RadioAnnGal

Don't Knock Government Subsidies, Mr. Sweeney!

2009-11-25T15:01:00.000-08:00

I was fortunate enough to attend the Future of News in the flesh last Monday (rather than the 1600 online souls who tweeted and posted comments through an online forum). The scrum that ensued between the Star Tribune with Mike Sweeney and Nancy Barnes on one side and Minnesota Public Radio's head news honcho Chris Worthington on the other was fun to watch.

But I was a bit dismayed at Mr. Sweeney's editorial, which ran in the Strib, lambasting government support for journalism, such as Minnesota's Cultural and Heritage Legacy Amendment which is going to put over $5 million over the next two years into the state's public broadcasters, including TPT, Minnesota's PBS affiliate and the 12 stations that make up the Association of Minnesota's Public and Educational Radio Stations (AMPERS).

Here's the thing: it's not technically "government" support. It's taxpayer support: the money is coming from three eighths of a sales tax that goes into a fund to public media. Like the BBC, the government collects the money, and then it gets sent on to the private, non for profit entities who decide independently, without government interference what to spend it on. I do admit that there is a potential for stations to produce what they think the government wants to keep the money coming in - in that regard, Mr. Sweeney's objections are totally valid. But it's the same issue for commercial media: for all of commercial media's insistence that there are robust firewalls between advertisers and editorial, let's not kid ourselves.

Also, newspapers are under the gun to produce content that generates revenue. The profit margins that supported content in the public interest are over (and indeed some would argue, those reporters often had to fight with their newspapers and television networks to get the support). So are we to expect benevolent sponsors and advertisers to fund reporting that investigates the comfortable and the powerful?

My point is it's not all or nothing. Because public media is getting additional support, doesn't mean they are avoiding covering the government, in the same way that I suspect newspapers will continue to try as much as they can afford to investigate wayward companies who advertise in their pages. What is important to remember is that there is room for both, and in fact, I would argue desirable. The newspapers can keep an eye on the government - and public media can keep an eye on the corporate advertisers who -dare I say it?- subsidize newspaper journalism.

Health Insurance Debate: Excuse Me While I Let Out a Wheezy Sigh

2009-08-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

Wow. Just when I thought broadcast news couldn't get any worse, it sinks to a whole, deeper, scummier, darker level. I say broadcast news, but the newspapers are just as bad. If I read one more poll from USA Today or NBC News, I might be forced to take direct action.

I thought the media, and the news media in particular had a public interest obligation. That's what I always hear the print dinosaurs whining about whenever I read yet another cliche about being an ink-stained wretch who wanted to give people the information they needed to function in a democracy. Ummm, apparently those days are over.

The coverage has turned into a window on the bizarre, and yes, I even admit, entertaining, match between the psycho anti-reform folks and the remarkably inarticulate, ill-informed elected Democrats who can't seem to answer the most basic questions about the proposals on the table. (I believe there are 5 - that's what PBS told me, and they are the most trusted news source in America, believe it or not.)

So I was quite gratified when My Man, Bill Moyers brought in his old buddy, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, and another guy to talk about how the media is covering this. But it got me thinking how hard it is for media outlets to make rational, thoughtful news decisions - in this case, broadcasting over and over again the marginal crazies who scream out questions and won't wait for an answer (and lest I am unclear, I am including the single payer folks in this. They are behaving in some cases equally shamefully.)

The toughest part, and I speak from personal experience, about being a journalist is standing by your work. It's even tougher when your organization abandons you (like Sulzberger abandoned Judy Miller, like CBS abandoned Dan Rather). It's tough to stand alone. But if two news people come together to tell the status quo that the news media is covering this "discussion" to the detriment of the public interest, then they're not alone anymore. If we all had a little courage to voice the absurdities of this most recent exercise in news insanity, then maybe we wouldn't be alone anymore.

Copyrighteousness

2009-08-18T07:51:00.001-07:00

Congress may be in summer recess, but the goliaths of commercial broadcasting interests are settling in for more battles in the debate over the Performance Rights Act.

In a nutshell: the Recording Industry Artists Association and the National Association of Broadcasters, formerly allies in the fight against "illegal" downloads of music, are fighting over the remaining crumbs of profit left from the broken business model of commercial radio.

The fight is really nothing new. RIAA has been agitating for performance royalties from commercial radio since forever. But what's relevant is that NAB is now feeling the pain of legislation is lobbied for to kill online streaming (and which RIAA was happy to endorse as well) to keep listeners tuned in over the air.

RIAA is now seeing their members, performers, are better served by a different compensation model. One that targets the multiple platforms where music is being consumed, such as iPods, laptops, mp3 players and so on. I listen to all my music on my laptop, hooked up to speakers that I downloaded from iTunes. I maybe buy 3 CD's in a year; I bought 10 albums on iTunes.

Time for NAB to upgrade its business model. Time for them to get some technological savvy. Time for them to play some music people might actually want to listen to.

Not Your Mom's NPR.org...thank God

2009-07-23T13:34:00.000-07:00

Got a nice email from the folks at NPR about their new website set to launch July 27. Scott Simon led a video explanation of what to expect and how the features would be different.

All I can say is: thank the Lord. I remember the first website, the one before what they got now. And when they finally updated it in 2006/7, I remember thinking: this is it?

I'll stop complaining, and just say, the preview looks great. They've added a much more powerful search engine, and the layout is significantly more accessible.

Maybe PBS can toodle over to NPR HQ and get some pointers.

The Company Man

2009-07-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

Lot of lamenting going on with the death of Walter Cronkite. I'll throw in my two cents: he was the start of the decline of broadcast news, with Murrow and Friendly at the peak.

Certainly the man deserves credit for having the courage (and corporate authority of CBS News behind him) to point out the obvious in Vietnam. And as Media Channel's Danny Schechter talks about on Democracy Now! Cronkite did speak out against media consolidation, albeit well into his retirement.

But when Murrow and Friendly couldn't get CBS to back their investigative ventures, they paid for it themselves, like Harvest of Shame, a 1960 documentary about migrant workers. Covering wars and the White House are very sexy, but I gotta go with the guys getting close to a group of people utterly forgotten and taken for granted.

I suppose, like all of us, Cronkite did the best he could given his environment. We all make our compromises to get along in an unjust, badly managed world; some of us not at all. Conkrite was a person, no more, no less, subject to the powers of the structure that doled out his paycheck and maintained his influential public image. And who could blame him?

I recognize the impact Cronkite had on future television news anchors (great, what a legacy), but it's easy to laud the folks who sat the on the fence and didn't provoke us into action.

Cover It Live...But Expertise Helps

2009-07-13T07:32:00.000-07:00

I'm watching the Sotomayor hearing on the Washington Post website (NPR's website was a pain in the ass...not everyone can listen to a radio at their desk, NPR! You lost me.) WP is using software called Cover It Live to provide live updates from their reporters. It's terrific, especially for me, since I am chained to my desk digging into research about public media models for Free Press.

Folks like me can post questions on to the blog, and the reporters respond in real time. Everything from how long can we expect the confirmation to take, what are the politics behind the Judiciary Committee, etc.

Cover It Live is facilitating an interactivity not even broadcast can replicate. But it did get me thinking: you still need people with knowledge of Senate confirmation hearings, ideology, and the politics of U.S. Supreme Court nominations. You still need reporters!

However, to some degree you need fewer reporters. One of the ways Free Press, where I'm working over the summer, is experimenting is crowdsourcing. Cover It Live could be a tool to solicit experts - constitutional law professors, executive directors of watch dog groups like the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, etc. - to contribute. I don't know if Cover It Live has this capacity, but I saw a demonstration of a program used by qualitative social science researchers, AtlasTi, that allows the researcher to group themes across media (so you could have pictures, audio, text cross linked and grouped according to themes you set up). That could be a very powerful tool for reporters to monitor trends or identify issues that come up during events like confirmation hearings.

Al Franken's Future: Remembering Paul Wellstone

2009-07-01T07:34:00.000-07:00

As I sat at my desk glued to live vlog streams, press conferences online, and real time blogging when the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that Al Franken would indeed be the next U.S. Senator, I felt a great sense of closure.

Franken's entrance into politics began on October 25, 2002, a date that will remain ingrained in my neurons for as long as I live. The incumbent Senator running for reelection that year was Paul Wellstone, a former political science professor who was challenged by one of his students to put theory into practice. With no money, no party endorsement, and certainly no physical grace to recommend him in our prettified, make-up television world, this improbable candidate won a U.S. Senate seat in 1990 and kept winning.

Wellstone died in a plane crash on October 25 in northern Minnesota, 2 weeks shy of a close, bitter race with the Republican, Norm Coleman. His memorial service brought the Clintons, Ted Kennedy, Wellstone's great professional and personal friend, Senator Tom Harkin from Iowa, and Al Franken. I can still hear Harkin's speech: "Will you stand up for your friend? Will you stand up for Paul Wellstone?" It's corny, but it still makes me teary.

I saw Franken that night after the memorial. (Disclosure: I was the News Director at KFAI Radio at the time and coordinating coverage of the fallout of the Senator's death.) He was crying, his face splotchy. He was moved by the intensity of the events, as we all were, even reporters like myself who knew Senator Wellstone, had been on the campaign trail. I remember one of my reporters couldn't stop crying at the memorial. I wanted to shake her and tell her to keep it together, but it just seemed inhumane. I gave her a hug, and asked her if she could make it through, and she did. I wanted to cry too, but I had promises to keep.

Franken moved back to Minnesota after that (he grew up in Saint Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis) and started raising money for the DFL (Minnesota doesn't have Democrats, we have Democrat-Farmer-Labor, thank you very much.) 2002 was a devastating year for the DFL, and Democrats nationally. His hard work paid off: when he announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate, he had won over the notoriously averse-to-change party politics of the DFL.

Franken announced his candidacy in February 2007, won the DFL endorsement that summer, and ran an organized, tight campaign against a tough incumbent, Norm Coleman. The rest as you know is history.

I couldn't help but think of Al Franken's friend, Paul Wellstone, when the judgement came down from the Minnesota Supreme Court. His political career is the phoenix rising out of the ashes of Paul Wellstone's death.

Frankenmediamania

2009-06-30T13:01:00.000-07:00

I'm watching the Uptake's live coverage of the news about the Minnesota Supreme Court decision to cede the U.S. Senate race to Al Franken over the incumbent Norm Coleman. It's a mix of citizen journalists, independent media organizations, and a few staff to cover press conferences at the Minnesota capitol, at Norm Coleman's house, at Al Franken's apartment, and they're doing a decent job.

However, it wasn't good enough to keep me because the audio wasn't terrific so I switched to KSTP. But I like the format of bloggers giving the blow by blow with people calling in. It was fresh, and engaging. Now we'll see what the legacy media does with it.

Moved to WordPress Partially

2009-06-25T06:55:00.000-07:00

I've moved blogging about things media reform related to my Word Press blog, mediareformgal.wordpress.com. It's protected, so if you want in, send me your Word Press username, and I'll approve you (and then later I'll have to kill you for viewing it - but it's a small price to pay for my brilliant insights.)

My People! My People!

2009-06-16T06:22:00.000-07:00

Driving across New York State on my way to Northampton, Massachusetts, I checked in to the local NPR stations. This is my favorite part of driving around the United States. NPR affiliates tend to have quirky, local programs hosted by the town intelligentsia/elders.

WAMC is the affiliate in this neck of the public media woods, and sure enough, I hear the telltale tone of local hosts talking about their issue of choice. It was the Media Project. This is going to be good, I thought. I love listening to analysis of media issues, especially from a local perspective.

I was soon to be disappointed. The discussion focused on the woes of the media industry and its effect on journalism in print and broadcast. A few items:

1. The host, Rex Smith, talking about how much he loves advertising. True, advertising has paid for some pretty good journalism. It's also paid for some lazy reporting, serious breaches of ethics, and my personal favorite, led us into a war based on misinformation. One thing was clear: Mr. Smith is holding on to the cultural legacy of advertising supported journalism. I'm not saying there isn't a place for it; however, there are alternatives. Which leads me to point 2:

2. Making the case for alternatives. Mr. Smith's partner in crime, WTEN's Elisa Streeter, at one point glibly responded to a valid criticism of profit driven journalism, with "what's the alternative". I awaited the academic's response, who also turns out to be the executive director of WAMC, Alan Chartock. Here was the moment where a public radio executive could make his case and espouse the ability of public media to take up the mantle. But he had no alternative to offer, which saddened me, but did not necessarily surprise me. Mr. Chartock is one of several public media administrators who have little to offer in the way of innovation.

The broadcast encapsulated in a nutshell the problems facing news managers, who are trapped in the thinking of conventional news production, and public media leaders, like Mr. Chartock, who appear weekly to make curmudgeonly comments about the state of journalism.

These are my people: public radio people. Except that they're not. One came from a newspaper, another was a commerical television anchor, and the lone public radio voice didn't have the knowledge to make a coherent argument about what next steps could be taken to bolster journalism, to bolster public media, to redefine the flow of information.

Follow the Money

2009-05-02T13:13:00.000-07:00

The Corporation of Public Broadcasting announced special funding for stations to cover the economic crisis.

Excellent, especially in a time where newspapers are crumbling and the money honeys' brains seem to shrink in proportion to their already anorexic dress sizes.

But I was reminded of how not to always believe what's written in front of me. Public radio in particular likes to emphasize the decentralized system - the affiliate system puts more boots on the ground, allowing Papa Bear NPR to distribute "real" voices. And they do.

However, my prediction is that most of the money will go to the Central Intelligence of public broadcasting: KQED, Minnesota Public Radio, PRX, and it doesn't reflect this in the statement issued by CPB, shows produced by Minneapolis based Public Radio International. Bruce Theriault is the senior VP for radio at CPB; his previous position was a senior executive at PRI.

I'm not saying they don't deserve them. These stations have the capital to match with CPB; they have proven track records. The powerhouses, like Minnesota Public Radio and KQED, are well ahead of NPR in developing new technology and interactive games.

But the stations most in touch with their communities - and very marginalized members of mainstream society, like migrant workers, refugees, union activists - will be pushed to the side. On one hand the normalization of public media is great: growth in audience, growth in financial support (for radio, not television), growth in creditability.

On the other hand the stations that have tried to remain as connected as possible by sustaining access, encouraging media engagement, and open doors to the public, are penalized for sticking to a mission that says even if you're in the minority, you still deserve a place on the airwaves. I wonder with public media nesting in the mainstream, where will that place be where the marginalized, the media disenfranchised, those of us left out of the Grand Narrative told by those who don't know us, and don't care. Who will support those stations who are too controversial for CPB to fund because rather than shrinking from the cacophony of voices, they revel in it?

Where are the Watchdogs?

2009-03-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

One of my professors returned an analysis paper I had written for a reading: Who is watching the watchdogs? a report done by the Center for Public Integrity awhile back about the Federal Communications Commission. This opaque agency through structural regulation (mostly deregulation) is responsible for the media landscape we enjoy (suffer?) today in the United States.

He liked my points but commented that I while I have many insights into the problems of watchdogging the media, I offer few solutions. Fair enough. I did talk to him later and pointed out that I do have some ideas, but a 5 page analysis paper would have morphed into a 12 page start at a thesis.

So here are my ideas on what possible solutions may be:

We (the royal we, like the FCC, Congress, the American people) need to rewrite the framework for communications policymaking. The rest of the world doesn't get our slavish devotion to localism. I don't think it has to be an either/or proposition, localism vs. regionalism vs. internationalism. My dream in setting up tcdailyplanet.net was that users, on one website, could see how they were connected to each other, neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city, country to country. The idea of glocalism is strong on the website, but users can also venture out into international waters. How about a news website that shows users the rest of the world is a click, or two, away? The BBC is already doing this quite effectively, much more so than the NYTimes.

The Internet must be at the center of communications policymaking. I can't take credit for this idea - there's a very smart lady at the University of Michigan Law School who's written quite a bit about this, and I'm persuaded. I heard a classmate last week bring up her concern about audience fragmentation on the web - this is where the FCC, or Congress, could create comprehensive requirements for what must be included on a website. Similar to the rules (which are long since gone) that every radio station had to broadcast five minutes of news at the top of the hour, every Internet provider would have to have prominent news and information links on user's home page. I would even go so far as to require ISP's to pay into a news and information fund to pay for news outlets to generate original content - they do this in Holland with 10% of the revenues for public broadcasting program guides going to newspapers. You could also start by requiring every public library in the United States to have a news site as a front page on their computers. Which leads me to my next solution:

Public Libraries: I'm sure I've written about this before. I don't know why they go overlooked, but it seems obvious to me spending a lot of time in various public libraries that they serve an important social function. I spent a couple hours with reference librarians trying to dig up sources for a paper I'm writing - these folks live to learn, and they live to help other people learn. It's their tradition, and they've changed many a life by doing so, Frank McCourt to name one, and one closer to my heart, my grandfather who happened to have some freak gene in his poor, Irish, fisherpeople DNA that sent him to the New London library to read and dream about something greater than himself.

Public media: this is where the government can play a significant role. We got our 1st Amendment issues about the government getting involved with newspapers. OK. But we already have a public broadcasting system in place with established rituals of funding and firewalls in place to prevent the government from interfering (Congress forward funds public broadcasting by 2 years). A restructuring is in order: regionalizing the existing decentralized system; and expanding licenses for low power FM. Also, a public media trust fund so that member stations can innovate without fear of offending their aging major donors who want things just as they are.

The master plan behind all of this is simple: the more people are involved in the media, the more they'll pay attention to how it affects them. To those folks who say 'I don't want to be involved in the media, I don't have time' - I say fine. That's why we need regulations in place to make sure people are exposed to relevant information as much as possible.

Where are the watchdogs in all this? We are!

Centralizing the Decentralized

2009-03-08T07:52:00.001-07:00

We Americans love our local autonomy. It's everywhere in our society from the power of school boards to include intelligent design in science curriculae to the pro-choice and gun rights groups: movements: protecting the rights of the individual.

Our broadcasting system is much the same. Despite mass media's homogenizing influence, we intuitively believe in the uniqueness of individuality, and that it's important.

That's why localism is such a big deal in broadcasting. Our European brethren and sisters across the pond don't get it. Too much navel gazing, too little international reporting. The good of the group must be weighed with the good of the individual - and the group is probably more important in the end.

So I was intrigued when I read this article in the public broadcasting trade rag Current about the new CEO Vivian Schiller.

"NPR doesn’t want to “control and dominate” the web sphere via NPR.org," Schiller said. “If we are successful, it will morph into this constellation of sites” from local stations, allowing listeners to experience public radio “on whatever platform they prefer.”

Schiller's allegiance to NPR's member stations are understandable: just like every other legacy news distributor in the United States, they are trying to keep their revenue streams flush while trying to figure out new ones.

And who are the cash cows that keep NPR afloat? Member stations. They pay millions to carry All Things Considered and Morning Edition, the flagship news programs. If you've ever volunteered for a pledge drive, you know when you ask why they are pledging, national programming almost 100% of the time is at the top of the list. They like the local stuff too, but it comes later. How do member stations stay relevant when audiences can stream online at NPR.org or get podcasts dumped by subscription on their iPods? Schiller thinks it's by bolstering the local relevance of stations.

She'll have many things to overcome, but the largest is the software most stations use for their websites: Public Interactive. NPR bought it last year from Public Radio International, the good folks in Minneapolis who bring you This American Life and the BBC. PI has the advantage of automatically updating a local station's site with content from NPR...the problem is with their small staffs, and I would also argue to some degree, staff who lack competence in new technology, can't create similar local content. You can do all those things on PI - but imagine you've spent the last 20 years making public radio news, and now they want you to take a picture and shoot some video. Some have embraced it (and take damn good pics!). Many have not.

Schiller and Co. will have to overcome, just like newspapers, a technological generation gap on how to produce information, and understanding how it's received and consumed. She knows this, and I say Godspeed to her as she tries to overcome the inertia of a decentralized public broadcasting system.

Finally!

2009-03-05T08:19:00.000-08:00

I've become increasingly irritated with columns that speak platitudes about why newspapers are important for American democracy. It's not that I even disagree with them - I just think they could come up with better arguments.

David Simon wins the prize: a great article showing what happens when you don't have people (reporters, citizen journalists, whoever) exercising our formidable public information laws. I used to have this experience with international students who would do reporting internships with me when I would send them, as any good intern should have to, to get public records, or attend police precinct meetings, or in one infamous case in my career, have to make a stink because a government funded neighborhood group invited us to cover a candidate forum at a building built by taxpayer dollars, and then said we weren't "allowed" to tape it. Right. (We ended up taping it in the end.)

The students from non western societies I could understand being amazed at the amount of access granted to reporters, but German students thinking they were barred access from a sub committee meeting at city hall? This is America, baby! Seriously, it was good instruction about how little the American press tradition is understood by other nationalities, and the international students, particularly from Africa, really ran with it once they realized what was available.

The point is, as Mr. Simon articulates, we all need to flex a little muscle in access to our government. And we need to find an allies as he did to enforce our great public information and government access laws.

Schiller On the Media and News

2009-03-02T15:56:00.001-08:00

Vivian Schiller started her new job as CEO of NPR last month, and she's hitting the circuit.

Her National Press Club speech today (March 2) emphasized the need to maintain the localism of affiliate websites and acknowledged that the "system" doesn't work well together. So true.

Schiller has an interesting set of challenges as NPR attempts to connect with digital natives, as well as diverse communities. To some degree public broadcasting, while not a slave to advertising, is a slave to listener donors, especially major ones who tend to veer into their last career as retirees. On one hand their sense of ownership of public media programming is charming; but it can also be a choke hold on adapting programming to increase listenership. By that same token, station leadership can also serve as a choke hold on innovation, and this was an issue I think Ms. Schiller addressed in her speech: to create a network, and that means centralization. Not all station managers are equal; some stations are innovating, some are not. That hurts NPR - they're relying on the affiliates to bring in the $$$.

The web oddly should be able to do just that. It can target niche audiences, and go after new ones with programming that can be distributed across mobile platforms. I subscribe to my nerdy public radio shows; there could no doubt be podcast only programs to serve specific audiences. I suppose this is the long tail theory approach to developing programming.

Schiller comes from a commercial media background (CNN, NYTimes). It'll be interesting to see how she brings those experiences into her work in public media.

Whither Goes Television News?

2009-03-01T19:05:00.000-08:00

There must be something in the air, because I've been reading and hearing a lot about the future of television news. First, this article about the We Media conference.

Then, a telelecture (I don't know if that's a word, I just made it up - sounds good, doesn't it?) with Bob Benz, formerly of Scripps Interactive, now off into the world of media consulting. The irony of the timing of his lecture was not lost: a former employee of the Rocky Mountain News, he was speaking to us on the day of its closing. And he also pointed out the three newspapers he worked for in his career have all closed.

NEWSPAPERS ARE DYING, CABLE IS NEXT

According to Benz, some folks in the cable world blamed the newspapers for their own demise: giving away content for free, not coming up with innovative ways to change how advertising reaches readers and thus pay for reporting. To him, newspapers are merely augurs of things to come for cable. The model is based on advertising, just as newspapers. And the technology is available for people to carve out the ads, or watch online, just about any kind of viewing that doesn't involve advertising.

WE MEDIA ON THE FUTURE

He's certainly not alone. The We Media conference last week in Miami had all the big guns out, like CNN, thinking about what's next. The major theme: embrace social media. Embrace "the future". This was Benz's theme as well. I can't remember if he said this, or if someone I was talking to said it, but stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The technology does not fit the financial model of running a business, not just media but in other sectors as well. This is a theme in "The Long Tail", coined by Chris Anderson in an article he wrote, and later developed into a book. Benz talked about it too in his lecture (actually, it's a phrase that gets bandied about quite a bit in the circles I travel in, but it may just be the company I keep.)

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

Lots of great examples going on out there. The Daily Show's website has got to be generating some kind of revenue. Their video ads are short and savvy - I couldn't believe it when I was actually humming the AT&T tune - they got me! I'm sure the revenues still dwarf in comparison to what it earns through the ads, but the crazy thing is, Jon Stewart just might be able to go completely on his own and support the production of the program through targeted ads delivered not only online but across mobile platforms as well. As Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame has demonstrated, wealth is generated by a company's ability to collect information about its users, and the Daily Show has an audience people are trying to reach.

We cling to the advertising model because it's proven to generate the most profit which in turn is used to create content. And as long as we buy stuff (which we will, goddamit we're Americans!) we're going to need to know about it. But how We the Consumer go about it is what the news industry is still struggling to find out.

Rocky Mountain Low

2009-02-27T11:08:00.000-08:00

Everyone's taken aback by the Rocky Mountain News closing today (Friday, February 27th, 2009.)

I'm more taken aback watching CNN right now giving financial advice to the assistant managing editor Luke Clarke. I'm blogging in real time, so I'm going through the motions of horror to being a little creeped out and now I'm at a point where I'm thinking, maybe this is a good idea.

This is the first time I've seen anyone in the mainstream press look at the personal impact of losing a newspaper job. A lot of kids went to college on those salaries, a lot of houses bought, a lot of middle to upper middle class lifestyles supported.

I like the fact CNN went into the financials of this particular individual, but now I'm waiting for the "what about civil society, what about democracy" when a newspaper goes away.

I'd like to see that debate right now. I'm a little tired of reading about "without a newspaper, Watergate would never have been broken as a story." That's kind of the same logic applied when pro-lifers say you could be aborting the next Mozart or doctor who finds the cure for cancer, or AIDS or whatever. I watch/listen/read a lot of alternative press that never reaches a mainstream audience, that you think would cause the mainstream media to forward material...and nothing happens.

I don't know what it all means. I have some ideas, but I'd like to hear more from a diverse group of folks. CNN, the paper has folded...we need you to generate some discussion about where it goes from here!

Some cheesy CNN Hero story has come on...time to channel surf.

To Local or Not

2009-02-26T12:43:00.000-08:00

What with several major dailies filing for bankruptcy, or closing their doors, salvation seems to be found in the local newspapers. Not so true for larger markets, like my adopted hometowns of the Twin Cities, where commercially viable options such as the Southwest Journal are shedding what few jobs they had. With the Star Tribune and Pi Press turning its still vast resources to "hyper" local newsgathering, they just can't compete.

I wonder where community radio will fall in this mix. In terms of audience, it's almost non existent, but it inspires a rabid following of listeners, and donors who want at least a semblance of pluralism on the airwaves. My philosophy as a news director was straightforward: I can't afford to send people to Gaza; send them to Minneapolis City Hall instead. With the growing immigrant and refugee communities in the Twin Cities, issues abroad took on local significance - and while we couldn't go to Mogadishu or Thailand, we could get inside a diaspora and try to explain what impact they were having.

In the global marketplace, of things as much as ideas, we are all connected. When (if?) I ever get back to local newsgathering, I'd like to put more effort into explaining its global influence, or how global influence is reaching into our neighborhoods. That's what's missing from local news.

The Corporations Are Coming! The Corporations Are Coming!

2009-02-11T13:03:00.000-08:00

An interesting blog post caught my eye about Twitter trying to figure out how to monetize their platform.

And in recent days, a chum shared an interesting take on the blogosphere, or rather the future of it, and how, ironically, corporations are coming in to ruin it in order to save it. Because at the end of the day, and this is where I think this guy is right on, the networks are still the big enchiladas with the brand and the capital to get the eyeballs reading the blogs and presumably turn a profit.

Here's the thing: the Internet was supposed to be the great equalizer. But it's turning out that capitalism is still king. Perhaps it was naive of some of us to think that it would turn it out differently, but the web has the potential to deliver great social policies.

Let's Get Intellectual

2009-02-07T06:17:00.000-08:00

My practical, pragmatic side and my philosophical, intellectual side always seem to be wrestling with each other. My intellectual side was losing last night as I watched Bill Moyers interview Jay Rosen and Glenn Greenwald. (Self-disclosure: I watched the program on television! On public television no less! Not on my computer! There is hope!)

I dig Jay Rosen. His NewAssignment.net project is innovative. I think he hero worships John Dewey a bit much, but for the most part I'm glad he's out there, saying his stuff, doing his thang. We need provocative thinkers..and what I like about Rosen as well...DOers. How do we make this media system work for everyone, not just people with education, with money, with good social connections? Drat...I'm beginning to sound like John Dewey!

MEDIA REFORM: HOW, WHY...AND WILL THE PUBLIC INTEREST BE SERVED?

They were talking mostly about the D.C. press last night - Rosen and Greenwald deconstructed the media coverage on Obama, notably the Daschle resignation as health and human services secretary. But then they got into press elitism - Walter Lippmann Syndrome if you will ( my phrasing, not theirs).

HOW THE INTERNET IS KILLING THE NEWSPAPER STAR...BUT NOT THEIR INFLUENCE

This is where I differ with Rosen. I don't think the press has declined that much in influence. There are a few cases where bloggers have set the agenda...but how does it get pushed into the mainstream? The mainstream media. And indeed, he talked about that when Moyers asked him about the exclusion of alternative pressheads, like Amy Goodman from Democracy Now!, from Meet the Press and all the other blah-blahers of the D.C. media corps. Just because "we" the Public, the Masses, are now able via the Internet to set up our own platforms, communicated directly with the powerbrokers, like the press -- does that mean "we" the Public, the Masses have more power? I'm not so sure.

PRAGMATISM v. INTELLECTUALISM

So here I am, my inner sides duking it out. On one hand agreeing with the good guests on Moyers - on the other hand quite skeptical. Because it's one thing to create the tool - it's quite another how, and when, and where you use it. And the conventions about how the press makes decisions on what to distribute, and what not - it's going to take a much larger flood to humble the elites.

A Blog Recommendation: the Newsosaur

2009-02-05T12:49:00.000-08:00

If you think I write long blogs...check out this guy.

Seriously, the Newsosaur provides great food for thought about the future of newspapers and journalism. He brings hard numbers and audience research and online usership to identify trends. And he's got a catchy Blogonym: Newsosaur.

When Pizza Isn't Good Enough

2009-01-31T14:22:00.000-08:00

My eye was caught recently by an article in the campus newspaper about Pizza with the Provost being cancelled indefinitely.

Reason: "Waning interest".

Initially I didn't pay this little tidbit much mind...until I got an email from a chum at Public Radio International, which is based in my adopted hometown of Minneapolis. If you hear the BBC on an American radio station, it's thanks to PRI.

INTERESTING THE MILLENIALS

She is trying to figure out how to get the young folks interested in international news, which is why she turned to me (I guess 30 still counts as young.) She unfortunately does not have pizza at her disposal to lure the youth audience to compelling public broadcasting produced international news. Isn't that an oxymoron anyway?

EATING YOUR VEGETABLES ALONG WITH YOUR PIZZA

I will confess: I've given up on the Lehrer News Hour (sorry, Jim!) But I make sure to check the BBC's website and watch the latest Bill Moyers program (online of course - why should I have to sit on my couch at 9pm on a Friday night? I have a social life!) And occasionally I even do this with a few slices of pizza - I got my junk food, and feeding my mind with the vegetables. Too bad reading and watching quality news doesn't trim down your waistline. What a great invention that would be. Note to self: must develop device that connects consumption of quality news and relevant information to weight loss.

WHY PIZZA DOESN'T WORK

Free food is a great incentive to get people out with the hopes of catching some interest. But ultimately, content (to use the old cliche) is king. And as much as the university here in Athens has talented administrators like the Provost - we don't really care. Well, some of us do, but the flyer beckoning the majority to "eat free pizza with the provost" lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. And let's face it: she's not Barack Obama. This was one of the issues for waning interest: no issues! What point was there in going to hear the provost when there wasn't anything pressing to talk to about? Also, look at the picture in the article in the Post - there is the provost standing at the head of the room, looking to poised to deliver a lecture. Thank you, I'd rather spend the money on an extra large and hang out with my buddies playing Beer Pong and Wii.

I'm not advocating Student Senate start "Beer Pong with the Provost" (though that would be funny if illegal), but why can't we expect our university elders to be, well, human? I've heard plenty of students voice concerns about various issues at coffee shops and parties - those ideas are out there.

BACK TO THE DILEMMA

So here we are back at square one: how do you (or the royal we) get young people interested in the boring tedium that is civic engagement? To that I say to the older generation, don't give up! Email links to articles or videos to your students or young people in your life that you think they might be interested in. Don't use easier words because you think young people won't know what it means. Make references to people or places to expand their knowledge base ( I did this recently referring to a recent film I'd seen as akin to a torture session with Torquemada - hyperlinked here for your convenience or if you know someone from Spain, ask them. He's world famous in Spain.)

MAKE IT PERSONAL, NOT PIZZA

The greatest connections we have are personal - not pizza. Our information is as good as our social network - so take your role in your social network seriously! I go in twice a week to do a radio shift on campus. I'm a lot older than the students, and my attempts to integrate via joking are often met with confused stares - but occasionally, grins and "wow, you're weird". Sometimes I'll throw out a bone - like when I teased one of the TV news anchors about stumbling over the word testes - we had a nice communal giggle. But just by being there, coming from a different lifestyle, a different background, a different perspective, I believe I am contributing to the Great Conversation.

And I do it without any pizza.

Before There Was Obama...

2009-01-07T20:15:00.001-08:00

I was looking through my notes after meeting with senior executives last month in public broadcasting in Washington D.C. What struck me was how almost every single person we met with talked about how public broadcasting could appropiate the Obama campaign's fundraising strategies.

HOLD ON

Lest we forget, and I mentioned this with the good folks at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS, Howard Dean did in fact revolutionize campaign fundraising through the Internet during his nomination bid in 2004. Before there was Obama, there was Dean.

But even before that, lest we forget, there was Richard Viguerie. He didn't run for office, but he is the granddaddy of the conservative fundraising arm, pioneering direct mail to solicit donations for the conservative cause, and ultimately getting Ronald Reagan elected.

My point is this: we get easily swept away with the new technology and how it transforms, for example, elections. But we forget while the technology has changed, the ideas are the same. Whether you use the Internet, or direct mail, you are manipulating the technology to serve a communication end.

It reminds me of an intern who wrote in her script for a radio story "because of globalization" and then led into the story. I asked her what she meant by globalization. How was what she describing in her story different from the global economy forged by the British Navy and the Dutch East India Trading Company? She didn't have an answer, but the lesson for me, at least as a journalist, is to think historically. Journalists can get very caught up in the moment of a story, and forget why it's relevant in the long term.

Twilight Zoning

2009-01-01T08:34:00.000-08:00

On a mission of self-improvement, I decided I need to break up my steady diet of non-fiction (Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, Lukas' recount of forced bussing in Boston, Samantha Powers' biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello) with a novel.

But who needs a novel when you've got the marathon broadcasts of the Twilight Zone on the SciFi Channel?

I haven't seen these since I was a kid, and terrified by most of them, like the grotesque "The Masks" where a dying patriarch twists his greedy family members' faces to suit their disgusting personalities.

Some of the episodes have lost their impact - their whole force was the twist that came at the end, and I remember almost all of them (like when the nurse takes the bandages off in episode "The Eye of the Beholder".)

But some are timeless gems of imagination that rival any great piece of literature.

The one I'm watching now is "Two". No dialogue, a couple speeches by Charles Bronson, and the silent Elizabeth Montgomery, who are the two remaining survivors of a human-made post-war apocalypse from opposing armies ( you can see this by their different uniforms.)

The irony of the situation is not lost on Bronson's character, who is trying to persuade Montgomery's character he won't hurt her: "But I can see the only way of showing you my honorable intentions is by force." He pauses. "And I'm so terribly, terribly sick of fighting."

It reminded me of the news media today, desperately trying to convince people that they need news, that it's relevant, and they keep cramming the same content with the same pundits talking the same lines over and over again. The newspapers, with their honorable intentions, are publishing with their last show of force. And they do seem terribly, terribly sick of fighting.

The news media is going through a form of purgatory, and the phoenix will emerge from the ash. Because we need the media. To create wealth, to further industry and innovation - but we also need it because we're social and we seek out channels to establish new relationships, build on existing ones, and terminate others. We're curious about each other and what's going on in the world and in our own backyards.

I suppose the news industry has entered its form of the Twilight Zone.

This has been a love story about two lonely people.

How the Media Perpetuates Stereotypes

2008-12-25T09:05:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about this recently after reading Maureen Dowd's profile of Tina Fey in Vanity Fair.

Fey was known on Saturday Night Live as "Herman the German" for her ability to make a plan, stick to it, and get the job done. Dowd even threw in a Rommel reference - the Nazi general from World War 2 who was called with admiration the Desert Fox by his competitors in the battlefield. He's also one of the "good Nazis" for his role in the plot to kill Hitler, and he committed suicide in 1944.

It was an interesting stereotype about Germans, one which they love: sort of the hookers with the heart of gold spiel, like Rommel, who ignored orders to kill Jewish civilians.

This stereotype was popular during the 1950's in Germany, thanks to media representations. Des Teufels General, a play about the moral conflict of a Nazi officer; The Enemy Below, which has a very moving speech by the German submarine commander: "it's not a good war". In their context, these were real breakthroughs: Germans not being painted as cruel oppressors, much in the same way blacks emerged in films as more than slaves or stupid house help through more complex roles.

But I wonder what the new stereotype of Germans will be, as the baby boomers get older and die in that country. They were caught in the middle, too young to be personally guilty, but desperately questioning their parents and relatives to understand their role in the national mass hysteria of National Socialism. Americans are easily impressed by Germans who come here to work and study - their Herman the German mentality is efficient and let's face it, they do follow orders very well.

But a few friends of mine who work for German companies in American offices point to lack of creativity, off color remarks about minorities, and a world view that is resistant to change, even in the face of the most compelling evidence otherwise. These are the reasons why German companies in Germany are recruiting international candidates for top positions in German companies - the country is very good at producing worker bees who are easily trained - but not so good at developing leadership. We have the opposite problem in the U.S. - everyone wants to be in charge and thinks they should be!

Because the baby boomer population in Germany is incredibly large, I expect this to dominate for another 20 years. They didn't have a boom in the late 80's and early 90's as we did, so their younger generation's voices get drowned out, and the fall of the Wall means that we will continue to be deluged with stories from the former East German Republic in our media landscape, some grim (The Lives of Others) and some nostalgic (Goodbye, Lenin!)

I suspect we may be forever stuck with the Herman the German stereotype - but in fact Tina Fey is undeniably American. I can't think of her German equivalent - as I can't think of one for Jon Stewart. So that's what I look forward to - the media political cartoon that at once confirms stereotypes while at the same time destroying them.

The Generation Gap of Interactivity

2008-12-21T01:11:00.000-08:00

I attended a live television broadcast the other day - the governor of Ohio came to the southeastern part of the state to hear ideas about how to make the school funding formula more equitable and understandable. A discussion worthy of live television.

Here's the thing though: the host rather half-heartedly asked viewers to email their responses during the broadcast to the governor as part of the broadcast's interactivity. However, none of the emails ever made it to to the governor.

So what makes this interactive? As far as I could tell, it was still uni-directional transmission of information.

The other thing that struck me as I sat in the audience was how carefully orchestrated the event was. Now I know television is rarely done live, off the cuff - this was a major criticism of Barack Obama and his reliance on teleprompters - but he did in the end agree to those town hall meetings.

The entire broadcast wasn't scripted, just the part where the governor explained the current funding formula for Ohio's school districts, and then he listened to responses from the audience. But the average age of people in the audience must have been 50 (and probably would have been higher if it hadn't been for me and the 3 other thirty somethings in the audience.)

I came away with this realization: the technology was not being effectively utilized. The public station, who organized the whole thing, and taped it, didn't engage its viewers through its website. The governor's staff had a website, which they directed people to, but in the interest of a partnership, couldn't the public station, and its website, have been leveraged more? The conversation ended at the moment they hit the stop button on the cameras - and it got me thinking how public broadcasting could be more of a tool of a civic engagement, and revitalize itself, if it could figure out how to connect the audience with its content via the web.

There are stations, and programs, already doing this - but it just hit me as I sat there, watching the traditional model of "interactive" media, that we have a generation gap about what interactive even means. And of course, one could argue that the purpose of the forum wasn't to make it interactive - it was to allow the governor the opportunity to hear from people he doesn't normally hear from (although I really question that - the forum sounded like an education conference with the familiar refrains of calls for all day kindergarden, lengthening the school year, and redistributing taxes more equitably to fund more impoverished areas.)

Clearly, public broadcasting has the ability to pull off what I saw this weekend. But I wonder what it will take for them to take it to the next level of "interactivity".

Do We Need So Many Reporters?

2008-12-18T08:15:00.000-08:00

An article in the NYT caught my eye: fewer reporters covering Washington as papers either cut or entirely close their Washington bureaus.

But one line in particular got my brain pumping: "Those that remain have cut back drastically on Washington coverage, eliminating hundreds of journalists' jobs at a time when the federal government - and journalistic oversight of it - matters more than ever."

This is where I get myself into trouble. This is where I commit heresy, but I'm going to do it anyway.

I have to question the part where the reporter writes "and journalistic oversight of it - matters more than ever". First of all, doesn't it always matter? Didn't it matter more than ever when the Bush administration was making the case to go to war, one of the most significant decisions a president can make? And where was the NYT? They took a pass, nee, they encouraged it with Thomas Friedman and Judy Miller getting suckered like 1st year journalism students who find out later the police chief or the mayor lied to them in an interview. Meanwhile, they ignored the work of Knight-Ridder reporters who didn't buy the weapons of mass destruction line.

Here's my second beef, which is much more academic: when our press has failed us in so many ways, and recently too - I'm not just talking about the failure to report the Great Migration in 20's and 30's or the reticence of American journalists to cover what was going on in concentration camps - isn't that the time to say, we made a mistake and we need to make some changes? How about addressing the lack of trust of the press? How about cultivating a sense of information stewardship on the part of your audience, who probably know things that are important?

Or how about acknowledging that the technology doesn't necessarily mean you need as many reporters? I don't have any hard evidence to support this, but my hypothesis is that one of the reasons we may be seeing a decline in reporting is that the old dogs haven't learned any new tricks, or are struggling to learn them. That's probably the fault of management, who are cutting everything to save a few bucks for their shareholders.

Some news organizations are developing very sophisticated databases to help them sort information better - in the way the microchip revolutionized investigate reporting, so are computer programmers who come up with the code to sift and mine and analyze. True, you still need someone to go out and do the shoe leather work. Or you could post your data graphically on the web and ask your audience to contribute video, pictures, some text - there are alternatives to the traditional reporting of the past thanks to the World Wide Grid.

Here's what a boils down to: journalism has attracted a lot of wanna be writers. Not all, but it's there. But because the medium has shifted, the need for the narrative may be less relevant. I'm not saying it will go away - if anything, I love it when the NYT posts audio slideshows of photojournalism. That's a narrative. And the traditional tools to create it - pen, paper, typewriter- have now now expanded to Flash, ProTools, Final Cut.

So we have a crisis going on in the U.S. Several even. 2 wars, a financial meltdown, corporate corruption. But I would ask, is the problem that we don't have enough information, or is the problem that we, the people, have stopped trusting the entities who deliver it?

When Social Networking Sites Merge with News

2008-12-17T15:18:00.000-08:00

I was checking my nytimes.com as usual and something caught my eye. LinkedIn, the professional networking site, is teaming up with the New York Times to create customized news pages for LinkedIn users. So lets say I, who work in public broadcasting, sign up. I would get articles related to that industry. Or maybe you're a school teacher, or an engineer. You would get info customized to your area of expertise.

Whoa. It's so simple it's brilliant. And possibly bring in additional revenue? Too soon to tell, although this article was interesting.

Cuts, Layoffs, Oh My

2008-12-14T05:10:00.000-08:00

I recently went on a fact finding mission to Washington D.C. with my cohort in the public broadcasting program at Ohio University. As luck would have it, the day we left was the day NPR announced their cuts...including my mentor and friend, Doug Mitchell. Jeffrey Dvorkin, the former ombudsman at NPR, wrote a glowing tribute much more eloquent than I ever could. (Jeffrey's a great guy as well - I talked to him for maybe all of 10 minutes about reporter training, and the following week I found a package in my mailbox on NPR's reporter ethics guide with a personal note from Jeffrey. That's what we call classy. The man is after all Canadian.)

Chicago Public Radio also laid off 9% of its staff, including a few from its new venture, vocalo.org. The CEO's previous decisions to cut music, especially jazz, on WBEZ has now bubbled to the surface as angry listeners question his leadership.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Pubcasters around the country are hurting - even powerhouse Minnesota Public Radio had a recent sobering meeting about their budget, and shortfalls in fundraising.

In my previous post, I wrote about the dangers of nostalgia clouding strategic judgement of public broadcasting. But I think one thing the emotion aroused by these cuts show is that public broadcasting hasn't done a very good job about being transparent. I'm not talking about pleasing everybody. I'm talking about public relations and making the case to listeners, who for the most part, are pretty reasonable, especially when presented with options.

Public broadcasting isn't a direct democracy, nor would I advocate that it turn into one. But the folks who run the stations are accountable to their stakeholders, some who give money, most who just watch or listen, and now is the time to rally them. Maine Public Broadcasting held a town meeting before making any decisions about layoffs or cuts - what a novel idea. How great would it be if Talk of the Nation did a national call in show with with a group of public radio CEO's and took questions and recommendations. Air it out. Let the sunshine disinfect.

Let's bring the public into public broadcasting.

When It's Time to Let Go: the Danger of Nostalgia

2008-11-30T21:13:00.000-08:00

An NY Times article caught my eye: the trend of departing long time local television anchors.

I'm pretty open about my distaste for local television, even though I have been spoiled by a decent glut in the Twin Cities. KSTP, FOX 9, WCCO have all had their moments (but not KARE 11, someone please make the Kare Bears go away).

I think the nostalgia for local television news is similar to the same nostalgia for what my former professor Stephanie Coontz referred to as 'The Way We Never Were'. Her book explained how the 1950's ideal of the nuclear family came into existence - and how it shaped sexist, and harmful social policies.

This article reminded me of the danger of getting too nostalgic. When we lose a news personality, we feel it personally. We get angry. We saw this in public broadcasting when the long time Morning Edition host Bob Edwards left NPR. I have been in so many situations where people have decried his departure and looked to me to back them up. I can't - I do think he had to go. I do think Morning Edition needed new energy. I do think he'd been there too long. And I like Bob Edwards - but my inner news manager recognizes that the industry is changing, and if you're people aren't, you have to find new people.

And this is where the nostalgia can get dangerous. We start talking about "the good old days". When journalists were real journalists, when newspapers were real watchdogs, conveniently forgetting massive failures of our press, and recent ones too.

Is this a reason to dismiss the independence of our press as a failure? Of course not. But we can talk about how to make it better. And it starts with acknowledging, in the words of Billy Joel, that the good, old days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.

Killing Newspapers Softly

2008-11-28T07:52:00.000-08:00

Sitting at a coffee shop in Minneapolis, I glance at the newspaper stand stacked with USA Today and my adopted hometown's daily newspaper, the Star Tribune. I almost pull out my wallet to buy one, and then...

FREE WIFI!!!!!

Who needs a paper when I can log on with my handy laptop? Which is exactly what I'm doing. I want more information about the violence in Mumbai, I surf around to a few online staples: the NYT, Wash Post, and blogs I check out. And the Star Tribune has a website too.

HOW WIFI IS KILLING THE NEWSPAPER STAR

Coffee shops have always been the enclave of the reader. Parked in the corner with his or her espresso or tea (or in my case hot chocolate), they provide at once privacy and a social scene. Where we come together to be alone. Except now with wifi we're not alone anymore. We're emailing, posting comments, blogging in my case, posting pics, maybe even a few adventuresome folks are cutting up some audio or video for their own purposes. As the violence in Mumbai, India, however, drags on into day 3, I was struck by how meaningless the local daily paper is when international crises occur. The headline above the fold is "Mumbai hunts for survivors".

But I go to the New York Times online, and there's an interactive map, a photo gallery, analysis from reporters who've covered the region in depth. Before the world wide grid, the Star Tribune had a captive audience. People needed them to bring international and national news to their backyards. No more. I can now surf the world.

KUDOS IN ORDER

I have to give the Strib credit: they are still putting up a good face, doing what they've traditionally done. And by the way, the Strib has done some phenomenal work with their website on Minnesota issues. But it does beg the question for these legacy media outlets: how do they respond to these international crises? It's one thing when the bridge falls down in your background as it did in 2007, or when the Republicans come to town to nominate their presidential candidate, but what's your role as a statewide paper when the proverbial international shit hits the fan?

NEWS CHOICES

I'm not saying the Strib shouldn't have put the Mumbai headline on the paper. Its magnitude is too large to ignore. But what I would love to see is a sort of Miracle on 34th Street moment. Santa Claus, who is hired by Macy's to play Santa Claus, tells parents where they can get better deals at a competing department store, Gimball's (sp?).

Why Media Access Matters

2008-11-26T09:20:00.001-08:00

I'm back in my adopted hometown Minneapolis for a holiday visit and have been listening to my former employer, KFAI. KFAI's model is volunteer-based and they've made it work. A lot of my German colleagues scoff at this - they have something called "open channels" in Germany that in my opinion is a system set up to fail - but I'm listening to Truth to Tell as I write, and the host and executive producer, Andy Driscoll, has marshalled his granddaughter, and her classmates to talk about racial integration in school.

The show is terrific. The young women, who are 7th graders, are talking to a teacher, a policymaker, and a student who interned for KFAI's Youth News Initiative. Nissan produced a very personal radio story about her experiences as the lone black student in a wealthy, white, suburban public high school. Out of all of the students I worked with during the program, Nissan's was my favorite.

What I find most moving about this program though is when the 7th graders ask the adults "what do we do about racism in the schools" or "how do we address this". And the adults, who are accomplished and educated, respond in Adult Speak. "This is a complex issue" and "That's a big question". For at least this hour on the airwaves, I as a listener got to see the world through the eyes of a 12 year old, and to hear them talk about these issues re-energized me. It also struck a chord because for some reason I decided to revisit J. Anthony Lukas' classic Common Ground, his detailed reportage of the forced busing to achieve "racial balance" in the Boston school district. The recent presidential election has created a period of hope for the moment, but let us not forget our previous policy blunders.

Without media access, we wouldn't hear from these young women. The way most broadcasters are set up, there would be no forum to look at the world through their eyes for awhile. But KFAI does. It's a small, clear bell in the cacophony of the media landscape.

A Hero of Media Reform

2008-11-24T12:20:00.000-08:00

I caught Lawrence Lessig on Charlie Rose before heading out for the Thanksgiving holiday, and was reminded of a great speech he gave in Minneapolis at the media reform conference this year. It's worth revisiting.

Online Incursions

2008-11-21T10:01:00.000-08:00

I was sad to see KPBS bid farewell to its Citizen Voices project, but excited about what kind of results they'll find. I took the survey - and perhaps because I've just spent a quarter studying research methods in mass communication - was a bit disappointed at how they seemed to be measuring success. One of the questions on the survey was if you had changed your mind about who to vote for in the presidential election.

The implication is that the people who read the citizen blogs are seeking another portal with which to inform themselves to make decisions as members of a democratic society. And that's a fine thing to want to know - are the blogs useful to that end?

But there's another question that could be pursued: did the blogs stimulate discussion amongst you and your social network? I think this is one of the issues that public broadcasting is finding tough to measure: to what degree do people refer back to the content they hear/watch/read? And does public broadcasting play a role in stimulating civic engagement?

I hope more funding will become available for projects like this one at KPBS - and also that public stations will think about carving out some dollars to make space on their websites for participation.

Big Media Covers New Media

2008-11-17T21:19:00.001-08:00

Interesting tidbit from the New York Times: how citizen journalism projects are uncovering stories in different parts of the country.

I'm a bit disappointed though - they tend to focus on the big venture capital invested projects like Voices of San Diego and MinnPost. (Minnpost by the way approached the Twin Cities Media Alliance, which I helped found in 2005, about a content sharing agreement before they rolled out. I left the board of directors shortly after the presentation, so I don't know what happened with the relationship.)

I wonder if these citizen journalism projects like what we started in the Twin Cities with a start up grant from the J-Lab Institute will go the way of neighborhood newsletters started by unions and immigrants in the United States. Forgotten except by a few academics are dig into their meaning. Maybe that's the nature of news media - the big ultimately subsume the small. The big wait for the small to experiment with ideas and then incorporate them.

There's something a bit sad about it. Maybe it's because I'm rooting for the little guy. Because I like to see media from the bottom up. Not from former editors and publishers and reporters of the era of newspaper hegemony. Not from venture capitalists.

But on the other hand, it is gratifying to see people willing to spend the dough on an unsure model. Because we don't know what the model of news production looks like - we just know that we need news and information.

Why I Love Free Speech

2008-11-17T16:14:00.000-08:00

I was reminded recently why I love free speech. Frequently, it's uncomfortable. I always seem to be in a state of agitation, yelling at the television set at some pundit, or deeply moved by a comment I hear on a radio program. My relationship with media is an emotional roller coaster.

I was moved yet again when I got a strange note in my email inbox about a New York Times Special Edition. Imagine my surprise when I read the headline that the Iraq War was over. Huh?

And then I looked a little more closely at who sent the email: it was from the Yes Men. (To truly experience their satirical gloriousness, I highly recommend the interview my hero Bill Moyers did with them last year, hyperlinked for your convenience.)

The New York Times spoof wasn't just done by the Yes Men. In fact, there's a degree of mystery about who all was involved, because, dang! Doesn't it really look like the New York Times?

We all flex our free speech muscles in some ways, mostly small ways. I recently attended a protest. And we all take for granted that we can say in public how much we hate this politician or that law and not get arrested. It's so every day that we don't even notice it!

But these guys are heavyweight lifter, pushing the limits of our great 1st Amendment. I'd like to see a Constitution with a six pack.

Public Radio is on a roll!

2008-11-12T12:39:00.000-08:00

Just when I thought I couldn't be more impressed with public radio with the announcement of hiring a former online operations guru from the New York Times to the Big Public Radio Sandbox in D.C., I get a note from one of the many list servs I am on.

The Public Radio News Directors Guide is born.

I remember when PRNDI first started working on this, and the Local News Initiative. This is the first tangible fruit of the labor.

One thing I like about it is the acknowledgement that public radio is poorly equipped to produce for the web. We don't have pictures! Or video. We're sound artists, and we have to be brought kicking and screaming into the brave new world. Well, some of us.

The public media landscape ranges from stations doing a lot of experimentation (they tend to be stations with a lot of dough, though not always) and stations uncertain about making steps towards developing a digital roadmap that will generate revenue, bring in new listeners, and perhaps attract foundation funding.

The other notorious aspect of public radio is the decentralization. On one hand, this is great. Localism is at the heart of radio. But it makes change across the public broadcasting system incredibly inefficient, and uneven. Some stations have very savvy fundraising and diverse revenue streams, like Minnesota Public Radio, in a large market. They can afford change. But other stations, perhaps in more rural areas, and where there is more need for innovation and change, can't. So that's why I'm glad to see a place online where we can be inspired by each other.

It's nice to see a group of public radio heads come together to share best practices. All of us is stronger than one of us.

Stop the Presses! Oh wait, this posting is about public radio

2008-11-11T14:45:00.000-08:00

Vivian Schiller is moving from the New York Times to NPR. Holy cow. Talk about a sign of the times.

Schiller ran online operations for the good ol' NYT - NPR announced her as the new CEO.

If this seems inconsequential, consider the recent hire of Kinsey Wilson, former executive editor of USA Today, by NPR. Check out the interview with Forbes about upcoming changes to NPR and its relationship with affiliates when it comes to digital distribution.

These hires are interesting on a couple different levels. One is the ability of NPR to attract big guns from commercial media. Rats fleeing the sinking ships of newspapers? I don't really think so, but I've said for a long time that public broadcasting represents a potential model of what might work in the digital age of news. It wouldn't be unheard of for digital media people to want to move to public broadcasting, which is still just testing its toes in the waters of digital media. NPR may also be in a position to offer more financially as well as a result of the Kroc Pot of Gold, but I don't know that for sure.

The other level is the tone these two will set for the organization. NPR is not unlike other news organizations where veterans have balked at executive decisions to push eyeballs to the web, rather than ears to the radio. I've heard stories at newspapers where reporters refuse to file a piece when it's done, because they want it to come out in the paper first, then posted on the web.

According to the Forbes interview with Wilson, those days are over. NPR is pushing digital distribution of their content.

Well, I'm excited. Never a dull moment. Back to analyzing focus groups as a methodology.

Europe is Color Blind, right? Riiiiiiiight.

2008-11-11T09:22:00.000-08:00

I can't tell you how many times I've had arguments with Europeans about racism in America. As my ex-French boyfriend would point out, "We have laws against hate speech. You don't."

Poor example on his part. And let it be on the record I am a rabid 1st Amendment supporter, and that includes protecting the right to make bigoted comments. This makes me unpopular even in my own country. But I don't see the correlation between curbing speech and protecting the rights of minorities. I would point out that we have much stronger administrative laws in the U.S. about discriminating against people applying to rent an apartment, or buy a mortgage. Does racism still occur? Of course. But we have the rule of law to bend the arc a little closer to justice.

RACE RELATION GROWING PAINS IN EUROPE

I wrote earlier about why I thought Obama would face more difficulty getting elected in Germany. I'm not alone in this view. I saw Chris Wallace from Fox News Sunday on the Daily Show, and he compared it to an Algerian getting elected as president of France. I agree with him. When a German party appoints a Muslim, or a German with Turkish roots, or a Jewish-German (yes, there are Jews living in Germany, quite a lot actually, and politically active) as chancellor, I don't think the American press would make the comments prominent European journalists and papers have made, even before Barack Obama got elected. In fact, I think the American press provided a measure of meritocracy when Angela Merkel became #1 of the Christian Democrats in 2005. It saddened me greatly to hear young German women talk both sides of the sexist coin: Frau Merkel either rose to the top because she "acted, or looked like a man" or because she submissively manipulated the mostly male party. Cheap shots at a clever politician.

But now, Europe, is revealing the racism they are so good at concealing in a recent Washington Post article.

INTEGRATION OR ASSIMILATION?

"Integration" as its known in Europe is an increasingly sticky problem. The problem is this: most of the immigrants who come to western Europe are pretty socially conservative. The countries they emigrate to are socially liberal. So when conservative Muslims want to arrange marriages for their 14 year old daughters, there's a clash. And because they are nice, social welfare states, countries, such as Germany and Holland notably, have adopted a "transfer-heavy, service-light" model. That means the state puts money on a regular basis into bank accounts...but offers very few services to integrate immigrants into mainstream society. (Transfer-heavy, service-light is a political science term. I'm not smart enough to come up with this stuff.) While this means no one goes to bed hungry, it also means they haven't quite figured out a roadmap for immigrants to be economically productive, as well as socially secure straddling mostly white, Christian Europe and their own identities.

FEAR OF CONSERVATISM

So they're afraid. Do we want to live in a society where we ignore the rights of 14 year old girls not to get married because we embrace "multiculturalism"? To what point do we respect the right of communities to live by their own cultural rules? This is what western Europe is grappling with at the moment, and is perhaps at the root of the comments made by prominent European journalists and policymakers.

NOT CONDEMNING EUROPE

Here's a taste of one of comments from the Washington Post article defending Europe:

"One cannot take reference in the least democratic politicians remarks which represent 1% of the european politicians. Stop taking sensational news at first level, look deeper and read more international news... the majority of European were looking forward to this election and celebrated with CHAMPAIGN even though this election was not theirs... but this may have been ommitted in the news... read deeper then condemn Europe."

The reader is right...but I think misses the point about the influence of the press and the leaders. The reason these remarks are disturbing is because they're being made by people who set the agenda, who hold prominence. The politicians may feel political repercussions...but who holds the press accountable?

ON THE PLAYING FIELD

I watched the European Cup at a former high school classmate's house in Germany this summer. As he watched the German National Team, he shook his head, and said, "This is probably the last time we'll see German names on the national team." (He's German by the way.)

I didn't press him - I was a guest in his home, and I didn't want to get into something that could erupt into unpleasantness.

But maybe I should have. Maybe that's what needs to happen in Europe: people who stand up and say, what the hell is a "German" name anyway. These conversations are probably happening already. And they're going to occur more frequently. Because like it or not, Europe is becoming more diverse. History will judge how well they handle the issues that arise, as it has judged the United States in the last 200 years. Let's just hope we learn from it.

The Digital Media Economy

2008-11-10T12:16:00.000-08:00

I hear a lot of talk about the green collar economy. Training people as technicians to fix solar panels, wind turbines, other renewable energy sources. The government hiring researchers a la the Manhattan Project to think our way out of our dependence on oil and curb emissions.

But who's thinking our way out of the collapse of the media industry, which seems to hemorrage more jobs every month?

Conde Nast Publications announced a deal with Brightcove to start producing advertising-supported videos for the company's website. You've seen these already: the 15 second ads that play before a New York Times video starts, or my personal favorite: the Daily Show's website, which allows you to pick different segments of the show, but...you gotta wait for the video ad first!

THE FUTURE IS NOW!

It's not suprising Conde Nast has waited this long. Its boutique publications (The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and so many others) caters to a hard copy audience. They have an older, higher income niche market, and dammit, they want their print!

But Conde Nast also got into reporting on the digital media business, publishing Wired. A new market for them. Still rich, but younger. In the Brightcove deal , Conde Nast is also expanding video options for Parade.com, direct competition for People magazine. And don't forget Portfolio.com, which rolled out in print in 2007. They are gunning after the already saturated business news market, competing with Bloomberg News, and of course, the Wall Street Journal.

WILL VIDEO ADS TURN INTO PROFIT?

The verdict is still out. Print ads still dominate the revenue for newspapers and magazines. And Conde Nast recently shed 5% of its workforce. But the fact that Conde Nast is teaming up with a video production group (who also by the way manage the New York Times video submissions from the public), indicates that the jobs are most certainly in production. And not only that, but it's a helluva lot easier for a print organization to hire out the production, than manage their own production crew on top of managing their writers and graphics folks.

WHAT ABOUT LOCAL SHOPS?

The crossover between broadcast and print has been interesting to watch in my adopted hometown of Minneapolis. A multimedia producer for my adopted hometown's paper even wrote about it. I've never heard of a business like Brightcove at the local market level providing the multimedia services - dailies seem to be investing in hiring their own talent. They seem to think, unlike Conde Nast, that they can provide the content as well as the packaging just as well.

Proud Progressives...and Americans Too!

2008-11-08T11:15:00.000-08:00

Very sad to lose Studs Terkel and John Leonard. It got me thinking about how the world perceives the United States.

THE LENS OF THE MEDIA

I spent all of last year in Germany, mostly in Berlin. I was saddened to see the limited vein with which Germans view the United States. Some German papers, like the Suedeutsche Zeitung, have relationships with the New York Times to reprint excerpts from the Sunday Times. On one hand this is great...but the New York Times does not reflect all of America.

CONFRONTING ANTI-AMERICANISM

It's hard out there in the world to be an ambassador to the United States. But Studs Terkel and John Leonard made it easier for me. I would remind my German friends, as I am reminding the international students I meet here at Ohio University, that the United States has a great progressive tradition. In fact, it was born out of the failed revolutions of Europe! Russian Jews starting unions in sweatshops of New York City; Scandinavian farmers running as Socialist candidates in Minnesota and winning (until the labor unions and the Democrats sold them down the river)!; Mexican activists demanding public school access for children of migrant workers.

STUDS TERKEL AND JOHN LEONARD

These two grew out of that tradition. Studs Terkel listened to the diversity of Americans and transcribed their experiences. History is not written by kings and prime ministers - Studs Terkel made sure of that.

And John Leonard holds a special place in my heart. I knew him best as a film critic for CBS Sunday Morning when Charles Kuralt was still the host. He firmly believed directors had a social obligation to the audience, and his prose cut like a scalpel. I later read him in the Nation magazine when my grandfather bought me a subscription (he called it protecting his investment.)

YOU WOULDN'T KNOW IT, BUT...

Progressivism still lives vibrantly in the United States, even before this presidential election. Look at how American cities are defying federal immigration law, telling their police officers to not inquire about immigration status. Look at how mayors are signing off on green zoning policies (and in Portland, Oregon, have for a very long time.) And my personal favorite is when Somali mothers in my adopted hometown Minneapolis started their own parent advocacy group because they felt like their issues weren't being addressed by the school board. These stories aren't getting to the world audience about the United States.

Studs Terkel and John Leonard wrote about these things, in different forms. Eloquently, powerfully. If you have room on your book list, check these two out. And if you're a young European who's worried about leftist values in the United States, let these two put your mind at rest.

Show me the money!

2008-11-05T08:56:00.001-08:00

I was in WOUB's election HQ last night updating the results from Athens county. An exchange student from Germany, a young woman, made a remark about how the German election system is better.

"We have 5 parties," she said, referring to the most addition of the Linke, or Left party. This populist group was catapulted onto the national German stage by winning over 5 percent of the vote in several state elections this year.

Beside the fact the young woman has a simplistic understanding of western political science (ummm, are we really going to hold Italy's bajillion multi-party system as a model of democracy? They've had 50 different governments since 1945 and umm, Berlusconi....well, need I say more?), it was also clear to me she hasn't taken a very close view of how this particular American presidential election was won.

SHOW ME THE MONEY!

Barack Obama outspent John McCain by opting out of the public financing system, a significant departure for a major party candidate. McCain, champion of campaign finance reform, stuck with the public money route. You could say Barack Obama beat the Republicans at their own game: the GOP is well known for their flush coffers from major donors and PACS. George W. Bush well outspent John Kerry in 2000, and even Al Gore too in 2000. Money talks, and money wins, as Barack Obama has proved yet again in this presidential election.

THERE IS A DIFFERENCE....

Barack Obama's money came from a mix of lots of small donors and big ones. I think this is what non-Americans, especially our horrified democratic brothers and sisters across the pond, find so shocking: no limits. Let's take our German friend mentioned above. Her experience of political campaigns is that they are short, they are heavily regulated in their funding, and let's face it, German politics are pretty boring. No Barack Obama equivalent running for office in Germany. Not even a George W. Bush for that matter, although the CSU, the ultra conservative party, provides no end of amusement for Germany's liberal media - but they're not a major party in Germany either.

There's no doubt in my mind that this election was not won on a level playing field when one candidate chose public financing and the other didn't. History shows us that every single president outspent his opponent. But we believe campaign donations are also a form of democracy - free speech if you will. Obama not only proved his merit as a candidate on the issues: he also persuaded lots of people from diverse groups to give him money. That says more to the Democratic Party than anyone else, but it also shows a degree of civic engagement that does not exist in Germany. In fact, they are punished for it.

PUNISHING SUCCESS

One of the arguments I made against Germany's election system (where the party decides by a list who runs things, instead of directly electing a candidate) is that it limits minorities from participation. She of course adamantly denied this - Germans are sensitive about these things. But it could be worse for immigrants and minorities in Germany: they could be living in France!

There's a great little book by Mely Kiyak, a Kurdish-Turkish-German, called 10 for Germany. Fuer die Deutschsprachigen das Buch heisst 10 fuer Deutschland: Gespraeche mit tuerkeistaemmigen Abgeordneten. It's a collection of interviews with politicians with Turkish roots in Germany. It's next to near impossible for minorities to get elected off the list within the parties in Germany - they have to be elected by mandate. Like how we elect politicians in the U.S. - your name appears on the ballot.

Kiyak provides one interview that I think is a classic example of what new Germans face when they choose to engage in the political process if they have a little initiative. One young gentleman ran with the Green Party for a local seat, he knocked door to door, and get this: he spent a few thousand euros of his own money to buy lawns signs and campaign literature. Sounds like a typical American campaign.

He got into trouble. The Green Party slapped him on the wrist for violating campaign finance laws, which are quite strict in Germany. He won the election by quite a bit - surprise! Connecting with voters actually works. When he decided to run again, he fled the Greens and went to the FDP, the free market, libertarian party. What I love about this story is that the Greens hold themselves up as the party that defends the rights of immigrants and minorities (and I'll give them some credit - they thankfully changed Germany's racist citizenship laws in 2002 during the coalition government with the Social Democrats.)

If this guy ran in a local election in the U.S., at least where I'm from in Minnesota, he'd be courted to serve on boards of directors, courted by policymakers to work for them, or parties to run a race for office. But in Germany, this type of thing is frowned upon, nee, illegal! Barack Obama could not win in Germany, at least not at the speed which Obama has ascended to the presidency.

BUT THEY LOVE OBAMA!

It's true: Europeans love him. The world loves him. They are enchanted with the cult of his personality, as some were by Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy. But I would argue that Obama benefits from a political system like the U.S. So this young German exchange student, who loves Obama, but hates our election system, is in a bit of quandary. Her European contemporaries think he's got it right on the issues - but what about how he got elected to office? If you're a true western European, you believe in public financing - and Obama doesn't. (Actually, I think he would argue that he used true public financing - by getting lots of small donations for his campaign.

But it's easy to love America, just as it's easy to hate America. It's a frustratingly complicated country. It's even hard for me as an American to understand the idiocy of policymaking, and yes, my fellow Americans.

And yet I still believe the United States is the place for those who want a second chance. Or a third. Or a fourth. A place where the rule of law can devastate human rights, and then reinvent itself to create one of the freest societies on the planet. I suppose that's the great story of the presidential election: our ability as Americans to reinvent ourselves...and indeed, redeem ourselves. A lesson for the world to learn from, and a responsiblity we should not take lightly.

KFAI Podcasts!

2008-10-31T08:37:00.001-07:00

KFAI, my former employer in Minneapolis, will be podcasting its locally produced news program. Full disclosure: I was the News Director at KFAI (2001-2006).

The local news program (6pm-6:30, Mon-Thurs) was always considered the natural laboratory for podcasting at KFAI. The journey of podcasting at a community station I think provides important lessons for anyone working in independent public radio.

Lesson 1: Starting with news avoids -for the moment- the murky copyright laws governing streaming and archiving music online. KFAI archives its locally produced shows for up to 2 weeks. The local programming is mostly music, but there are locally produced public affairs programs like Catalyst and Northern Sun News that could be podcasted. And that's exactly what KFAI is doing.

Lesson 2: The move to podcasting developed over a long period of time. The station, which is a non profit, conducted a strategic plan in 2005, which I was a part of. At that point, podcasting was identified in a democratic process as a necessary move for the station. This was key for KFAI, which has community contributors since the station went on the air in 1978. There was an information gap, and strategic planning provided a venue to inform stakeholders about new technology and distribution platforms.

Lesson 3: Creating success to make the case for more podcasting! The idea is to show stakeholders that KFAI can increase its listenership through podcasting - and the all around consensus is that it will. And with that comes the potential for generating more revenue for the station. NPR has been working on the idea for the last few years.

WILL PODCASTING SAVE PUBLIC BROADCASTING?

Public broadcasting is somewhat insulated (though not by much) from the pressures of the market. The United States has a tradition of philanthropy, and luckily, we've got some rich folks out there who appear to love public broadcasting (like Joan Kroc of McDonald's money fame.) But there's no doubt that public broadcasters will have to look at moving more resources to distributing across mobile platforms (like iPods, like cell phones) rather than completely investing in their websites. And I will write more about how one ginormous station is banking on that later.

Benton.org, or Crack to Feed My Addiction to Media Related Info

2008-10-29T16:51:00.000-07:00

I just got turned on to benton.org's site. I think I died and went to heaven. You can see for yourself, but it aggregates articles about what's going on at newspapers (job cuts), upcoming votes at the FCC (November 4 for anyone who's interested) and general info on the topsy-turvy world that is media.

I knew about the Benton Foundation, but I didn't really know what it was for. It says they are about providing a public interest perspective in the digital media landscape or something like that. Fantabulous! I can't believe it took a funder of public broadcasting efforts to say what public broadcasters should have been saying for awhile. Let's take the mission to the web! Let's create access to information to people who have limited access! Let's give people the digital tools and media literacy they need to make successful choices as citizens!

I must be channeling John Dewey tonight.

Millennials Go A-Voting

2008-10-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

Warning. This is not a posting about the media. But I can't seem to find a venue to post this hypothesis.

I've been hunting around the web (because everything must be on the web!) about the impact of the millennial generation on this year's presidential election. The boomlet peaked in 1990 - and I believe the arithmetic means over 4 million 18 year olds could potentially head to the polls this year? And that's not counting the millennials who were born before 1990, the 19, 20, and 21 year olds who are also first time voters.

WHO CARES?

I would suppose Barack Obama's campaign does. Doesn't he have super smart people working for him who think about this stuff? When the kids do elect to exercise the franchise, they tend to vote Democratic. A couple political scientists have written a book about it - check it out. And some brains at USA Today broke down the demographics in a recent article that has nothing to do with the coming of age of the current boomlet and their impact on this election.

It seems this is like a perfect storm for Barack Obama's campaign: the convergence of not only an unpopular president, but of the GOP; bad economy, scratch that, make it depressingly grim economy; and a swell of first time voters who can't remember a life without Internet access, a computer, and the dull memory of a Facebook-less existence. Combine that with the Internet-savvy Obama campaign, and all Barack needs to do is get a good interior designer for his new digs.

The iReport Factor

2008-10-22T18:19:00.001-07:00

I've been giving some more thought to the iReport - you know, unfiltered, unfettered postings on CNN's website (or some kind of affiliate site - it doesn't really look like CNN's site.)

This changes the name of the game. If CNN pulls this off, they will have altered the labor formula for producing content. But is it news?

There is probably some form of news lurking in there. But I'm wondering if iReport is now getting in the business of just producing CONTENT as opposed to NEWS CONTENT. Is that the new world of information? We don't distinguish between news and other forms of content?

For some reason, this is twisting my brain around. I have figured out the significance of it though. By creating a space for unedited content production, CNN has attached its brand to citizen journalism. That means it can use its primary platform - television - to push people to this website, contribute more content, and generate more revenue potentially.

Must think about this some more. I feel like my sense of the universe has fundamentally altered.

iReport: i can't believe it!

2008-10-21T19:05:00.000-07:00

Fade up the theme music to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

CNN is posting unfettered, unedited, unfiltered user-generated content on its iReport site. This is the first time I've seen a major news organization reach this far into the scary underbelly of participatory journalism. Sure, news sites solicit video and pics from cell phones, but they get edited and vetted. This is the unadulterated stuff.

What can I say: this is bold. And what does it mean for the broadcast journalism profession when people are doing this stuff for free? This raises a lot of questions, opens the door into the Great Terrifying Unknown. Either this project will die a miserable death - or will it transform journalism. It will reveal our incredible potential as humans to connect with one another in a meaningful way - or it will expose our inability to show individual responsibility for information production.

It is a new world. I hope we'll be brave about how we exercise our power within it.

The Bottleneck: Curse of Public Broadcasting

2008-10-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

Someday I'm going to make a movie riffing Pirates of the Caribbean, only it will feature Radical Public Broadcasting News Managers terrorizing the Tired Befuddled Ancients to get them to put more content on their website.

I've figured out the problem: it's the bottleneck. WOUB has tons of content being produced by students - they're just not being posted to the website. Instead, the Athens Midday instructor, Mary Rogus, has them posting to a blogger account. Go to athensmidday.blogspot.com to check it out.

Google has figured out what public broadcasters haven't, or at least WOUB: using web-based platforms like Blogger to support content. Now, Athens Midday is somewhat restricted in that the links to the videos are supported by WOUB's server, BUT it's still a huge advantage over having students tied to the old newsroom model and waiting for the editor to post material. Here they can post it, Mary edits it, and then gives it the green light, and voila! It's up!

When I talked to Mary recently, she was a bit perplexed about why I would want my material on WOUB's site. She said something about overcoming barriers, and she's right. And she's found a way to bypass the bottleneck by just getting a new bottle.

News Blues

2008-10-15T09:35:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's the changing weather maybe it's post traumatic stress disorder after the week of financial havoc around the world, but I've been feeling a bit blue about my profession.

I know, nothing new. Major job losses at newspapers. Shrinking revenue streams for traditional news outlets, print and broadcast, and no clear answer as to the future. Actually, Bill Kling, mastermind of how to make a lot of money from a non profit, and public broadcasting empire, articulated it quite well in his keynote to this year's batch of grant winners for innovations in journalism.

No, I think my blueness is more about the disappointment of the once bright promise of the web. I suppose this happens with new technologies. You see the enormous potential, the possibility of a new society! Call me naive, but the possibility of a fairer world. I think of Francis Ford Coppola, who's great wish for the future of filmmaking was that some fat, 1o year old girl would be able to take a portable camera and make a beautiful movie without huge Hollywood budgets, without crews, without the crushing EGOS that goes along with making a movie. (If you I think I'm inferring that there are crushing egos in news...you're right! Gold star.)

That was my great wish for the web, and to some extent it's happening. But I see large companies appropiating ideas, using citizen journalists as excuses to cut staff, and continuing their same business practices. And you know what? They can. There's no law requiring thoughtful, responsible stewardship of information. (I find it amusing how reporters are decrying the loss of information and complain about the lack of restraint of citizen journalists and bloggers, but cry foul when they get criticized.)

I had hoped for a Copernican style revolution. One where our fundamental assumptions about our place in the media landscape changed irrevocably. Down was up, up was left, right was wherever. A revolution that opened the gateway to another Enlightenment period, perhaps.

But the Enlightenment also went hand in hand with mercantilism and the foundation of economic practices that gave birth to capitalism. And that freaked out the princes and the Church that you had a more mobile, and flexible class system questioning the existing power structure. I think that's what we're seeing: the Internet has allowed us to reframe our media consumption - and production!- to question the power of the traditional structure of news industries.

My real fear is that web-based news is going to create a more elite class of content producers, and this will divide us even more so, from the criticism of the right that the news media is biased to the left, to the criticism from the left that news media isn't responsive to the needs of citizens (and residents too for that matter...you don't have to be a citizen to be affected by issues!)

But we're also not far off where we could shoot and edit a film on our cell phones. So maybe my blueness means I'm not thinking straight.

Or maybe I don't understand what's happening in this industry, and I wouldn't behave differently if I were in charge. And that really gives me the blues.

Thoughtful Pushback

2008-10-07T19:10:00.000-07:00

I've been spending a lot of time in an office at WOUB, the NPR/PBS affiliate in Athens, Ohio. There's a guy there about the same age as my dad, and somehow he manages to hold what I would describe as traditional values about the need for thoughtfulness in the media, the media as an educational resource, the need for media to provide information stewardship.

At the same time he also "gets" the web. He sees the complex issues facing not only public broadcasting, where he works, but the media industry in general.

At the moment, he says he's been pushing back a bit on how to use new media for WOUB. Is that the role WOUB is supposed to play? An online resource for local news? A place for web 2.0 experiments? These are fundamental, existential questions about the place public broadcasting websites play in the media landscapes ought to play in the media landscape. And the fear is that the decisions made now could lead to disaster in the future. But at the same time, not to act seems like it leads to slow, painful death.

I just can't believe that public broadcasting is incapable of innovating for the new media world. Not only that, I can't believe that the people who love it, who work in it, will let it flicker before burning out forever. It makes me wonder who is going to chart the future of public broadcasting in the digital world? I think those people are out there, but I'm worried that because of the inherent conservatism of public broadcasting, it will just be slow to change at a time when boldness is required.

What DO journalists do anymore?

2008-10-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

Journalists do a lot of things these days. They blog. They shoot video. They collaborate on multimedia projects. They track what other journalists are doing in this age of continuous news.

And academic Jay Rosen says some of them are doing more in his book "What do Journalists Do?" which I recently picked up. It's about the public journalism trend in the early to mid 90's. Very controversial.

The journalists he describes not only cover city hall meetings and investigate corruption, they start non profits, and hold BBQ's, and ask reporters in their newsroom to read John Dewey and Alexis de Tocqueville. Public journalism!

A lot of these efforts fizzled out, although I recently came across some research in a journalism studies journal identifying a few places that still profess to practice public journalism. But in a lot of ways, the web's impact on news organizations has forced them to practice another type of public journalism, participatory journalism. You can see that with iReport on CNN; you can see it on news sites that feature blogs by their reporters and by vetted community members.

This is the battle being fought in professional newsrooms across the country: those who want to preserve the traditional role of the journalist, and those who are curious and want to see where interactivity and participation will lead. As my colleague Art Hughes, formerly a reporter at Minnesota Public Radio, is fond of saying, "There's a room for both."

I agree with him. But the question I would pose - do we need both? That's a different question from, can online journalism pay for itself, but I'm more interested in the existential rather than practical question. But it's a question that Jay Rosen is exploring with his current project, NewAssignment.net. Only time will tell.

WOUB.org Woes

2008-09-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

Do public broadcasters need to invest in their websites?

That is the question. At the moment many of them use Public Interactive, which provides a template allowing NPR affiliates to easily update content from the mothership in D.C. But why would I go to my local station's website for news from NPR when I could to npr.org? It's great for NPR to have it's site linked to an affiliate but what good does it do the affiliate?

Which leads me to my conclusion: affiliates would invest more in creating local content, information, ideas, discussions about the geographic area it serves (although you could argue that through the power of the internet every station really could serve the whole world! That's another blog posting.)

This is not happening at WOUB in Athens, Ohio, though they produce quite a bit of local news and information for their television and radio channels. The copy and video get posted to the website, but no original content specifically produced for the site. So southeastern Ohio has several key races, and get this, WOUB-TV is the only station serving 40 counties in Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia, and there is no information on their site about these races.

I know, I know. Public broadcasters don't have the resources. They don't have the people power. They're already keeping body and soul together with declining budgets, and desperate pledge drives begging for money. And yet, I beg to differ. WOUB is licensed through Ohio University. As far as I'm concerned, they have a built in labor force of students. So why wouldn't they harness that?

Well, they already do. But as someone at WOUB pointed out to me, they have a well-oiled training machine for television and radio. And it's somewhat of a struggle to maintain the content for TV and radio with the revolving door of students coming in and out. But I don't think it would take that many students to create original content for the web. I went through the training program at WOUB, and during a lull we talked about what we were interested, what we wanted to do. As soon as I said wanting to produce original content for the web, it was like a bomb went off. Even the trainer, a sophomore at Ohio U, said something about the website being "nonexistent". (He was more charitable about the website than I was.)

So you have young people who understand the web, who want to do it. They just need to be organized.

I fear this is a theme throughout public broadcasting, a theme I would call lack of leadership. In some places I could understand where investing in the website makes little sense. Rural areas have limited technological infrastructures or low rates of Internet access that make it silly. But Ohio University has an extensive alumni network around the world who connect with the university through WOUB. Here's this for an idea: how about creating a portal on WOUB's website that would allow alumni to post material? Through a smart membership drive, I bet you could hit up those folks for contributions and make the case that WOUB is serving alumni around the world, as well as the community in Athens.

Every station has to determine its own course in this brave, new digital world. But to say as part of your mission to is train students, and not provide the ability to create original content, even at a public broadcaster, is shortsighted.

Kumbaya Print and Online

2008-06-18T23:49:00.000-07:00

I guess they must like me, because I got invited to a Bild party last night. Oh my! Bild girls, corporate execs, and the hundreds of grunts who churn out information for both print and online. Print folks got a button that said "Kiss me, I'm Print" and online "Kiss Me, I'm Online".

Let the healing begin. Apparently, this was the first attempt to socialize print and online departments. As Stefan, who just started working in the video section 6 weeks ago said, "This would have been unthinkable a year ago."

So what's changed? Things have settled down after the big office move; the ship is gliding into the waters of digital nirvana which are not as choppy as many thought; and oh yeah, the bosses say if you don't like it, you can go somewhere else.

But here is one trend I have noticed, well, a couple, I took away from last night. One is hopeful that it could mean a change in the content of the trashy, splashy, unabashedly provocative and political Bild; the other fears a backlash. So here is trend numero uno:

The Bild has hired a bunch of young people who have either worked at small web designer companies or alternative online products. I talked to Thomas quite a bit last night - terribly interested in how the web is being used to distribute information. Clearly a guy with an eye towards the public interest. Needs to pay his rent - so he applied for a job at Bild Digital. He wants to go to Paris to shoot in the fall, is skeptical however that Bild will get him accredited and all that. He says he'll do it anyway - and this is the thing that makes me hopeful - the change going on with the website makes it possible. It gives people like Thomas, a guy with ideas and vision and a conscience, the opportunity to pursue his passion. And as long people are clicking away on bild.de, I don't think the execs really care.

The young folks are quite critical of Bild - surprisingly open about it, too. But on the flip side of them you have what I fear may be the backlash: the ex-public broadcasting folks wooed to Springer, I guess with better pay, because I don't think the working conditions are that great with the constant pressure. These guys are very cynical about public broadcasting, the politics of the fee structure used to support it (Stefan told me last night it was a "hidden tax") and the cozy relations between politicians and public broadcasting. You have a group of former public broadcasters who are pretty pissed, and could check the youthful idealism of the younger webbies (the ex-public broadcasters are late 30's, early 40's.)

What to make of all of this? I suppose it's the reason for the party. How do you get these people to work together? I haven't mentioned the old, crusty print guys either - Elmar was quite poetic when I talked to him. An inspiration.

Management understands for this integration to work, to "harmonize" (that's the official corporate speak in the memos), everyone has to get along. I'm rather amazed that things run as smoothly as they do. Sure, there are some kinks (see below), but they got the money to figure it out and apparently the power. Everyone tells me it all comes from Diekmann (Kai Diekmann is some high up executive. Imagine a Sulzberger, or a Graham, or a Murdoch.)

I suspect more parties are coming. And perhaps a button that reads "I bat for both teams."

Working Out the Kinks

2008-06-11T11:19:00.000-07:00

The Springer Machine moved its headquarters to Berlin late last year (2007). In those months, the company has been pouring resources into their online department, in particular video.

Because it is such a massive publishing factory of information, it has 3, count them 3, video departments: ASDTV, bild.tv and web.tv. It's set up this way so they compete with each other, according to Stefan Tappert, one of the top editors in the video department of bild.de ( I guess that means they have 4, count them 4, separate video departments. Whew!) Obviously a sign that Springer is figuring out how to integrate video on the web for its myriad newspapers and magazines. (Springer owns tabloids in Poland as well as niche publications like Bild Frau, for women. I could list all of them but sufficed to say, it's a long list.)

I've noticed a few kinks in the couple days I've been in the division.

So let's go down the line.

Kink #1: Access to Video

Bild has an account with the Associated Press Archive, but it had never attempted to access its video archive until they needed it for a Bush piece (he had dinner with Chancellor Merkel Tuesday evening on his final European tour as president). After an hour or two, poor Sylvia (who I had been shadowing) ended up going with photos googled and youtubed (or geklaut, or stolen as one of the video editors termed it.)

Bild of course doesn't have its own video archive - traditionally a newspaper, not a broadcaster. Clearly an issue for them, but it's a small kink and they will work it out.

Kink #2: Uninformed Video Editors

Sylvia is a video editor - no journalism training. Sure, everything goes by Daniel and Stefan, the heads of the department. She wondered why they needed the Bush piece. I told her because Bush was coming to Germany for his final tour. She didn't believe me, knew nothing about it (it had been on the front page of all the German newspapers, that's how I knew.) That's a problem. Which leads me to the next kink, which I think is part of the problem why Sylvia didn't know Bush was coming to town.

Kink #3: Poor Communication

Part of me wants to blame the passive aggressive German psyche (I do so love to harp on the deep, dark night of the German soul), but in this case I think it's a factor of the managers (Daniel, Stefan) under constant pressure to churn out content for the website. Sylvia told me it's not unusual for her to splice together 4 videos in a shift.

Another person writes the text - I find this odd. Which leads me to the next kink.

Kink #4: Lack of Teamwork

The video section hasn't quite figured out how to effectively combine the video editors with the information side. So you have a reporter or an editor writing text without knowing if there are any pictures, still or moving, to go along with it. I'm not trained in TV, but in radio it's usually a pretty good idea to know what audio you have to work with.

On the flip side there are things that are amazing about this video department, and when you think about the potential this organization has to mobilize its resources, it's like being on the front lines of a world war, or an invasion (and it is war, Bild is gunning for Der Spiegel Online's impressive advertising revenue and ability to draw traffic). They're doing tedious, grunt work, digging the trenches, holding the line.

And the goal you might ask? Well, maybe you won't, because it's obvious, but the goal is always to generate more clicks, more eyeballs, which translates into more revenue coming from advertisers. So the video I worked on yesterday (click on the Truck Weitsprung updated at 11.06.08 at 17.26 Uhr) was produced to do exactly that: get people to hit the site and play the video.

Stefan shows me the stats (they check them at 11:40 and again at 4:40, the peak times.) He also tells me that the video player link on the front page of bild.de used to be at the bottom of the page - now it's further. As soon as they did that, he said, they started generating more clicks. If you build it, they will come. If you put it up top, they will click. So simple.

Showing Off the Bild Digital

2008-06-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

Manfred, head of Bild Digital, was showing off the Video Department today to a couple guys from BMW. (BMW is giving a presentation this evening.) He kept saying "Das ist die Zukunft" and the BMW suits kept nodding, and smiling, rocking out to whatever cheesy pop bed of music was playing under the graphics.

Some things are changing...but rich guys in suits will always stay the same.

Bild: bild.de and covering the European Cup

2008-06-09T03:54:00.000-07:00

If you live in Europe, or if you are a diehard soccer fan in the US, you know the European Cup is gripping everyone’s emotions. A good opportunity to talk about how the Bild, and other news outlets are using multimedia to generate clicks on their website.

This is an interesting case study, because of course the realm of major sporting events belongs to TV. Multimillion dollar exclusive contracts signed to networks in the US – like NBC to broadcast the Olympics or in the case of Germany, host of the mammoth 2006 World Cup, negotiating between public and private broadcasters.

Private media outlets, like the Bild, are of course interested in figuring out how their website can generate revenue. The pursuit of the goose that lays the golden eggs. The print version of the Bild is still the economic engine, but last week, the deputy of Bild Digital’s head dude, came down to congratulate everyone on a record 70 million hits on bild.de within the last month.

‘Congratulations,’ he told the online staff, ‘and keep it up.’ Lucky the European Cup is going on. It’s the perfect time for the Bild to cultivate online habits of their users.

If you look at their website, what’s interesting is how they keep it to an archive of the past game. So last night, the Germans not surprisingly beat Poland. The Bild’s website incorporated brief video clips, not much more than a minute, embedded with the article.

It’s done in very Bild style, with the bolded text, short sentences, but it uses video to maximize what the Bild already does: simplifying information in a very short space to make it easy for the user to digest. Only now it’s on the web.

I can’t see soccer fans replacing the television with their computers. The same way I can’t see Americans giving up the tradition of sitting around a wide screen TV with friends and family to watch the Super Bowl or the World Series. But I was impressed by the outdoor rig set up by a group in Kreuzberg. They had set up their wifi computer, connected it to a machine that displayed the images on an overhead projector and sat in their garden, grilling, drinking beer, playing a little music in the background. In much the same way that portable radios allowed people to take their media with them, that might be the wave of the future...and it might pose some competition to television broadcasters.

A Digression, Brief

2008-06-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

Stepping outside of my experience at the Bild newspaper: had the unfortunate experience of reading a headline from the Tageszeitung. If you don't speak German, yes, it is what it looks like.

The paper called the White House Uncle Barack's Cabin, a reference to Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin". It's generated much discussion in the blogosphere.

I'll just say upfront I am disappointed in the Tageszeitung. And not even because I think they are abandoning their liberal/left credentials. It's the hypocrisy. Germany doesn't get American sensitivity to race. They think we're racist, they think we're backwards. The other side of it is they think we're too politically correct. But most Germans don't know black Americans, and most Germans live in a homogenous society. And yes, Germany is still very homogenous, despite enormous growth of immigrant communities, they still lag behind the US. The largest minority, Turkish migrants, runs at about 10 percent. And most of them are unseen outside of the country's metropoli (though on my last visit to my hometown, Pohl-Göns, where I grew up in Hessen, I saw a huge Turkish wedding take place. PG is a tiny, conservative village. I bumped into a former neighbor of ours who talked about 'the coloreds' moving into town. He seemed resigned that the Germany he knew, a mostly white, Christian Germany, was gone.)

Even if communities of color were a significant part of the German landscape, the history is still different. Turks, or recent African immigrants, or Russians were not brought to this country in chains, enslaved, tortured, exploited. They were compensated for their labor at the very least. We have never paid our national debt to progeny of those who were a part of building America, who suffered great injustice and indignity, and who died in American wars for a country that didn't even recognize them as a human being.

I don't think the German press would like it if a Jewish chancellor (how awesome would that be?) were elected in Germany and an American paper ran headline that read "There's a new Führer in town" above an image of the Reichstag. These things are sensitive.

So I'm disappointed in the taz because they claim to be small, they claim to have a conscience, and then they publish something that implies Barack Obama is a sell out to the white establishment. That his achievement as an African American running for president is the result of catering to white sensibilities. There is certainly a place to have that discussion - his ability to attract white voters, Latino voters, etc - but to play on the darkest period of American history - from 1776 until 1863 when slavery stained the fabric of this new experiement - spits in the eye of Senator Obama's campaign. It also sadly shows to me that Germans, even on the left, have a long way to go when it comes to being sensitive about living in society that is the majestic colorful tapestry of the United States.

It also another reminder to me that the American Left hero worships European liberalism (liberalism in the American sense!) without truly understanding the lack of depth missing in German intelligentsia about the United States. American Studies departments are growing in Germany - I think this is a great indication that Germans are curious about the US (I wish more Americans returned the curiousity!) But the same way Germans would like to see more American sensitivity to their issues, the press, as agenda setters, need to scrutinize their own insensitivity - and perhaps learn something that will improve integration in Germany?

Bild: The Will and the Money

2008-06-07T03:10:00.000-07:00

I opted to do a later shift Friday. I had talked to Alex, from the 16th floor, about shadowing him. He's in the print section, and one of the many who are learning how to use the software to build web pages. I asked him if he had volunteered or if the department told him he had to do it. The order came from above, although he did say that he wanted to learn it, he just wasn't planning on doing it at this time.

Too me it's interesting to see how a clear office structure is set up, in this case, top down. I haven't figured out who is a permanent full time employee and who is a stringer, or temporary, hourly worker. In public broadcasting if you're Festangestellte as the Germans call it, it's almost impossible to be removed. I don't think the online folks are permanent - I think they're contract, but I will have to look into that.

I don't sense a certain fear in the online department. Everyone is quite collegial and chatty and focused on getting the work done. The will to change course of this massive publishing ship is internalized in every editor in the online department. And most importantly, which I think a lot of people forget, the organization has pumped money into creating a space and providing the tools so that they can do the work.

It sounds simple, perhaps even simplistic. But it got me thinking that perhaps the reason public broadcasting in the US is slow to change is because they see they don't have the tools to pull off a comprehensive content shift to online. In this case, money is key and might even open the door to the will to change things.

2008-06-06T02:52:00.000-07:00

Attended a larger editorial meeting on Wednesday. All the print people sit at their terminals in a circle while the online team surrounds them in an outer ring. It reminded me of how traditional elections are held in Switzerland where the men stand in a circle with their swords (1 sword, 1 vote), while the women stand silently looking on, excluded.

Inge tells me the goal is to merge online with print. The latest drama is requiring print to spend a 2 week internship in the online department to learn how to use the system (CMS) to build their own stories onto the website. At the moment, the online department is taking stories from the print side and reconfiguring them for the website, adding video and galleries where appropriate.
I told Inge this is what I refer to as putting lipstick on a pig in English. She tells me the goal in the end is that the online department develops its own content, independent of what’s printed in the paper, though this is certainly years down the road. She even laughs and says "Maybe in 10 years?!" But the print staff is much older, while the online department is quite young. At the editorial meeting there were suits and bowties. The online department is dominated by jeans, and loose t-shirts, a few of the young women careless about bra straps showing. It’s clearly a divide.

But what I’m impressed by is they are even taking steps forward to integrate with print and online, however painful it may be. At RBB and Deutsche Welle TV (both public broadcasters), the online team never contributed anything at the editorial meetings. In fact, at Deutsche Welle, I think the online team is relegated to the basement in some confined space where they just update the video on the a regular basis and make sure the live streams are working. And when Deutsche Welle debuted a new program about globalization, there wasn't even a web page built for viewers to log onto. I'm not even going to tell you what the annual budget of Deutsche Welle is, but even at my little community station, KFAI in Minneapolis, where we don't even have an online department (annual budget: 1.3 million dollars) we made sure the website was updated with a page about new content. So to say that German public broadcasting is oh, like, back in the 90's when it comes to web content would even be charitable. More like, they're acting as though the Internet doesn't even exist.

So the question is how will large news outlets, like the Bild, organize their staff to compete online not only for readers, but now listeners and viewers with the ability to post photo galleries and videos and podcasts. It’s clear they are taking the initiative, while German public broadcasting is remaining stagnant.

This is why I'm excited to start the MA in Public Broadcasting Management at Ohio University in the fall. There is such a gap in what commercial media is doing and public broadcasting. Yeah, I can hear the champions of German public broadcasting ( I would even count myself one of them) talking about how their content is so much better and they do news in the public interest...but what about their responsibility to cultivate a new generation of educated citizens? What about their responsibility to the public interest by providing information on all channels? And to pull this snobby "our content is so much better, that will keep people coming back" is weak. I love public broadcasting, and I still go to the web first. I listen to the radio and watch television, but I'm using it in tandem with my computer. That's how PBS keeps me coming back. That's how Bild keeps people coming back to their site, and getting more unique clicks. A lesson for German public broadcasters to take note of.

Bild: From the Top, All the Way Down

2008-06-05T09:56:00.001-07:00

You really know who's running things when the phone rings, and someone says "I want a story about how inflation is hurting the German pocketbook."

I was sitting on the newsdesk with Inge (remember Inge? Caught in the middle of integrating the print people with online?) She's one of the online editors. A hard worker. Reworking copy from the wire services. Knows the system inside an out. Answers all my questions.

I do a little research for her. I find an IMF study about inflation in Germany to provide what we in journalism like to call context.

This isn't useful, she says. She needs to write about how inflation is hurting the German consumer. Period. She's going off some study by a guy who says the consumer price index tally of 3 percent doesn't reflect "the feeling" of true inflation, which he adjusts at over 12 percent.

The purpose of this blog is not to write about the news values of the Bild. But I want to add a small comment about how the web as a powerful tool.

The reason its such a powerful tool for Bild is because they've spent decades building their brand. Unlike myself who intermittently blogs and has no audience. The ability of a higher up to make a phone call and tell the minion to distribute something, the veracity of which is dubious, is nothing new. But she did it in about 15 minutes.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the power structures are still the same. We can talk about the Internet and how it makes us more hysterical, and less community minded. But the truth is, there will always be people who abuse the medium. There always HAVE been people who abuse the medium. We call it propaganda. Only now it's faster and further reaching.

I meditating on some thoughts I have about the potential there is at the Bild to change core values because of competition from online news outlets. More on that tomorrow.

The Bild: Tag 1 (Day 1)

2008-06-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

Bad omen: they forgot I was coming. And the lady who set the whole thing up...on vacation until June 10. It must be nice to take 12 day vacations.

But they very graciously fetched me and brought me upstairs. It turned out 2 of the 3 big time editors were also on vacation, and the third hadn't arrived yet (it was 9am). It must be nice to wander into the offices of Europe's largest distribution newspaper sometime later in the morning.

Daniel soon shepherds me. He talks very fast, very authoritatively and it isn't long before he's stopped by a tall, slender woman ( I later learn her name is Inge - more to come on her later). There's trouble brewing, according to her.

Here's the thing: Bild just moved their headquarters to Berlin (formerly had been in Hamburg, media capital.) But Berlin is symbolic, especially for the Axel Springer publishing house. Springer put his building defiantly facing East Berlin. The publications are committed to a few basic principles: a unified Germany, support Israel, a unified Europe, embrace a free market economy, and reject all forms of political extremism.

You might say they have an agenda. In fact, they set the agenda for Germany on several occasions.

But the Bild, and all of its other publications are facing what every printed publication is facing: fewer readers. More folks are going to the web. They've started pumping millions into their online departments. And they're in the process of integrating the print department with the online department.

There's trouble brewing.

Inge in short order informs Daniel that a print guy doesn't want to take part in a session on how to build a web page. Bild Digital has a slick computer system - and its awesome, I want one to play with - where they can build a web page using a template that allows to upload, video, audio, photo galleries, surveys (what they call mini-voting). It's incredibly efficient (what else would we expect from a German media outlet?)

Some of the print guys don't want to learn - they want to turn it over to the online folks. But that's not a very efficient use of resources - Bild wants to free up bodies to generate more original content for the website rather than dedicating resources to reformatting the print content for the website. In short, they want the print reporters to do more work. Capitalism is such a cliche.

Daniel's job is to integrate online with the print department. He's organizing all these seminars. And he tells Inge they have to learn it. Period. That's the order from up high. And it will happen. But he points out they don't have to learn video, they don't have to shoot footage. What they're being asked to do is quite minimum.

They go back and forth. I can tell Daniel is a pit bull. Inge gives up after all, but tells him she's caught in the middle. I feel bad for her - she's on the front lines of the battle to change internalized practices. Short of dragging the print people to the 3rd floor (the print department is on the 16th floor) there's not much anyone can do.

But this is classic. I've heard stories like these before. Tension between online and print. Fear of being asked to do more with fewer resources. Fear that journalism is going to be sacrificed. (This is not much of a concern for the Bild.) But clearly a fear of change.

20 Days at the Bild

2008-06-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

The Bild. The mere mention of the Bild in Germany immediately causes eyes to roll into the back of heads, tongue clucking, and an exasperated sigh.

"You're doing an internship at the Bild?"

My poor German friends. It's not their fault they live in a digital wasteland of poorly constructed news websites, no comprehensive blogosphere, and fat, lazy public broadcasters with too many employees, too much money and not enough ideas.

For my American buddies: the Bild is a tabloid newspaper. It's about as trashy as you can get. Barebreasted women tease readers with dull, stupid stares. 24 size font headlines scream catastrophe and doom for the German consumer. To which my American friends may ask:

"You're doing an internship at the Bild?"

To be more specific, I'm doing an internship at Bild Digital, the online department. (By the way, if you want to know why everyone has health insurance in Germany, it's because if you want to do anything in this social welfare state, you have to show proof of health insurance, even for crummy, unpaid internships at sleazy tabloids.)

So for the next month, I am going to blog about what I see there. A modern day Guenther Wallraff if you will. Well, not quite. I'm there under my own name. But I'm hoping it will provide some insight as to how a large news outlet is steaming ahead, pouring resources into online and integrating its bread and butter - the publication - with the digital frontier.

Poland's "Homosexual Problem"

2007-11-30T01:40:00.000-08:00

The fish rots from the head.

It’s a Polish expression. I heard it through the simultaneous translation at the “Bridges of Tolerance” conference in Krakow November 27-29. The interpreter told me it’s a common Polish expression when talking about problems in politics or society. I take it to mean that if you’re thinking is corrupt, your actions will be corrupt as well.

I was invited to the conference to provide an “American” perspective on how the media covers gay and lesbian issues. Of course, there is no monolithic “American” perspective but I did my best.

The topic is especially sensitive in Poland, which is deeply Catholic, unlike Ireland with its strained distrust thanks to ongoing priest and nun abuse accounts which continue to pop up, and unlike the United States where many American Catholics are quite happy to break to with the Vatican on birth control, abortion and accepting gays and lesbians without believing they are sinning.

In Poland, the Catholic Church is the symbol of resistance against the Russians and before them the Nazis, and before the Nazis, the Russians again. Pope John Paul II was Polish, and involved in the underground during World War II, so Poland has a special relationship with the Vatican, and have a deserved pride (although few Poles would comment on the Vaticans conspicuous silence during the Spanish Civil War, the 20th century’s bloody Catholic fratricide from which the Vatican stayed away.)

But what they refer to as the “homosexual problem” in Poland has caught them, and the rest of Europe, off guard. The country is not only traditional but homogenous, so when gays and lesbians flexed their free expression muscle by putting on a gay pride parade in Warsaw in 2005 without permission from the city, it was the country’s first experience with a minority demanding to be recognized. And like many other countries before them, it was met with resistance.

The Vatican is quite clear about how it regards homosexuality, and Poland takes its cue from Rome. But it has now become an issue for many gay and lesbian activists who say they are discriminated against. They won a small victory the summer of 2006 when the city of Warsaw allowed a gay pride parade, but gays and lesbians face a much tougher opponent: Polish national identity, which many feel threatened by entry into the European Union, and the introduction of the euro by 2012.

The Polish press is a mirror of this confusion about how to address “the homosexual problem”. And I think that’s quite normal, as I said on this panel about how gay and lesbian issues are covered in the media. Participating in a democracy, whether as a journalist watch dogging government and powerful organizations, or whether as a private citizen marching in a gay pride parade, or advocating for restricted recognition of gays civil rights, is messy, and often times unpleasant. But it’s the anti-perspirant on the stench of corruption and injustice, and without an independent media and press, the foulness of the fish head rotting would creep deep into the roots of Polish society.

The more the topic is debated in Poland in an independent media and press, the more I think gays and lesbians will be recognized as a part of Poland. The door has opened, and the church is right to think now it will lead to greater demands. But that is the natural progression of a society that values freedom of assembly and freedom of expression and the rule of law – the smell of rot disappears once the fish grows a new head.

The German Media Landscape: Destruction of a Free Press?

2007-11-18T14:47:00.000-08:00

The front page of der Tagesspiegel last week had a hefty center piece on the train strike, which is taking a toll on Germany's import and export system, which relies on the trains to bring and deliver goods to the country. An important national, if not European, story for Germans.

But another story, also on the front page, but pushed off to the left hand margin, was an article about der Tagesspiegel's discovery that the police had intercepted their reporters' mail and eavesdropped on their interviews with source. Similarly, NDR, the public broadcasting station learned that not only reporters, but an editor, had been caught up in the surveillance of suspects during the course of interviewing them for a story.

The director of NDR, Jobst Plog was clear about the ramifications for a free press in Germany if it is confirmed that a district attorney gave the go ahead to conduct the surveillance as part of an investigation of alleged left wing radicals.

Surveillance in Germany takes a different tone than in the United States. Most Americans haven't felt the fear or paranoia of being spied on by the government. We've had a few moments: the McCarthy era, and blackballing people for alleged Communist affiliation. J. Edgar Hoover's almost Nazi like obssession with keeping files on everyone from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Robert Kennedy to Abbie Hoffmann.

But they were not ordinary people leading ordinary lives. They took risks, they antagonized. An FBI file is almost a badge of honor, because it indicates that you raised to the level of importance that the government ought to know what you were doing.

Not so in Germany. During the Nazi regime, students regularly reported on their parents comments at the dinner table to teachers, who reported it to the local Gestapo. Anyone who criticized Adolph Hitler at a private party could be arrested; anyone who spoke out against the government even in passing to a friend could be detained. And anyone could be listening: your neighbor, your teacher, your aunts and uncles. It was a regime that turned people on each other.

When the country was split, the Communist Erich Honecker, after 9 years imprisoned by the Nazis, took lessons from the Communisty Party head and eventually lead the most notorious secret service in the world: the Stasi. After the wall fell, and people burst into the basements of the Palast der Republik, they found millions upon millions of files. The Stasi had kept records on everyone, East and West Germans. And they had lists of informers, some paid, some "informal". When the German government received the Stasi files from the CIA in 2000, the BBC reported on the concern about exposing former West Germans as Stasi agents. Families are learning that a beloved relative was in fact an informer; wives learning that husbands were spying on them, and vice versa. As an individual you can request your file and look at it, but it's so sensitive, even 17 years after the wall has come down, that no one except journalists or researchers, are allowed to look at the Stasi files. Journalists are prohibited from publishing or broadcasting information from the Stasi files that were collected through secret methods, like taping a conversation without someone's knowledge or taking their picture without them knowing. But of course, the Stasi was all about secrecy, and the majority of the information was collected secretly.

That was chilling enough. One of the first things the U.S. did when it "denazified" Germany after the war was building up an independent press. It has served the country well, from the undercover reports of Guenther Walraff on living as a Turkish factor worker to the exposure of the Hitler diaries as a fake. Germans are engaged in their democracy, proud of it, and they should be. They, and the rest of the world, paid a heavy price for it.

When the press learns that it's government has been spying on them, spying on their whereabouts with sources, how can Germans begin the road to trusting each other, and reporters? In so many ways, it is a young democracy, a young nation state, and it is an infant in trusting the stewards of its democracy - the press - to safeguard the promises of the German constitution, one of which is the right to privacy. German privacy laws are very strict, and when you think about the history, you understand why. The press cannot function effectively if the government is spying on reporters in the interests of national security. The press cannot safeguard the freedoms demanded in the constitution when a government deploys its powers to secretly collect information. That is a step in the direction of a military junta, of a type of dictatorship. It's not of an individual, but it's of an entity, like the Nazis, who pass laws and exercise them for the "safety" of the country. The Nazis were democratically elected, and within two years, stripped Germany of its democratic practices. The country has come so far, and it's a leader for other European nations. It's time to leave the secrecy behind, and let the sunshine begin to heal the sores of government chafing.

The German Media Landscape, Part One

2007-09-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

The shocking tale of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung giving up its tradition of no pictures on the front page has gripped the pundits in Germany. Journalism in Germany is declining, the standards are being lowered, und so weiter und sofort as they say here in the Fatherland.

I have always thought pictures were dangerous to journalism. You know that one of the Afghan refugee girl with the haunted eyes on the cover of National Geographic? That was a bad call. And raising of the flag at Iwo Jima? What a load of tripe to even consider for placement on the pages of a newspaper.

Photojournalism has a provided some of the iconic moments of history. And God forbid you create a newspaper that (gasp!) more people would want to read. The BILD is of course awful, but the paper is a well known tabloid and it's cheap to buy too. I don't think the FAZ is falling into this category.

German newspapers are not quite in the position as American papers. It's a fairly literate population, but of course this is changing as younger readers turn to the Internet. But this change is slow, since unlike the U.S., Germany hasn't had a recent baby boom. The last one occurred when all the boys and men disappeared into the eastern and western fronts and never returned in 1945. So these people will keep things afloat, and quite healthy for many years to come.

Still, German publishers are turning to the web as in the U.S. A recent article the English edition of Der Spiegel 'The Perils of Online First' goes into detail about the efforts of newspapers to publish first on the web and neglect the print product, which is a bit like shooting themselves into the foot. Uwe Knüpfer is experimenting with an online publication in the Ruhr area of Germany but it's a hard sell. They too are searching for the holy grail of how to make journalism on the Internet financially sustainable, and hopefully lucrative in the long run.

The article I think neglects one perspective, and that is that journalism standards are not necessarily neglected on the web. I'm trying to think of a good example of when that happened, and they don't give one in the article. If anything, there are examples of great online journalism that involve interactivity and better explanations of our society and how it works. The NY Times is doing this, as well as the Washington Post. I'll give a nod to the Star Tribune as well, because they produced excellent work on the plight of Liberians in Minnesota, which made an impact on policy. Even Der Spiegel has wonderful online segments, most recently about the Baader-Meinhof gang and their reign of terror when they murdered politicians and important ministers.

I think the problem lies in that there is a generation of journalists - I would call them the Lost Generation - who are being taught journalism without understanding the ethics of online reporting because their teachers don't know either, and nobody is really talking about it. If they are, I haven't been made aware it. Journalism schools are putting emphasis on new media, which is good, but as far as I can tell, very little on what is right and what is wrong and what the obligations are. I don't pretend to have the answers.

KSTP, Why don't you just change your call letters to USSR?

2007-09-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

My leftist buds will no doubt tell me that I'm naive, and my defense of the Hubbard family owned KSTP franchise in Minnesota was misplaced all along.

I will still defend the Hubbards on some things (like giving candidates free air time and hosting live debates), but I was sorely disappointed in their coverage of the aftermath of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. The mayor, R.T. Rybak, signed off on opening up a pedestrian bridge, which allowed closer viewing of the wreckage. KSTP sicced one of their serious, manly reporters on the hunt for Rybak (who as many reporters in the Twin Cities know is probably the most accessible elected official this side of the Mississippi). He got reporter-tough with him, asking him to respond to the emergency responders who didn't want the site opened up.

Follow up interview with Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek. Remember this guy? The disgraced public safety commissioner in Minnesota who is on the record as using racial slurs in interrogating suspects as a Minneapolis cop and was forced to resign as a result? Well, the Comeback Kid Stanek got elected in 2006 to the sheriff's office, and he's loving it. The interview was between him in the KSTP's studios and some blonde cupcake who looked like she was barely literate. She gently probed him on what it meant to the families to limit access to the site. His eyes filled with tears, he choked up but somehow managed to make it through the tough interview with Barbie. He should have announced his candidacy for governor right then and there.

According to a former employee of KSTP, Gary Hill, expect more of this. The Hubbards are getting into the newsroom, and they're not leaving. They've always been idealogues, as I well know, making hefty contributions to Republican candidates, but they've always been explicit about their politics, which I'm grateful for. But painting Rybak as the bad guy, and Stanek as our knight in shining armor, besides showing KSTP's gross bias, is inaccurate.

I'd love to see a robust discussion about the ethics of access to disaster sites, the appropiateness of showing body bags, playing the tapes of the final moments of some of the victims, and other unpleasant things. If it were me, I'd show the bags, but I know other news executives feel differently.

KSTP was my station choice immediately after the bridge fell down. It's now fallen by the wayside, because I know the Hubbards are pushing their political agenda on an issue that has no good guys or bad guys. It's painting the story of government incompetence as black and white, when it's several different shades of the rainbow. Maybe KSTP should change their colors to red, the color of the Soviet flag, who so excellently spewed propaganda to the disservice of their constituents, but for the greater good of improving the lot of a small group of people who could only think about preserving their political influence.

When Print Journalists Go Broadcast

2007-08-12T08:41:00.000-07:00

It shouldn't surprise many in my most recent hometown of the Twin Cities that a few print reporters have taken up residence at at least one broadcast outlet. I happened to be escorting a group of teenage miscreants to tour the newsroom and meet the News Director at Minnesota Public Radio (what a generous fellow Bill Wareham is - he must have teenage children).

I knew there was a new sheriff in the newsroom. Chris Worthington, a higher up editor at the Pioneer Press, was one of the rats to leave the sinking ship early before the buyouts, and ensconced himself as Bill Wareham's boss in July of 2006. Traversing between media is nothing new in the Twin Bergs - TV goes to print, radio goes to TV, newspaper heads go to magazines. It's a small reporter's world here.

So it was with much surprise when Wareham, who is a candid fellow but shrewd, told our budding journalism students that he thought MPR could have responded more quickly to the I-35W bridge collapse, which had occurred just four days earlier. And that he noticed a difference in how broadcast and print approach such catastrophes. He noted that Worthington came from a print background, so his response was to assign the stories to the appropiate beat. Wareham wanted to get as many people on the ground as possible to get live coverage moving as soon as possible.

Even though Worthington is a print guy, it's still no excuse. News outlets have had Internet capabilities for several years now. Why is it so difficult for print guys to adapt to this new order? I get the "we don't need to rush and make sure our information is accurate", but in a calamity of the I-35W collapse, not rushing hurts your coverage in the long run. It didn't take too long before the state and the feds moved in, blocking off access to the site -- those were golden opportunities to get footage up close and personal, and footage that served the public interest. It's won't be too long before we forget the horror of the collapse, and the press has a responsibility to show those images, not the ones taken from far away.

Broadcasters historically have loved to win print reporters to their newsrooms. Print guys love to dig up dirt, and have neat tricks and a history of sources to expose fraud, waste and abuse. But the order is no longer print reigns supreme with the best coverage, then radio, and TV at the bottom of the barrel with its ridiculous anchors and pundits who editorialize and shout. The Internet has become the great leveler in journalism, allowing broadcast outlets to shine, and show those print guys, you don't know how to cover everything. In fact, those ancient methods may hamper coverage, and the public interest.

Moyers: Old but Good

2007-06-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

It must be the way he asks questions. Because at first glance, he's not much to look at. A well-educated, privileged white man who doesn't take it for granted.

He seems to take a natural curiousity about everything, even with guests who's views he finds repugnant, as recently happened with a libertarian writer. He treats them relatively the same, with dignity, with respect, ared with information but itching for a conversation, not a fight.

I remember first reading Bill Moyers, not watching him. My advisor for the extended essay requirement of the International Baccaulaureate Diploma recommended "The Power of Myth", Moyers' iconic interviews with mythology professor Joseph Campbell. I was more interested in Campbell at the time, and quoted him in my my final thesis.

I met Moyers again, 4 years later, in a journalism class. The professor, while not a great instructor, had the foresight to make us watch part of "The Public Interest" series, another iconic Moyers work. In the presence of the ruthless, Republican strategist, Michael Devers, Moyers exuded his trademark calm and respect, which is why I suppose, so many admire him. He confronted the beast, continues to confront the beasts, as well as the better angels of our nature.

so it must be in the questions, but it's also his eye for a good story. And people make good stories: villains, underdogs, heroes, philosophers, powerbrokers, you and me. He connects them, and us with the contempoary issues of our day: corruption, patriotism, civic duty, honor, redemption, falls from grace. He takes on meta issues, such as the recent documentary on how the American press covered the lead up to the war in Iraq.

Bill Moyers is an anomaly in the white noise of talk radio, network sitcomes and inane local news. He's high brow journalism at a time when the educational and civic ability of Americans is at an all time low ( look at the number of Americans registered to vote - and then look at the even more depressing figure of those registered to vote who don't make it to the polls.) It begs the question of whether Moyers is doing a service by remaining above the fray, or limiting his audience by remaining (and forgive me, Bill, because I love you) old-fashioned.

Perhaps he would riposte with an avuncular chuckle, then a thoughtful response about how the American public can be trusted so long as it's supplied with the facts.

Or maybe he would say that public broadcasting is the last refuge for true independent journalism to take chances and he won't compromise.

Moyers is 73 this year, 2007. He was a child of World War II, cut his professional teeth in the Johnson administration and Vietnam, and turned to what was then a still noble calling, television journalism. But I fear Moyers abilities are lost on Gen Y and future generations. I fear he is an anachronism, and I fear that while he may be practicing the best journalism in the United States, he is limited by his understanding of how to reach my generation (I'm 29 at this writing). As devoted as I am to Moyers, not even I catch every show.

Who will remember this icon? Who will say "there but for the grace of God goes Bill Moyers?" I've spent the last 6 months at a Big 10 school, spending time in the campus newspaper newsroom, and a mention of Bill Moyers gets blank stares and a shrug. It's depressing to see Moyers' work go underrecognized, if not completely unrecognized. And I wonder how he will continue to fare with the expansion of the web.

But Moyers is the king of comebacks. He has repeatedly said he is retiring, then returns with a new series. He seems to prefer appearing alone, the center of gravity. His instincts are right on: we trust him to ask questions we want answers to, and we trust him to ask questions we never even thought of. Not many have that happy talent.

The future of Moyers: relegated to insomniac tv sets of the blue hairs? Or underground hero to young journalists?

No Virginia Tech on the Daily Show or the Colbert Report

2007-04-30T13:38:00.000-07:00

This will be brief: a salute to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert (or should I say a tip of the hat?) for steering clear of the Virginia Tech shootings. Sometimes if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. It was only when the fallout occurred over the loopholes in the gun law that they responded, staying true to their ethics of afflicting the comfortable, rather than afflicting the afflicted as the MSM is so wont to do.

The Information Haves and Have Nots

2007-04-10T13:52:00.000-07:00

I've been out of the blog world for quite a bit. Keeping my media diet of Daily Show, Washington Post podcasts, and a cursory glance at the Star Tribune's website, the daily paper of my current hometown Minneapolis. The American empire appears to be standing up nicely.

But the newspaper industry isn't feeling quite as robust. I, and my fellow Kiplinger Fellows, met with the publisher of the Columbus Dispatch today. The paper just bought out 21 reporters, and it appears in the next couple months, the paper will trim its physical size by a couple inches.

Senator John Glenn attended our discussion: in his early 80's, he's concerned about what happens to a democracy when the newspapers are cutting reporters, ergo content.

I do share those concerns. But I also believe that for time imemoriam we've lived in societies of information haves, and information have nots. Lawyers are the classic examples of those who profit the most from information. Accountants I think another. So why should there continue to be a gap in information when most people have access to the Internet, either at home or surfing on the computer at the local library?

Well, not all pigs are equal. This is the difference between my parents' stock fund portfolio and Donald Trump's. His accountants know more than theirs. They have better information. The same holds true for everyday folk. Some people are savvier about obtaining information than others. I think consumerism is a good example. I can think of a few friends who are fanatic about finding good deals on clothes. I wouldn't say I'm a spendthrift, but I'm not going to quibble over a $10 or $15 difference on a pair of pants. I can afford it. My friends can too, but they quibble because they --and here's the key-- know they can get it for cheaper. They're aware of the difference, and they know it's out there, and once you know something is out there, it changes how you make your decisions.

That might not be the best example. There are much more profound ones, and in the case of journalism, hopefully, showing those differences in candidates, or elected officials, will have a profound impact on how you interact within this democracy.

Quality vs. Quality

2007-03-03T13:02:00.000-08:00

Sitting in a room with mostly young public radio reporters from different midwest affiliates (myself included - young, but not employed by a midwest NPR affiliate), I had an epiphany.

Public broadcasting is doing an excellent job churning out sound artists who also happen to do news. At least, that's what I came away with.

But as I sat through the listening session, I was struck how the younger reporters spend so much time on the sound integrity on their stories, that they forget basic newsgathering.

Take the gentleman who did a sound rich, plucky story on why a public library in Cleveland was considered the best in the country. Well, I heard inside the library, how it's changed...but I had this nagging question at the end of it: Why is this library number one in the country?

Don't get me wrong. I love sound rich stories. I think reporters, whether you work with sound or not ( and increasingly, every reporter works with sound, even the print guys who are kicking and screaming into the world of digital journalism), need to get outside more. Meet people. Hang out. Listen. Watch. Absorb. But don't forget it's not all about the sound quality. It's still about the news, isn't it?

BBC Model in America?

2007-02-15T08:35:00.000-08:00

A lot of public broadcasting supporters look across the pond to state funded journalism and cultural programming. They look at Germany, with its monthly fee subsidy on televison and radio sets; they look at the BBC in Great Britain, and wonder how we could get it so wrong.

They have good reason to think that. Let's face it the state of journalism, and broadcast journalism in particular, is at a low ebb. In a recent conversation with Gary Gilson, soon to be the former head of the Minnesota News Council, he said, "Nobody's interested in doing public service journalism anymore. They [the networks] used to pour money into projects. It's over."

Gilson also isn't upbeat about ongoing foundation support, pointing to the Ford Foundation's short lived interest in public interest international journalism, "making the global local" projects and others. And so again, we turn our heads across the pond, and wonder why we in the United States can't adopt the BBC model.

I'm not totally persuaded by the BBC model. I went to German public schools, I have a fine private, international school high school education, I've summered in the south of England. And there's good broadcasting in western Europe. But it's not all good, even though it's heavily subsidized. So I don't buy the argument that subsidies are the answer.

The other thing about the BBC - and any other western European model - is that if the government chooses, it can forbid them to broadcast material. Such was the case with the BBC, just a month after the 9-11 attacks. Prime Minister Tony Blair summoned, to use the parlance of the British newspapers, the broadcast service executives to Downing Street to ask them not to broadcast tapes of Osama bin Laden. Flash forward to May of 2003: on a tip from a fellow journalist, the BBC's Andrew Gilligan meets with Dr. David Kelly, a scientist critical of evidence suggesting Saddam Hussein was capable of producing WMD's. Gilligan doesn't name Kelly as a source, and the government forces the issue, requiring Gilligan to testify and criticizing the BBC for allowing a story to air with only one source to verify that evidence was cooked up in the case being made to go to war in Iraq. Gilligan coughs up Kelly's name, who eventually kills himself in July of 2003.

The government prevents broadcast of the Hutton inquiry on television or radio into Dr. Kelly's death, and his criticism of the evidence used in the case made for the invasion of Iraq. The BBC complies.

Let my inner Bill O'Reilly come out here: that would never happen in America. The government could not make an order like that and get away with it. However, I will concede this: this same story - the furor over the BBC using one, unnamed source to verify fabrication of evidence to make the case for war, the documents that showed high level government officials doctoring intelligence - never made it into the American press for an entirely different failing of the United States, and its not because we don't subsidize public broadcasting.

It's because American journalism is timid, including public broadcasting. And I would argue that public broadcasting can be especially timid because they are so petrified of losing their precious federal dollars that they won't go out on a limb.

Now you could say, that's an extreme example. And there are plenty of examples where the BBC has done robust reporting, from conflicts in Africa to terrorism in western Europe to domestic issues on the island. But it's those singular instances where the BBC shows it's only as strong as its weakest link, and its weakest link is that when the stakes are high enough, the government will tell them what to do, and they will comply.

I have a problem with that, and I don't see the BBC funding model as a panacea for the woes of American journalism. There are too many string attached. There are already strings attached for National Public Radio as the news arm for Voice of America. I have a problem with censorship, even if it happens very rarely. It's never OK for the government to tell an independent press what to say or do, and to say you're independent and comply with the government's orders is hypocritical.

After some reading, I'll post soon about different ideas about freedom of speech. Apparently, not even Americans really believe in the 1st Amendment. Sigh.

Stroking the Public Radio Ego

2007-02-04T14:01:00.000-08:00

Being the lone radio person in a group of newspaper fogies, I'm finding myself amused by at once the deference, but also sad, comments sent the way of public broadcasting.

On one hand, my print colleagues appreciate the artistic value of radio and audio; on the other, they lament the inability of public broadcasting to financially support as extensive a news network of reporters and editors as newspapers do.

The most public version of this discussion came out when McClatchy announced it would immediately sell the Pioneer Press in Saint Paul, after acquiring it in one of the biggest newspapers sales from Knight Ridder. The e-democracy folks in the Twin Cities, certain the Twin Cities was doomed to becoming a one paper town, floated the idea of the state's largest public broadcaster to purchase the paper. Minnesota Public Radio has a many multi-million dollar budget, buys and sells radio real estate with the help of low cost loans and good standing in credit: why not buy a paper?

As many pointed out in the posts following the idea, the nonprofit may be able to pull off a 12 million dollar acquisition (as it did with the purchase of St. Olaf's WCAL in Northfield), but HALF A BILLION? It's a lot to ask, even the wealthy, and well-endowed Minnesota Public Radio.

But there are other reasons why I wouldn't recommend public broadcasting's hand in the newspaper business. The Americans who do support public broadcasting want the national stuff: All Things Considered, Fresh Air with Terri Gross. Local news production, on the scale of Minnesota Public Radio, is almost unheard of at an NPR affiliate. The bulk of their budgets go to National Public Radio or Public Radio International to purchase programming, rather than investing in local programming.

To me, that lack of investment in local programming shows an unwillingness to try new things, which newspapers in their heyday were known for. That's the exception, not the rule in the small world of public broadcasting. They are so careful, so fearful of pissing off potential donors, current donors, foundations, they wouldn't touch it. Fo Shizzle.

That doesn't mean public broadcasting can't change. But it's an insular culture that doesn't like outsiders coming in, telling them how they can do better work. And so little of public broadcasting is devoted to actual journalism, that it would take an infusion of newspaper talent to turn the small reporting ships of NPR affiliates into the strong, shrill shrieks of Washington policymakers calling for an end to public broadcasting funds.

Don't get me wrong; I love my American public broadcasting. I give money. I defend it's mission. I'm grateful. But I'm also painfully aware of its shortcomings. It's like my parents. I love them, but I also know I can't get everything I need, or even want from them.

What's Up with Journalist Access to the Floor During State of the Union?

2007-01-26T10:35:00.000-08:00

At the same time President Bush was preparing to make his next to last State of the Union address, I was struck by a head cold. Achy sinuses, headache, sore throat. What better way to feel better than by watching the State of the Union. I decided to turn to CNN.

I don't know why I pick CNN. Probably from my days at a boarding school in Switzerland when one of the teachers would have it on all the time during the 1st Gulf War. So they got me at a young age. But I gotta say CNN, and all the other networks, aren't doing much with their newfound access to the floor. I'm not quite sure what the physical access gets them anyway. They're able to take a different angle shot of the action, therefore our perspective has changed as viewers? We're somehow more level with the elected officials who decide much of our fates from before birth until after death? I didn't feel much in touch with Washington by watching John Roberts mingle with the gaggle of politicians on the floor, but to have CNN report it, it was the greatest wish ever to have a camera on the floor.

If there was one thing that the coverage of the State of the Union proved to me, is why The Daily Show and The Colbert Report remain ever popular: how can we take these guys seriously? Better yet, how can we take that Candy character on CNN seriously? It's at moments like those, staring into the television void that I fear for the future of television journalism. I know TV is the favorite whipping post of every pseudo intellectual in this country, but as someone who loves television, loves news, and knows some of the cats producing it, I know they can do better. Spending half the coverage on how fantastic it is to have access to the floor during the speech doesn't tell me much. Apparently, the access didn't do much for CNN's ability to hold policymakers feet to the fire as well.

The New Media Frontier..I Guess

2007-01-23T13:32:00.000-08:00

This fellowship program I'm in at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at the Ohio State University talks a lot about new media. It is in fact a "New Media Fellowship".

But the media itself isn't new. Radio has been around for about 80 years; television for 50, and the printed word, at least in modern western European history, since good old Johannes Gutenberg figured out the secret to movable type (I think it was in 1482, but of course the Chinese had him beat by a few hundred years.)

What's new is the ability to meld these individual mediums into a whole made possible by the world wide web. You can now watch a movie on your computer, or make an audio slideshow with photos you took from your last vacation, or publish a video newsletter (a vletter?) about your family on your home computer. And you can sit like me and blog the afternoon away in lieu of constitutional law homework.

I hear a lot about the "revolution" the Internet has had on the ability to create media, and the fear it strikes in the hearts of reporters who worry about amateurs encroaching on their professional turf. I don't see it as much of a revolution. Didn't the printing press open up a new media class of non royalty, common folk who could own the means of production of media, and distribute pamphlets that created social, religious and economic revolutions? I'm thinking of Martin Luther, of Thomas Paine, and all the unknown printers who threw themselves into the creation of new means of communicating that didn't require monks slaving hours with pen and paper to preserve ideas. And writing in the vernacular also opened up the ability for information to be understood by lay people.

So it is with the Internet. That's why it's not enough for newspaper to just publish stories on the web. I think we've forgotten that we collect information through the 5 senses, not only by digesting words through our eyes and into our neurons. Because we (western industrialized folk) are surrounded by radio and television and video and photography, we intuitively reject the way newspapers, and broadcast outlets are recreating newspapers as hypertext.

It's up to the "professionals" to now professionalize news on the web - which means thinking about why we like to watch television or listen to the radio or go to a photo exhibit in the first place. I can only answer for myself, but it's something I think news outlets will have to ponder as well, and not use a focus group either.

The Ohio Frontier

2007-01-23T12:45:00.000-08:00

I'm coming up on three weeks in Columbus, Ohio. The responses I received when I made public my decision to leave KFAI Radio in Minneapolis to come - omigod - HERE ranged from "Why would you leave Minneapolis for an inferior city?" to "What a fabulous opportunity!"

It seems to me - just to add to the categorization we all seek to box people in - is that there are two types of people in world. One group finds its status in where it lives; the other finds status in what it lives. I think I'm in the latter group. I don't really care where I live, so long as I have access and opportunity to what I want to be doing, which isn't much. I'm not vain, so access to trendy boutiques in unimportant; I'm not a music aficionado, so I don't care about the local indie rock or pop scene; I don't really care all that much about art or theatre,

It's also no secret that midwesterners in general have an inferiority complex, and part of its manifestation is to put other parts of the midwest down. Fine with me; I'm not from the midwest, and can scoff at everyone in it, knowing full well that it doesn't matter if Minneapolis is on the cusp of being a first class city and Columbus most definitely a second class city - both are neither fully first class anything, and for those of us who have experienced first class, the provincialism of such a conflict is rather charming. Kind of like watching a Jerry Springer show.

Welcome to My Blog

2007-01-18T09:17:00.000-08:00

Since leaving my job as the News Director of KFAI Radio, a few interested parties have suggetsed I start a blog.

So here I go: I'm in Ohio, doing a new media fellowship. No, I will not leave with an M.A. in journalism. This fellowship is where they pay me to complete a project ( in this case a multimedia website on Somali businesses in Columbus, Ohio). They also pay for classes if I want to take them. I'm taking constitutional law - watch out, Scalia!