Objectivity: The Mortal Ethic That Started The ‘Quest for Innocence’
Couldn't resist this photo of Prof. Rosen. Seemed apt.
While newspapers, TV journalists, and news radio bemoan the internet as an attack on journalism, Jay Rosen’s excellent piece, The Quest for Innocence and the Loss of Reality in Political Journalism explores the failures of journalists themselves. In an attempt to cling to the standards of an obsoleted era, journalists, not the internet (read: those of us who use the internet) are failing as the Fourth Estate. The 'quest of innocence,' that stems from the need for objectivity seems to run counter to the mission of reporting facts. This leaves Prof. Rosen to end with a question: “How the hell could this happen?”
There are of course, far too many reasons to answer the question succinctly, but let me posit a few observations in an attempt to respond:
The need to remain relevant
If “sources are going direct” then one of the roles of the traditional news institutions, to report fact, has become obsolete. To remain relevant, newsorgs are left with three possible methods of covering the news: a) present an opinion on events, b) cover parts of the story the sources themselves will not reveal, c) curate the sources into a digest. Traditional journalists feel the need to remain objective (more in a bit), which eliminates opinion and leaves only a combination of behind-the-scenes reporting and factual curation as a means of covering news. Since access is the easiest way to cover what the sources won’t self-reveal, newsorgs live in fear of angering any one party and cause them champion the shield of objectivity.
Objectivity means detachment
If the only way newsorgs can provide value is to gain access and curate, the desire to use the blanket of objectivity has never been so strong. Seemingly, only objectivity can persuade sources to provide access to a reporter. A strong reputation for only reporting facts … and who a fear of reporting any facts that might run counter to the source’s interest is always best. The ethical tenant of objectivity is perhaps the greatest hinderance to reporting ever conceived.
Dear Bill Keller
Dear Bill Keller,
You’ve got to be kidding me.
I had hope. I’ve been to the new Times newsroom, I’ve seen your awesome web infographics, I’ve talked with your developers, I’ve watched videos of your futurism department. There are many, many, smart people working for you.
When I asked one of your employees, why he had given up a well-paying job to come work for you he told me “…when the Times calls, you answer.”
I was emboldened when I read your byline from Iran. You, a manager, reported from the heart of what continues to be the world’s biggest story.
You sir, are in control of one of the finest journalism producing institutions in the world. Yet, people like you are pissing it away.
I was heart broken when I heard that the New York Times, which I have a deep respect and love for signed it’s intent-to-file-chapter-11 forms.
Nonetheless, I have a deep appreciation for experimentation, and I hope that your endeavors will teach the rest of us a thing or two about how to make money on the web.
Then, I read a Q&A that you did in TIME magazine. Even though the copy had to fit on one page, and your answers are brief, I’ve never seen a journalist sound as much like a politician as you did in that article. (And I use the word 'politician' that in the out-of-touch, slimy, refusing-to-be-held-accountable sort of way.)
Apologize for your mistakes. Transparency is all it’s cracked up to be.
You admitted that journalists in this country had failed as the Fourth Estate. The flat-out bad reporting when ex-President Bush took this country to war against Iraq was in-excusable. The argument for war was based on lies. To this day, the media hasn’t made a resounding statement saying as much.
You didn’t apologize.
You blamed us, the people, for creating “conventional wisdom” for you to ‘float along’ with.
If you want us to trust you, we’ve got to have an honest relationship! Tell us when you get something wrong. We’ll be mad, but we’ll trust you more because you came clean.
The smell of ink doesn’t justify its cost.
You said that print still has “a lot of life left in it.” I’m not sure if that was the diplomatic answer but I think most of us would have been more impressed to hear that you were actively looking for ways to move your operation digital; that print was on its way out as the foundation of your business.
Make a commitment to doing journalism online because the myth that, “the best of online journalism is rooted in mainstream media,”
won’t last long. I’m not sure what you define as “mainstream,” but you ought to consider re-evaluating your premise. The MSM isn’t the only group of people capable of doing journalism. Read the rest of this post →
Signed and Released: Side Projects Are So Good
Common thinking in the photography industry is to always have a side project going in addition to your main job. Work, even photography work, is tough. You've got to have a personal project going to keep you sane.
Turns out having a side project can lead to some really good work too. Just ask Google about their 20% rule.
After a long time of not following this sage advice, I am now fortunate enough to announce two.
The Vancouver Project
A good friend of mine, Andrew Burton, and I have been talking for a couple of months about the rise of DSLRs with video capability and what it the implications for sports photographers.
Andrew had the foresight to see that this new technology would come to head in the very near future – namely the coming winter Olympics in Vancouver. Exploring thought, we also realized that this Olympics would be the first since the rise of the real-time web, live video broadcasting from cell phones, Google Wave, and, and, and.
Our realization lead to a plan of action which we're calling The Vancouver Project. Stop by and check us out.
Shameless plug: if you're in a position to help by spreading the word to the right people we'd love to hear from you.
Linked Photographer
In other news, I'm writing a book.
That is a very weird sentence for me to write. I write posts, tweets, cutlines… not books. But, apparently, that's happening :)
An excellent friend of mine, and phenomenal fashion photographer, Lindsay Adler, approached a few months ago saying that she was looking into writing a book, would I be interested in co-authoring?
Today, I signed the contract. We'll be writing a book that's got the tentative title Linked Photographer. It will be part treaties, part howto, and part reference on how photographers can use social media for business. It's a bit more than a for-dummies book, but
We'll be launching linkedphotog.com soon, so stay tuned!
Whiteboard of Mindmapping: ‘New Media’
I'm a visual person, so over the last month or so I've been trying to map out the state of the new information based industry. This is part of a massive post I'm working on, but I figured I'd toss my visual up on this blog and maybe start a conversation. (If anyone can read my chicken scratch.)
Mindmapping on a whiteboard
LIVE | D.O. Palooza
D.O. Palooza is a conference put on by The Daily Orange of Syracuse University. I'll be livestreaming the event throughout the day.
You can watch here, or on my newly launched Mogulus Channel.
You Can’t Make Abundancy Scarce
My brother sent me an email tonight after he heard, Peter Fader speak. Fader is a professor at Wharton School of business at UPenn “doing datamining - they call it marketing.” Apparently, my brother found this talk inspiring, ending his first email in our resulting exchange with:
…he made some damn good points about the subscription model. b2c already is doing ok (campfire, github, etc.), it's time for consumers to pony up. His bottom line: if facebook decided to charge you $10/month, you'd pay it. No questions asked.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, or know me, or have listened to some of the top minds in this ‘new media’ business, you’ll be pretty easily pick out how totally my brother has drunk the kool-aid of the bass-akwards mind fuck that the ‘old media’ folks try to sell you.
First there was the stone age
Deep breath.
Let’s try to break this down: We are now in the information age. Where once the pinacle of technology was an iron sword, the new tech is information.
Our economy is based on the trade of IP, and yet, paradoxically, the internet has made information practically infinite. Therefore, attempting to make money by controlling the amount of information is doomed to fail.
Put another way: controlling the scarcity of something that isn't scarce can't work.
History is not a good guide here: The internet is a fundamental shift from anything we’ve experienced before. It’s as revolutionary as the printing press and as radical as the written word. It’s both asynchronous and instant two-way communication.
Newsflow: How Journalism Is and Will Be Generated
The News Ecosystem according to Steve Johnson. Click for a larger version.
Steven Johnson, co-founder of outside.in, gave a very good, well thought out, speech at SXSW on the state of the news industry last week. In the transcript on his blog, he shares a slide on how he envisions the future of the news industry.
Steven has a good, albeit simplistic break down of how this new paradigm is working. I'm sure I agree with the flow of the information News → Commentary → Curation → Distribution. Seems to me that you'd have to distribute before you can get comments back, and that you'd need to curate the commentary… Forget it, the the chart is simplistic.
Steven does have the right context for this though:
Now there’s one objection to this ecosystems view of news that I take very seriously. It is far more complicated to navigate this new world than it is to sit down with your morning paper. There are vastly more options to choose from, and of course, there’s more noise now. For every Ars Technica there are a dozen lame rumor sites that just make things up with no accountability whatsoever.
I agree whole heartily with his point and I like the broad strokes of his chart. But, I suggest that this diagram far too simple to describe the new paradigm.
As Steven says, “The implied motto of every paper in the country should be: all the news that’s fit to link.” What his model is missing is the intricacies of linking, how data will be distributed to not only the customer, but among all of those gathering and generating news.
Hypothesizing on the new newsflow
Licensed under Creative Commons. Click for a larger version.
Yea… not as easy to understand right? I’ve got arrows going all over the place, and there’s not clear rhyme or reason to the way information flows. My apologies, these relationships are chaotic and often have many nodes. Let me make the key points:
Data is key. As Tim Berners Lee has predicted, the future of the web is “linked data.” This is is something that Steven addresses, but only briefly. As the semantic web becomes reality, displaying and accessing data will become the important role for journalism to fill.
ESPN Shouldn’t Use Their Monopoly to Take Advantage of Students
- Image via Wikipedia
ESPN.com has me angrier than TIME.com right now. They've sent an email to the sports department at The Daily Orange asking them to contribute content to ESPN.com for the NCAA tournament.
I'll go ahead and quote portions of their email in two quotes. I'll break in between for analysis.
Here’s what we’re interested in:
- Cross post opinion and campus reaction/color during the NCAA Tournament in the ESPN profile space (description below). Could start with Final 4 picks.
- Send an e-mail to me and removed for privacy once you’ve posted
- Include URL of the post on ESPN.com with brief description
- Include any related URLs
Break: If you’ve read that carefully, you’ll see that ESPN is trying to crowdsource their reporting. They’re asking college journalists to write about the topic they know best, their campus, then package the content with a neat little bow, and send it off to them to be used…
Here’s what I can do with your content:
- Posts considered for the P1 box below the poll on the front of ESPN.com
- Best posts included in campus roundup file
- Best posts shared with our college basketball editor
…no where important.
REPOST | Defined: Newspaper Platform
This is something the news tribe did not understand went it first went online around 1996. It saw the Web as a good way to re-purpose its content from the old platform; and while the Web can do that, the idea of re-purposing news content had a huge intellectual cost. It did not help the tribe understand the ground on which it had to rebuild. It permitted the press to delay the date of migration.
– Migration Point for the Press Tribe, Jay Rosen
Newspapers got it all wrong when the went online. Simply shoveling their content from the print product into a template website and saying, “There, we’re online.”
But, they’ve never really been ‘first class citizens’ of the web. Newspapers are still not doing simple things like linking or tagging or using social media. They’re online in that they have a website, but their still using a print mentality to maintain it.
I propose that this is because news organizations still haven’t realized that the internet has changed the definition of a journalist. During this week’s #collegejourn chat I proposed that:
“journalists, at least in the new media sense, are nothing more than experts in a field that have the ability to create mass media based on that expertise.”
Based on this definition, journalists should be viewed as community leaders, people that know a lot about a topic, and therefore are respected enough by the community to inform others. This makes them something of a mixture of a columnist (read: blogger), a reporter (read: blogger), and a content creator (read: photographer/videographer/designer/infographics-maker/databaseminer/developer).
If we extrapolate this out to the newspaper as a whole, the future might very well be an organization that consists of many journalists that can provide mass media to a relevant community.
Newspapers are used to being limited to geographic communities because they were limited by their physical product that never could reach outside that demographic. The Internet gives us a publish button that puts content up for the whole world to instantly see. The word “community” is no longer limited to geography, it can now apply to any niche of information.
The company Gawker Media, has taken advantage of this new definition. They host nearly a dozen websites that cover a specific niche. From tech news to celebrity gossip, each site has it’s own coverage of a particular niche of information. This includes both original content and aggregation. Anything, just so long as their site gives a complete picture of the niche they’re covering.
A Geographic Niche
With that model in mind, let’s get back to newspapers, who are best at covering the geographic niche. There are ways for newspapers to turn their websites into first class web citizens and stop re-purposing of print content, that doesn’t do a good job of serving their community.
Rank Your Links! A Publish2 Community Proposition
I love publish2.
It’s a service that is very similar to delicious in that it allows for social bookmarking, but it’s restricted membership: only journalists can join. It also has slightly more formal tagging regulations and greater integration with other sites (including, delicious).
It’s a service that lets my not only bookmark sites that I like, but index them in a way that makes them eminently searchable for future writing/reference.
However, it’s missing one critical component that we get out of services like digg or reddit or iTunes: a ranking system.
I’m a bit of a freak when it comes to my iTunes library. I can proudly boast that I own 80.4 days of music. That amount of data requires a certain amount of … OCD attention to detail.
Part of my 'attention to detail' is keeping track of what music I actually like. Fortunately, iTunes has a way to do this ranking 1-5 stars — just like the movies!
What the feature might look like if Publish2 adopts it.
★★★☆☆
When I got back and do research for a blog post, quality is one of the first things that I try to remember about a link in my publish2.
I never bookmark complete trash, but when I’ve got hundreds of links related to advertising (for example), it would be great to have the most important ones popup first.
So, I propose a solution. From now on, I’ll be adding asterisks to my tags in publish2, as a way to star rank the quality of the post on a scale of 1-5. Just like iTunes. Just as easy to do.
I invite you to join me in this endeavor. If we all start doing this, it will become an effective way of raising the best links to the top of the pile.
I've created a Get Satisfaction feature request, please weigh in there.
What the feature might look like if Publish2 adopts it.
Micropayments Lead to Piracy
Since the TIME cover story that re-rose the micropayment debate last week the topic has been beaten to death across the web, but I want to raise just a few more points that I haven't seen elsewhere.
Information wants to be free. No matter what, people will find a way to get it online. We’ve proven this time and time again with music, movies, software, and video games. No, don’t laugh – video games are a multi-billion dollar industry, that represent some of the greatest achievements in technology in the past decade.
These three heavy-weight entertainment industries have proven that charging for content online leads to … quasi success. Yes, iTunes, Netflix, and Steam have been able to deliver paid content to a mass audience, and they do if far easier than if you try to pirate download the same, but piracy is still rampant.
Make it free, or the pirates will. The TIME article, and others like it, refer to the 'iTunes model' when the talk about micropayments for news. Yet, this analogy is flawed:
- Music, movies, software, and video games are content that has ‘repeat use’ value. News is read once, then mentally file away.
- Music, movies, and video games are entertainment, a luxury good that carries a far different intrinsic value than an essential good like news. Software isn’t a luxury good, but it is a productivity tool that also doesn’t have the intrinsic value that news/information has. Besides, software doesn’t really have the micropayment model either.
- It’s easy to preview content on iTunes, it’s near impossible to provide an accurate preview of information without providing the … information.
I’d be willing to bet that if a news service tries the paid content model people will find someway to get around the pay wall. If they’ve found a way to steal entertainment goods, trust me, they’ll find a way to steal the news.
And that sure doesn’t sound like a Fourth Estate to me: a system where the people have to steal their information!?
Better to let the traditional newsroom die, or run a smaller operation. You can’t tell me that every reporter in a current newsroom actually earns their keep.
If micropayment schemes ever actually gain traction, people will opensource the news. We can mashup twitter, youtube, blogs, and aggregators to get a reasonable approximation of the information that we get now. Granted, it would be much shorter form content. But since we mostly skim the news right now anyway, the user wouldn’t see much lost.
No Wonder They Don’t Trust Us
Warning: the following is a rant. I'll keep it short.
It drives me crazy to see journalist putting the nail in their own coffin. E&P just republished an AP story that politely complains that Israel still isn't letting journalists into the Gaza war zone.
No wonder 54% of the public doesn't trust the media anymore. Instead of playing Fourth Estate watchdogs, these journalists have been nicely asking the courts of Israel for permission to do their jobs. Nevermind the fact the Israeli government and Hamas are controlling the story and spewing propaganda. It's still a good idea to wait on one of these governments to allow you into a region when they can control what you see.
Grow some balls.
Do your jobs. Please. You're only hurting yourselves through your laziness and ignorance. Don't moan about how hard it is. If were easy, we wouldn't need professional journalists in the first place!
Journalists are expected to add value to what people on the ground tell us in order to curate and inform the mass-public about the actions of governments, industry, and events of the day. How can we do any of that if we're not able to report!?
Journalists. Step up. Now.
Yes, “It Is Our Fault”
A few weeks ago, I as I was sitting down in my 'office'* in The Daily Orange 'newsroom,'† I noticed a book sitting next to my curmudgeon office-mate, Andy. Noting the rather dilapidated state of his paperback, I read the title: The Powers that Be.
My curiosity piqued, I flipped through it, read a summary (a review of the "good ol' times" of journalism) and the copyright date (sometime in the 70s). What choice did I have but to mock Andy for reading out-dated literature about a now-dead job while wishing for the return of drinking on the job. I told him to do like me: read a few blogs instead.
Andy's a great guy – we get along really well, even if we disagree on… everything. His focus (both personally, and as the Enterprise Editor) is on improving the quality of writing and reporting around the paper. The rants about ledes and grammar Andy goes off on would make Wooward cry.
My job, as the Exponent of the Evolution, is on expanding the use of 'new media.' It's all about the blogging, podcasting, videos, tweeting… I'm also not the quality hound that Andy is. It's all about the 'version 1' for me; if we can just get something online: we've made progress. We can worry about improving the next version.
In a recent round of blog posts (1, 2, 3) responding to a Washington Post article on the victimization of the press, Jeff Jarvis writes:
The reason to take responsibility for the fall of journalism is to take responsibility for the fate of journalism. Who’s going to try to save it if not for journalists? We are indeed responsible for the future of journalism and we have about one minute to grab that bull by its horns.
-BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » It is our fault
Realization strikes: Andy and I aren't that philosophically far apart. We're both trying to 'save journalism' – through different routes.
Though I firmly believe that newspapers are the only medium that is doing true journalism nowadays (broadcast TV sure isn't), I think that the future lies in the ability of newspapers to adapt to the internet age. They've got to realize that blogging, the link, multimedia, commenting, and an unlimited newshole have forever changed the business.
Andy would rather focus on the basics – good reporting. He argues that the bar is constantly being lowered (an example) and saving journalism means raising it back up through better sourcing, good writing, etc.
I'm still think that reporting is the most important service a newspaper provides (sounds obvious, but tell that to the bean counters), and Andy is one of my premiere video podcasters. We're willing to recognize the strength of the other's arguement-–we just have different approaches to journalism.
Saving journalism is not just about moving a newspaper online, it's not about figuring out a new revenue model, it's not about multimedia, it's about finding the balance of all three to ensure the future of the media information industry.
And that future is… us. The current generation of college graduates who are aware of the what the internet can do, who aren't biased by the way things used to be (Andy possibly excluded). There is a gap of understanding between generation X & Y on the use of the web. With a younger, more tech savvy generation coming into the industry it's up to us to figure out how to meld the nutty world that the interweb has become into the the sphere of journalism.
The problems that the newspaper industry face right now can largely be overcome by realizing that we're not in the newspaper business, we're in the media information business. Those of us young'ins who are just starting in this industry have an idea of how to reinvent journalism to survive in the internet age.
If you've got a computer problem, who do you look to for a fix? You're nearest 15 year old who has already forgotten more about computers than you ever cared to know? Journalism has a computer-problem right now. Take a look at us young folks for a fix.
* My 'office' is more of a conference room. † The Daily Orange 'newsroom' is a converted house. So there is no real newsroom floor, there are no real offices, we mostly consider ourselves lucky to have a desk and a roof.
‘New Media’ Chaos
I have too much going on in my life right now. I'm back at school and shooting a ton. Not only shooting, but I'm back to editing.
I have created/taken the position of "Exponent of the Evolution" at The Daily Orange, my student newspaper. I had previously served a year as the photo editor for the paper, and has sort of assumed that my time there was up.
Little did I know that the opportunity would arise to use a lot of the knowledge that I've linked to and talked about on this blog in the 'real world' (however real an independent daily college paper is).
As the Exponent of the Evolution, I have 3 areas of responsibility:
- Promotion and advocacy of 'new media' at the paper. Blogging, audio slideshows, video, podcasting, video podcasting, etc.
- Establishing and expanding the paper's online precense. This can be simple, like promoting the website in print, or publishing headlines on twitter, to more complicated things like the creation of a new CMS for college papers.
- Monetizing. I serve as an advisor to the business side of the paper for online ads. Best online ad practices, new revenue streams, etc
The good news is this: this job has never existed before, and it desperately has needed to. It is critical for the survival of newspapers in the internet age to adapt to the new, online world. At this point, no newspaper has done it successfully.
Papers like The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, have made leaps in the online realm, but none of them are able to sustain their operation entirely off revenue from the online side of the business. If print is dead, it is critical that newspapers, as the sole remaining journalists, figure out a revenue and distribution model that can maintain them.
Since this is already a bit of a disjointed, stream-of-consciousness post written at 6am out of pent up guilt for not writing a real post for so long. Let me provide a list of what I have done for the DO:
- Twittering of all headlines @dailyorange. Our popular sports blog gets special designation for it's posts (as do videos).
- Establishment of Final Cut Pro as our go-to video and audio slideshow editor. The result, as a movie, has a superior quality over soundslides or slideshowpro.
- Our sports section has been publishing 'graphics' prior to games that give details on players, what to look forward to, who to watch, etc. We're trying to move this to an interactive, online, format.
- I've developed a hypothesis: the lone reporter/photojournalist is dead. Instead, reporting will be done in teams that function like (pardon the analogy) terrorist cells. They will be largely autonomous, have a mission (a beat), and be comprised of a small group of people who have unique skills.
TV media has been doing this for a long time – they always send out at least a camera man and a reporter.
These teams will consist of 2-3 people (with an editor back in the office) who need to have 5 skills between them. Those skills are: 1) video 2) audio 3) photo 4) writing 5) 'personality. The last is a poor term for describing the person who is the 'on camera personality' – the person who is the front man for the team – recognizable to the public. These skills can be divided in any manner among the 2-3 members of the team.
I've been working on this 'hypothesis' for months now, recognizing that in this new world it is impractical to expect a single reporter/photog to be able to deliver a complete multimedia piece. Non only is it impossible to shoot video, sound, and photos at the same time, but it cannot all be complied on deadline. Having a team of people working on the same project allows them to deliver a complete multimedia package for every story – on deadline.
The point: I've decided to test the hypothesis: I have a 3 person team (who's beat has yet to be determined). At this point, they're producing a video a week on a chosen topic. We'll see where this goes. - Our sports section now has 2 video podcasts: On the Beat and Just Le Jus. Publishing 3 times a week, I'm hoping that this sort of thing will spread to other sections of the paper (working on Opinion).
- I'm the front man for the DO at coPress, a collective of college newspapers who are developing an opensource, custom, content management system for college newspapers. I've written the first blog post of coPress here. This is a move to get our paper off College Publisher, and onto a more workable CMS – a critical goal for the long-term sustainability of our paper.
- I've hired a couple of web developers (well, had hired, looks like I'm going to have to fight the board on this one) to help develop our CMS. This marks the first time the DO has hired someone specifically to develop code for our site. The sports graphics are a good example of the power that this brings.
- We are now using vimeo for all of our videos. It's a flexible system that allows HD content hosting. We'll have our own branded player eventually, but for now, this is a great, turn-key solution.
- Google ads don't make a ton of money, but they are something, and provide great filler for when we can't sell local ads.
- In order to figure out who is visiting our site (and how), it's critical to have a good suite of analytics software. We're now using Google Analytics.
- Our sports section has been live blogging for about a year now from games. I'm trying to get this work ethic expanded to other sections.
I think that's the list for now. We're/I'm working on doing more. I was just approved as a full time hire, but I'm still doing the job of more than one person, and could really use additional staff to make this all work. I'll end by sharing a very rough audio slideshow I did for a local walk for cancer.
Light the Night from Daily Orange on Vimeo.
Censorship ➔ Ambivalence
Photo: Stefan Zaklin/European Pressphoto AgencySomething has been bothering me for a long time about my generation (1980-1999~ish): we're ambivalent.
Let me take a moment to explain: I'm not talking about coffee vs. tea, or McDonald's vs. Burger King. It's not even an issue of Obama vs. McCain – we're just as clueless as the rest of the country when it comes to politics.
- - - - -
Our parents we're one of the greatest generation(pun intended) of upstarts the US ever saw – they were responsible for protesting the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and Watergate. The Baby Boomers, they knew how to protest. We, just don't seem to care.
There are tons of issues that the youth of this country could get riled up about. My top three: We've got a president that's blatantly broken the law with a do-nothing congress to boot. We're involved in not one, but two, failing wars that kill more of our generation every week. We've broken the prison system with more inmates than it can handle – largely due to the failed War on Drugs.
And what do we do? Do we write petitions? Vote out our congress? March on the Capitol? Riot? Demand that the troops come home? Do we do anything even remotely radical?
Bring back the 70s.
At least the hippies, blacks, and press knew when they were getting screwed. They stood up and did something about it. They marched, protested, investigated, demanded, pursued, and were otherwise activists!
- - - - -
So, all that's been on my mind for about a year. Obviously, I'm perturbed by what I see to be a failing of my peers. Which is why when I read an article about the lack of true war photography in the New York Times, I felt both more perturbed and a little relieved.
Obviously, preventing pictures of dead soldiers from appearing in the press is yet another example of the Bush Administration's efforts at censorship.
…military commanders worry about security in publishing images of the American dead as well as an affront to the dignity of fallen comrades. Most newspapers refuse to publish such pictures as a matter of policy.
-4,000 U.S. Deaths, and a Handful of Images - NYTimes.com
Yet, as the article points out, during the Vietnam War, the press published photos of dead soldiers, civilians, and whatever else they please. This, in part, got the folks back home disgusted with the war. It got them out in the streets protesting the war. Perhaps this dumbing down of our media coverage has caused the American people to forget these wars. To forget their responsibility to tell the government when it has strayed down the wrong path.
I'm satisfied that I've found part of the explanation, but I'm more troubled by what the slow decay of the media is causing.
Apparently Reports, Editors and JUDGES Decide Newsworthiness
The judge wrote that he expects Gertz "will be prepared to testify regarding the newsworthiness of this case and, more particularly, the reasons why maintaining the confidentiality of his sources is critical to his ability to engage in investigative reporting."
-Judge Tells Reporter To Explain Spy Story - washingtonpost.com
The US is not a particularly great place to be if you're a reporter trying to protect sources. This latest ruling is just another example.
It seems as though the national security is more important than a free press for the public good in nearly every case. At what point does national security gain more by the advancement and continuation of the free press than the suppression of information and the increased secrecy of the government for and by the people?
Update:
Greenslade writes that Judge Cormac Carney has protected Bill Gertz from identifying his sources. At least the ruling was favorable.
Auto-Aggregation Needs Real-People Editors
The above is a screen shot from daylife.com, a news aggregation site akin to newser, but vastly different from digg or buzz! in that people don't vote on stories or set content – just about everything, exceptions are cover stories, are auto-generated.
This mostly works fine until you get an admittedly minor problem like the one above. Maybe its just because I have a personal grudge against this President for subverting the Congress, but the president's picture should never appear as a representation of the Congress.
Now, this is a relatively minor mistake, and will self-correct once a new story gets sorted to the top of the US Congress category, but nonetheless, its little things like that make me distrust the auto-aggregation model. I think other people feel the same way (purely a feeling). This society wants people to tell them what's going on, not a computer. It's a marketing/perception problem.
Don’t Get Caught Photoshopping, We’ll Laugh at You
-Iran: You Suck At Photoshop (updated) - Boing Boing
This week, the Iranian National Guard photoshopped a picture of their missile test to make it look like a missile the presumably failed to launch had taken to the air successfully.
Needless to say, when the Media Industry found out, they were outraged. Several top papers had already run the image on their front pages, and their corrections were necessarily harsh on Iran.
Boing Boing had a different take. They asked their readers to submit a funny photoshopped version of the same phone. My (and their) favorite above. (click for more)
Why Pro Photographers Are Hired
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| John Shinkle - Politico.com | Evan Vucci - AP |
Both of these photos are part of similar articles about Senator Kennedy returning to the Senate for the first time after being diagnosed with brain cancer to vote on a new Medicare bill.
Of course, there's also this:
Lauren Victoria Burke - APBlogging Off an Car Battery
Normally, I would add a short article like this to my Tumblr feed with a few tags and move on. But this is a really important story about the importance of spreading the freedom of the press to third world. Furthermore it's a great example of how an educated (literate) populace needs a Fourth Estate to assure that the government remains in check.
I don't often go for human interest stories, but this is truly inspirational.
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Meet Afghanistan's most fearless blogger -Slate Magazine |
Meet the Press … Moderated by Tom Brokaw
"I can continue to ask the tough questions."
-Tom Brokaw, Meet the Press Jun 29, 2008, while interviewing Arnold Schwarzenegger
I've been listening to NBC's Meet the Press via podcast for about two years. In conjunction with CBS's Face the Nation I feel like I can get a pretty good taste for what the coming political issues of the week will be. (This coming week: more of the same election coverage.)
Russert Did This:
I've never really been a loyal listener. I miss a week as often as I listen to a show, and I frequently listen on my iPod, while traveling somewhere, so my attention to the finer points may be a bit lacking.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed listen to Tim Russert on the program because I found the he would frequently demand answers to his questions – a value that many broadcast journalists don't seem to share. Politicians are infamous for not giving real answers to questions that hit too close to home. The fact that Russert didn't seem to drink the Kool-aid (too often) was an admirable quality in a broadcast journalist.
With Russert's recent death, the understanding seems to be the Tom Brokaw will take over moderating duties. This week was the first that Meet the Press was introduced without Tim Russert's name attached, and the first that Brokaw sat in Russert's chair.
Brokaw Did This:
As the presumptive successor to the program Brokaw picked an interesting format. Perhaps necessitated by his other reporting duties, the broadcast was shot at the Western Governor's Convention instead of the Meet the Press studio in D.C.
Admitedly, Brokaw is a new to the program, and undoubtedly there will be a settling-in period. Nonetheless, his style differed dramatically from Russert's.
His opening interview with the Democratic governor's of Wyoming and Colorado consisted mainly of softball questions and very few quotes were used (Russert was famous for doing this). His interview with the Republican governor of California had some hard questions, but Brokaw never really pressed when Arnold Schwarzenegger evaded answering.
Lastly, Brokaw's 'final word' was nothing more than a notice that we'll have to wait two weeks to see him again (due to the tennis championships). At least he ended with "If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press."
Therefore…
I know it was only week one, but I'm not looking forward to Meet the Press under Brokaw. He doesn't seem to have the knack for tough interviews that Russert was so known for.
Bummer.
The Blogoshpere Works as a Good Check on the Media
This video (~5 min) provides several good examples of bloggers doing a wikipedia-style check on the mainstream media. (Sorry, no embed available.)
Tough One: The Government’s Right to Notes
The New York Times has a good summary of the military's case against CBS News. Essentially, the military wants access to the unaired portions of a video interview with one of the soldiers involved in the deaths of Iraqi civilians in Haditha during November of 2005.
CBS is claiming its first amendments rights to keep the footage unseen. The military is arguing that there may be footage that helps to incriminate the soldier and it should be seen by the court.
Obviously, the military is looking for a confession that the soldier may have given on tape. CBS is stuck in an awkward position. The soldier is clearly guilty, the only questions are how much guilt does he bear and how much can be proven. It's quite possible that CBS obtained an interview with the soldier only on the basis that it not air certain parts, and/or promises were made after-the-fact.
Regardless, CBS has claimed that isn't required to turn over it's excess footage because of its constitutionally guaranteed free press rights.
This footage is the equivalent of a print journalist's notes. In that it is information that was obtained from a source but not published.
Unfortunately, the US does not have a good history of protecting journalists, especially when the government is the opponent in a court of law. Yet, it is important for the government to recognize the necessity of the fourth estate (this administration does not, one example).
As much as the soldiers involved in the Haditha Massacre need to be punished, it is not okay for the military to subvert journalist's rights to get the evidence that they need.
Connecting Another Dot(s)
Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 has posted an article entitled Contecting the Dots of the Web Revolution. A quick summary of his points on how the internet has affected media creators:
- Shorter reads. People don't want to invest the time to read long articles online. Get the gist of what's going on, move on to something else.
- Old media needs to credit their online sources. Most major news outlets post their stories verbatim. Blogs link off to their sources.
- Traditional media is too attached to long form writing. New Media relies on links, and therefore, multiple sources to address a broad issue. Old media would write a book.
Its easy enough to agree with the first two points. It's the last point that is the interesting one.
The obvious flaw in the logic is that there are some stories that need to be addressed in a longer form. Karp specifically mentions books as an example of old media that is out-of-date.
It's not a problem for me to get behind the idea that New Media needs to adopt a short format style. But, the idea that books are going out of fashion doesn't sit right with me. Several points:
- Books make the authors money. eg: Scott McClellan.
- Books are still seen as a reputable academic resource.
- Pick one:
That's because books are reviewed and their worth is determined.- Anyone can write anything online. Getting a book published means that the author has convinced the market that they has ideas that are worth paying for. This guarantees a minimum standard of quality that isn't yet achievable online.
Strike that one. This is possible to this online too. Wikipedia is a good example of it in action.
The problem then, is that the internet is just not recognized yet as a legitimate source. That's happening, slowly, but it's got a ways to go yet.
If you have read my post immediately before this one, in which I argue that the print newspaper is dead, it might seems as though I've contradicted myself.The question then, is where does this leave the newspaper industry, which I've said is not going to be able to rely on it's printed form much longer.
In the same place.
Newspapers are not long form writing. True, there are the occasional long articles. But, these will continue to work fine online. The occasional in-depth article is a good to see, but as a whole, the business of producing daily (hourly) news belongs online. The business of presenting long thesis belongs in book form.
