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 →
Paid Content = Paid Wifi
- Image via Wikipedia
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve paid for WiFi access. Like most geeks, I pride myself on being able to find free internet access wherever I go. If I can’t find it, (like some airports) then web access nearly always goes into the “it can wait” column of my todo list.
Taking a step back, a service that I can find for free elsewhere is not one I’m likely to pay for, and I’m willing to sacrifice timeliness to save money.
This will be the a huge problem for newsorgs who want to go the paid content route.
Actually, the phrase Paid Content is flawed. It presumes that you’re paying for a product. Paying customers of the WSJ, aren’t really paying for the content, they pay for access to that content. You aren’t buying a product, you’re buying a service.
Let’s call Paid Content what it really is: Paid Access.
An Economist Approach to the Newspaper Industry
You should really hear my brother and me argue.
It sounds sounds a lot like we disagree on everything, but sit and listen to us, and you realize that we often have the same point of view, just different ways of expressing it.
My brother is the guy who got me inspired/angry enough to write You Can’t Make Abundancy Scarce. Phill Baker (who has no online profile to link to), who studies economics and engineering at UPenn and was assigned a massive project – to write a 80 page paper on an industry effected by technological change.
I’m pretty certain that his decision to write on the newspaper industry was in part to piss me off, but in reality, I’m glad he’s doing it. It’s interesting to see how an economist approaches the industry from a macro perspective.
He’s asked me to publish the paper when he’s done, mostly to see what the “industry insiders” think. I’ve agreed, so look for it in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, we're in the process of another email exchange, in which I play futurist and defend us blogging “ilk.”
What follows is excerpts from his email (small edits), interspaced with my responses. Any emphasis or links are my own.
Uh, yea, definitely, as to the last point you made. It's interesting b/c this is a 'classic' example of how success breeds failure under the pressure of technological change. There's some fascinating literature in that topic, but the poignant example is Kodak: they were so focused on being a film camera company, that they completely missed digital. They thought they were in the business of film (they were a pretty sophisticated chemical engineering company), whereas they should have seen themselves in the photography business.
Where we differ is the extent of the change. So the business model has lost its exclusivity and newspapers missed the boat. Now they're facing established competitors in their markets with serious competitive advantages and the benefits of network effects through first mover status (e.g. if the NYTimes had been craigslist, we wouldn't be hearing of the end of newspapers).
Newspapers are not going anywhere. Print will not disappear, there's simply too much demand. 15% profit margins (20% is a bit high, actually the industry average is about 17%), should disappear (they can be maintained at the cost of cutting everything in the paper, but that'd be stupid). Circulation will likely stabilize in the next few years as the cannibalization of the print edition by the internet edition faces diminishing returns.
What's fascinating is that their business model has been co-opted by search. I don't think, and the research backs me up here, that display advertising online will ever come close to replacing the lost advertising revenue that was enjoyed in print. The 'national' papers, or those that are big enough to scale and aren't trapped under burdens of debt due (some serendipity comes into play there), will likely find stability first as they can portray themselves as the replacements to the four TV networks. At the head of long tail, they'll be able to differentiate themselves from commodity news through designer websites, cool visualizations, (hopefully) good journalism and (hopefully) their brand names.
- Agreed. Ads will very likely not be able to fund the entirety of a newsorg in the future. I can say this with maybe… 90% certainty.
- Newspapers enjoyed a profit margin of 20% and higher.
- The issue here is largely mindset. Newspapers are used to thinking of themselves as …newspapers. As they realize that they are really just a specialized subset of the tech sector, they'll come to have a revenue model that is more inline with the industry. Which is to say, one that relies on multiple sources of revenue.
- We really agree on your last three points here. Newsorgs need a great UI, ability to inform using data, and to maintain a solid reputation.
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.
NBC Olympics: Annoying, Incompetent, Liars?
NBC is doing a heckuva as the US's only provider of the Olympics this year. They've got tons of coverage on TV, and an extensive online coverage system too. Naturally, with such a huge operation there are … difficulties.
Annoyances
Watching the coverage online requires Microsoft Silverlight, which (now) supports Macs, but it means installing some Microsoft bloatware onto your system (yuk).
Silverlight is competitor to the ubiquitous Adobe Flash. In this blogger's humble opinion, MS has no chance to take the market. It's annoying to have to install the software just to watch the Olympics. Of course, kudos to MS for getting their software in such a preimo spot (we'll ignore the MSNBC connection). I sure do wish NBC had provided a Flash alternative though.
Incompetencies
On Technically Incorrect | CNet, Chris Matyszczyk blogged about his experience watching the Olympics online. Let's just say that NBC was less than professional:
Wait, wait.
The scrolling commentary has political news: "Iran, USA detente at the head of the main peloton as Iran's climber Hussein Askari takes a flyer and is joined by (we think) USA's Jason McCartney."
We think? We think? This might be a U.S. assault on Iran. And all they can say is "We think"?
-Censors not able to keep up with NBC's online Olympics coverage | CNet
And, it seems that NBC has concluded that if their talking heads are writing, and not talking, they can spew even more BS than they typically do:
This is how he has just spoken to me in writing: "The first time up the major climb of the finish circuit has substantially damaged the peloton, but we are still waiting on names and time gaps."
So this commentator is telling me he has no idea who is winning, no idea who is second, no idea who is third, and no idea of the time differences between the riders.
Lies
Slashdot is a news aggregation site for nerds. If someone on that site notices something fishy going on with the news media, you can be pretty sure that a) What they say happened, happened. b) It's pretty out of the box because, this is not a site that usually notes this kind of thing. Below is the full text of the blurb on Slashdot.
"Viewing the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony online at NBC's Olympics website, you can see that the order in which the countries were presented was very different from the actual order of the countries in the ceremony, as listed at Wikipedia. NBC skipped roughly 100 countries ahead, then jumped back and forth, apparently delaying the appearance of the United States in its home market until later in the broadcast. (In fact, the US team was shown on the infield before they were shown marching!) NBC did not acknowledge this in its broadcast. Is NBC altering the reality of the broadcast to boost ratings? Was this true only online, or also in the live broadcast?"
-Slashdot | Did NBC Alter the Olympics' Opening Ceremony?
Bear in mind, that if you live on the West Coast of the US you got to watch these opening ceremonies a full half day after they happened – just so that NBC could show it to you in primetime.
I'm going to enjoy the Olympics throughly, I'm also going to take everything that NBC shows with a grain(s) of salt.
Update
Technically Incorrect has posted another article about digital fakery in the opening ceremonies and the continued use of the word 'live.' Read it here.
In case there was any doubt – NBC is raking in the dough from this Olympics. According to Sean McManus, Olympic commercials cost $1 million a piece.
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.
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.
No, No, Newsprint IS Dead
Stanley Bing (Gil Schwartz) has written an article arguing that newspapers as we know them are not dead. Bing is a humor columnist for Fortune, so he takes his time to get to his point, which he presents as a list in his signature style. While I'd like to agree with Bing, I'm forced to face a more realistic, and sad, truth: print newspapers can't last. Let me address each of his points:
Bing's Reasons Why Newspapers Will Live |
Joey's Response |
| I like newspapers. I look at a few every day and even read some of each; | I like newspapers too, but that doesn't mean that they have a profitable business model (anymore). |
| I don't believe everything I read in the paper, but I'm interested in what they think is interesting; | I'm interested in what journalists, who are experts in their field, have to say too. Yet, I can find the information much quicker, and from a greater variety of sources online. Multiple sources make it much easier for me to believe what I'm reading |
| Newspapers have been around a long time, from medieval days through the time of Horace Greeley and beyond. Radio didn't kill them. TV didn't kill them. The Internet will not kill them; | um... are you seriously arguing that change isn't inevitable? Horses were the primary means of transportation for a few thousand years more than newspapers were a source of news. I don't drive to work in a horse. |
| If there were no newspapers, all we'd have is the Internet, whose capacity for the promulgating and dispensation of bulls**t is unparalleled; | erm... all of the newspapers are online too, so unless the news suddenly becomes bullshit by posting it online, it's the same info you get in print. |
| I am NOT interested in a PERSONAL, daily e-mail informing me only of the stuff I pre-select as of interest to me. What's the pleasure in that? | I agree, having to sort through an email or select out the news that you want to get is limiting and annoying ... that's why newspapers have whole sites online for you to read. |
| If we all had a euro for every article in some medium that declared another medium dead, we'd all be Europeans; | Yea, sure. But trust me, no one writes on clay tablets anymore. Or, a more recent example: who uses a typewriter? |
| Aggregators can only aggregate content if there is content to aggregate. No content, no aggregators; | Sure, we need content. No one's saying that the newspaper industry is going to cease to exist, just that it needs to evolve. Rapidly. |
| Contrary to popular belief, journalism is an actual profession that takes training, talent and skill, and one of the most rigorous and necessary places in which it's pursued is in newspapers; | Totally agreed, journalism is a hard, and noble profession. So let's keep 'em around. Their product is going to look a bit different, but that's cool right? |
| 89% of all citizen-journalists are just full of it. | 32% of all stats are made up on the spot. Seriously though, no sane person is going to argue that journalism as a profession is coming to an end, just that it can stand to be democratized a little bit. It's impossible for journalists to be everywhere at once. Let's farm out some of the story-finding to the average joe. Half the time he can write perfectly well about the birth of 6 lambs in Podunk, Utah anyway. |
| source: Life and Death in the Media Business | MediaCulture | AlterNet |
Bing also brings up a few points that he doesn't address in this list. He argues that both Rupert Murdoch and Sam Zell have recently bought major newspapers: the Wall Street Journal and the Tribune Co. respectively. These industry titans must be investing in newspapers for a reason.
→ Mr. Bing, I agree, they are investing for a reason. The news business will not die. There is an inherent need for the fourth estate; both for the sake of democracy and human curiosity. These rather smart business men are simply buying low so they can sell high.
Bing writes that his kids love reading newspapers; he hints that there is a need for something physical for a younger person to be able to understand it.
→ If Bing is arguing that his kids won't be able to satisfy their "obamamania" without newspapers, he's wrong. They can always get their news online. Faster. From more sources. More reliably – will they look to a newspaper to see who won on November 8th? More likely they will keep track of the election night online. Or at least on TV.
As to the need for something physical, that is a problem. So far, we have nothing better than print newspapers as a physical medium. Trust me, solutions are being worked on though. I like OLEDs.
Advertising dollars are down across the board, and according to Bing, and all the bad press that newspapers are getting means that advertisers are being scared away.
→ There's bad press for a reason. The media industry can be pretty stupid. Yet, I trust them enough to report that part of the industry is failing only if it actually is failing.
Ads may be down across the board, and that might partially explain the loss of ad revenue for newspapers, but there's no way the overall decrease is responsible for the drastic losses that newspapers are seeing. They've lost their crown jewel of advertising, the classifieds, to the internet. An overall slump in the graph should not equal a valley for the newspaper industry.
I've got a bad habit of not being able to read the vocal inflections that people try to convey with text, so I apologize if I've taken any of what Gill wrote too literally. However, the point is important, the print medium is dying. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that technology is not ready yet with a replacement. In the mean time, newspapers have to find a stop gap solution where they can exist online and still maintain a physical product.
