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
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
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]
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]
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
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.)
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.)
Saturday, January 24, 2009
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
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
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
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
| 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
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Friday, December 26, 2008
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
| 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
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
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
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
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
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
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
Sunday, November 23, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
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
Flux of facts - the fate of news in a wired world (0)
WIRED autopsies crowdsourcing experiment (0)
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)
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
Flux of facts - the fate of news in a wired world (0)
WIRED autopsies crowdsourcing experiment (0)
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)
Thursday, October 30, 2008
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."
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."
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Thursday, October 09, 2008
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."
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."
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
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.
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.
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