’t hurt his profits.

Why is it that globalization so easily gets in the way of our democratic values? Thomas Lipsomb recently complained in Editor & Publisher that giant companies like Google that control American media are too willing to suspend democratic and First Amendment principles when those ideals get in the way of profits. “Google is perfectly willing to posture as a brave defender of the privacy of its users in the U.S. marketplace it already dominates while caving to the immense commercial opportunity awaiting it in China,” Lipscomb wrote (subscription required for access.)

As the world gets flatter, it's only getting worse.

Let's hope Jagger's gaffe matters as little as his concern over the censorship. The New York Times quoted a popular Chinese blogger who said Chinese rock ‘n’ roll fans would prefer a domestic pop singer over the Stones. One Shanghei concert-goer added, "listening to the melody, it wasn't so beautiful."

I wholeheartedly agree.

Posted by at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Thanks to this class I am now highly aware of any and all advertising that ties in blogs. In the daily e-mail newsletter I receive from Adrants, there is a story on how Subway is taking a new approach to their advertising campaign, utilizing future NFL player Reggie Bush. The ad promotes a Subway blog Subway Fresh Buzz that launches tomorrow and features two to three entries a day from Reggie (or his psuedo writer). The focus of the site and blogs are supposed to be about Reggie entering his rookie year in the NFL. There's sections of the site that will supposedly provide information on healthy eating, Reggie's stats, etc. It tried the site and it's not live today, but I look forward to returning tomorrow.

I'm interested in seeing the site and trying to determine the audience segment they are targeting. Evidently, it's male sports enthusiasts, but how much do they think this audience will move off their ESPN and fantasy football sites to visit Reggie's blog. I also find it interesting that Subway was able to capture this high-profile rookie over some sports gear company. Now that I'm addicted to advertising and their use of blogs, I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes and how Subway will measure its impact.

Posted by at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

JB pointed out earlier this week that he discovered I had an interest in state politics. Since I have been discovered, I thought I would blog this week on the upcoming 2006 election and some verbage flying around the Internet. In my research, I found an interesting article that commented on the state of blogging in Kansas politics. Of course, it was written by the Lawrence Journal World own Joel Mathis and picked up by other newspapers in the state - running the Lawrence slug line, of course. (My note to this is that a majority of Kansas believes Lawrence to be the liberal dark hole in the state)

On to the state political blogs. I searched the two leading Republican governor candidate sites and found neither one currently had a blog posted. Governor Sebelius does not have a blog, either. Mathis listed in his story a link to the 2006 Campaign Blog, but I followed the link and it did not exist.

What I did find were a number of conservative blogs that chatted away about state politics and its players. Interesting links include Kansas Republican Politics and Kansas Governor. These two sites are following who the leading Republican candidates will select for running mates and the campaigning they have been doing around the state.

Looking into this made me wonder - what impact do we think blogs will play in our governor's race this year? When will the candidate blogs begin if they determine to use this communications medium?

I think it will be interesting to follow the race this year and see how blogs play a part. More to come.

Posted by at 4:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I was totally, woefully and completely negligent in the schmobjectivity entry by not pointing out the Kansas City tie to pervertedJustice.com. Aaron Barnhart wrote about the group's misadventures in concert with KCTV. It's funny, unless you have any feeling at all for the vast, wasted potential of local TV news. Read it and weep, one way or the other.

Let the record show that in my days in television news, I never had anybody working on a story for my station bash his head against glass until it bled (his head, that is, not the glass).

Posted by Professor John Broholm at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Remember when I said this blog was going to make us all rich? Well, maybe I didn't read the fine print all that closely.

According to a recent story in Newsday (Fame and Fortune: They're in the Blog--link unavailable since it's a registered site), bloggers are having a hard time making the cross-over from basement-dwelling, pajama-wearing, parents-house-living isolationists to mainstream media darlings. From the Newsday story as provided by Lexis-Nexis):

Even the most prominent books that have evolved from blogs haven't become top sellers, and some critics say blog writers haven't figured out how to translate pithy entries into a graceful long form. A recent shortlist of contenders for a new prize called the Blooker - for books derived from blogs or other Web sites - contains 16 titles you've mostly never heard of. This year, "Dog Days," a satire by Ana Marie Cox, the original Wonkette political blogger, received a great advance (reportedly $250,000), mixed reviews and poor sales - less than 6,000 copies sold since it was released in January, according to The Book Standard's figures from Nielsen BookScan, which account for 70 percent to 90 percent of all books sold.

"I think we're still waiting for the big blog novel," says Book Standard editor in chief Jerome Kramer.

So there you have it--we still have a chance to write the great Blog Novel (by the way, what is the "big blog novel?" Does it mean half of the page is left blank so that the reader can add his/her own comments...sort of like a Choose Your Own Adventure book--that leads nowhere). I already have some suggested titles for the first big blog novel (and you can use them for a small fee): "The Great Blogsby," "In Cold Blog," and "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Blogger".

Actually, the story goes on to say that bloggers aren't necessarily falling flat on their faces, either. In fact, while bloggers haven't translated well as novelists, they have found "cross-over" work as TV commentators (Wonkette's Anna Marie Cox) and even as university professors ( Buzz Machine's Jeff Jarvis, who now teaches a class on blogging at NYU).

The story is also worth searching out because it points to the next trend of blogging: Vlogging (video blogging), and uses the vlog Rocketboom as an example of this burgeoning field:

Rocketboom, which offers a daily visual commentary on the news with lively anchorwoman Amanda Congdon, is a prime example. The vlog is also available on TVs through TiVo, so far the only Internet content offered there, says Rocketboom founder Andrew Michael Baron.

...Several networks have asked them to do some sort of news show, but so far they've declined. One network wanted to buy them, but they won't sell. Venture capitalists offered money, but they said no. They've been asked to write books, and might pursue an idea they had. They also got a request from "CSI" to use Amanda in an episode, which aired Feb. 2.

I visited Rocketboom and was rather underwhelmed. Then again, it's still a developing medium, and I'm sure others had the same reaction when viewing the earliest blogs.

So what's the bottom line of all of this? Well, I guess it demonstrates that blogging itself doesn't translate well into other print-driven media. We've been arguing whether bloggers are journalists, well it turns out they may not be authors, either. However, blogging is providing a high-profile platform for some of the more popular bloggers, giving them a chance to pursue other media-related careers. So, in other words, this class blog aint gonna make us rich, but it'll probably land us a few TV pilots, a book deal, and an endowed chair in some lucky journalism department. (I wonder how many of our professors got hired simply because they had sexy blogs?)

Posted by at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The short fuse for opinion and commentary has gotten shorter. Recent case in point: Jill Carroll and the remarks she made before and just after her release from being a hostage in Iraq. The criticism of those remarks went so far as to raise the T-word. Darnit, treason is getting a downright bad name these days. Ann Coulter -- oh, no, you won't catch me linking to her -- slung it at liberals in the title of a book, no less. Liberal blogs tossed it back at nearly every Bush administration official who ever spoke the name "Valerie Plame."

In Carroll's case, the charge -- and all the other garbage that accompanied it -- was grossly premature and largely flatulent. When you spring to the attack on somebody, you can't know what you're talking about until you know what you're talking about. (I expect the call from Yogi Berra's copyright lawyer any minute.) Makes no difference whether you're on cable, blog or the op-ed page.

The fun part is that the traditional news media are finally getting the type of criticism and scrutiny that they've meted out for years to just about everybody else. Politicians and public relations people have carped about new coverage for years, but now newsies are actually listening to the complaints. The not-so-fun part is that a fair portion of the criticism is as ill-informed as ever. Ask Jill Carroll -- though she doesn't seem to want to talk about it.

The blogs have made that fuse shorter.

The blogs are apparently loosening things up at the news networks, too. Bloggers don't bombard television with nearly as many keystrokes as they do newspapers -- and each other -- but when they do, it can cut deep. We all know the litany that bloggers brought down Dan Rather with righteous indignation over CBS's presentation of documents about President Bush's National Guard service, documents that turned out to be less than genuine. Or not. The debate about the docs goes on. What's clear is blogdom's influence.

CBS is running its own blog (a cross between an ombudsman and a more freewheeling media critic), and that blog is *gasp* criticizing NBC's Dateline for the way it covers apparent pedophiles. In short, NBC teams up with Perverted-Justice.com -- here's another link I refuse to make -- to lure online trollers to go past their trolling to actual physical encounters with what they think are hot kids. Some say it's entrapment; NBC says it's "enticement." CBS says NBC goes too far in its tip-offs to authorities. (Copy-edit wretches: should that be "tips-off"?)

This is, Scott Collins of the LA Times says, a real change from the "don't criticize us, we won't criticize you" relationship TV networks and stations have maintained. Collins also says CBS goes too far by criticizing a rival net, with which I heartily disagree.

Note that this is happening on a blog, not on the air. The closest we come to regular on-air media critcism is Reliable Sources on CNN, but Howard Kurtz seldom steps up on the soap box himself and tends to maintain a gentlemanly and even-handed stance -- sometimes too much so. Kurtz did get into a lovely little set-to with Lou Dobbs, though, and the transcript has its charms.

The Kurtz-Dobbs match led Michael Kinsley to muse on The Twilight of Objectivity:

No one seriously doubts anymore that the Internet will fundamentally change the news business. The uncertainty is whether it will only change the method of delivering the product, or whether it will change the nature of the product as well.

Uncertainty? It's been a sure thing that the Internet would change the "nature of the product" from the word go. The questions are how and when. Never before has the feeling been so widespread that objectivity is schmobjectivity, a sham that's outlived its usefulness as a defense against criticism -- assuming it was ever useful. The debate now is over what will replace the ritual of invoking objectivity.

I seriously doubt it's a matter of whether we're shifting the traditional lines between objective reporting and opinion, as posited by Peter Johnson at USA Today. Line shifted. Done.

The question worth asking -- worth cryin' dyin' and fightin' about -- is how informed, considered and useful will be the opinion we get... on such a short fuse.

Posted by Professor John Broholm at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I’m reading The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell for another class. So far, I really like it. It discusses how small things can spark a sales revolution by word of mouth. In the beginning of the book he uses the Hush Puppy example. The company that produced Hush Puppies was all but bankrupt when a few people in SoHo, New York started wearing the shoes to nightclubs. Gladwell refers to these people as “trendy hipsters” who were just looking for something to wear that wouldn’t be the norm. When these select individuals started wearing shoes that nobody else was paying attention to, they started a trend that saved the business. Soon big name designers were requesting the Hush Puppy brand for their runway shows and using them in all their designs.

The reason I bring this up is because Gladwell labels these “trendy hipsters,” Mavens and Connectors. A Maven is someone who knows a lot about a lot. They make it they’re business to know about the latest computer program and can compare liquid to pencil eyeliner. They are the type of people who always read consumer reports and relentlessly go comparison-shopping. A Connector is someone who seems to know everyone. My dad is a Connector. He cannot go anywhere in public without running into someone he knows. Some of his friends joke he should run for mayor, and I can’t say I disagree with them.

I’m learning from Gladwell that a marketing plan cannot succeed without both Mavens and Connectors. If one person, or a Maven, knows about a really amazing product, it still won’t sell unless other people know about it too. When a Maven tells a Connector about the product, the Connector will spread the word to its many friends, therefore starting a trend.

I think blogs can add another element to this equation. The Tipping Point was published in 2000, right at the very beginning of the big blogging boom. So, so far he hasn’t discussed the effects of blogs or the Internet in his book. However, I think if Mavens and Connectors each had a blog, the tipping point would come much sooner than Gladwell says it does. The Connector’s blog could link to the Maven’s blog and then people could access their social network and consumer information all over the world. I’m sure this is already the case with many things. But I wonder if bloggers have realized their power when it comes to marketing and sales?

Posted by at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

SAN FRANCISCO — In Atlanta, an online ad offers a room in exchange for "sex and light office duty." In Los Angeles, a one-bedroom pool house is free "to a girl that is skilled and willing." And in New York City, a $700-a-month room is available at a discount to a fit female willing to provide sex.

On the widely used Web site Craigslist.org, some landlords and apartment dwellers looking for roommates are offering to accept sex in lieu of rent. "They have to be attractive. I don't let just anybody come into my house," said Mike, a man who answered the phone at the New York City listing but declined to give his last name — and refused to say whether he has, in fact, collected the rent under the sheets.

At least Mike has standards. What self-respecting landlord would accept anything less? Does this make Craigslist a pimp?

Just another weird -- really, really, weird -- example of the issues Craigslist currently faces.

Posted by at 7:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

A story on the front of the Sunday Times talks about how campaigns are being transformed by the Internet. Political parties’ reliance on the Internet “has increased at a staggering rate over the past two years,” Adam Nagourney wrote.

He said both sides are using Interactive Web sites, blogs, podcasts, text messaging and e-mail blasts to raise money and get out the vote. They also are trying to create attack ads that are so cool friends will pass them along by the thousands. Kinda like the popular Chronicles of Narnia rap from Saturday Night Live.

Republicans and Democrats have set up Web sites to discredit each other. One memorable effort included the Dems passing around a memo written by Florida Sen. Mel Martinez who was extolling the political benefits of the Terri Schiavo case.

All this activity is starting to make tv ads and other forms of fund-raising obsolete. When Mark Warner, Virginia’s former governor, decided to make a run for the White House, his first move was to hire a blogging pioneer. He’s now one of at least three viable candidates.

But while the Internet is great at reaching and mobilizing supporters, it “has proved to be much less effective at swaying voters who are not interested in politics,” The Times said.

I hope candidates and the parties can work to successfully change this. The Internet offers the perfect chance for campaigns to reach the younger audience that never shows up at the polls and makes America’s voter turnout so pitiful.

But I am probably too much the optimist. Even the hilarious antics of Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell in the Chronicles of Narnia can't save SNL.

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The nytimes.com has finally acknowledged that bloggers have something worthwhile to contribute to the conversation. Before, the news was anything but a conversation: Here's the news, swallow it, feel free to vent on a reader forum.

Now the nytimes.com's new feature ranks Times' articles that are most often linked to by bloggers and is updated hourly. (In case you haven't seen it, the folks at nytimes.com have redesigned their site, which I think has a bloggy feel to it.)

Leonard M. Apcar, nytimes.com editor, gives us this broad explanation in a letter to readers :

"Our goal when we set out to redesign The Times Web site more than a year ago was to make experiencing The New York Times online simpler and more useful."

Predictably, he used the word experience and only briefly mentions the blogging feature. Apcar skirts the issue; he doesn't explain exactly why the Times chose to implement this feature. But it at least the Times has finally acknowledged that blogs are an online force.

Why should the Times redirect you to another site when its goal is to keep you on its site to view its upper-crust ads and articles? Does the Times actually care what the bloggers are saying?

I wonder how editors determine which blogs to link to. Do they include blogs that have been linked to most frequently? Do they include blogs critical of the Times' coverage? Do they edit for AP style and grammar, or at least beg bloggers to do so before they post a link?

The nytimes.com has vastly increased the utility of its site with this feature. However, I'm full of questions. Apcar should write a post explaining the Times' methodology for linking to blogs and why it decided to adopt this cool feature.

P.S. Thank you to whoever read this blog and allowed me to save face by changing it before you commented. The rest of the class might have found out that I was a purveyor of false information. It wasn't disinformation; I swear.

Posted by at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)