Well welcome new cybercats. Your assignment for this week is a one paragraph introduction to yourself sent to me by this Sunday afternoon by e-mail. For a start please just write the paragraph directly into the body of the e-mail. We will work with attachments later as they can sometimes be a problem.
Following is a copy of a great News Letter for alternate Journalism. The hotlinks don't work in the copy but you can subscribe to the news letter with the information on the page, I think. If not, and you want to subscribe to the weekly. Let me know in the next class.


The Weekly Spin, April 7, 2009

CMD Reports

Lots of Opinion, Not Much Disclosure
by Bob Burton

The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) have more in common than being major industry lobby groups. Both have hired former Greenpeace activist turned PR consultant Patrick Moore to deflect environmental and public health criticisms.

Read the rest of this item

Weekly Radio Spin

Weekly Radio Spin: NATO Is Neato!

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, NATO raises its profile, ghostwriters, and hijacking choice. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin,'" DC Navigators. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

Read the rest of this item

Spins Of The Week

EDF Goes Nuclear on Greenpeace
Source: The Guardian (UK), April 1, 2009

An executive with the French government-owned energy company EDF "has been charged on suspicion of spying on the environmental group Greenpeace." The executive, "who previously worked as a police commander, is being investigated for conspiring to hack into Greenpeace France's computer system." Under investigation is whether EDF, "the world's biggest nuclear-reactor operator, hired a private detective agency run by a former member of the French secret services to illegally spy on environmentalists and infiltrate their ranks." EDF confirmed that it hired the firm, Kargus Consultants, but denies "ordering the use of any illegal spying methods." A Kargus employee admitted that he hacked into the computer system used by Greenpeace France's campaigns director in 2006. Greenpeace thinks the spying "could have been related to their campaign to block EDF's construction of a vast, new generation nuclear reactor in Flamanville" in northern France. Greenpeace France is tightening office security and saying the incident "shows just how frightened the nuclear industry is of transparency and a democratic debate." EDF recently bought British Energy and "nearly half of U.S. group Constellation Energy's nuclear power business ... in order to build power plants in Britain and the United States," according to Reuters.

CoalSwarm a Nerve Center for the Green Energy Movement
Source: San Francisco Chronicle blog "The Thin Green Line," March 13, 2009

The San Francisco Chronicle's website profiled "Ted Nace, director of the CoalSwarm website and an important part of the anti-coal movement that has been in the news in recent weeks." CoalSwarm is a "nerve center," a partnership with the Center for Media and Democracy within the SourceWatch wiki. Nace explains, "Anybody can post information. We've got 1500 articles on the [CoalSwarm] site, and it's been accessed hundreds of thousands of times. We have a separate article on each proposed coal plant and each existing plant, and whenever anything happens having to do with that plant, we post the news. Everything has to have a footnote to a published source, so people don't have to take our word for it. A movement needs information to run, and we're trying to put information at people's fingertips." SolveClimate blog also lauds CoalSwarm as "the one-stop-shop wiki for all the dirt you need on coal. ... As one supporter explained: 'It's putting information once the province of lobbyists into local activists' hands.'" CMD's SourceWatch wiki also hosts a major portal on Climate Change and the upcoming COP15 climate treaty conference.

Center for American Progress Hangs with the Neocons
Source: Jeremy Scahill, April 2, 2009

Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill sees the liberal Center for American Progress teaming up with leading neoconservatives and going to bat for Barack Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan. On April 3 CAP is hosting a forum titled A New Way Forward in Afghanistan to release their report Sustainable Security in Afghanistan. Scahill notes the event includes "a leading neoconservative activist, Frederick Kagan, one of the lead proponents of the 'surge' in Iraq. In addition to being a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, which was basically Dick Cheney's bunker away from the bunker in the 1990s, Kagan was also a major figure in advocating the agenda of the neocon-Project for the New American Century, which molded the Bush administration's conquistador foreign policy. Kagan's brother Robert Kagan along with William Kristol started a new version of PNAC a few weeks ago, called The Foreign Policy Initiative. Another key figure in the group is Dan Senor (who is married to CNN's Campbell Brown), formerly L. Paul Bremer's righthand in Iraq."

NATO PR Push Targets Journalists, Youth
Source: The NewsMarket (via Marketwire), April 1, 2009

As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) turns 60 and some ask why the Cold War alliance still exists, NATO is launching new media and public relations efforts. The NewsMarket, an online source of b-roll and video news release footage, is providing NATO-produced videos to journalists. Not surprisingly, given Barack Obama's controversial plans to increase troops in Afghanistan, the NATO / NewsMarket channel features videos on "mentoring the Afghan Army" and "taking the fight to the Taliban," along with an interview of U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones, a proponent of NATO expansion. "NATO Public Diplomacy Division has developed a comprehensive strategy to engage with young audiences," according to the NATO / NewsMarket press release. NATO's youth outreach includes an "Internet TV" channel and "unconventional advertisement videos" posted to YouTube. NATO spent 500,000 Euros (U.S.$666,000) on the videos, which use the slogan "Peace and security. That's our mission."

"Product Safety Standards" for Cigarettes?
Source: Huffington Post, April 2, 2009

The proposed legislation to have the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulate tobacco is "window-dressing masquerading as legislation," according to Alan Blum, M.D., director of the University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society. Putting the country's most lethal consumer product under control of the FDA will perpetuate the myth long favored by the industry that cigarettes can be made safer. The industry itself long ago started a PR campaign to assure people it was possible to identify and remove any component of smoke that was found to cause disease, and went on to leverage public fear of smoking to market gimmicks like filters that were "just what the doctor ordered" and conferred "double-barreled health protection." Lobbying to remove cigarette ads from TV and put weak, unobtrusive warning labels on cigarette packs has also served the industry's interests by giving them legal cover and saving thousands in advertising costs while doing little to actually restrain tobacco promotion. With the passage of the "Marlboro Preservation Act," the FDA -- which already has difficulty assuring the public that peanuts and pistachios are safe -- would now be handed regulation of cigarettes. While well intentioned, the bill is misguided. It ought to carry its own warning: "This legislation is deceptive, and it will prove devastating to public health."

The Infinite Mind Was Not Aware

PR Watch has reported previously on conflict of interest issues surrounding psychiatrist Fred Goodwin, the former host of "The Infinite Mind" public radio series. In his role as host of the show, Goodwin talked up the advantages of antidepressant drugs while failing to disclose that he had received $1.2 million in fees for giving marketing lectures on behalf of pharmaceutical companies. After the funding was revealed publicly, Goodwin attempted to claim that he had informed the show's producer, Bill Lichtenstein, of his financial ties to drugmakers (a claim initially echoed by National Public Radio's "On the Media" show). Now Lichtenstein is claiming vindication, and NPR has issued a retraction and public apology for its claim that Lichtenstein knew. Goodwin has also backed away from saying that he disclosed the payments, claiming instead that he doesn't "see these things as a conflict of interest."

Smoking in the Movies: Under-the-Radar Cigarette Advertising?
Source: Pediatrics, March 30, 2009

A meta-study published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics concludes that viewing movie smoking scenes is a significant factor in smoking among older teens and young adults. In 1999, researchers interviewed thousands of 10- to 14-year-olds, assessing their smoking status and exposure to images of smoking, via movies. Follow-up interviews in 2006 and 2007 determined whether the former non-smokers had taken up the habit and compared their smoking status to their earlier exposure to movie smoking scenes. Those with the highest level of movie smoking exposure were twice as likely to have become established smokers as those with the least amount of exposure, even after controlling for a wide range of other factors. Researchers defined "established smoking" as having smoked more than 100 cigarettes in one's lifetime. They estimated that 34.9% of the youths' established smoking could be attributed to movie exposure. Smoking in the movies has come under renewed scrutiny. A 2005 study found that the amount of smoking depicted in movies diminished steadily from 1950 to 1990, but then increased so rapidly that by 2002, smoking in the movies was just as common as it was back in 1950. A 2006 study found that in recent years, depictions of smoking have shifted from R-rated to PG-13-rated films, and that major studio pictures account for 90% of movie smoking scenes. The 2006 study authors concluded that major film studios are "delivering the most new adolescent smokers to the tobacco industry."

Greg Gumbel Fumbles on Infomercials
Source: StinkyJournalism.org, March 30, 2009

Two years ago, CBS Sports anchor Greg Gumbel "signed a 5-year contract with Paul Doug Scott's EncoreTV to appear as host for, what turned out to be, a Florida infomercial company," reports Rhonda Roland Shearer. Gumbel's agent told her, "It wasn't supposed to be an infomercial. One is hesitant to say he was duped, but yeah, I was duped." Some of the infomercials are titled "Eye on America," a CBS News brand, apparently without authorization from the network. The infomercials use "an identical newsroom set and ... identical animation graphics" to the cable news shows they follow, and have aired on CNN Headline News, without the required disclosure that they are advertisements. Turner Broadcasting, which owns CNN, admitted that it only vets "national ads sold by Turner sales people," and the Gumbel infomercials were sold and placed by a local provider, Time Warner Cable. Even some of the companies behind the infomercials thought they were being profiled on a real national news segment -- albeit one that requires guests to pay a $20,000 to $30,000 "scheduling fee." One company boasted that its executive had been "interviewed on CNN / Headline News' 'Eye on America.'" The infomercials have flacked "a mind-numbing and illogical diversity of products," Shearer writes, including timeshare sales, barley products, Internet security software, small universities and "my personal favorite, a distributor of aluminum trusses."

Dewey Square Caught Astroturfing Again
Source: Halifax-Plympton Reporter (Marshfield, Massachusetts), March 27, 2009

The Halifax-Plympton Reporter received a letter to the editor urging "that people contact their congressman about the Medicare Advantage program," a "sort of privatized health plan paid for via the recipient's Medicare. Reportedly, there's some interest in doing away with the program." The actual, physical letter was in the name of a local resident, but it didn't mention any of the local Congressional delegation, which the newspaper's editor, Matthew Nadler, found strange. So, he called the man who had supposedly written and mailed the letter. "He had no idea what I was talking about," Nadler reports. Then, "I got a phone call Monday from a young man who said he was calling on behalf of the letter's non-writer. I told him what happened, and I think I had some pointed words about what was a pretty sleazy use of an elderly person. I asked the caller who he was and who he worked for. Which, not surprisingly, I suppose, he declined to tell me." However, Nadler could see his phone number, and traced it back to the Dewey Square Group, a high-powered, Democratic-associated lobbying firm. Nadler notes that "their Web site doesn't list their clients, but it doesn't take a genius, or a newspaper editor, to figure out they've been hired by someone with an interest in keeping Medicare Advantage in business." The firm's site "promises 'grassroots' communication," but, he concludes, "it looks more like Astroturf from here."

Television: Now with More Stealth Ads!
Source: Advertising Age, March 26, 2009

Local television stations are increasingly open to product placement. The Meredith Corporation's "syndicated hour-long lifestyle program 'Better' (named in part after the company's Better Homes & Gardens magazine)" includes space for local stations to add in sponsored segments. The "three-to-five minute videos" have pushed products related to "child-care topics such as baby-proofing the home, installing a car seat and visiting the doctor," for sponsors including State Farm Insurance, General Mills, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson and Kimberly-Clark. "National and local product integration is one way Meredith generates revenue from its 'Better' program. Up to eight minutes ... can be 'localized,' which could include the sale of local product integration, as well as sponsorship of news and entertainment features." CBS also has a "special unit ... aimed to spark discussions of product integration earlier in the program development process," while its new senior vice-president of branded integration and online is "branded-entertainment executive Greg Bennett." At the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Steve Bornfeld lists examples of what are -- or at least appear to be -- product placements in local TV news. "Channel 3's allergy prevention story, interviewing a St. Rose Hospital pediatrician who has been a station source more than once? No allegations of an arrangement," he admits. "But not knowing equals not trusting."

Airline and Online Lobbying on U.S. "Card Check" Bill
Source: PR Week, March 20, 2009

In the battle over the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would make it easier for workers to join a union, "both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO are focusing on grassroots outreach." Before the bill was introduced, "the Chamber launched the Workforce Freedom Airlift program, a series of events that fly in local small business owners to Washington," to lobby against the bill. The first "airlift," on March 10, "brought in small business owners from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Nebraska, and Louisiana." Since July 2008, the Chamber has worked with Adfero Group on an anti-EFCA "social media effort," expanding "a virtual march on Washington that was created the last time the bill went to Congress in 2007." It "allows users to register for the march as avatars and send an automatic letter to their elected officials through a Facebook application." Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO is highlighting "YouTube videos of workers sharing their support" of EFCA, and running "an online contest that allows users to vote on the most outrageous statements from the opposition."

Courage, Bayer CropScience Style
Source: New York Times, March 28, 2009

Bayer CropScience has invoked the specter of terrorism in a bid to limit what information the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board can release at a public hearing into a chemical plant explosion in West Virginia that killed two employees. Bayer is claiming that "because it has a dock for barge shipments on the adjacent Kanawha River, its entire 400-acre site qualifies under the 2002 federal Maritime Transportation Security Act," reports Sean D. Hamill. "It has asked the Coast Guard, which has jurisdiction under the act, to review the public release of 'sensitive security information.'" Bayer appears to want to limit discussion of the potential hazards of methyl isocyanate, the same chemical made at Bhopal, India, notes Hamill. On its website, Bayer CropScience states that one of its core values is "integrity, openness and honesty" and that it is committed to "having the courage to tell the truth" and "presenting the unvarnished truth in an appropriate and helpful manner."

| Investigative Journalism Being Reborn Through the Web? |
| from the i-don't-want-to-go-on-the-cart dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday March 30, @15:22 (The Media) |
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/30/1625200 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

Combating the stigma that investigative journalism is dead or dying, the
Huffington Post has just launched a new venture to [0]bankroll a group of
investigative journalists to take a look into stories about the nation's
economy. "The popular Web site is collaborating with The Atlantic
Philanthropies and other donors to launch the Huffington Post
Investigative Fund with an initial budget of $1.75 million. That should
be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate stories
with freelancers, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief
of The Huffington Post. Work that the journalists produce will be
available for any publication or Web site to use at the same time it is
posted on The Huffington Post, she said. The Huffington Post Web site is
a collection of opinionated blog entries and breaking news. It has seven
staff reporters. Huffington said she and the donors were concerned that
layoffs at newspapers were hurting investigative journalism at a time the
nation's institutions need to be watched closely. She hopes to draw from
the ranks of laid-off journalists for the venture."

Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/03/30/1625200

Links:
0. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/29/huffington-post-launches-_0_n_180498.html

Maybe a new final hope? From the New York Times:
Mother Jones Tests Nonprofit Model in Race to Survive the Recession
By TIM ARANGO
These days the leftist magazine views itself as a
defender of not just independent journalism, but of
journalism itself.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/arts/07jones.html?th&emc=th

Find out what a pundit is before you read the following, as this is a special genre of journalism:
Why pundits always get it wrong
Paul Raven @ 02-03-2009
Have you ever wondered why the talking heads on television are so often utterly wrong in their predictions about the future?

According to a research psychologist from Stanford University, it’s because the people the media tends to hire as pundits are the sort of people who are psychologically predisposed to making predictions based more on their own beliefs than any rational assessment of the situation:

At first, Tetlock’s ongoing study of 82,361 predictions by 284 pundits (most but not all of them American) came up empty. He initially looked at whether accuracy was related to having a Ph.D., being an economist or political scientist rather than a blowhard journalist, having policy experience or access to classified information, or being a realist or neocon, liberal or conservative. The answers were no on all counts. The best predictor, in a backward sort of way, was fame: the more feted by the media, the worse a pundit’s accuracy. And therein lay Tetlock’s first clue. The media’s preferred pundits are forceful, confident and decisive, not tentative and balanced. They are, in short, hedgehogs, not foxes.

That bestiary comes from the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who in 1953 argued that hedgehogs “know one big thing.” They apply that one thing (for instance, that ethnicity and language are primal; ergo, any country that contains many ethnic groups will break up) everywhere, express supreme confidence in their forecasts, dismiss opposing views and are drawn to top-down arguments deduced from that Big Idea. Foxes, in contrast, “know many things,” as Berlin put it. They consider competing views, make bottom-up inductive arguments from an array of facts and doubt the power of Big Ideas.

Intriguing, no? But while foxes are arguably better than hedgehogs, here’s the sobering conclusion:

If there are three possibilities (say, that China will experience more, less or the same amount of civil unrest), throwing darts at targets representing each one produces a forecast more accurate than most pundits’. Simply extrapolating from recent data on, say, economic output does even better.

Unfortunately, extrapolated data doesn’t make for such good television… or blog posts, for that matter. Will the decentralisation of current affairs newscasting make this situation better or worse? [image by silas216]

I wonder if we could classify science fiction writers using the same dualism?

Here is a follow up to the story below which I put up yesterday and this my be the way things will go every were in the future:
February 27, 2009 12:48 PM PST
Hearst to publish its periodicals electronically
by Dong Ngo
Looks like the e-paper revolution is really about to start.
Hearst Corporation, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, announced Friday that it has developed an electronic reader for newspapers and magazines, the way that Amazon's new Kindle does for books.

Soon you'll be able to read magazines and newspapers on an e-reader.
(Credit: theoprahmag.com)
The news, first reported by "Fortune", is really significant as Heart owns about 16 daily and 49 weekly newspapers and has influence on hundreds of magazines. Examples of those include the "San Francisco Chronicle," "O," and "Cosmopolitan."
It's unclear if the device Hearst has been working on has anything to do with the eReader that Plastic Logic unveiled recently but its principle seems the same. It's a handheld device used to read digital content, much like the Kindle. The main difference would be the Hearst's e-reader has a much larger size to accommodate the format of newspapers and magazines.
It's also speculated that Hearst's e-reader is going to be physically flexible and even foldable. The first version would come in black and while with the later coming in color and even with video-playback capability.
Once implemented, this would change the way newspapers and magazines are published. Instead of getting a print copy, you can just download the newest issues on the e-reader, wirelessly. No printing or paper is involved. Aside from the environmental factor, this would cut down about 50 percent of the cost to circulate a periodical.
It's also not clear when you can get the first issue of "Cosmopolitan" on this new e-reader but considering the recent launch of the Kindle 2 and the upcoming e-reader from Plastic Logic, Hearst's new e-reader will probably be launched in 12 or 18 months.
Dong Ngo is a CNET editor who covers networking and network storage, and writes about anything else he finds interesting. You can also listen to his podcast at insidecnetlabs.cnet.com. E-mail Dong.

Over the last three or four years we have discussed the death of the paper news paper. Well it seems in America it's closer then ever:

Crisis in the US newspaper industry
By Max Deveson
BBC News, Washington
If the economic crisis goes on much longer, will there be any newspapers left in the US to write about it?

America's newspaper industry has been badly hit by the downturn, and a number of titles face closure.

The latest casualty is the venerable San Francisco Chronicle, whose owners on Wednesday announced they were planning to cut a "significant" number of jobs to meet cost-cutting targets, and that if the targets are not met, then the paper would be sold or closed down.

The Chronicle, which was founded in 1865, soon after the gold-rush hit California, lost more than $50m (£35m) in 2008, and so far 2009 is looking even worse for the title.

Circulation fell by 7% in the six-month period running up to 30 September 2008, and advertising revenues are plummeting.

The Hearst Corporation - the Chronicle's owners - last month proposed similar measures for another of their titles, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

And the owners of Denver's Rocky Mountain News announced on Thursday that the newspaper would publish its final edition on Friday. The Tucson Citizen also faces the axe.

Biggest names

Without these titles, Seattle, Denver and Tucson would still be served by at least one newspaper each.

But the demise of the Chronicle would leave San Francisco with no paid-for newspaper (the city's other main newspaper, the Examiner, is given away free).

Even the biggest names in the US newspaper industry are feeling the recession's bite.

“ You take readers and advertisers who were already migrating away from print, and add a steep recession, and you've got serious trouble ”
James Surowiecki
New Yorker
The New York Times is struggling to service debts of some $400m, amid dwindling cash reserves and plunging revenue. Last year it had to mortgage its gleaming new headquarters (built in 2007 with much fanfare) to bolster its cash flow.

The Tribune Company, which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun and many other titles, filed for bankruptcy in December, and although its newspapers remain in publication, the repercussions of the bankruptcy filing are likely to lead to restructuring.

Three other newspaper companies have also filed for bankruptcy in recent months: the Star Tribune Holding Corporation (which owns the Minneapolis Star-Tribune), the Journal Register Company (which owns the New Haven Register and a number of other titles in the North-East), and Philadelphia Newspapers LLC (which owns Philadelphia's two top newspapers, the Inquirer and the Daily News).

Although some companies are doing better than others, and some companies (like Tribune Co) took on more debt than was advisable, the bankruptcies and closures are all attributable to an industry-wide malaise.

And the reasons for that malaise are not hard to figure out.

Free content

Newspapers used to get their income from two sources: their readers (who either paid by subscription or at the newsstand) and advertisers.

As more and more newspapers started making their content available on the internet free of charge, the first source of income dried up, as readers stopped paying for articles that they could get free on the web.

Newspapers hoped to make up for the sales decline with increased advertising revenue, as the market for online adverts exploded.

But the rise of classified advertising websites like craigslist.com cut into newspapers' revenue stream, while the recession has led to a drastic reduction in the amount of advertising companies are willing or able to pay for.

"You take readers and advertisers who were already migrating away from print, and add a steep recession, and you've got serious trouble," writes the New Yorker's James Surowiecki.

Of course, print circulation losses are being partially offset by increases in online readership.

The problem for the newspapers has been finding a way to turn increased readership into increased revenue.

"It's said that for every dollar the newspaper gets in print advertising, that same dollar translates into the equivalent of less than a dime in its online counterpart," says Professor Neil Henry, Dean of the Journalism School at the University of California, Berkeley.

He worries that the widespread cost-cutting and possible closures threaten to devalue journalism - and democracy - in America.

"An important and vital part of democracy is vanishing before our very eyes, whether the public realises it or not," he told me.

Time magazine's Walter Isaacson suggested in a recent article that newspapers and magazines should adopt a system of micropayments.

Readers would pay a couple of cents for an article, a bit more for access to a full day's edition, and a couple of dollars for a monthly pass.

But as Michael Kinsley explains in the New York Times, micropayments are unlikely to generate enough revenue to make up for the advertising shortfall.

"The [New York] Times sells just over a million daily papers. If every one of those million buyers went online and paid $2 a month, that would be $24 million a year. Even with the economic crisis, paper and digital advertising in the Times brought in about $1 billion last year. Circulation brought in $668 million."

"Two bucks per reader per month is not going to save newspapers."

No crisis?

Other commentators have suggested that newspapers could reorganise themselves as not-for-profit trusts, backed by rich patrons, and stop relying on sales or advertising for their revenue.

Professor Henry warns that this could cause problems of its own.

"What happens if journalism must depend for its survival solely on the altruism of rich people, whose own special interests may invariably sway coverage?"

His faculty is experimenting with a new business model.

"We are developing a number of... local news sites in digital format for neglected communities in the Bay Area, in which our students are producing content from our reporting classes for academic credit and as paid interns... There's a long way to go, but it's a start - and it's truly galvanizing our students, faculty, and local communities."

Whatever model the newspapers of the future adopt, the current crisis is likely to put at least some titles out of business, with only the strongest surviving.

Less competition could mean more business for the survivors and the industry is likely to consolidate, with cities and regions being served by fewer newspapers; we could perhaps see a truly national newspaper market develop in the US.

But with US newspapers competing with one another, as well as with international news providers (including the BBC), there would still be plenty of choice for news consumers.

"With even half a dozen papers, the American newspaper industry will be more competitive than it was when there were hundreds," writes Michael Kinsley. "Competition will keep the Baghdad bureaus open and the investigative units stoked with dudgeon."

The "crisis" in the newspaper industry may, therefore, be more of a crisis for the journalists and publishers who are currently facing job losses and bankruptcy.

But if it is merely the quantity, but not the quality, of journalism that declines then - for readers - there may not be a crisis at all.

REACTIONS TO THE EVENTS AT THE CHRONICLE
I see this as an opportunity squandered. Here was the paper atop Silicon Valley that should have seen the changes in our world clearer than any other, that should have anticipated the importance of October, 1994, when the commercial browser was introduced, that could have reinvented itself over a luxurious decade and a half. But now, instead, it's hurry-up-or-die for the Chron.
Jeff Jarvis,

As much as I'd like to think a major city can survive without a newspaper, I'm not super-excited to try the experiment personally. San Francisco has some of the nation's most tech-savvy citizens, but are they really ready to get their local news only from virtual sources? If the Chronicle gets shut down within weeks, as seems to be Hearst's intention, they may have no choice but to find out the hard way.
Jen Phillips,

The trend towards reading news online is better established in the technophiliac Bay Area than elsewhere. It no longer seems so unfathomable that the Chronicle might close. The shame is that not many people might mourn its passing.
Owen Thomas,

Here's one way of looking at this somewhat shocking news: This is Hearst trying to strongarm the union into complying with whatever demands they try to shove down their throats. They are basically saying "concede to layoffs, loss of vacation and severance, or we will shut it down." The question is, how will the union members respond to these bullying tactics? Will individuals hope that their jobs won't be the ones cut, or will they call Hearst's bluff? Another way of looking at it: They're broke as all hell, and they will shut it down. Which seems to be the most likely scenario.
Brock Keeling,

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7913400.stm

Published: 2009/02/27 02:08:10 GMT

What do you think about this from Slashdo?
| AP Considers Making Content Require Payment |
| from the you-see-there-is-this-thing-called-web-2.0 dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday February 23, @13:30 (The Media)|
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/23/1657242 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

TechDirt is reporting that the Associated Press is poised to be the next
in a long line of news organizations to completely bungle their online
distribution methods by [0]making their content require payment. While
this wouldn't happen for a while due to deals with others, like Google,
to distribute AP content for free, even considering this is a massive
step in the wrong direction. "Also, I know we point this out every time
some clueless news exec claims that users need to pay, but it's worth
mentioning again: nowhere do they discuss why people should want to pay.
Nowhere do they explain what extra value they're adding that will make
people pay. Instead, they think that if they put up a paywall, people
will magically pay -- even though the paywall itself is what takes away
much of the value by making it harder for people to do what they want
with the news: to spread it, to comment on it, to participate in the
story. Until newspaper execs figure this out, they're only going to keep
making things worse."

Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/02/23/1657242

Links:
0. http://techdirt.com/articles/20090220/1802393852.shtml

Well I have been reporting and telling you that Journalism is in a crisis but some say there is a bright side and I hope so.
Web not killing journalism, improving it
Paul Raven @ 12-02-2009
We’ve heard plenty of worrying from journalists about how the death of print newspapers will be the death of journalism itself, so here’s a contrary view from within the same camp. Jim Stovall of JPROF suggests that the medium of newspapers is actually part of the problem, and that journalism will be improved once it is no longer chained to the printing press.

He provides a number of reasons for optimism, of which I think this is the most telling:

More reporters. Students in my experience are wildly excited about this new age of journalism. I am honored to be the faculty adviser to the Tennessee Journalist, the student operated news web site of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee. More than 35 people regularly show up at our weekly staff meeting (only the editors are required to come) and the numbers are growing. The number of our majors has grown from 350 to 450 in just one year.

What has caused this, I wonder? The tempting conclusion is that the ease of self-publication has made people less intimidated by the idea of producing writing in public, but maybe it’s also to do with the erosion of the media monoculture - the web has provided a space for dissenting voices and niche interests that newspapers couldn’t support, tied as they are to physical locations.

Whatever the cause, it’s good to see some optimism. Journalism was born out of the desire to learn and communicate, and it looks like that desire has been increased rather than eroded. Who knew? [via TechDirt; image by Annie Mole]

What the future might bring:Cheaper to give away Kindles than print the New York Times
Edward Willett @ 03-02-2009
According to an analysis by Silicon Alley Insider, it actually costs the financially struggling New York Times Company about twice as much money to print and deliver the newspaper over a year as it would cost to send each of its subscribers a brand new Amazon Kindle instead. And an inside source tells them their estimate of the Times’s printing costs is so low it’s “not even in the ballpark.” (Via Instapundit.)

Bottom line: “as a technology for delivering the news, newsprint isn’t just expensive and inefficient; it’s laughably so.”

No, papers can’t–yet–force everyone to read their content on some sort of hand-held device. But in the future, why not? Subscribe, and get a free ebook reader to which stories are uploaded regularly as they’re posted. Bonus: you can use the reader for other kinds of content, too. Which would also drive ebook sales. Win-win.

(And I say this as the former editor of a weekly newspaper, who once swore up and down that nothing would ever replace traditional print…a former newspaper editor, I might add, who now reads his local newspaper’s digital edition exclusively.)

A history of new show:
January 24, 2009
LAST CHANCE
When the News Was New

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
WASHINGTON — The good lady Opinion sits perched in a tree, wearing the weighty towers of the town as her hat, which blinds her eyes. On one of her hands a chameleon sits, doubtless changing its spots to accommodate the surroundings. Held in her other hand is a wand used to shake the tree’s branches, from which leaves fall: leaves of books and papers, which offer not knowledge but libel and foolishness, which “in everie streete, on everie stall you find.”

Such is the cynical vision of the news business put forward by Henry Peacham in 1641 London, as journalism, in its earliest forms, was becoming a major force during some of the most tumultuous decades in England’s history: no wisdom, he finds, just much posturing and gossip.

More than 360 years later, as advance obituaries are being prepared for the very forms of printed journalism born during Peacham’s era, Lady Opinion is on display, along with far more reverential examples of news and opinion, at the Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill in the exhibition “Breaking News: Renaissance Journalism and the Birth of the Newspaper.”

The show, housed in the library’s stunning exhibition hall, will be taken down after Jan. 31, which means that to sample these offerings we are all of us on deadline. The curators — Chris R. Kyle (Syracuse University), Jason Peacey (University College, London) and the library’s own Elizabeth Walsh — have put together a chronicle of chronicles, an account of how information about the wider world in 16th- and 17th-century England, including reports of wonders and horrors, wars and troop movements, murders and merchandise, gradually made its way from private journals or letters reporting on events witnessed, to publicly sold broadsheets and pamphlets.

The show’s effect is understated and must be pieced together slowly, since these documents should be read as well as seen. But the story of how journalism became a public enterprise in Renaissance England is actually the history of how a public itself took shape; how out of a monarchical society in which great poverty and great wealth cohabited, another kind of identity evolved. It was based on slowly increasing literacy and impassioned written argument; it included curiosity about gossip and a taste for exotic tales; and it developed alongside a new commercial world in which written advertising, like the news it accompanied, helped shape taste and expectations.

Look carefully, and it is really the birth of the modern West that we see taking place here: snippets of news and sensation helped define a shared experience of the past and present, as political debates laid the foundations of democratic culture. If the Reformation is often credited with having turned the West toward the Enlightenment, another such force must be the growing taste for news and its multiple retellings. While other cultures were arguing over the interpretations of sacred texts, England’s was arguing over the nature of government in print. We are the beneficiaries.

The exhibition itself could have been much more clear in its chronological and thematic organization, particularly because the knotty politics of 17th-century England — centering on its civil wars — are treated as if they were far more familiar than is the case, but these documents repay the patience of careful reading.

When Sir Walter Raleigh was convicted of treason and executed in 1618, his eloquent speech on the scaffold was reported not by newspapers — which had not yet evolved — but in private written accounts. The real revolution came in the 1620s under the influence of “corantos” imported from Amsterdam, which provided the main news of the week. The corantos (which are still recalled in the names of newspapers, like The Hartford Courant) also inspired opposition from the government over their reports of troop movements during the Thirty Years’ War, leading to censorship and even imprisonment.

But the demand for news — and opinion — increased. Press censorship collapsed with the beginning of the civil wars of the 1640s, but the debates of this era were so intense and so much a part of public consciousness that news publications became instruments in the political battles between monarchists and parliamentarians. Newspapers were counterfeited, imitated, mocked and attacked. Parliament tried to reimpose censorship in 1643, and the poet John Milton wrote his famous speech demanding “Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing.” But newspapers, complained Sir Roger L’Estrange, an ardent monarchist, make “the multitude too familiar with the actions and counsels of their superiors.” He created The Observator, shown at the Folger — the “pre-eminent Tory journal of its day.”

Coffeehouses also proliferated in which newspapers were read and where, as one 1683 critic put it, “false and seditious news is invented and spread.” The Folger has a modern working reproduction of a Renaissance printing press, which in a kind of mirage, out of the corner of the eye (at least an eye surrounded by these contentious publications), seems a distant relative of the guillotine.

The ultimate impact of all this, though, did not depend on a particular political position. The journalistic enterprise itself led to an expanded sense of the importance of individual opinion and even provided glimpses of something like public opinion. The result was a revolution in the ways citizens thought about themselves and their government.

Mixed in with political argument were other morality tales. There were reports of the skies raining blood in Rome, or, in London, “A True Relation of a most desperate Murder” from 1617. There were accounts of beheadings, bizarre births and conjoined twins (“a Prodigious Monster”).

Advertising evolved alongside such narrative spectacles and urgent political arguments. A 1660 notice heralds “Sir Kenelm Digbies sympatheticall Powder, prepared by Promethian fire, curing all green wounds.”

By the beginning of the 18th century the modern press was emerging. The first issue of the first newspaper published in the New World is here: Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick (Sept. 25, 1690). This was also the last issue; it was closed down by the Governor and Council of Massachusetts for its scandalous tales. The first issue of The Boston News-letter from 1704 is here too, but it must have been more sober: it became the first continuously published newspaper in America.

It is strange to think that the genetic code of modern journalistic culture was laid down four centuries ago in England, mixing hype and high seriousness, incorporating battles over press freedoms, suffused with a spirit of competition and a need for marketing. The newspaper, we also see, evolved as the creator and mirror of its public. Political modernity is almost unimaginable without that relationship.

In our own era this deeply inscribed code can lead to a slightly exaggerated pride and self-importance. That is the approach of the nearby Newseum, devoted to celebrating the press and its importance to democracy. But at this exhibition we see something else.

One aspect of the historic importance of the newspaper arises not from its idea of liberty, or from its presumption to tell truth to power, or from publishing without fear or favor. Its importance derives not out of itself alone, but out of its relationship to an evolving public. Whether published in pixels or ink, it acts at once as that public’s guide and its follower, its critic and its servant, its creator and its voice. That, at any rate, is what it says on the latest leaf that Lady Opinion has knocked out of the tree into this scrivener’s hands.

“Breaking News: Renaissance Journalism and the Birth of the Newspaper” continues through Jan. 31 at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington; (202) 544-7077, folger.edu.


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Student video show is coming up on Friday the 16th.The time is 6PM, Friday 16th, Shibuya campus, and the location is Building 11, room 217# Hope to see you there

Well here is a new twist on the downfall of Journalism via Slashdot
| Data Mining Rescues Investigative Journalism |
| from the radical-transparency dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday January 04, @16:49 (The Media) |
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/04/2026205 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

[0]John Mecklin sends in word of initiatives through which the digital
revolution that has been undermining in-depth reportage may be ready to
give something back, through a new academic and professional discipline
known as "[1]computational journalism." "James Hamilton, director of the
DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy at Duke University, is in
the process of filling an endowed chair with a professor who will develop
sophisticated computing tools that enhance the capabilities — and,
perhaps more important in this economic climate, the efficiency — of
journalists and other citizens who are trying to hold public officials
and institutions accountable. The goal: Computer algorithms that can sort
through the huge amounts of databased information available on the
Internet, providing public-interest reporters with sets of potential
story leads they otherwise might never have found. Or, in short, data
mining in the public interest."

Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/01/04/2026205

Links:
0. mailto:john.mecklin@miller-mccune.com
1. http://www.miller-mccune.com/article/deep-throat-meets-data-mining

Just a reminder to keep Friday, Jan. 16th.open as that is the evening for the Aoyama video acadamy award for a student videos.

and via slashdot:

| Print News Fading, Still Source of Much News |
| from the fact-checking-the-next-media-casualty dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday December 26, @10:22 (The Media)|
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/26/1341218 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

CNet's Dan Farber took a look, not only at the popular news of how print
media is dying a slow death, but also what contribution to the news print
journalists are still making. According to research quoted, while the
physical publications are quickly becoming a thing of the past much of
the news that makes its way into circulation via blogs and other means
still [0]originates from the hard work of those print journalists. (We
[1]discussed a similar perspective on the news a week back.) "While the
Internet is growing as the place where people go for news, the revenue
simply isn't catching up fast enough. The less obvious part of the
Internet overtaking newspapers as the main source for national and
international news is that much of the seed content--the original
reporting that breaks national and international news and is subsequently
refactored by legions of bloggers--comes from the reporters and editors
working at the financially strapped newspapers and national and local
television outlets. [...] As the financial pressures mount--the outlook
for 2009 is dismal--and the cost cutting continues, we can only hope that
the original news reporting by top-flight journalists is not a major
casualty."

Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/12/26/1341218

Links:
0. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-10128881-80.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
1. http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/20/2124218&tid=149

Interesting article on the future of Newspapers in the New Yorker:
THE FINANCIAL PAGE
NEWS YOU CAN LOSE
by James Surowiecki
DECEMBER 22, 2008
TEXT SIZE:
SMALL TEXT
MEDIUM TEXT
LARGE TEXT
PRINT E-MAIL FEEDS

RELATED LINKS
The Balance Sheet, James Surowiecki’s blog.
KEYWORDS
Newspapers; Advertising; Internet; Technology; Business; Economic Crisis; Recession
hen the Tribune Company announced that it was filing for bankruptcy, last Monday, Sam Zell, the man who bought the company a year ago, for $8.2 billion, said that its problems were the result of a “perfect storm.” You take readers and advertisers who were already migrating away from print, and add a steep recession, and you’ve got serious trouble. What Zell failed to mention was that his acquisition of the company had buried it beneath such a heavy pile of debt that any storm at all would likely have sunk it. But although Zell was making excuses for his own mismanagement, the perfect storm is real enough, and it is threatening to destroy newspapers as we know them. Layoffs and buyouts have become routine. The Miami Herald and the San Diego Union-Tribune are reportedly on the selling block, while lawmakers in Connecticut are trying to keep two newspapers there afloat. Even the New York Times Company has slashed its dividend and announced that it would borrow against its headquarters to avoid cash-flow problems.
There’s no mystery as to the source of all the trouble: advertising revenue has dried up. In the third quarter alone, it dropped eighteen per cent, or almost two billion dollars, from last year. For most of the past decade, newspaper companies had profit margins that were the envy of other industries. This year, they have been happy just to stay in the black. Many traditional advertisers, like big department stores, are struggling, and the bursting of the housing bubble has devastated real-estate advertising. Even online ads, which were supposed to rescue the business, have declined lately, and they are, in any case, nowhere near as lucrative as their print counterparts. Papers’ attempts to deal with the new environment by cutting costs haven’t helped: trimming staff and reducing coverage make newspapers less appealing to readers and advertisers. It may be no coincidence that papers that have avoided the steepest cutbacks, like the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, have done a better job of holding onto readers.
Newspaper readership has been slowly dropping for decades—as a percentage of the population, newspapers have about half as many subscribers as they did four decades ago—but the Internet helped turn that slow puncture into a blowout. Papers now seem to be the equivalent of the railroads at the start of the twentieth century—a once-great business eclipsed by a new technology. In a famous 1960 article called “Marketing Myopia,” Theodore Levitt held up the railroads as a quintessential example of companies’ inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Levitt argued that a focus on products rather than on customers led the companies to misunderstand their core business. Had the bosses realized that they were in the transportation business, rather than the railroad business, they could have moved into trucking and air transport, rather than letting other companies dominate. By extension, many argue that if newspapers had understood they were in the information business, rather than the print business, they would have adapted more quickly and more successfully to the Net.

FROM THE ISSUECARTOON BANKE-MAIL THIS
There’s some truth to this. Local papers could have been more aggressive in leveraging their brand names to dominate the market for online classifieds, instead of letting Craigslist usurp that market. And while the flood of online information has made the job of aggregation and filtering tremendously valuable, none of the important aggregation sites, to say nothing of Google News, are run by a paper. Even now, papers often display a “not invented here” mentality, treating their sites as walled gardens, devoid of links to other news outlets. From a print perspective, that’s understandable: why would you advertise good work that’s being done elsewhere? But it’s an approach that makes no sense on the Web.
These mistakes have been undeniably costly, but they’re not the whole story. The peculiar fact about the current crisis is that even as big papers have become less profitable they’ve arguably become more popular. The blogosphere, much of which piggybacks on traditional journalism’s content, has magnified the reach of newspapers, and although papers now face far more scrutiny, this is a kind of backhanded compliment to their continued relevance. Usually, when an industry runs into the kind of trouble that Levitt was talking about, it’s because people are abandoning its products. But people don’t use the Times less than they did a decade ago. They use it more. The difference is that today they don’t have to pay for it. The real problem for newspapers, in other words, isn’t the Internet; it’s us. We want access to everything, we want it now, and we want it for free. That’s a consumer’s dream, but eventually it’s going to collide with reality: if newspapers’ profits vanish, so will their product.
Does that mean newspapers are doomed? Not necessarily. There are many possible futures one can imagine for them, from becoming foundation-run nonprofits to relying on reader donations to that old standby the deep-pocketed patron. It’s even possible that a few papers will be able to earn enough money online to make the traditional ad-supported strategy work. But it would not be shocking if, sometime soon, there were big American cities that had no local newspaper; more important, we’re almost sure to see a sharp decline in the volume and variety of content that newspapers collectively produce. For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime—intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on—and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can’t last. Soon enough, we’re going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is. ♦
ILLUSTRATION: CHRISTOPH NIEMANN

More bad news for American newspapers:
Washington News Bureaus Are Shrinking
By RICHARD PREZ-PEA
As newspapers cut costs, coverage of events in the nation's
capital suffers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/business/media/18bureaus.html?th&emc=th

Check it out:http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/08/hp-and-asu-demo-bendable-unbreakable-electronic-displays/
You now have outstanding assignments: 'A Radio Report sent to me as a .wav attachment in an e-mail, a watch sports story, a story about what will disappear through new tech. over the next few years, and finally a report on your expierience at the FIFA events in Japan. The first three are late. Good luck and work hard.

From Tech Innovation

My first job as a journalist was at Supermarket News, the leading publication for grocery executives. I worked out of a bureau in San Francisco that included several other journalists who reported on the fledgling computer industry. While I was attending the opening of Safeway's first gourmet supermarket, my colleagues were watching Steve Jobs unveil the first Macintosh. It didn't take me long to figure out which was the more exciting and important industry to report on. So when I got the opportunity to switch publications, I jumped.

Over the next two decades I covered Silicon Valley—first for trade publications, and later for Forbes, Fortune, and Business 2.0. There were two things I especially liked about my job. I met some of the most amazing people on the planet, and I got to watch digital technology creep into every aspect of our lives—PCs, cell phones, music, movies, cars, and more.

For the last three years I have been covering the field of social innovation as managing editor of Stanford Social Innovation Review, and I'm happy to see that digital technology is starting to have a bigger impact in the social sector. William Brindley, the CEO of NetHope and the subject of our most recent interview is one of the reasons that phenomenon has occurred.

Brindley leads a group of techies from the world's largest humanitarian NGOs who are finding creative ways to use technology to improve the way that humanitarian aid is delivered. The group has helped create suitcase-size devices powered by solar cells that provide internet and phone service anywhere in the world, and is developing easy-to-use hand-held devices for field workers charged with monitoring agricultural production in Africa. Nonprofits still trail for-profits in their use of technology, but with the help of people such as Brindley they are closing the gap.

Citizen Journalists Provide Glimpses Into Attacks
By BRIAN STELTER and NOAM COHEN
The attacks in India served as another case study in how
technology is transforming people into potential reporters,
adding a new dimension to the news media.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/world/asia/30twitter.html?th&emc=th

Well guys here it is again and am still waiting for the pod casts ( wav. file attachment) news report:
Investigative journalism to make an online come-back?
Paul Raven @ 22-11-2008
Following on from Tom M’s mention of Spot.us, the New York Times has an article on the organisations that may well end up replacing it. Local news websites like VoiceOfSanDiego.org are looking to beat both the current newspaper and web news models by returning to solid original journalism on the matters that matter:

“Voice is doing really significant work, driving the agenda on redevelopment and some other areas, putting local politicians and businesses on the hot seat,” said Dean Nelson, director of the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. “I have them come into my classes, and I introduce them as, ‘This is the future of journalism.’ ”

The problem being that, currently, online advertising doesn’t provide enough income to run a proper newsroom, even with the lower overheads of the straight-to-web model. But will that always be the case? I’d be a lot more tolerant of internet advertising if I felt I was getting decent content as a result of it.

Got the following from Futurismic.com a very good source.
Tomorrow’s news: Journalism’s future will look like … ?
Tom Marcinko @ 18-11-2008
As Ed Wood said, future events such as these will concern you in the future. With newspapers shriveling up on our breakfast tables, and TV spewing out tabloid and opinion, what’s going to happen to investigative journalism? Reporter-maven DigiDave says:

What we need right now is 10,000 journalism startups. Of these 9,000 will fail, 1,000 will find ways to sustain themselves for a brief period of time, 98 will find mediocre success and financial security and two will come out as new media equivalents to the New York Times…. I don’t know what that organization will look like or who it will be - but that’s what we need and we face some serious challenges along the way.

Dave’s behind Spot.us, a venture in “community-funded reporting.” People submit tips and fund pitches, and the resulting stories can be used by anyone under Creative Commons. About 10 projects are on the boards. A pitch on the after-effects of a year-ago oil spill on San Francisco Bay’s beaches has raised $500 and needs $300 more. Sounds like slow going, but it beats whining about the good old days.

[Story tip: Journerdism]


Related posts

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Secret Motel Art (0)
Queen Rania of Jordan opens communication with the West… via Youtube (0)
Mixed messages: Wired in two minds over Estonian “cyberwar” story (2)

Here is a good talking point for next class:
Newspapers Are Dead; Long Live Newspapers
Source: American Journalism Review, November/December 2008

"Newspapers are in trouble for reasons that have almost nothing to do with newspaper journalism," writes Paul Farhi. "Even a paper stocked with the world's finest editorial minds wouldn't have a fighting chance against the economic and technological forces arrayed against the business." Farhi says newspapers "remain remarkably popular" but suffer from "the flight of classified advertisers, the deterioration of retail advertising and the indebtedness of newspaper owners." The Internet, he maintains, has expanded newspaper readership while sapping "newspapers' economic lifeblood. The most serious erosion has occurred in classified advertising, which once made up more than 40 percent of a newspaper's revenues and more than half its profits. ... Craigslist and eBay and dozens of other low-cost and no-cost classified sites began gobbling newspapers' market share a few years ago. What they didn't wipe out, the tanking economy did." In the same issue of American Journalism Review, journalism professor Philip Meyer writes that economic pressure will transform today's general-audience newspapers into "The Elite Newspaper of the Future," offering "analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting" to "the educated, opinion-leading, news-junkie core of the audience" who "will insist on it as a defense against 'persuasive communication,' the euphemism for advertising, public relations and spin that exploits the confusion of information overload."

Assignment for this week is a Pod cast. Which is a sound file recording in .wav format which you send to me by Sat. evening 8 p.m. as an e-mail attachment. Looking forward to listening to your radio news broadcast.

From CBC:
Journalists easily manipulated, says veteran U.S. newsman
Seymour Hersh says bloggers now more effective than mainstream media

Seymour Hersh will kick off the Shaw Festival's fall lecture series on Sunday in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. (Brad Barket/Getty Images)
Groundbreaking U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh contends that journalists have allowed themselves to be manipulated in their coverage of U.S. politics in recent years.

"My profession failed us when it came to understanding what George Bush and Dick Cheney were doing in Iraq," Hersh said Thursday on CBC cultural affairs show Q from CBC's Washington, D.C., studio.

"Generally, we didn't do our job, which was to be skeptical and give them the greatest scrutiny we could, to hold them to the highest possible standards. We didn't do that. We went along with them and became part of the team," said Hersh, who will kick off the Shaw Festival's fall lecture series at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., on Sunday.

And journalists are still being manipulated, he added. "We have a man in office [in the U.S.] who's demonstrated no capacity to get anything done with any success, and we've just given him $700 billion U.S. to ease the world's credit crunch. Of course, we've found out over the past weekend that they're only just figuring out what to do with this money."

It's not a new situation, he said, giving examples from his career as a reporter in the New York Times' Washington bureau and as Washington correspondent for the Associated Press.

"When you have editors who want stories and are willing to take risks, you have a great newspaper," he said. "But most of the people who get promoted [to top editors] fit the corporate model, are malleable and predictable … less interested in stories and more interested in not making waves."

Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin have been telling American voters to ignore what they call the liberal media.

Hersh pointed to a revolution in journalism that's been sparked by the Internet. Bloggers, he noted, have replaced the mainstream news media as cutting-edge news gatherers.

The public began learning about Sarah Palin, he said, "when bloggers in Alaska started flooding the Internet with accounts of some of her doings and the mainstream press picked it up. We have a new phenomenon at just the right time .… We don't know what to make of it … but I assure you, it is the future in terms of journalism."

He also noted that the public's appetite for celebrity gossip has resulted in the blurring lines between news and entertainment. "I don't care what they [reporters] think," he said. "I want to know what they know."

But Hersh, whose coverage of the My Lai massacre and coverup helped end the Vietnam War, believes in the power a single piece of writing can wield.

He also believes it's the duty of journalists to be unbiased in their reporting, and this objectivity shouldn't undermine reporting the truth.

"By 1967, I was convinced that the only objective thing to say about the [Vietnam] war was that it was a disaster," he said. It was corrupting America, it was murdering people."

Just a reminder that your assignment this week is to listen to two or three of the New York Times podcasts and perhaps a couple of the NPR ones. Also take a look at this rather long opinion article:
Don’t let the facts spoil a good story
Ben Goldacre
The Guardian,
Saturday September 13 2008
Here is a cautionary tale for anyone working in research. “Captain Cook and Lord Nelson seem unlikely figureheads in the fight against climate change alarmists,” said the Sun. “Lord Nelson and Captain Cook’s ship logs question climate change theories,” announced the Telegraph. Oh that’s handy. So perhaps we can just keep on burning oil regardless then? “The ships’ logs of great maritime figures such as Lord Nelson and Captain Cook have cast new light on climate change by suggesting that global warming may not be an entirely man-made phenomenon.”
I spoke to Dennis Wheeler, a geographer at Sunderland University and the man whose research triggered this coverage. Is he a leading figure in “the fight against climate change alarmists”?
No. “But now I’ve had emails from cranks around the world thinking I’m some kind of anti-global warming conspiracy theorist and a friend to them. I’m most certainly not. The newspapers grossly and crassly misrepresented everything we are doing.”
In fact, Wheeler had spoken only to the Sunday Times, which covered his work accurately. The rest of the newspapers copied the quotes, and the information, but rather grandly decided to change the purpose and the outcome of his research. “It was odd reading articles which were written as if a reporter had spoken to me - I wasn’t fully aware of the extent to which the media copy each other’s newspapers - but worse was the brazen way they distorted our work. Not a single one of the journalists from any other newspaper contacted us to see if their take on the story was correct.”
In fact, the journalists concocted all kinds of connections entirely for themselves. “Ships’ logs, and thousands more like them, have revealed that recent global warming is not so unusual after all.” Is that true? “No. As I pointed out to the Sunday Times, the ships’ log books I work with only give us information about wind force and wind direction, they basically do not give us information on temperatures, and if they do it’s very scant and unreliable. We’ve simply never claimed indirectly or directly to have any direct evidence on changing temperatures.”
More from the Telegraph: “The records also suggest that Europe saw a spell of rapid warming, similar to that experienced today, during the 1730s that must have been caused naturally.”
Wheeler? “Your heart just sinks. Well, the central England temperature series, for example, have shown us that the 1720s and 1730s are a period of fairly rapid warming, but that’s in recovery from the Little Ice Age, and we’d like to know more about that, but this has been known about since 1974. What we are trying to do is to shed a fresh light - a bit of background - on these long-known changes in temperature.
“Somewhere at the end they do quote me, but by then the headlines have done their job, and the message is lost in the willingness of so many people to believe global warming is not a major issue. And by the end it was unclear what my quote meant anyway, in its new context.”
How did the papers quote Wheeler? Thus: “Global warming is a reality, but our data shows climate science is complex. It is wrong to take particular events and link them to carbon dioxide emissions.” I could see how that quote might get misunderstood.
“Only out of context. I wasn’t talking about the scientific community, I wasn’t talking about climate change theory being wrong, I was talking about the media and others getting things wrong. Any new weather event is currently explained away as yet another facet of global warming, but there has always been freak weather. Like most people, I find it hugely irritating when people draw too much from single events.”
If you’re an academic and your work has been “grossly and crassly misrepresented” by the newspapers, then I’m always very pleased to hear from you.

Investigative journalism 2.0
Tom James @ 02-09-2008
Self-described new media whore Paul Carr has an interesting take on the future of investigative journalism and publishing - the problem:

Talk to a random sample of journalists and they’ll tell you the same thing - no one commissions investigative journalism any more.

Talk to any editor and they’ll tell you why; it costs a fortune to produce and rarely adds anything in terms of circulation or bottom line.

In an era of plummeting circulation and competition from free online news sources, as far as a cost-benefits analysis of newspaper investigations goes, it’s all cost and no benefit.

Basically another example of the problem of monetizing content that costs a lot to produce but little to reproduce. After dismissing one Web 2.0 business that attempts to address the problems of investigative journalism called Spot Us Mr Carr proffers his own solution:

I’d kill it. Take it out to the shed and put a bullet through its brain. Its been sick since the mid-80s and watching it try to struggle for twenty more years is embarrassing at best and cruel at worst.

…

Walk in to any bookshop and go to the politics, culture, biography or current affairs section. Now tell me investigative reporting is dead.

…

Of course these are the big stories - what of the smaller, more immediate ones? TV news. It’s there first, it has money and access and it has a 24 hour cycle to fill, meaning that every lead gets followed and reported no matter how apparently inconsequential.

…

Online news sources have their part to play too, although, frankly, they can be divided into two camps - brand extension for established media companies or total horseshit. Blogs have a role - but it’s confined to fact checking and uninformed gadflyery.

This gadfly likes Carr’s idea of idea of a cheap, subscription book-service, slightly more in-depth than a typical article in The Economist but less heavy than (for example) the 464 pages of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and you would also get a tighter, more focused, and original piece of reporting:

I’d approach an established publishing house with a business plan - a new imprint that publishes short (40,000 words maybe), low cover price (£4.99 tops) books, each written by a recognised investigative reporter and each dealing with a single investigative subject.

Also recommended is Paul Carr’s recently published book Bringing Nothing to the Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore. It combines hilarious gonzo journalism with genuine insight from Paul Carr’s experience as a wannabe Web 2.0 entrepreneur.

Here's something I'd like you to look at and listen to too: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/multimedia/podcasts.html
As you can see this is an internet page with a list or directory of New York Times podcasts. I'd like you to listen to at least four different podcasts. Try and pick a variety of different kinds so you will get a better idea of how they are done. Making your own podcast as an assignment for the class will be something that we will be doing this semester.

Here's more from the Center of Media and Democracy Newsletter on fake news:
Yet Another Kind of Fake News
Source: MinnPost.com, August 18, 2008

As more newspapers and other media outlets cut staff, public relations and advertising make gains. The Minnesota-based firm ARAnet provides "free print and Web content. ... More than 65 of the nation's top 100 newspapers, including the Star Tribune, use" ARAnet content, which "carries client messages." ARAnet president Scott Severson says his firm provides "high-quality consumer content" that "just happen[s] to be underwritten by our clients." ARAnet clients pay $4,500 for content creation, tracking and reporting; media outlets use it for free. One ARAnet article "offered to auto sections" was sponsored by Lexus. Severson explains, "The article was about safety systems and mentioned Lexus. The best advertising doesn't look like advertising." It also doesn't carry clear disclosure. ARAnet's "online articles typically are identified as sponsored content," but its "print articles merely carry an 'ARA' designation, similar to the 'AP' identifier that runs with Associated Press articles." Other ARAnet clients include Home Depot, Microsoft, Best Buy and UPS.

Hi group, I hope you all enjoyed the Ashai Newspaper tour. Could those of you who took digital pictures send me copies as an e-mail attachment? Thanks. See you next Mon. when your video project is due. Clark

This is long but you should read it, so here from the New York Times:

July 2, 2008, 7:14 pm
Save the Press
On the lobby wall of the newspaper where I got my first reporting job are the Thomas Jefferson words that journalists like to trot out as Independence Day nears:

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Of course, Jefferson also said the only reliable truths in newspapers were the advertisements, and that he was happiest when not reading the papers.

But as to his iconic quote, it’s no secret that we’re trending toward the former. And anyone who cheers the collapse of the newspaper industry should consider why Jefferson put aside his distaste for the vitriol and nonsense of the press for the larger principle of healthy democracies needing informed citizens.

Last week, almost 1,000 jobs were eliminated in the American newspaper industry, perhaps the bloodiest week yet of a year where many papers are fighting for their lives. You read about the great names — the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe, the San Jose Mercury News — as if reading the obituary page. Rich cities like San Francisco can no longer support a profitable daily paper.

Columnists, reporters, editors, cartoonists and photographers — including some colleagues here at The Times — who brought to life the daily narrative of a city or region have been swept aside. What started as layoffs and buyouts is edging toward closures and bankruptcies.

And here’s the great paradox: all of this bad news is coming at a time when the audience and reach of many newspapers has never been greater. The Internet may kill the daily newspaper as we know it, but it’s allowed some papers to increase their readership by tenfold.

Those who revel in the life-threatening trauma that newspapers are going through, saying they brought it upon themselves by being too liberal, too sensationalistic, too banal — choose your insult — miss the point. People are not deserting these complex and contradictory summaries of our collective existence. Not by any stretch.

Measured purely by number of readers in all formats, many newspapers have never been more successful.

Newspaper Web sites attracted more than 66 million unique visitors in the first quarter of 2008 — a record, and a 12 percent increase over a year ago, according to a Nielsen Online analysis. Forty percent of all Internet users visit a newspaper site. A visitor, it should be noted, is different from a reader, but it’s the measurement of choice.

The Web is the future. And yet, because online advertising accounts for only about 10 percent of total ad revenue, newspapers are hemorrhaging money. In its present form, and even in best-case projections, the Web format will never generate enough money to keep viable reporting staffs afloat at some of the nation’s biggest papers.

That’s the business model crisis, an old story by now, the millstones of capitalism crushing an outdated format. Something new will emerge, a print and Web model.

In the meantime, print reporters strap on the old Webcam, charge up their podcast recorder, grab their notebook and dutifully try to cover a story that now needs to be presented in three formats, or more.

What’s the alternative — the National Public Radio model? It’s possible that some civic-minded nonprofits will end up owning one or two of the nation’s great papers, and operating them as trusts, hands off.

But that’s a limited solution, fraught with problems of control and flexibility, and it won’t keep reporters at city hall in Sioux Falls or the statehouse in Santa Fe.

Another response is goodbye, and so what. Look at the auto industry numbers from this week, with General Motors slouching toward bankruptcy.

Besides, there’s plenty of gossip, political spin and original insight on sites like the Drudge Report or The Huffington Post — even though they are built on the backs of the wire services and other factories of honest fact-gathering. One day soon these Web info-slingers will find that you can’t produce journalism without journalists, and a search engine is no replacement for a curious reporter.

And just how much do most contributors at the The Huffington Post make? Nothing! “Not our financial model,” as the co-founder, Ken Lerer famously said. From low pay to no pay — the New Journalism at a place that calls itself an Internet newspaper.

Yes, the Brentwood bold-face types who grace HuffPo’s home page can afford to work for free, but it’s un-American, to say the least.

Long ago, I was a member of the steelworkers union, and also a longshoreman. If any of those guys on the docks heard that I was now part of a profession that asked people to labor for nothing, they’d laugh in their lunch buckets — then probably shut The Huffington Post down. Doesn’t the “progressive” agenda, much touted on their pages, include a living wage?

We could be left with a national snark brigade, sniping at the remaining dailies in their pajamas, never rubbing shoulders with a cop, a defense attorney or a distressed family in a Red Cross shelter after a flood.

My lament this Fourth of July is to ask readers to see newspapers as not just another casualty in the churn of business. Sure, reporters say stupid things and write idiotic stories. Everyone stumbles. But on its best days, a newspaper is a marvel of style and wit, of small-type discoveries and large-type overstatements, a diary of our deeds.

We may still prove Jefferson’s preference wrong: perhaps a nation can function without newspapers. But it would be a confederacy of dunces.

Here is a very good statement by web anthropologist Howard Rheingold .quoted from Futurismic, on the function of Journalism:
A smart mob is not necessarily a wise mob.

The technology itself does not guarantee peace or democracy. It really requires a literacy. It requires an informed citizenry. Journalism plays a role in that. Journalism brings to the people news they need to know about the workings of the State. And it helps bring public opinion to the policy makers to know that they cannot make policy that goes against the majority of opinions of the citizens.

Just to let you know that the Asahi Shimbun tour has been set for July 7th Mon. at 11 a.m. This tour is worth 50 points for your course work and can change your final mark a lot so please make every effort to attend. I will give you exemption papers so that you can be excused from any classes that you have at that time. The tour will last for about one hour.

Training helps bloggers hone professionalism
By CARYN ROUSSEAU
Associated Press Writer

Miami real estate agent Lucas Lechuga began blogging to share his knowledge of the local market. He didn't bargain for a $25 million defamation lawsuit when he wrote that a Miami developer had gone bankrupt decades ago.
In Lake Geneva, Wis., commodities trader Gary Millitte registered the Internet domain name LakeGenevaNews.com eight years ago, but is so worried about the legal boundaries of writing online that he still hasn't started the ultra-local news site.
Non-journalists entering the world of blogs, online feedback forums, online videos and news Web sites provide information that newspapers and other media can't or don't. But many are now turning to professional journalists for help with dilemmas they're facing: When is something libelous? What's the difference between opinion and news? And how do you find public documents?
About a dozen would-be reporters navigated the basics of journalism at a recent training offered by the Society of Professional Journalists in Chicago. The group plans similar seminars this month in Greensboro, N.C., and Los Angeles.
Lechuga, who didn't attend the training, said it would have been a good idea. Having jumped into the world of online publishing with a finance degree, he said the claims against him - which are still pending - arose from a question of semantics, and he would have chose his words differently if he had a second chance.
"It would definitely have been something that would be worthwhile and I'd (have) been able to prevent this," said Lechuga.
Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., which supports working journalists, praised the effort to offer training to so-called citizen journalists.
"I think that what we're moving toward is some king of positioning between amateur and professional," Clark said.
Amateurs have long contributed to professional news reports, including the film of John F. Kennedy's assassination and photos from the Virginia Tech massacre last year, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004, Clark said.
Now, many distribute their content on their own, and some have gotten into trouble, said Clint Brewer, the national president of SPJ.
Geoff Dougherty, editor of the Web site ChiTownDailyNews.org and a presenter at the SPJ program, is trying to prevent that by offering his reporters online training.
With a $340,000 Knight News Challenge, he's creating a team of 77 to report on the smallest of meetings in every city neighborhood - gatherings that mainstream news organizations don't cover.
"I see us in five years as the go-to source for Chicago news," said Dougherty. "It's a big goal."
Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, said more than 100 judgments valued at $17 million have been handed down against bloggers over the last three years - about 60 percent for defamation, 25 percent for copyright infringement and 10 percent involving privacy.
"It's the tip of the iceberg," Cox said. "Bloggers are being asked to write checks. The threats against bloggers are very real. The costs are very real."
Other groups offer help, including NowPublic.com - a site that gathers photos, video and news tips from the public and distributes them to news organizations, including The Associated Press. NowPublic, funded with venture capital, offers resources for contributors and helps them learn to police themselves, said co-founder Michael Tippett.
"A lot of our members are aspiring journalists," Tippett said. "They'll get half of it right. We'll push them to getting all of it right."
MJ Tam, who has blogged about motherhood for eight years and attended the Chicago workshop, said she worried about how far she could go in rating baby products.
"I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing," said Tam. "How far can I take criticism? What's considered libel? I need those basics."
---

Check this web site out. We will talk about it next class:http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=0094

Sorry about not having this story up last week:
Search For RMS Titanic Was a Cover Story |
| from the just-like-in-the-spy-who-loved-me dept. |
| posted by timothy on Tuesday June 03, @12:33 (The Military) |
| http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/03/1621249 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

wiredog writes "According to National Geographic, Robert Ballard's
[0]search for the RMS Titanic in 1985 was a cover operation for the real
search: They were looking for the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion, two US
nuclear submarines that sank during the Cold War." [1]ABC News also has a
story on this two-fer undersea search.

Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/06/03/1621249

Links:
0. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080602-titanic-secret.html
1. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4978391&page=1

Here is another paper with a short and a long quote in text:


Tomoko Asakawa
Mr.Richardson
WritingⅢ
June 10, 2008
671words
Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte

Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte both typify English literature. They deal with the same topic, which is love. We can especially see their view toward love and the society they lived in by reading their books. Jane Austen’s masterpieces are Pride and Prejudice and Ema, and Charlotte Bronte’s is Jane Eyre. We can see how different those works are, though both authors are from England, and are almost contemporary with each other, and what is more, both fathers were a priest.
The first comparison between Bronte and Austen is about their different views of the ideal woman. Bronte doesn’t make a thing of looks and elegance peculiar to woman. In her novel, Jane Eyre, about the beauty, the heroine says “I should have said that beauty doesn’t matter, or something like that.” (P#32) She thinks the most important thing for woman is the growth of their spirit. According to English literature Institute, the reason why Bronte writes at the length about the heroine’s childhood is because she emphasis the heroin’s growth as part of an educational novel. On the other hands, Austen makes a thing of their looks, elegance and in addition calmness. She seems to think that the ideal of woman must be beautiful and intellectual. In her novels, all of the heroines are beautiful and intellectual, though all of them have different character.
The second comparison between Bronte and Austen is their difference of view toward love. Bronte seems to have more passionate love than Austen, and wants romance. In Jane Eyre, the heroin named Jane meets the hero in an incredible situation. When she is on the way going back to her master’s estate, she encounters an accident and happens to meet the hero. By contrast, Austen regards love as more common and realistic than Bronte. Almost all the heroines meet the hero at a party or have an introduction from acquaintances. She seems to be more concerned about success resulting in the marriage rather than a romance, because in her novels when giving a description of the hero, she always adds his income and status.
The third comparison between Bronte and Austen is about the difference of their style. Bronte describes characters and also landscapes vividly. Her ability of description is celebrated. Many specialists on English literature say her novels are like pictures. On the other hand, though we can also see particular description of characters in Austen’s novels, it is more decent and minute than vivid and passionate. Bronte in referring to Austen states that she has a wise sense and approach to reality. However, she does not have a feeling. Austen’s writings are full of elegance.
The final comparison between Bronte and Austen is a look at the degree of concerns for feminism. Bronte is known as a feminist. According to Jane Eyre, the heroine says,
Do you think I am a machine, without feelings? Do you think, because I’m small and poor and plain, that I have no soul and
no heart? Well, you are wrong! I have as much soul and heart as you. We are equal in the sight of god. (P#59)
She thinks that woman who has a wonderful ability should be given an equal opportunity as well as a man and also insists on an improvement of statue of woman. In this respect, Austen seems, in contrast, to feel not much interest in it. Though she seems to worry about the life of women, and regard it as social problem, but in her case it doesn’t connect with women’s liberty.
Bronte and Austen, both are great novelists. However they have different opinions, both have works which have made a deep impression on their readers. Both have many highlights, and teach us important things. Even if the period that those books were written is now considered old, there still remains the powerful basis of people’s behaviors, for example sadness, happiness, anger and love are universal and eternal, so the books will continue to be enjoyed and read.
Work cited
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Kazuhiko, Ousima. Jane Austen. Tokyo:Tyoushinsya, 1997.
English literature Institute. English Literature. Tokyo: Arakawa Express, 1997.

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New: Penguin, 1997.

Your assignment for this week is a hot news story. Don't just copy from a newspaper source. Hot news is a fire, bank robbery, murder etc. Dig up your own info. If that is to difficult go out and walk around and use your news nose to find an interesting story about anything you want. Remember, look around and ask your self what is that? Why is that? See you next week. Story is due by 8 o'clock p.m. Sunday

Sorry about not sending you all this as an e-mail this week, I couldn't find the e-mail address on time. And it looks like you can't connect to this blog through my website as it is also down. See you next week. Clark
The Weekly Spin, May 28, 2008

Blog Postings

Congress Orders Investigation into Pentagon Pundit Scandal
by Sheldon Rampton


"I believe it is absolutely critical that a public investigation happen that is transparent to this body as well as to the American people," said Rep. Paul Hodes, explaining his decision to sponsor the amendment. "Congress cannot allow an Administration to manipulate the public on false propaganda on matters of war and national security."
By a voice vote, the U.S. Congress passed an amendment last week to the Defense Authorization Act for FY2009, forbidding the U.S. Department of Defense to engage in "propaganda purposes within the United States not otherwise specifically authorized by law."

Probably more important is that the amendment requires an investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study and report back to Congress on "the extent to which the Department of Defense has violated the prohibition on propaganda" already established in previous laws passed by Congress.

The amendment was prompted by an April 20 report in the New York Times exposing the Pentagon military analyst program through which the Pentagon lobbied for war by cultivating former military officers who became regulars on Fox News, CNN and the broadcast networks. As Diane Farsetta and Sheldon Rampton have argued previously, the Pentagon pundit program broke existing laws which forbid government officials from engaging in "publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."




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Product Placements vs. VNRs
by Sheldon Rampton


We recently received an email from someone who asked, "What is the difference between a 'product placement' and a 'video news release' (VNR)? Is a VNR a type of product placement?" Since other people might have the same question, I thought I'd post my answer here.

On SourceWatch, we have articles about both topics. As our article about video news releases explains, a VNR is a piece of video that is created (typically by a public relations firm on behalf of a paying client) and designed to look like a news segment for broadcast by TV news programs. It deceives audiences by creating the impression that the "news" they see on TV was produced by independent reporters, when in fact VNRs are promotional pieces designed to sell something for a client whose identity is not always disclosed. TV news shows often deny that they use VNRs, but Diane Farsetta, our senior researcher, has done extensive research in which she found numerous examples of the practice.

"Product placement" is a separate but similarly sneaky practice of getting television programs and movies to display a company's product within their program.




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Weekly Radio Spin: Dick's Army of Angry Renters
by Judith Siers-Poisson

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at an award only money could buy, how a Pentagon investigation isn't bad for business, and who thinks struggling homeowners are whiny. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we look at the checkered career of Dick Armey. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!




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Be A Citizen Journalist

Featured Participatory Project: ID the Candidates Supporting the "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq"
Source: Congresspedia, May 27, 2008

On March 27, a coalition of Democratic House candidates and military experts unveiled the "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq." As one of the more solid commitments to end the war, it has generated a lot of buzz lately as more than 50 candidates have endorsed it. With the Iraq War as the foremost issue this season, an endorsement of the plan is a critical piece of information about a U.S. congressional candidate, so we need your help to add it to the profiles of candidates that make up Congresspedia's Wiki-the-Vote project. (If they haven't endorsed the plan, you can call attention to that as well.) No experience is necessary and full instructions for helping out can be found here. It's your democracy - participate!




Spin Of The Day Postings

Tiger Woods Caddies for Chevron
Source: The Nation, May 22, 2008

In early April, the global oil company Chevron announced that it has entered into a five-year deal with the foundation created by the professional golfer, Tiger Woods. Woods proclaimed that "Chevron has a track record and a commitment to bettering the communities where they operate." Chevron's record, such as its partnership with the Burmese military dictatorship on the Yandana gas pipeline is "certainly nothing with which Woods should want his name attached," writes Dave Zirin in The Nation. Asked about Chevron's record, the president of the Tiger Woods Foundation, Greg McLaughlin, stated that its partners share its mission to help young people. "President McLaughlin should think more seriously about what Chevron is and what they do: they pollute, they destroy, they conspire with dictators, and heaven help anyone who gets in their way. Now they want to burnish their 'brand' by partnering with Tiger Woods," Zirin concluded.




Coal Front Group Feels the Heat
Source: Facing South, May 22, 2008

Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) -- a coal and power industry front group -- is busy organizing opposition to America's Climate Security Act of 2007 proposed by Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner. The Institute for Southern Studies (ISS) reports that Pete MacDowell, an activist with the NC (North Carolina) Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, received a phone call from ABEC asking if he would put his name to a fax to Lieberman and Warner opposing the bill. Asked whether ABEC was an environmental group, the caller said "yes" and denied it had any links to power utilities. In response to ISS's revelation, Steve Gates from ABEC's parent group, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, stated that "one new staff member -- who is no longer working on this project -- decided to 'wing it' when asked some questions that were off her script. This staff person clearly should have answered 'Yes' when asked if ABEC was related to the utility industry."




Healthcare Privacy Laws Quietly Assist Fundraising
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, May 27, 2008


When a patient checks into a hospital or goes to see a doctor, they are typically handed a booklet called "Notice of Privacy Practices" and are asked to sign a document acknowledging that they received the information. Patients assume that these "privacy practices" are in place to protect their personal information and that doctors and hospitals will keep their information in strictest confidence. In reality, patients usually overlook fine print contained in these documents that say that hospitals can share their personal information and use it for fundraising purposes. Thus someone who checks into the hospital for a heart ailment can later be solicited to help pay for expensive new hospital equipment or a new diagnostic wing. Fundraising professionals call this "high touch direct mail," but others think gathering marketing information this way is disrespectful to patients. Dr. Steven Fugaro, an internist and president of the San Francisco Medical Society, says the practice raises ethical concerns. "When you go to Macy's or Wal-Mart or buy a car, it has come to be expected that your name will be used for commercial purposes. But ... people come to us because they are sick. They have an expectation that their names will be kept private, even the fact that they were treated by the doctor or a hospital." Most patients are unaware that health care privacy laws are being used to harvest marketing data.




Duck and Cover
Source: Calgary Herald, May 25, 2008


Oilsands mining in Canada (Source: Sierra Club of Canada)
The Alberta government has hired crisis management guru Peter Sandman to help it defuse concerns over the environmental impact of the oilsands mining industry. In April, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach sought to defend the discovery of 500 dead ducks found in a tailings pond. At a cost of C$35,000, Sandman spent two days advising Alberta Environment officials on how to "handle regular public meetings and controversies" over oil extraction. "It's not a secret that when you mine bitumen, it's pretty ugly. ... It's not shocking that tailings ponds occasionally kill ducks," Sandman said. Lindsay Telfer from the Sierra Club of Canada told the Calgary Herald that she wondered how Sandman's advice affects the government's "very specific attempts to greenwash the oilsands."




McCain's Pastor Problems Deepen, Widen
Source: Huffington Post, May 21, 2008


Pastor John Hagee endorses John McCain for President in March 2008
Pastor John Hagee, the controversial Christian televangelist who last March endorsed Senator John McCain's nomination for Republican candidate for U.S. President, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis were doing God's will when they chased the Jews out of Europe in order to herd them into Israel, where they could establish a Jewish state. In an audio tape of the sermon revealed by Huffington Post, Hagee went in and out of biblical verse as he preached, "'And they the hunters should hunt them, that will be the Jews. From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks. If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can't see that." A Hagee spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the remarks, which can be found at around the 1:08 mark of his sermon titled "Battle for Jerusalem." Hagee later apologized for the remarks. But McCain, who had earlier sought Hagee's endorsement to improve his standing within the evangelical community, quickly distanced himself from the pastor, describing his comments as "crazy and unacceptable."




Big Fat Lies
Source: Scripps Howard, May 22, 2008

"Dishes targeted to health-conscious consumers at popular chains such as Chili's, Taco Bell and Applebee's contained as much as twice the calories and eight times the grams of fat than the restaurants claimed in their published nutrition information," reports Isaac Wolf, citing research done in eight cities by television stations affiliated with the Scripps media chain. The worst offender was the Macaroni Grill, a restaurant chain owned by Brinker International. Its "Pollo Margo Skinny Chicken" was supposed to have 500 calories but actually had 1,022, with 49 grams of fat rather than the promised 6. "People have a right to know what's in their food," said Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "How can you exercise personal responsibility and make an informed choice if you don't have basic information?"




Thanks for the Mercury
Source: Times Union (Albany, NY), May 21, 2008

It isn't every day that a state's largest polluter is honored. It helps when the polluter -- and its buddies -- helped found and advise the group giving the award. The Maryland-based Wildlife Habitat Council gave biodiversity conservation awards to 21 companies, including the Lafarge cement plant in Ravena, New York. The award was for Lafarge's 150-acre Deer Mountain Nature Preserve. The honor was not publicized until the company came under fire for mercury contamination near a local high school. Federal reports show that the plant in question was New York state's largest mercury emitter for three years running. Environmentalists smell a case of greenwashing. "At first I thought it was a joke. Then I was astonished and horrified," said an analyst with the New York Public Interest Research Group. Joining Lafarge on the Wildlife Habitat Council's board of directors are representatives from Monsanto, Exxon Mobil, DuPont, ConocoPhillips and Waste Management. The conservation group Ducks Unlimited, which is funded by Exxon Mobil and Anheuser-Busch, also holds a seat. The Council gave "Signatures of Sustainability" awards to DuPont and Anheuser-Busch, both of which had a role in founding the group.




America Supports Its Friend's PR Firm
Source: O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), May 22, 2008

PR firm Susan Davis International (SDI) has retained its contract with the U.S. Department of Defense's America Supports You campaign. The one year contract is good for up to $3 million. "The long-running campaign aims to communicate public support of the military to service members and their families. Among SDI's assignments are developing a national media strategy, partnerships with businesses, celebrities and other entities, PSAs, internal communications, events, and a 'robust' web and interactive campaign." Some claim the bid process heavily favored SDI, but that's not the only controversy. As CMD reported previously, the Pentagon is investigating SDI's work on America Supports You, including unusual financial arrangements with the military newspaper Stars & Stripes. The paper recently reported that "a former attorney for the Pentagon's news bureau, the American Forces Information Service, has alleged 'serious misconduct' by Pentagon and S&S officials," including Allison Barber, who "is a friend of Susan Davis, and awarded the six-figure PR pact without a competitive process."




Virginia Commonweath University's Secret Research for Philip Morris
Source: New York Times, May 22, 2008

As CMD previously reported, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) operates a School of Medicine and a School of Public Health while enjoying a cozy relationship with the tobacco industry, especially cigarette maker Philip Morris (PM). Now the New York Times reports that in 2006, VCU entered into a secret and extraordinarily restrictive research contract with PM that bars researchers from publishing, or even talking about, study results without first getting approval from PM. If news organizations ask about the contract, university officials are supposed to decline to comment and tell PM about the inquiry. All patents and other intellectual property created under the contract go to PM. The contract violates VCU guidelines for industry-sponsored research, which state "University faculty and students must be free to publish their results." David Rosner, a professor of public health and history at Columbia University in New York, says VCU's contract is "counter to the entire purpose and rationale of a university." VCU President Eugene Trani, who refused to be interviewed for the Times article, owns 6,250 shares of common stock in the Universal Leaf Corporation and sits on their Board of Directors.




Less Isn't Always More
Source: Contra Costa Times, May 21, 2008

Comprehensive information about what chemicals are sprayed on food crops just got much harder to come by. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced that they will no longer conduct and publish annual national surveys of "which states apply the most pesticides and where bug and weed killers are most heavily sprayed to help cotton, grapes and oranges grow." The report is used extensively by farmers, environmental advocates, chemical companies and even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Don Lipton, a spokesman for the American Farm Bureau, said "farmers will be subjected to conjecture and allegations about their use of chemicals and fertilizer. Given the historic concern about chemical use by consumers, regulators, activist groups and farmers, it's probably not an area where lack of data is a good idea." One fear is that information will only be available after there's been a problem. Steve Scholl-Buckwald of the Pesticide Action Network explained, "What we'll end up doing is understanding pesticide use through getting accident reports. And that's a lousy way to protect public health."




Yucca's Not Quite Dead Yet, but What's Plan B?
Source: Las Vegas Sun (Nevada), May 21, 2008


Aerial view of Yucca Mountain
Increasingly, people are coming to the conclusion that the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada might never open. Former Louisiana Senator J. Bennett Johnston, "the lawmaker perhaps most responsible" for advancing the plan for a permanent waste repository at Yucca, now says the "project should never have been billed as a place to hold waste indefinitely," reports Lisa Mascaro. Johnston admitted, "You can't absolutely prove with certainty what's going to happen in 10,000 or 100,000 years." The U.S. Department of Energy will soon "deliver its long-awaited application to license the site." The department currently projects "that Yucca could start accepting waste by 2020." Meanwhile, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) industry group "has been quietly chatting with small, primarily rural communities to gauge their interest in hosting a temporary waste facility." Neither NEI nor Johnston "will admit that Yucca Mountain is dead ... but they would like to have a backup plan." For more on NEI, see CMD senior researcher Diane Farsetta's article in the June 2008 issue of The Progressive magazine, "Meet the Nuclear Power Lobby."




Terrorists Recruited on YouTube?
Source: O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), May 20, 2008

Senator Joe Lieberman has penned a letter to Google, asking them to ban content on YouTube that is produced by organizations considered to be terrorist, such as Al Qaeda. Lieberman asserts that Islamic terrorist groups are using YouTube to "'disseminate their propaganda, enlist followers and provide weapons training.' His Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has found Al-Qaeda branded videos on YouTube documenting 'horrific attacks on American soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan.'" Lieberman adds that the videos play a "significant role in the process of radicalization, the end point of which is the planning and execution of a terrorist attack." Google responded that while it understands Lieberman's concerns and has removed some egregious videos, they seek a balance that "encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view."




Armey's Angry Renters
Source: Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2008

"AngryRenter.com looks a bit like a digital ransom note, with irregular fonts, exclamation points and big red arrows -- all emphasizing prudent renters' outrage over a proposed government bailout for irresponsible homeowners," writes Michael M. Phillips. In fact, however, "the people behind AngryRenter.com are certainly not renters. Though it purports to be a spontaneous uprising, AngryRenter.com is actually a product of an inside-the-Beltway conservative advocacy organization led by Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, and publishing magnate Steve Forbes, a fellow Republican. It's a fake grass-roots effort -- what politicos call an AstroTurf campaign -- that provides a window into the sleight-of-hand ways of Washington."

I finally downloaded the obituaries from last weeks assignment. Some of them are really great. I also wanted to check and see if all of you gave me a computer e-mail address (rather then a cell-phone one) as I would like to send you a couple of long e-mails. Will talk with you about that next week. This weeks assignment is longer then most as it is an opinion article, one were you review something and tell your readers what you really feel about the subject. Here anger is good and of course love and joy are also acceptable. See you next week. The assignment is due Sun. evening.