News Cut Category Archive: Media

Dog bites TV anchor

Posted at 12:05 PM on February 8, 2012 by Bob Collins (15 Comments)
Filed under: Media

This was such a nice story....

Until the TV station tried to keep the story alive one more day...

The TV anchor, Kyle Dyer, is in the hospital. The incident happened this morning in Denver.

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The gentleman journalist

Posted at 4:12 PM on February 3, 2012 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

If there has ever been a nicer person in the journalism business than the Associated Press' George Esper, not many people know about him. Esper, who toiled for the Associated Press, died last night at age 79.

He spent 10 years reporting in Vietnam, the last two as the Associated Press bureau chief. He was the guy who told you about the fall of Saigon. But most of us old people in the business -- especially those near his Boston base in the '80s -- remember him better as the person who could get positively wide-eyed at our stories of covering the mundane city hall and cop shop beats that young reporters are required to cover.

I spent several evenings as a pup reporter telling him about my work, while simultaneously thinking, "why would someone like you care?" But he did.

And that's where we learned a valuable lesson: You don't have to be a jerk to get the story, but you do have to be a great storyteller. Oh, and it won't kill anyone to care a bit about people. When the North Vietnamese rolled into Saigon, he offered them poundcake and Coke. Not just anyone can meet an invading army.

At a time when the world of journalism needs more George Espers, it sadly has one fewer.

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Dewey defeats Truman II

Posted at 1:30 PM on February 2, 2012 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Remember when the Associated Press was winning plaudits a couple of weeks ago for its ironclad system of checking and double-checking sources, a system that kept the AP from reporting the premature death of Joe Paterno?

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Reporters and Twitter often a bad mix

Posted at 11:34 AM on January 27, 2012 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Former Pioneer Press top editor Thom Fladung is in the center of a journalistic firestorm -- or what passes for one -- in his native Cleveland.

Fladung, who left Minnesota for the Cleveland Plain Dealer a year ago, removed a reporter from his beat -- covering the Cleveland Browns -- because Tony Grossi thought he was sending a direct message to someone when he tweeted to the world that team owner Randy Lerner is "a pathetic figure, the most irrelevant billionaire in the world"?

"It's a testament to the fact that, in this day and age, where social networks make people more accessible than ever, public figures must be especially careful as to how they present themselves," a writer for the Dawg Pound Daily says.

It also rekindles an old debate: Is the crime here that the reporter has an opinion? Or is it that now you know what it is?

Fladung called a local sportstalk station to explain it...

In other Cleveland football news, the Browns are about to hire former Vikings coach Brad Childress. In the interest of job security, it might not be a bad idea for football beat writers in that city to go ahead and shut down their Twitter accounts now.

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Terry Gross on Colbert

Posted at 10:39 AM on January 26, 2012 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

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TV news shows that try too hard

Posted at 12:15 PM on January 24, 2012 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Media

For people in the media, it's always interesting to watch news organizations try to do something new. There just aren't a lot of "new" ways to do "old" media, not that CBS hasn't tried dozens of times over the decades with its perennial third-place-finishing morning news program.

A few weeks ago, it wiped away its last host team, adding Charlie Rose and Oprah-pal Gayle King.

When the announcement of the Oscar nominees was made this morning, the show tried something new: a Mystery Science Theater 3000-like commentary-fest.

"The 2012 nominees for actress in a supporting role are....." the Oscar ceremony host started...

"I assume this is being seen around the word," Charlie Rose interjected.

"It depends on the time zone," another guest intoned as the nominees were named.

"Jessica Chastain in 'The Help'," the Oscar official said...

"Jessica," Rose added.

"Ahhhh," another host said.

It didn't get much better. It was like the people behind you in a movie theater.

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Hastings newspaper changes policy on suicide coverage

Posted at 8:50 AM on January 20, 2012 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Media

The pleas of some mental health professionals in Minnesota to change the way newspapers and news organizations cover suicides has apparently not fallen on deaf ears.

Today, the Hastings Star Gazette announced a change in its policy of not covering suicides that happen in private, while reporting on those that happen in public. The paper acknowledged the mostly discredited assertion that covering suicides encourages more suicides (the Star Tribune maintains this policy), which is mostly an incorrect interpretation of what experts say. "Glorifying" suicides risks leads to more suicides. Details. Details.

That was short-sighted on our part. Essentially, we were sweeping the problem under the rug.

This week we changed that policy. We will write about mental health issues in the police report - again, the issues are not criminal, but police are often called to help mediate the situations and in some cases they transport the affected person for evaluation. It's a significant use of police resources, and the public ought to know how their department is spending its time.

Please know we will not be publishing the names of those who are affected. Nor will we publish addresses.

The greater good in this, we hope, is that by telling you about these instances you'll see how prevalent it is. You will have greater awareness about the ongoing struggles taking place in your community. Once you are armed with that information, we hope you'll do what you can to help your fellow residents.

Our guess is that if the people who need this care feel like they are the only ones with the problem, they could feel ashamed. They may refuse to be treated. They could become even more isolated, and that would likely just exacerbate the problem.

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Vanity Fair on NPR

Posted at 2:22 PM on January 18, 2012 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

No doubt, the execs at NPR can exhale now that Vanity Fair's long piece on NPR is out. It reportedly has been in the works for more than a year ("National Public Rodeo"),
To summarize:

1) Not liberal enough.

In the process, it's gone decidedly mainstream. True, in story selection and sound, NPR retains a tincture of elite liberalism. (Anyone seeking evidence need only listen to the insufferable "Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!") But as its critics on the left contend (yes, there are lots of them too, every bit as over-heated as those on the right), on NPR these days there's far more comforting the afflicted than afflicting the comfortable. NPR has traded much of its early edginess and eccentricity for reach and respectability, stability, and an almost compulsive inoffensiveness. (When, not long ago, Leon Panetta called Osama bin Laden a "son of a bitch," NPR felt compelled to bleep out the "bitch.") Apart from the occasional stories about gays or Palestinians (and maybe even gay Palestinians), there's precious little on NPR these days for conservatives really to hate. For them, despising NPR and cutting off what amounts to the few pennies it collects from the federal budget has increasingly become more a matter of pandering, or habit, or sophomoric sport, than of conviction or serious policy. The editor of the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol, once confessed to former NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin that he really didn't believe NPR was liberal; he just said so "to keep you guys on the defensive." And that still seems true.

2) Pushed around by Juan Williams:

Three times in our hour-long interview, (Tell Me More host Michael) Martin called Williams "the most skillful manipulator of white people's anxieties that I have ever met." Sure enough, when I asked Williams whether he had spread himself too thin at NPR, he came back at me the next time we talked claiming I'd called him "lazy," a lethally incendiary word in a racial context I'd neither used (the interview was taped) nor implied, nor had ever heard anyone else use or imply. (Williams is quite the opposite of lazy: he's hyperkinetic.) Many journalists are surprisingly thin-skinned: to Williams, just about any criticism is ridicule, and personal, and maybe just a bit bigoted. "There's no way that I could be me and be a phony," he said. "It's just too public, too highprofile. If I was in fact a charlatan who knew nothing and was over-extended and was a pretender, it would just be so transparent."

3) And Juan Williams is asking tough questions at Fox that NPR should be asking:

In the Wall Street Journal/Fox News-sponsored debate among the Republican presidential candidates in South Carolina on January 16, the dilemma was on perfect display. In fact, to those who continue to follow him, Williams's performance gave rise to an interesting sideshow, a debate within a debate. It was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Williams was a panelist alongside Bret Baier and two representatives from The Wall Street Journal. The topics ranged from foreign affairs to tax policy to "super PACs," but with a couple of exceptions, virtually every question Williams asked that night dealt with minorities and their problems in an especially troubled economy.

In a hotbed of "states rights," he asked Rick Perry whether the federal government should continue to scrutinize the voting laws of states that have historically discriminated against minorities. He asked Mitt Romney--whose father, he noted, was born in Mexico--whether his opposition to the Dream Act threatened to alienate Hispanics. He asked Rick Santorum if now was the time to address the extraordinarily high poverty rate among black Americans. He asked Ron Paul to acknowledge racial disparities in drug-related arrests and convictions. Whenever a candidate answered that blacks and Hispanics should receive no preferential treatment whatsoever, he received lusty applause, while Williams sat there glumly. Then, in a question that brought hoots of derision from the hand-picked, wealthy, white Republican crowd, Williams accused Newt Gingrich of belittling the poor by suggesting, essentially, that their poverty was their fault: they really didn't like to work. Then, over more boos, he asked it again.

Summary: There's not a lot of "new" in the piece, though it will rekindle previous debates.

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Behind every great host

Posted at 12:28 PM on January 18, 2012 by Bob Collins (16 Comments)
Filed under: Media

There are two days left now before Gary Eichten calls it a career, and although I've written at least two tribute pieces to the man in the last year, I feel compelled to join the (highly appropriate) media tributes to the long-time Midday host. Instead, I'm going to pay tribute to him in a way only Eichten would appreciate -- throwing the spotlight on his colleague who can't stand the spotlight.

One of the pitfalls of radio is the audience only knows the existence of the voices, not the considerable infrastructure behind the scenes. Sara Meyer is part of that infrastructure. This photo, taken by David Brauer today (he was in to interview Gary), is one of the few pictures she allowed to be taken of her. (Update: Sara says she didn't know David took the picture. I knew it!)

Meyer is the producer of Midday and every deserved tribute that Mr. Eichten is getting as he concludes his career, should live in the shadow cast by Meyer as well. For as larger-than-life a person as Eichten is to the audience, Sara Meyer is to this newsroom, too.

She, like Gary, is the model of professionalism and integrity. She, like Gary, is unflappable in the face of mishaps and breaking news. Every guest you've heard on Midday in the last several decades (she fled to Minnesota from her native Massachusetts in 1985 1975), you heard because Sara made the phone calls to potential guests who were smart enough not to say "no."

There's nothing easy about producing a two-hour talk show with multiple guests or live coverage at state political conventions, live broadcasts from the Capitol, or election nights that go into the next morning. The smoother it all sounds on the air, and the more it sounds like the host is doing it himself, the harder a producer is working. The reward is often only the tongue lashing from the would-be caller who couldn't get on the air because he wanted to deliver a speech that had nothing to do with the topic being discussed.

Like Eichten, her passion is politics. She can tell you where most political districts are, and who lost the election in them 20 years ago.

She is not without blemishes; she maintained that Jim Rice belonged in the Baseball Hall of Fame until everyone got so tired of hearing about it, they put him in.

Gary will retire on Friday and the sun will come up by 11:06 on Monday morning. Sara is staying, as far we know. The plans for Midday will not be announced until after Gary's final show on Friday, presumably because the management (appropriately) doesn't want to distract from the spotlight on Gary.

Whoops.

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Eichten, my Eichten

Posted at 11:13 AM on January 17, 2012 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Gary Eichten has just started today's Midday show in his usual style. There'll be only two more such occasions until he retires to the good life.

His retirement has brought out the literary genius -- more or less -- in his audience, which has been submitting messages to him for the last few weeks.

Today's highlight, courtesy of "Steve R." is worthy of mention:

O CAPTAIN! my Commentator! Your wonderful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel of news has been grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of real news,
Where on the deck my Captain now resides,
Retired and much missed.

O Captain! my Commentator! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up-for you the flag of honest news is flung-for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths-for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear Newsman!
This Network beneath supported your clear head;
It was a dream that you were on the air,
You've captured our hearts and heads.

My Commentator does not answer the call in lines anymore;
My Commentator does not feed my head and now I have no pulse nor will;
His news was anchor'd safe and sound, now the voice closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
I walk the dial my Commentator left,
Now shallow, empty and with dread.

If we only had a name for this society of Midday fans.

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Should reporters point out lies?

Posted at 10:56 AM on January 12, 2012 by Bob Collins (13 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The New York Times' ombudsman, Arthur Brisbane, asks an interesting question today that many people will consider a slam dunk, and others will consider: Should reporters point out when someone is lying?

As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?

If so, then perhaps the next time Mr. Romney says the president has a habit of apologizing for his country, the reporter should insert a paragraph saying, more or less:

"The president has never used the word 'apologize' in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president's words."

Or should reporters simply write what they're told? If this question sounds familiar, you're probably a regular NewsCut reader.

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MPR's 'naked lady'

Posted at 3:51 PM on January 10, 2012 by Bob Collins (10 Comments)
Filed under: Media

There are only 8 broadcasts of MPR's Midday left before Broadcasting Hall of Fame host Gary Eichten retires; this is a massively depressing fact for a sizable part of the MPR audience and 100 percent of the people who work here.

We've enjoyed reading the messages that people have been submitting, but few have elicited the guffaws that the imagery from one did today.

A woman who moved here from Germany 18 years ago reminisced about her introduction to Midday, closing with this:

"In centuries past, big proud saling ships had statues of naked ladies mounted to the front that showed them the way through the oceans. I sure hope that MPR is still going to find its way after its very own naked lady, Gary Eichten, has gone home."

Of course, we put our best and brightest on that one...

Mr. Eichten has worked at MPR for nearly 45 years, but it wasn't until his last two weeks in the business that he picked up a nickname that might just stick.

(h/t: Michael Wells)

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Former Strib editor stood on principle, and larger than life

Posted at 5:00 AM on January 5, 2012 by Eric Ringham (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Regional history

Charles W. Bailey, the former editor of the Minneapolis Tribune and its successor paper, the Star Tribune, died Tuesday in a New Jersey nursing home. He was 82.

For the generation of young reporters and editors who entered the journalism business during Watergate, Chuck Bailey was the perfect editor in chief. He came from the East Coast and brought with him an air of old money. He reminded us a little of the Washington Post's Ben Bradlee. He could wear a bow tie and make it work.

Once during the news huddle he asked why the Tribune was giving so much attention to a Lutheran convention. One of the editors pointed out that Minnesota had substantial numbers of Lutherans. Chuck replied, "No, Episcopalians are substantial. Lutherans are merely numerous."

That was the story, anyway. Chuck was larger than life, and it was sometimes hard to tell the legend from reality. He wrote "Seven Days in May," a major political thriller that got made into a movie. He was there when Bobby Kennedy was killed. He was on Air Force One when LBJ took the oath of office. He went with Nixon to China.

That last one I was sure of, because I'd seen a photo from the trip in Chuck's office. Even at the bottom of the Tribune's food chain, I was often in that office, answering questions about my life and career plans. Once, when he found out I was planning to visit London on vacation, he pressed on me the home phone number of a famous foreign correspondent who he insisted would have me to dinner. He made me promise to call. I did, and though no dinner invitation came of it, I did have a memorable conversation.

It says something about a boss: that he would go to such lengths to make a young employee feel like a colleague.

Chuck wrote an occasional column for the editorial page of the Tribune. All too often these days, executive editors and publishers use columns like that to promote a coming series of news articles or to celebrate circulation gains or an iPad app. But Chuck never wrote promotional copy, and instead based his columns on the news. He was implicitly stating a principle: that he would hold himself to the same standards he expected of anyone else.

When he left the paper, it was again to state a principle, explicitly this time. After the Tribune merged with the afternoon Minneapolis Star -- a merger that Star employees compared to the merger of a bug with a windshield -- Chuck promised that staff reductions would go only so far. When the publisher told him he would have to break that promise and make more cuts, he quit. He announced his reasons in one of those somber shirtsleeves meetings that newsrooms always have when something awful is about to happen.

He did pretty well for himself after that, taking a job with NPR in Washington. But as he walked away from a job he clearly loved, he wept, and his staff applauded. In 30 years at the newspaper, I never heard that kind of applause again.

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Facts vs. truth in Bachmann reporting

Posted at 10:21 AM on January 4, 2012 by Bob Collins (19 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Politics

Every now and again, we'll get an e-mail from somebody who objects to the reporting of anything "but the facts." Some people don't want analysis and they don't want anything but what somebody says. That would be a bad thing.

It's a bad idea for journalists to cover a campaign by merely reporting the words of candidates.

It was a fact that Mrs. Bachmann said she'd stay in the race after Iowa no matter what. But it wasn't the truth, and most every political analyst knew it. Facts vs. truth: Which should be in a headline?

"I didn't tell you what I knew to be false," she said today.

How would you headline that?

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Iowa faux pas

Posted at 11:45 AM on January 3, 2012 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Politics

Something's missing this afternoon from the front page of the Des Moines Register's website:

It's the cleverly placed ad, purchased by Barack Obama's campaign, that was there this morning:

(From Romenesko)

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Whatever happened to that kid?

Posted at 3:00 PM on December 29, 2011 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The last week of the year is a challenge for anyone in the news business; there's simply very little news going on.

So it's a good time to waste time -- cleaning out the e-mail, for example.

Today, I started chucking e-mails that I've saved in the "Stuff to Save" folder. There are e-mails from colleagues who are dead now, couples who are divorced, and the rare missive from someone who wrote something nice. There are passwords for sites that no longer exist. But some are e-mails I saved for reading later, and then never got around to.

There's this one, for example, from November 2003 from a high school student at Jefferson High School in Bloomington, who attended a symposium MPR had offered for young people who might be interested in a career in journalism. I was managing editor for MPR's online news division then (there were only two of us).

We do very few of these anymore, which is too bad because there's nothing more invigorating for journalists than young people who are interested in the field.

Anyway, she wrote a thank-you note to the person who was my boss back then:

I can honestly say I enjoyed all the speakers, but I was especially intrigued by Mr. Collins' speech about online journalism. I think it's very interesting that radio as a news medium, in particular, has embraced online journalism to the degree that it has. I have heard quite often that online journalism means the end of journalistic reporting as we now know it. Of course, this is true, but Mr. Collins emphasized particularly how that is not a bad thing. He implied that it perhaps makes the job a bit more difficult, but it also allows the public access to more information. That, of course, is what journalism is all about. His speech made me realize that journalism is at a very exciting point right now, evolving and becoming something better than it was before. He also tied his speech in well with Mr. Skolar's talk on Interactive Journalism. I also found this topic particularly interesting. I find that many people my age, myself sometimes included, tend to be quite apathetic about events that are happening around them. By allowing people to, in effect, become the news, it should increase interest. That's simply human nature. What an absolutely ingenious idea.

I wondered whatever happened to that kid? So I "Googled" her and found her... at the Washington Post. She made it to the big time.

Good for you, Hayley Tsukayama!

I wonder what else is in this email folder?

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Fall of a TV anchor

Posted at 1:54 PM on December 22, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The Mankato TV station anchor whose "slurred speech" during a newscast made her a YouTube hit has been arrested for DUI.

The Mankato Free Press says Annie Stensrud, 28, was arrested for allegedly driving while intoxicated on Wednesday morning.

KEYC, the TV station where Sensrud works -- or worked, it's still not clear -- has since had the video pulled from YouTube.

But here's how Stensrud performed during better times. This is her "demo reel," a video anchors put together to help them get jobs.

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Who mattered in 2011?

Posted at 10:08 AM on December 14, 2011 by Michael Olson (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

There is no shortage of top-ten best-of lists helping us to boil the year down to a blog post. Time's Person of the Year is worth a conversation. The magazine selected "The Protester."

Time: "Once upon a time, when major news events were chronicled strictly by professionals and printed on paper or transmitted through the air by the few for the masses, protesters were prime makers of history. Back then, when citizen multitudes took to the streets without weapons to declare themselves opposed, it was the very definition of news -- vivid, important, often consequential. In the 1960s in America they marched for civil rights and against the Vietnam War; in the '70s, they rose up in Iran and Portugal; in the '80s, they spoke out against nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Europe, against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, against communist tyranny in Tiananmen Square and Eastern Europe. Protest was the natural continuation of politics by other means."

Who would you like to see on the cover of the magazine?

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Threaten a boycott, boost the ratings

Posted at 11:15 AM on December 13, 2011 by Eric Ringham (10 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Politics, Religion

It's a lesson that never gets learned: The best way to generate more exposure for speech is to try to suppress it. People who would never have given an obscure reality show a second look will tune in to "All-American Muslim," now that the Florida Family Association has pressured the Lowe's chain to withdraw its advertising.

The group's executive director, interviewed by CNN's John King, did his cause no credit by first pronouncing the word "imam" as "eye-mom." Or by allowing himself to be interviewed in close conjunction with Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who did a credible of job of arguing his simple point: Muslims are just regular people. What strange times we live in, that making such a case seems necessary.

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The private lives of TV newspeople

Posted at 10:56 AM on December 9, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Maybe you've noticed the latest local trend in TV news: If something happens to one of the station's "talent," it's news. Have a baby? News. Get a disease? News. Time for the colonoscopy? Health segment.

When is something not news? When most of the nation is laughing at your anchorperson for doing a newscast, apparently, under the influence of.... something.

As an earlier 5x8 post indicated this week, it happened Sunday to an anchor in Mankato.

The TV station hadn't said anything about it until last night, posting a short message on its website at a time when few people are looking at news websites.

"Sunday night's uncharacteristic newscast on KEYC Mankato can hardly be considered private. Nonetheless, in our judgment, the matter represents a personnel issue to be resolved internally."

Dennis M. Wahlstrom
Vice President and General Manager, KEYC

Fair enough. Even though the person is obviously in the public eye, privacy is demanded, even if it makes news. It's not a policy often extended by the news media to people not in the news media.

Later last night, the anchorwoman issued a statement saying she's been sick and on medication.

Perhaps there's a future story here on the need to read the warning labels.

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Where have all the good advertisers gone?

Posted at 3:43 PM on December 6, 2011 by Michael Olson (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

This week has presented us with two significant developments in Minnesota's media landscape: 1) The Utne Reader is leaving Minneapolis for Topeka, and 2) The Star Tribune metered pay wall seems to be working.

In both instances loyal readers were there, but finding loyal advertisers continues to be a struggle.

Strib metered pay wall: Web traffic down 10-15 percent, revenue up. MinnPost's David Brauer sees good things in the early numbers on the Star Tribune's metered pay wall system. "Long-term, there's still reason to believe this will help create a durable digital subscriber base that advertisers eventually pay more for," Brauer writes. "That should keep journalists celebrating."

In addition to keeping this momentum going, the Strib is facing a new challenge to convince advertisers that a smaller audience is worth more money.

The Utne Reader of Topeka. The Utne will join its sister publications in Topeka. Marianne Combs asked Utne Reader's editor-in-chief about the move in a post on State of the Arts.

Editor-in-Chief David Schimke and his staff will not be moving to Topeka with the magazine. But he did take the time to answer a few questions.

Combs: In the past six years the Utne Reader hasn't been able to make a profit. Why is that? Have automatic aggregaters like Google Reader replaced digests?

Schimke: I think it's a little bit that. But the fact is, we've been winning awards; we even upped the price and didn't see a decrease in subscribership. But the advertising just isn't there. We have a small loyal audience, but it's a difficult audience to market to.

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Reporting a suicide in the media

Posted at 12:49 PM on December 2, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

We've had a couple of posts this week on the subject of suicide and over the years, there've been plenty on the question of whether and when should the media indicate a suicide is a suicide.

This week, we got a glimpse into what happens when it's a member of the media who takes his own life.

It happened in Kansas City, when meteorologist Don Harman hanged himself. The station involved asked most of the media in town not to report the death. They didn't.

Peggy Phillip, a news director at a competing news director writes today:

We talked about how we would proceed, first at our weekly manager meeting and then with all reporters, producers and photographers in our daily editorial meeting. Our sources at the police department confirmed that Harman died by suicide. We did not report Harman's suicide on our 11 a.m. newscast. Some have criticized this decision. I understand why but I stand by what we (and most of the other newsrooms in Kansas City) did.

Certainly the management at WDAF was in the most difficult position, balancing the public's right to know with their own significant loss.

And therein lies one of the questions: Should the media treat a story differently because it involves one of their own. Phillip says it wasn't until 4 or 5 p.m. the next day that her station treated the story as a suicide, and provided more information about suicide in general.

From what she writes today, it was a high-volume discussion.

Read more about it here.

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Behind the bedroom door

Posted at 4:33 PM on November 28, 2011 by Bob Collins (15 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Politics

How is running a country different than running a corporation? When you run a country, you don't get to make the rules.

Here's the response Herman Cain's attorney, Lin Wood, sent to a Georgia TV station which this evening is running an interview with a woman who claims she's had an affair with the presidential candidate for the last 13 years:

Mr. Cain has been informed today that your television station plans to broadcast a story this evening in which a female will make an accusation that she engaged in a 13-year long physical relationship with Mr. Cain. This is not an accusation of harassment in the workplace - this is not an accusation of an assault - which are subject matters of legitimate inquiry to a political candidate.

Rather, this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults - a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life. The public's right to know and the media's right to report has boundaries and most certainly those boundaries end outside of one's bedroom door.

Mr. Cain has alerted his wife to this new accusation and discussed it with her. He has no obligation to discuss these types of accusations publicly with the media and he will not do so even if his principled position is viewed unfavorably by members of the media."

Fair game? Or is it out of bounds?

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Minnesota Independent closing

Posted at 4:50 PM on November 16, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The Minnesota Independent online news site is closing.

The network of individual locally-targeted "Independent" sites is being eliminated in favor of one big site.

According to a note on the Independent's site:

I am writing today to announce the closure of the Minnesota Independent. After five years of operation in Minnesota, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com.

This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms of journalism made available as technology has advanced, and an increasing emphasis on national coverage and issue-based coverage from our network. Over the coming months, AINN will announce a number of new journalism initiatives that will continue to advance our mission of producing impact journalism in the public interest.

Going forward, an archive of Minnesota Independent's reporting will exist on AmericanIndependent.com.

We are grateful for the loyal readership of the MnIndy, and to the outstanding work of our reporters and editors.

We look forward to keeping you posted on our plans, which will be announced early next year.

Best regards,

David S. Bennahum
CEO & founder, The American Independent News Network

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Walks like a duck, but has no comment

Posted at 12:30 PM on November 11, 2011 by Michael Olson (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

You heard the one about the reporter who heard "dog" when a meat market worker said "duck," right?

The Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists says WCCO has some explaining to do. The MnSPJ has come out in support of demands made by the Asian American Journalists Association that WCCO explain how its unfounded story claiming that dogs from Minnesota were sold in New York as meat made it to air.

We understand that mistakes happen, but we are disappointed that we have yet to see an explanation from WCCO regarding the report in question, which has since been pulled from the website. The report, which perpetuates an Asian stereotype, resulted in a state probe of the meat market in which no evidence was found of dog meat (AAJA).

The City Pages rolled out some new information on what led to the error.

Apparently it wasn't a snap judgement to air the story and publish it online.

"It was approved by multiple middle manager producers, and the CBS lawyer," says the source. "Our news director hasn't said a word, hasn't approached anyone in the newsroom about it. He may make heads roll before his head rolls."

The City Pages source also says that "a reporter from the CBS affiliate in New York was deployed to Chinatown to ask if the meat market in question also sold dogs as pets, according to our source. The question met with a confused 'No.'"

But I-TEAM reporter James Schugel pressed on with the story and in a phone call with a market employee confused "duck" with "dog."

Thanks to a cached version of the story, here is how the exchange was reported on WCCO.com:

The I-TEAM found no sign of dogs, until they called the market directly.

"Do you sell dogs?" asked the I-TEAM'S Schugel.

"Yea. We sell dog," said the man who answered the phone.

"Dogs for people to eat?" asked Schugel.

"Uh, yea," he said. "We sell many kinds of meat."

"Dogs for people to eat?" asked Schugel.

"Yes," said the man.

The I-TEAM questioned the man again, just to be clear. He said he does not sell dogs for pets. He only sells them for food.

After hearing the shocking story New York Agriculture Department investigators went to the market and found no indication the market was selling dog meat.

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Anonymous sources and 'Woman A'

Posted at 1:01 PM on November 8, 2011 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Media

NPR and other news organizations have now identified "Woman A" in the Herman Cain sexual harassment scandal.

(Karen) Kraushaar, 55, a career federal employee and registered Republican, currently works as a communications director at the U.S. Treasury Department.

The release of her name also came after the restaurant association, acting on a request by Kraushaar's lawyer, Joel Bennett, freed her last week from a confidentiality agreement signed when she settled her harassment case against Cain and left the association with a cash payment in June 1999. Bennett on Friday read a statement on behalf of Kraushaar, who alleged the incidents involving Cain were "a series of inappropriate behaviors and unwanted advances from the CEO."

Journalist Dan Gillmor has long maintained that using anonymous sources hurts the credibility of news organizations:

Whether the reporters and editors who so casually violate their institutions' rules are simply arrogant and/or lazy, or whether they genuinely believe they're providing information that readers need to know, they're undermining the credibility of their news organizations almost every time they do this. In reality, whether they understand it or not, they betray contempt for their readers, not respect.

As a reader, I've trained myself to treat anonymously sourced stories with the most extreme skepticism. Unless I can infer a truly compelling reason for the anonymity, I now actively disbelieve -- or, at best, assume a sleazy motive on the part of the source -- what I read in these circumstances.

The question of whether anonymity should be extended to people in a news story is not without the occasional flash of comedic irony. Take this paragraph from Michael Calderone's recent article on Huffington Post.:

"There's no journalistic reason not to name them," said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I think it comes down to a very simple equation: If you name them, the likelihood of your news organization interviewing them probably goes down to zero."

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Cornish to ATC

Posted at 10:43 AM on November 2, 2011 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

What was your favorite Audie Cornish moment on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday? It's over. At least for now.

Just five months after Cornish took over the program from long-time host Liane Hansen, NPR is tapping Cornish as the new host of the daily All Things Considered program, according to the Two Way blog.

She takes over, at least until next November, from Minnesota native Michele Norris, who is leaving the host position because her husband is taking a job with the Obama re-election campaign.

Norris will continue in a reporting role, but won't do any political stories, according to NPR.

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When journalists protest

Posted at 12:15 PM on October 28, 2011 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Media

It's not really hard to understand why some members of the public don't see the problem with journalists taking an active role in a news story, as long as they're taking part on their side.

But it's surprising that some journalists don't see the perception problem doing so presents...

Caitlin Curran, a web journalist, wanted to do a story on reaction to the sign, so she had her boyfriend hold it. When he got tired of holding it, she held it. In the business, this is referred to as "crossing the line."

She revealed it all to the Gawker website:

The next day, The Takeaway's director fired me over the phone, effective immediately. He was inconsolably angry, and said that I had violated every ethic of journalism, and that this should be a "teaching moment" for me in my career as a journalist. The segment I had pitched, of course, would not happen. Ironically, the following day Marketplace did pretty much the exact segment I thought would have been great on The Takeaway, with Kai Ryssdal discussing the sign and the Goldman Sachs deal it alluded to in terms that were far from neutral.

Well, not exactly. The story Marketplace did was with the person who wrote the words, not a reporter who was taking part in a demonstration and then covering herself taking part in a demonstration.

It may well be splitting hairs, but if you write the words that someone else uses in an active news story, is that the same as holding the sign with those words? Here's the original post on The Atlantic's website, which has context and information, and would constitute, as they say, "informed opinion."

Nonetheless, does that make the journalist who wrote the words part of the protest?

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Marriage and the NPR ethics rules

Posted at 11:11 AM on October 24, 2011 by Bob Collins (9 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Cue the "we knew it" outrage.

Michele Norris is leaving hosting duties at National Public Radio -- temporarily -- because her husband is joining the national Barack Obama re-election campaign.

In a note to staff posted on the company's Two Way blog, Norris says she's not leaving reporting, just hosting:

I need to share some news and I wanted to make sure my NPR family heard this first. Last week, I told news management that my husband, Broderick Johnson, has just accepted a senior adviser position with the Obama Campaign. After careful consideration, we decided that Broderick's new role could make it difficult for me to continue hosting ATC. Given the nature of Broderick's position with the campaign and the impact that it will most certainly have on our family life, I will temporarily step away from my hosting duties until after the 2012 elections. I will be leaving the host chair at the end of this week, but I'm not going far. I will be wearing a different hat for a while, producing signature segments and features and working on new reporting projects. While I will of course recuse myself from all election coverage, there's still an awful lot of ground that I can till in this interim role.

"This has all happened very quickly, but working closely with NPR management, we've been able to make a plan that serves the show, honors the integrity of our news organization and is best for me professionally and personally.

"I will certainly miss hosting, but I will remain part of the ATC team and I look forward to contributing to our show and NPR in new and exciting ways."

The should amp up the "NPR is just a bunch of liberals" cackling. And it comes days after an opera host, whose show was distributed but not owned by NPR, got into ethical hot water because she also served as a spokeswoman for Occupy protests in Washington

It also shows the tricky aspect of determining ethics where family members are concerned. Sure, there's a fair chance that if Michele Norris married a senior adviser to Barack Obama, that Barack Obama is on her list of favorites. But, prove it. Clearly, she thought the perception of a conflict of interest was an ethical violation, but does moving to reporting duties erase that?

Norris also recused herself in 2004 when her husband worked on the Kerry campaign. But she didn't when he volunteered on the Obama campaign in 2008.

Another NPR host, Linda Wertheimer, is married to Fred Wertheimer, the former president of Common Cause. There's no indication that presented ethical problems for either her or the company for which she works.

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You are editor: The picture

Posted at 11:43 AM on October 18, 2011 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Which one of these images is more newsworthy?

This one?

Or this one?

They were both taken by Associated Press photographer Andrew Burton at an Occupy Wall Street protest last week, a protest that has been largely non-violent.

But it was the top photo that was splashed on the front page of newspapers over the weekend.

You are the editor: Which photo do you use?

"We've written several articles and run numerous photographs in the paper and online from Occupy Wall Street protests, Washington Post Managing Editor Liz Spayd told Salon.com. "The vast majority portrayed the animated but generally peaceful demonstrations you describe. The one we ran last Saturday was a powerful, vivid image of a protester clashing with a policeman. Of all the photographs we looked at that day, it was the most original and the most newsy. The cutline made clear there were only 15 protesters arrested, a small number given the total crowd. We remain highly interested in this movement and its potential political power in the future."

There's some speculation, apparently, that maybe the "tackling protester" was just falling. The photographer told Salon he doesn't know. He said he didn't see the moment he'd captured with his camera and doesn't know what happened.

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Are reporters lobbyists?

Posted at 10:41 AM on October 14, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Media

What part of the First Amendment don't government officials get? On some days, most of it.

In Broward County, Florida, a mayor says reporters for a local newspaper have to register as lobbyists, the Sun Sentinel reports. At issue is a county code of ethics and Lauderhill Mayor Richard Kaplan's interpretation of it in an email to a reporter.

Though reporters do not necessarily consider what they do is lobbying, their work is provided to the editors who use their research to write editorials. Editors do try to influence the final decision making indirectly (which is communication by an means) which is lobbying according to the new law as I see it. It is this understanding that your research will be used in lobbying activities by editors that pay you, that I believe may include reporters in as lobbyist. I just don't want to risk the situation.

The mayor in this case certainly has the right not to talk to the media, but once reporters are required to register as lobbyists, they subject themselves to regulations and that's the part that probably runs afoul of the Constitution.

No matter to many of the commenters on the paper's site, most of whom invoke a political angle and prove again that many people are willing to defend the constitution right up to the point where it becomes politically distasteful to do so.

Meanwhile, in San Diego, a federal prosecutor is threatening "going after" newspapers, radio and TV stations because of ads they're running for illegal marijuana operations in a state that has legalized medicinal use of marijuana.

According to the Center for Investigative Reporting...

Federal law prohibits people from placing ads for illegal drugs, including marijuana, in "any newspaper, magazine, handbill or other publication." The law could conceivably extend to online ads; the U.S. Department of Justice recently extracted a $500 million settlement from Google for selling illegal ads linking to online Canadian pharmacies.

Duffy said her effort against TV, radio or print outlets would first include "going after these folks with ... notification that they are in violation of federal law." She noted that she also has the power to seize property or prosecute in civil and criminal court.

William G. Panzer, an attorney who specializes in marijuana defense cases, said publishers may have a reason to worry. Federal law singles out anyone who "places" an illegal ad in a newspaper or publication. Nevertheless, Panzer said he is not aware of a single appellate case dealing with this section of the law.

"Technically, if I'm running the newspaper and somebody gives me money and says, 'Here's the ad,' I'm the one who is physically putting the ad in my newspaper," he said. "I think this could be brought against the actual newspaper. Certainly, it's arguable, but the statute is not entirely clear on that."

Duffy, if she carries out her threat, would have a leg to stand on where TV and radio stations are concerned. TV/radio, regulated by the government, doesn't enjoy 1st Amendment protections that extent to an unregulated newspaper industry. But prosecuting a newspaper on the basis of content -- even advertising content -- might invite a constitutional challenge.

In this case, the law against placing illegal ads is equating the person placing the illegal ad with the organizations -- mostly alt-weeklies -- accepting it.

The even larger issue, of course, is a federal government essentially targeting a state's decision to legalize marijuana.

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What now, Facebook?

Posted at 1:31 PM on September 22, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

So now we know. Timelines are the big deal that Facebook announced today. It's basically an online scrapbook of your life, called Timelines:

But will it replace scrapbooks? A few years ago, my mother surprised me at Christmas with a scrapbook she made of my life. Sure, it had pictures -- the kind you got when you picked them up at the photo store a week after you dropped off the film. It also had a postcard I sent to my grandmother in Florida (announcing some new chickens has laid eggs), a letter I sent to the editor of the local newspaper at age 12 warning against pollution (I grew up in a mill town; there's no pollution anymore because all the mills have closed), the program at my high school graduation. In other words, a lot of non-digital items that withstand archiving in the digital age.

There's another aspect of an online timeline/scrapbook: You're more likely to actually "scrapbook" your life in a more honest way if you know that people aren't likely to see it until, perhaps, you're gone. Throw something up online, and you're probably going to sanitize it so it looks more like the Christmas letters people send you every year, the ones that edit out real life.

Some analysts think this presents a problem for Google. "What does the new Facebook mean to Google?" someone asked via Twitter a short whilte ago. "Google knows our search and browsing history, but Facebook is going to know OUR history."

But which is likely to reveal the real you, the history you post via a Timeline, or the you you reveal by revealing it Google through searches and other activities?

I'm anxious to see everyone's Timeline to see if I have the same reaction as when I open those letters.

Mashable is live-blogging today's announcements from Facebook.

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Hospital vs. newspaper over coverage of doctor in Duluth

Posted at 3:21 PM on September 20, 2011 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Media

It's not at all unusual for news organizations to be threatened with lawsuits, but fairly unusual for one to be filed. In Duluth today, however, a hospital has filed suit against the investigative reporting of the Duluth News Tribune.

St. Luke's Hospital has filed suit against the paper for its report on neurosurgeon Stefan Konasiewicz, who worked at the hospital from 1997 to 2008.

In May, the paper ran a series of articles alleging the hospital was ignoring the number of malpractice suits filed against the doctor:

When he moved from Duluth about three years ago, Konasiewicz left behind two dead patients, one woman paralyzed from the neck down and six others who say his treatment caused them serious physical harm.

His former employer, St. Luke's hospital, was aware of the harm Konasiewicz was alleged to have caused and yet continued to let him practice, according to records obtained and interviews conducted by the News Tribune.

In its lawsuit, the hospital says the paper knew that the hospital "had a rigorous Quality Assurance program, that all adverse outcomes were investigated, and that St. Luke's has always engaged in an ongoing extensive peer review program," and that state law and the rules for participating in Medicare required the hospital to have an accredited peer review program.

"To create this false news report, Defendants intentionally and deliberately mislead sources, quoted sources out of context, and purposefully avoided information that would contradict their preconceived story," the lawsuit alleges.

In August, the paper followed up with two more stories about the efforts of colleagues to call attention to Konasiewicz, and seemed to imply that the administration looked the other way because he was making money for the hospital that was losing it before the doctor was hired:

Peter Goldschmidt, an orthopedic surgeon who shared patients with Konasiewicz as part of St. Luke's trauma team, said he saw so many complications and adverse outcomes from his colleague that in the early 2000s he brought his concerns directly to St. Luke's senior administration. People he addressed, he said, included CEO and President John Strange, Vice President of Clinics Sandra Barkley and Chief Nursing Officer JoAnn Hoag. He said he also spoke about Konasiewicz with the then-chair of St. Luke's board, Wells McGiffert.

"I thought something had to be done because of the unacceptably high complication rate," said Goldschmidt, who has worked in Duluth since 1994 with Orthopedic Associates, an independent practice that works with St. Luke's. "Nothing seemed to change in (Konasiewicz's practice). And I never received any follow-up."

In an interview on Friday, Strange, who has been CEO of St. Luke's since 1996, said the responsibility for taking any action against Konasiewicz lay with St. Luke's doctors.

Strange said concerns that are brought to him or other administrators about any doctor are taken to the hospital's medical executive committee, which is composed mostly of physicians and has the ability to discipline doctors or restrict their privileges. Strange said he is on the committee but does not have a vote.

"I'm not a physician," Strange said. "Some of that stuff is so technical. I'm not in a position to make a judgment on whether or not something was good care."

In its suit, the hospital said the critic of Konasiewicz quoted in the story, Peter Goldschmidt, worked for a company that was in "competition with St. Luke's," and that his statement was false. It also said had Goldschmidt raised his concerns with the hospital, it would have been required to investigate them.

The story that seems to be at the heart of the lawsuit was filed just as a negligence trial was starting in Stillwater, filed by a man who alleged a brain biopsy performed by Dr. Konasiewicz led to seizures, severe cerebral dysfunction and brain injuries. A week or so later, a jury cleared Konasiewicz.

This afternoon, the hospital issued this statement:

The false statements about St. Luke's published by the Duluth News Tribune are unacceptable. This defamation lawsuit was brought because our patients, dedicated staff, and community deserve to know the truth and not be misled and misinformed by these false reports.

St. Luke's is deeply disappointed in the Duluth News Tribune's tactics to produce its false and defamatory reports. Patient safety and quality healthcare is our top priority at St. Luke's. We are committed to making the truth known, to the extent allowed by law, particularly when it concerns the quality of care we provide our patients.

Notwithstanding the false and defamatory reports by the Duluth News Tribune, we are gratified by the numerous expressions of support that we receive everyday from our patients, staff and community.

In his statement, News Tribune Publisher Ken Browall said: "The stories portrayed what is unquestionably a matter of public safety and concern. We look forward to proceeding to court and the dismissal of this unwarranted complaint."

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Silence and the 9/11 coverage

Posted at 10:44 AM on September 13, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

If there's one thing radio people hate, it's the sound of silence. That made Sunday's broadcast of 9/11 services a challenge for broadcasters because it involved the awesome power of silence.

Which many of them ruined, according to the NPR ombudsman in an article today.

"I expect that NPR, of all media, trusts its listeners' intelligence and patience," a listenere Diana Krauss from Brunswick, ME, wrote to NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos. "Alas, (host) Audie Cornish needed to interrupt the first moment of silence TWICE to tell us that we were listening to a moment of silence, thus destroying it."

Margaret Lowe Smith, the acting senior VP of news responded:

In our planning, we thought long and hard about those moments of silence- They posed serious technical and production challenges, which we couldn't ignore. But most importantly, we wanted to show respect for the moment, the memory of the victims and their families.

Technically, radio stations have silence sensors that go off if they detect dead air. It's a way to alert station engineers of a dropped signal. We had to avoid that happening. And, for our radio listeners, when there is silence on the air, there is often confusion. All that added up to having to make some brief comment during the longer moments of silence. Our host, Audie Cornish, did that with great respect and sensitivity.

In his article, found here, Schumachker-Matos did not offer a verdict of his own.

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Eichten's last fair

Posted at 5:26 PM on September 5, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Some of us are still shocked enough by the recent announcement that MPR News' legend Gary Eichten is retiring at the end of the year, that we're not quite prepared for the series of "lasts" that are about to follow.

I guess that started today because Eichten made his last appearance at the MPR booth at the State Fair.

And as I looked at this photo (from colleague Valerie Arganbright), it dawned on me that Eichten has already anchored his last election night in Minnesota, and he's also moderated his last Sunday-before-Election-Day, top-of-the-ticket debate at the Fitzgerald Theater.

We didn't need more reasons to be depressed about the state of politics, but we're not better off not having this guy guide us through.

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Another girl, another dragon tattoo

Posted at 12:10 PM on August 23, 2011 by Eric Ringham (3 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Media

I'm not one to hold a grudge.

Well, OK, I am one to hold a grudge. I still haven't gotten over "Three Men and a Baby," the English-language remake of the similarly named French film "Three Men and a Cradle." The remake seemed to have no purpose other than to spare the American movie-going public all that messy stuff with the foreign languages and the funny-looking appliances.

Last weekend I saw the trailer for "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," the English-language remake of the similarly named Swedish film "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." (Though it needs to be said that the Swedish title, "Män som hatar kvinnor," reportedly translates as "Men Who Hate Women" - nothing there about tattoos or dragons. For some reason that I don't care enough to find out, the name was changed for both the English title of the novel and the foreign release of the Swedish film.)

The trailer suggests that it's going to be a rip-roaring, gritty crime drama starring big-name actors familiar to American audiences. It contains at least one instance of Daniel Craig doing his signature thing with a cocktail: He takes a sip without breaking eye contact. When I try that, I spill. But James Bond can do it, and so, apparently, can the Swedish journalist Mikael Blomkvist.

The thing is, the Swedish film is also a rip-roaring, gritty crime drama. The actors all have this habit of speaking Swedish, but why shouldn't they? It kind of adds to the set-in-Sweden vibe.

Here's the trailer for the Swedish film:

And here's the trailer for the remake. Watch for Craig to do the thing with the drink:

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'Why are you being so weird about this?'

Posted at 12:42 PM on August 18, 2011 by Eric Ringham (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Politics

How can a (so-far) failed politician and author generate buzz for her book? Or, how can a talk-show host build credentials to help establish himself as a replacement for Larry King?

I don't mean to suggest that either Christine O'Donnell or Piers Morgan went into their taped interview with premeditation, intending the confrontation that ended with her walking off his show. But I do mean to suggest that the aborted interview did no harm to either of them - that, in fact, many more people will be watching the interview on CNN than would have been if the interview had gone off smoothly.

(As Murray remarked to Ted on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "That's right, Ted. It's just a matter of giving the public what they want.")

It's depressing, but this is the way it goes these days. The incentives work in the wrong direction. At least Morgan had the grace - or maybe it was only comic timing - to follow her departure with, "Anyway, it's a good book."

Here's the video.

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Why context matters

Posted at 2:19 PM on August 8, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Economy, Media

Finding examples of poor journalism is like shooting fish in a barrel today, what with the stock market meltdown and all.

Here's a headline from the front page of CNN.

It rather looks like advice, doesn't it?

It's not.

Five paragraphs into the story, we get the real context of the quote:

"Investors are having one reaction to the downgrade: sell first and ask questions later," said Paul Zemsky, head of asset allocation with ING Investment Management.

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The secret of how talk show callers get on the air

Posted at 3:13 PM on August 3, 2011 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Even without looking, I can tell that the nation's radio station producers were rolling their eyes while listening to a complaint from a caller on today's Talk of the Nation.

During its program on nutrition guidelines, a caller complained that NPR's "call screeners" (we call them "producers," actually) were letting mostly women callers through for a show on diet, but during an earlier segment, "the male screener only allowed one female caller in during a foreign policy discussion." (Scroll to 24:15 below. Or you can just take my word for it.)

The Talk of the Nation host skillfully, and with tongue held, manipulated the caller back on topic.

How does it work really? As far as I know in 35 years of working in radio, the gender of the caller isn't even a factor in determining whether a caller should be allowed to ask a good question on air.

Radio, at least Public Radio, isn't like the open lines on C-SPAN where they take one caller from the "Democrat line" and one caller from the "Republican line" and everyone gets on in the order they call no matter how stupid or pointless the comment.

Calling a public radio station program isn't the zipper merge.

A producer's allegiance is to the listener and the discussion. Each call and each question or comment has to fit the conversation at the moment it's taking place.The best way to find yourself on the air with a comment or a question, is to focus on something that hasn't already been said.

"I want them to be concise and thoughtful," MPR Midmorning producer Chris Dall says. "I want them to be passionate yet restrained. I want them to be listening to the conversation that's going on. I want them to have a question or comment that moves the discussion forward. I want them to understand that no matter how good they think their question or point is, they just might not get on the air."

As for gender, radio hosts know when the callers are mostly men or mostly women, but there's not a lot they can do about it. Any radio producer is at the mercy of who's calling. Maybe more women are calling on a topic than men. Should the producer put a male caller with an irrelevant comment on instead of a female caller with a good point?

The producers have a tough job, preventing irrelevant conversation -- a complaint about a producer during a show on nutrition, for example -- getting to your ears. Sometimes for every good question you hear on a public radio talk show, there's probably at least three others telling a producer what a jerk he/she is.

Very few of the many I've known over the years actually are.

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A perilous world for a retweeting journalist

Posted at 11:31 AM on August 1, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Tech

The Twitterverse lit up like a Sally Field Oscar speech last night when President Barack Obama credited peoples' "tweets" with helping to bring the "debt crisis" to a conclusion.

Last week, Obama urged Americans to take to Twitter to send messages to their representatives to cut a deal. Never mind that most Washington politicians' tweets are actually a staffperson who tweets on the congressperson's behalf. That Twitter has been validated as a medium that's as influential as a telephone is the point.

But it still has some serious growing pains, as an incident involving a New York Times reporter would suggest.

After the White House issued its call to tweet last week, Jen Preston, the social networking reporter for the New York Times, asked what the hashtag for the tweets should be (a hashtag allows people to filter all tweets to see an organized collection of relevant tweets. In this case, the hashtag was #compromise).

When the White House responded, Preston "retweeted" the message to her followers:

The website Daily Caller charged Preston showed her bias in the "retweet," apparently thinking -- incorrectly -- that a retweet constituted a willing participation in the effort. Other news sources picked up the story and the horse was out of the barn (the link above is an updated story that was rewritten to cover up the embarrassment of a journalist who didn't understand Twitter in the first place).

Preston responded to the attacks with this defense on Storify (only a portion is quoted below).

Mr. Munro's uninformed knowledge of Twitter not only questioned my integrity but unleashed a torrent of ugly attacks from right-wing and conservative Twitter users (including socks and operatives) who accused me of all sorts of things. I have been a journalist for 30 years. Taking abuse comes with the job. But, as a journalist, I am disappointed Yahoo News picked it up without even looking at my two tweets. And that Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times picked up the story without picking up the phone or apparently looking at the tweets in question. Reporters make mistakes all the time. I know that I do. Just last week. But we correct them.

This provides a good example of the dangers of mainstream media hopping into a new medium that others don't get.

Just a few weeks ago, for example, my colleague, Tom Scheck, retweeted an item from a The Hill reporter who was promoting a story on Michele Bachmann's voting record. He got a similar response as Preston:

To which Scheck, who understands Twitter as well as anybody, responded with a message that mainstream media members are going to have to deliver more often, apparently.

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Farewell, 'lady of the house'

Posted at 10:30 AM on August 1, 2011 by Bob Collins (9 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Someone called my house last week and asked my wife, "is this the lady of the house?"

"There's no lady of the house here," she replied before hanging up.

We're pretty sure it wasn't the Nielsen company on the other end of the phone. Nielsen, the people who measure what people are watching on TV, and then report to the networks that people are watching garbage instead of decently-written shows, is retiring its "Lady of the House" demographic.

Among the many characteristics its report to network execs contains, the LOH shows what women who don't work outside the home are watching.

CNBC's Jane Wells says...

These days, the lady of the household is often a guy. Meantime, the owner-renter is often a woman, who's probably not really in her house much. She works, or runs 500 errands a day, or both. Maybe she's a single mother. Maybe she's not really much of a lady. She's like a man, only busier.

"Essentially, this is just the latest evolution in our TV measurement," says Nielsen's Julia Monti. "An analysis found that viewing estimates for "Lady of the House" are similar to those of the average female and that clients are no longer using this term for business transactions, thus we determined that it's time to phase it out."

About 40 years late.

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The Hangover, Part 3: Up all night at the Capitol

Posted at 11:37 AM on July 20, 2011 by Eric Ringham (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Politics

When I worked in the newspaper editorial business, we had a cute name for the kind of piece we'd have to write on a day like today: STW, or "Shoot the wounded." It acknowledged, implicitly anyway, that we weren't performing a particularly courageous or useful function. Other people were the ones who had to stay up all night, take risks, make deals, put their careers on the line. We had the luxury of getting a good night's sleep and then coming down out of the hills once the fight was finished to pick over the remains and second-guess the decisions of others.

(There are other kinds of stock editorials, so routine that we made up acronyms for them. One was the DMM; it stood for "Drink more milk," and referred to any kind of editorial that urges a noncontroversial civic good. I hear that the same kind of editorial is referred to in Wisconsin as an EMC. Get it?)

I did not stay up all night to monitor the legislative process that now has brought our sorry shutdown to a close. But the news this morning has been fascinating. My vote for the best quote of the morning goes to Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook: "Gov. Dayton reluctantly took your plan. He took your plan on tobacco bonds. He took your plan on borrowing from our kids. You didn't have to tax those millionaires. You win, and Minnesotans lose."

That is what's called staying on message. The Democrats will do everything they can to make sure you hear, over and over, that the plan the Legislature passed is a Republican one. Most of them won't be quite as descriptive as Rep. Michael Paymar, DFL-St. Paul, who said, "I'm going to go home and take a long, long shower to wipe the stain of this legislative session off of me." For my taste, that's a little over the top.

Trying to spin the story in the other direction, House Majority Leader Matt Dean, R-Dellwood, adopted the role of statesman: "Every red vote is a vote to continue the shutdown. We need to get Minnesota back to work. We need to stop pointing fingers."

So there you have them, the core messages we'll be living with for a while: "You keep pointing at me," "I'm only doing what you made me do," "You wanted to keep Minnesotans out of work," "You make me want to take a shower." Sigh.

Unfortunately for the Democratic message, Gov. Dayton and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie were unable to control their facial muscles during the bill signing this morning. They did what politicians do when signing bills: They smiled. Oops:

MPR photo/Jeffrey Thompson

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Hacking the news

Posted at 1:09 PM on July 18, 2011 by Michael Olson (6 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The first sign of the Rupert Murdoch/News of the World scandal meant something to the lives of people across the pond came when Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed that the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating claims that the tabloid hacked into voice-mail accounts of Sept. 11 victims.

The once untouchable Murdoch became "wounded" and "suddenly appears mortal, and his enemies are emboldened" writes Politico.

In an otherwise defiant editorial, Murdoch's Wall Street Journal ended on a note of contrition.

Phone-hacking is deplorable, and we assume the guilty will be prosecuted. More fundamentally, the News of the World's offense--fatal, as it turned out--was to violate the trust of its readers by not coming about its news honestly. We realize how precious that reader trust is, and our obligation is to re-earn it every day. (Wall Street Journal)

Has the phone hacking scandal changed your view of news media?

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When television lies

Posted at 11:33 AM on July 8, 2011 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

If you watch coverage of a live event, do you expect to see reality or a stage show?

The other night, while watching CBS' coverage of the Boston Esplanade fireworks, I thought something was up when I saw this shot.

The Massachusetts Statehouse is fairly close to the Charles River, but it's not this close.

But it was this shot that gave away what CBS was up to.

It's a lovely image. It's also a phony one. The fireworks behind home plate at Fenway Park is an impossibility. The Charles River, from where they were being fired, is in the other direction.

Today, the Boston Globe called out CBS and producer of the program...

David Mugar, the Boston-area businessman and philanthropist who has executive produced the show for nine years, confirmed yesterday that the footage was altered. He said this was the first year such alterations were made.

Mugar said the added images were above board because the show was entertainment and not news. He said it was no different than TV drama producer David E. Kelley using scenes from his native Boston in his show "Boston Legal'' but shooting the bulk of each episode on a studio set in Hollywood.

"Absolutely, we're proud to show scenes from our city,'' Mugar said. "It's often only shown in film or in sporting matches. We were able to highlight great places in Boston, historical places with direct ties to the Fourth. So we think it was a good thing.''

If one follows the logic, one might fairly question whether the fireworks themselves actually were being shot off.

A media ethicist told the paper it sends a number of wrong messages, including that ethics don't matter if it's not the news department.

(h/t: Ted Canova)

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The need to name names

Posted at 10:56 AM on July 7, 2011 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Curt Schilling, the former Major League Baseball pitcher, said no team has won a World Series in the last 20 years without cheating to do it.

Broad brush, anyone?

These sorts of statements sound like wicked honesty, but they also tend to destroy reputations needlessly and where's the courage in that?

Schilling made his comments in an article in the Sporting News...

When asked if he ever suspected any of his 1993 Phillies teammates of using steroids, Schilling replied, "Oh, absolutely. It wasn't something you would walk up to someone to talk about or ask them. You had your ideas. When guys showed up with 25 extra pounds on them after three months after you had seen them during the winter, you had an idea."

Twenty years? Do the math on that. In 1991, your World Series champions were the Minnesota Twins. Anyone want to guess who was on steroids on that team?

This is the problem with "tell all" articles. They tell very little while needlessly -- in some cases -- impugn the character of people.

Take the comment from former Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau that's gotten some traction in the last 24 hours.

In an article on Huffington Post, Molnau appears to take a swipe at former governor Tim Pawlenty ...

"He has a tendency to not be a good judge of what he needs," Molnau said. "A lot of us like to have people around us that think like we do and agree with us because we don't take criticism very well. Well that's a good thing because you don't have a lot of white water conflict. The thing is you never know when you're going off because everyone's afraid to tell you, or, the people who do, you don't see as trustworthy anymore."

"He surrounds himself with people that say 'yes' and tell him how good he's doing, but he doesn't have a lot of people who can take the chance at critiquing him, and that's a problem he's had for a long time," Molnau added.

Is that all of the people? Some of them? Which ones? Without names, we don't know whether it's former spokesman Brian McClung, former chief of staff Dan McElroy or even former lieutenant governor Carol Molnau.

It's a question that reporters need to at least ask reflexively, "who?"

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Feting the boss

Posted at 1:55 PM on June 30, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

This is MPR president Bill Kling's last day of work for the company he founded. He'll be feted tonight at a dinner and reception, but last night MPR employees paid tribute to him.

Something great happens to the straight-laced world of MPR News when you give a reporter a camera and tell them it's OK to be funny and irreverent.

Here's a prime example. It comes from MPR higher education beat reporter Tim Post.

Post points out that no company time or equipment was used in the production of his tribute.

Reportedly, there's another video around of a "The Office" parody with Kling playing the part of Michael Scott. That one's been as hard to find online as a state budget agreement.

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Ann Taylor's exit

Posted at 3:26 PM on June 29, 2011 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Media

It had to happen sooner or later but a lot of the voices who made NPR famous are retiring. Carl Kassell retired a few years ago. Liane Hansen called it quits in the spring, and today is Ann Taylor's last day.

She lives in Manhattan and says she got tired of commuting to Washington to deliver the newscasts.

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Covering Greece

Posted at 1:13 PM on June 29, 2011 by Bob Collins
Filed under: Media

Now that flood season is starting to wane, we're not likely to see any more reporters in hip waders standing in or near water, but we have a new entrant in live-report props.

Check out the protective eyeware worn by a CNBC reporter in Greece today, which presumably keeps any of the rocks and bottles being thrown in the street from hitting her several stories above on her hotel-room balcony.

There's a good reason, however, for the glasses. Tear gas from the street below.

"I'm less affected by the tear gas. Just my eyes bother me. But that is why I'm wearing them," she said. "Everybody on the ground has them for sure. It wafts up, when there's a lot of it, it seeps into the hotel rooms and causes you to throw up and is extremely painful. You can feel it go all the way down your esophagus."

Everybody on the ground doesn't have them. Communist party deputy Liana Kanelli could've used a pair today. Someone unloaded some yogurt on her during the protests.

The protests have continued sporadically since the passage of a plan to cut spending and raise taxes by $40 billion over five years.

End of the Kling era

Posted at 11:32 AM on June 28, 2011 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

There's another countdown going on in Minnesota besides the one for the state shutdown. Bill Kling's last day as the only president Minnesota Public Radio ever had expires at the same moment the state descends into planned chaos. Pure coincidence, perhaps.

Today, everyone who wasn't deemed essential gathered on the parkland across from the World Headquarters of NewsCut, for a picture to mark the occasion. They're standing next to a mock radio tower which MPR employees paid to have constructed to mark the occasion. It was very terrestrial of us.

This image, however, is probably more symbolic: Kling conducting the MPR "orchestra."

(Images from Julia Schrenkler/MPR)

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Reporter apologizes for smoking

Posted at 8:59 AM on June 28, 2011 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Media

A former KARE reporter has apologized for, apparently, being human. Brad Woodard was reporting on a fire for a TV station in Houston last Friday when the camera caught him taking a drag on a cigarette.

Smoking a cigarette in Texas, for the record, is legal and many reporters smoke. It's not as if he started the fire with his cigarette or shot a puppy before the broadcast.

Still, Woodard felt compelled to apologize on the station's Facebook page:

Dear Viewers,

Some of you have raised concerns about my live report from Chambers County on Friday, June 24th. Due to a technical glitch, I was observed on camera smoking and extinguishing a cigarette, something I find both professionally and personally embarrassing. I was reporting from the scene of... a fire at an abandoned "tank farm" formerly used to store petroleum products. The fire was well under control at the time of my report, and I was standing on concrete when I discarded my cigarette. I also made sure it was extinguished following my brief report.

Apparently, some of you are under the impression I was reporting from the scene of a wild fire. That was not the case. My bad habit aside, I'm very cognizant of the extreme drought conditions facing this state. I report on those conditions daily and care very deeply about those affected. That said, I sincerely apologize to those of you who were offended. We appreciate...I appreciate...your viewership and your concerns.

Regards,

Brad Woodard

Good point. You can't smoke and still be a professional in the journalism business.

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Fairbourne retiring from WCCO

Posted at 11:46 AM on June 27, 2011 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

It's not often anymore than a meteorologist can last at one station for 30 years. Mike Fairbourne might be the last of them in the Twin Cities. Fairbourne is retiring from WCCO this week.

Jimmy Carter was in the White House when Fairbourne started his career there.

WCCO has posted some other Fairbourne videos. This personal favorite didn't make the list, though...

Fairbourne is about as low-key and all-business as they come, but he may be best known for causing a ruckus in these parts three years ago when he expressed his opinion on the issue of climate change.

He accused the environmental movement of practicing "squishy science" when it ties human activity to global warming. The Star Tribune outed Fairbourne after his name appeared on a list of 31,000 "scientists" questioning climate change as a human contribution.

The dust-up also served as a warning to many TV meteorologists to avoid getting into the climate change issue.

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Lending a Yelping thumb

Posted at 1:30 PM on June 24, 2011 by Michael Olson (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Yelp is more than a place to find reviews of local businesses. It has become a window into our communities that can, at times, be helpful. It also provides perspective ranging from hilarious to inane.

Take the reviews of the Minnesota State Fair as an example:

"Eat, Gawk, Repeat."

"It is not the place to count calories, worry about the waistline, try to be posh or be a snob. Just relax and enjoy."

"Just like Farmville only in real life."

"The state fair is like a Walmart on acid — awesome people watching..."

"...too smelly."

Those yucksters over at Funny or Die! have turned the inane side of Yelp into comedy gold.

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One small step for authenticity?

Posted at 2:20 PM on June 23, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

This is a picture of President Obama announcing his troop withdrawal strategy from Afghanistan last night.

This is a picture of President Obama when he announced that Osama bin Laden was dead.

Other than the dates and circumstances, what's the difference between the two? The bottom image was staged. The White House had a policy of no pictures during presidential speeches, presumably because of the noise they make.

It wasn't exactly a scandal -- other presidents had the same policy -- but it set some journalistic tongues wagging. The Poynter Institute, for example, called for an end to the practice.

It is time for this kind of re-enactment to end. The White House should value truth and authenticity. The technology clearly exists to document important moments without interrupting them. Photojournalists and their employers should insist on and press for access to document these historic moments.

And so, last night we got truth and authenticity from White House photographers, which looked pretty much exactly like the the staged variety.

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This week in double standards

Posted at 11:01 AM on June 21, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

One need look no further than the vaunted "Washington Whispers" blog at US News today to see how women in the public eye are treated differently than men. Writer Paul Bedard delves into the world of Michele Bachmann's lip gloss:

Just consider last weekend's 2011 RightOnline Conference in Minneapolis. Before stepping on stage to speak, the Republican realized she needed a touch of lip gloss but didn't have any. Her new spokesperson, Alice Stewart, who worked for former Gov. Mike Huckabee's 2008 presidential campaign, saw an old friend from Arkansas, Elizabeth Aymond, and asked for hers. "We thought she might need a little touch-up," Stewart says. "Elizabeth whipped out her lip gloss and off she [Bachmann] went."

But don't call Bachmann a prima donna. "She is so focused on her speeches that it's the little details [like lip gloss] that you don't think about."

The shade: Bare Minerals "Wild Honey."

Jon Huntsman announced his bid for the presidency today, and most of the coverage -- so far -- has been about his politics rather than his appearance.

It's not just female politicians, of course, who get this treatment. Venus Williams, the five-time Wimbledon champ, went to work a day ago and got this treatment from the Associated Press:

Goddesslike Venus dazzles Wimbledon in white dress

And she won her match. A later AP story had Venus stoking the coverage...

There sure was nothing shy about a playsuit Williams called "trendy": white and sleeveless, with a deep "V" neckline, a triangle cut out in the back, a gold belt and gold zipper.

"Jumpers are very 'now,"' she explained, "as is lace."

Not as sensational as the corset-like black lace number with skin-toned undergarments that drew so much attention at the 2010 French Open, but Monday's romper looked something akin to a toga and surely would have won the approval of her Roman goddess
namesake.

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Few Minnesota winners in national journalism awards

Posted at 10:53 AM on June 14, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

There were two local winners announced today when the national Edward R. Murrow Awards were given out. Overall, though, Minnesota was not particularly well represented in the annual awards from the Radio Television News Directors Association.

Of the 95 awards handed out, these are the two Minnesota winners:

Boyd Huppert, the marvelous storyteller at KARE won for best writing. (See compilation video)

The Star Tribune won for overall online news excellence for local news organizations. The entry (available here) stressed the website's video offerings.

Find all the winning entries here.

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A restaurant review that piles it on

Posted at 12:11 PM on June 10, 2011 by Eric Ringham (6 Comments)
Filed under: Media

This morning I woke up feeling fat, and it took a little while to realize why: I must have gained weight reading and re-reading Rick Nelson's review in the Thursday Star Tribune of "Tilia," a new restaurant in southwest Minneapolis.

"The scallop was evaporating inside my mouth, collapsing on itself in a cloud of ethereal juiciness," he begins. "It was one of those dining-out moments where my body's involuntary response was to slump into my chair, block out everything else around me and wallow in the bliss that was enveloping my taste buds."

You wouldn't think Rick could maintain that level of swoon for long, but he does: He goes on that way for an eye-popping 1,120 words. (For comparison, the play story in this morning's Strib, about the severance packages a state shutdown might trigger, brings home the goods in just 731 words.) Here's more:

"The top of the heap is what's easily the City of Lakes' most awesome way to greet the weekend: delicate cornmeal waffles topped with perfectly poached eggs, chunks of sweet poached lobster and so much supple hollandaise that it should be served with a cardiac defibrillator. It's a dish I could happily consume every Saturday. And Sunday. Forever."

And this -- as my colleague Molly Bloom pointed out - was for a restaurant that Rick only gives three and a half stars. What would a four-star review look like?

Say what you will about the generous helping of steaming adjectives. What I admire about Rick's writing is that he clearly loves good food and enjoys sharing what he knows about it. I just wish he wouldn't tell the whole world. Until yesterday, I'd never heard of Tilia. Now I'll never get a table.

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The MPR News iceberg

Posted at 11:45 AM on June 1, 2011 by Bob Collins (9 Comments)
Filed under: Media

City Pages released an extensive article on retiring MPR boss Bill Kling today, and the factoid that many people in the business are picking up on is this section of the story:

He believes MPR's current newsroom staff of 86 needs to double.

"You can have all the blogs, all the Huffington Posts, and Twitter feeds, and any other way of distributing content," Kling says. "But if you don't have the content, none of it's worth anything. That comes from reporters, which I believe we have to step up."

It's true that what you hear on the radio comes from reporters but what you hear on the radio is a lot more than their work. And, truth be told, of the 86 people in the newsroom, only a handful of them are reporters.

I occasionally give very long tours of MPR's news operation to News Cut readers because if there's one thing they need to know, it's this: We're more than hosts and reporters. The MPR newsroom, like most newsrooms in well-respected media organizations, is an iceberg.

News content comes from more than reporters. Here, let me show you in this photo tour.

Midmorning has just ended, so producer Chris Dall and Kerri Miller are already talking about tomorrow's show. Or maybe Friday's. There are three producers on the Midmorning team who spend much of their day chasing down potential topics and guests, including pre-interviewing them to make certain they can converse in an interesting way. The same is true for MPR's Midday (two producers). and Morning Edition (three producers).

We're a few hours away, yet, from All Things Considered. The show has two producers you never hear on the air, and one host that you do. They have a large news hole to fill and that portion which isn't filled by a reporter's story, is filled by interviews that they arrange and conduct.

Of course, we have reporters, easily identified because they're usually embracing the latest office fad. In this case, standing up. They can probably give you a good deal on those giant exercise balls they used to sit on...

Editors -- radio and online -- are pretty important in the big content scheme of things. We've got six or seven of them, enough to insure that infinitives aren't split and facts aren't mangled.

A portion of the Minnesota Today contingent -- editor and reporter.

Midday is on the air. You hear Eichten. You don't hear RJ (Randy Johnson) who is the technical director (each show has one), or David Chong, who's one of the producers today. He's one of the people who answers the phone when you call into Midday and makes sure the question you want to ask is relevant to that point in the conversation.

The public insight journalism area, commentary editor position and -- down in the bottom right corner -- a real life blogger (Paul Tosto) can be spied if you're very quiet and stay downwind. Bloggers are highly intelligent creatures and can sense when danger is near.

You know those music segments you hear on MPR? It takes audio specialists like Michael DeMark to make them happen and make them meet the high audio quality standards MPR listeners expect.

And none of this is possible if all of this audio content can't get out the door, into the sky and down to your radio. This is the International Control Center and satellite uplink/downlink section of the headquarters.

And I haven't even shown you the people who book satellite time, the photographers for the Web site, hourly newscasters, the new media department, newsroom managers, and the I.T. people who keep a technical-heavy operation running,

Each of these people is creating news content.

It's true, of course, that reporters are the vital cog in this wheel. But in a given day of news programming, only about 10-20 total minutes actually comes from a traditional reporter. The rest comes from many unseen members of the team.

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Tweets from Tahrir

Posted at 2:30 PM on May 26, 2011 by Jon Gordon (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Tech, Weather

"I'm not interested in what you had for lunch."

That's the kind of complaint I hear often from Twitter skeptics. They're partially right -- there's a lot garbage on Twitter.

But Twitter can also act as a vital news service, of course. MPR News uses two accounts to share critical information during severe weather, for example: @MPRnews and @MPRweather, where we share storm warnings and watches, damage reports and photos, and rebroadcast Tweets we read during storms. For example, these Tweets from the May 22 tornado in Minneapolis:

Our audiences seems to appreciate our Twitter efforts:

But here's an even better example of Twitter's utility and import: Tweets from Tahrir.

Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing writes about a new book that collects Tweets from the scene of the Egyptian uprising. Excerpt:

... through this book, a picture of Twitter as a means of quickly bridging together different constituencies emerges -- not everyone was tweeting, but everyone knew people who were tweeting, whether they were in the Square, discovering what was going on elsewhere among the hundreds of thousands of people; or elsewhere in Cairo and wondering if they should take to the streets; or watching from around the world. Twitter, text messages, Facebook and phone calls became a way of shaping the narrative, rebutting the official state media, arguing about the purpose and character of the uprising, and deciding when to hold fast and when to retreat ...

Tweets from Tahrir is an extraordinary record of an extraordinary moment in history, a collection of first-person observations and reflections that took place in realtime that constitute a new kind of record of social upheaval.

Social media and human rights, and the use of social media to help dispense of repressive regimes, is the topic of Midmorning tomorrow. It should be an interesting program. What do you think -- is social media a human right?

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Mark Haines dead at 65

Posted at 9:24 AM on May 25, 2011 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Media

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Women edited out of iconic photo

Posted at 1:26 PM on May 9, 2011 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Too far? A Hassidic newspaper didn't like having women in the now-iconic photograph of the White House situation room during the rain on Osama bin Laden's lair, so it removed them.

This is the original ...

This is what ran in Brooklyn's Hasidic paper ,Der Zeitung.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security team member Audrey Tomason were edited out of the picture.

Der Zeitung isn't talking, but apparently it doesn't run photos of women that could be considered "sexually suggestive," Jewish Week writer Rabbi Jason Miller told the New York Daily News.

"I have no idea why they did it, but what I can say is that there is nothing in Judaism that prevents the publication of images of women in power," Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a New York City radio show host, told the paper. "On the contrary women in positions of power pervade our community."

(h/t: Failed Messiah)

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Why the BBC?

Posted at 12:52 PM on May 3, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

In the coverage of the killing of Osama bin Laden yesterday (and again today), MPR News is making liberal use of the resources of the BBC. That bothered (a little bit, anyway) a listener who wrote to the network today to wonder why.

"I am curious why it's not being reported by NPR reporters, even if that means simply waiting for their regular news shows," the listener wrote. "Thanks for satisfying my curiosity. (Not that I don't appreciate the global perspective, but today especially I guess I want to hear *us* talking and explaining first before I hear from others.)"

It's a great question and, frankly, we welcome the opportunity to explain some of the discussions that take place at the highest levels of the newsroom during breaking news.

Steve Nelson, MPR's program director provided the play-by-play in his response:

Thanks for the note. Yesterday newsroom leaders spent a lot of time considering options for coverage of this story. Our immediate decision was to put on as much coverage about the death of Osama bin Laden as we could. We tried to choose the best available option for our audience at any given time, much like a web site throughout a day or a newspaper when selecting stories for page one the next day.

We were connected to internal NPR and BBC alerts all day so we knew what to expect and how to compare the two. In addition we were monitoring various wire services and CNN.

Here is some of our thinking through the day.

Morning Edition 6a-9a - Since the story was so important, we dropped all of our local stories that were planned for the day, and stayed with NPR almost exclusively.

9a-noon - Midmorning and Midday covered the story with a range of guests and calls from our audience.

Noon - We had a choice to air NPR programming -- basically, Talk of the Nation -- or the BBC's World Have Your Say, a global call-in show. We went with NPR, largely because their first guest in the hour was Colin Powell, a perspective we hadn't heard.

1p - We cut away from the NPR newscast at the top of the hour to go to a briefing from John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism. He had a lot of good, new information and the details proved compelling. We stayed with that briefing for around 40 minutes before returning to NPR's coverage.
(Bob notes: More about that here. That was a brilliant decision.)

2p - We aired the BBC Newshour instead of NPR. We wanted a harder news treatment and magazine style format of Newshour, rather than a "talk" format from NPR. We also wanted the BBC's global perspective. This was the first BBC coverage we had on our air Monday.

3p-6:30p - All Things Considered became available from NPR and we aired it, but this time mixing in MPR News stories relevant to Bin Laden's death.

6:30p -- We aired a lengthy BBC report -- The Hunt for Osama Bin Laden -- instead of Marketplace. Marketplace was offering seven minutes about Osama bin Laden, which we aired at 6:20.

7p - The World, at its regular time, was almost all about Osama bin Laden.

8p - We pre-empted Fresh Air with a special wrap up hour from NPR.

9p and 10p - We aired BBC. The Story was produced mostly last week, so it was out of date. We thought the BBC's coverage at 10 would be stronger than As It Happens. Plus, the BBC was live, and As it Happens is taped earlier in the evening.

Hope that helps. Thanks for the feedback and feel free to contact me with any other thoughts you have.

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A class goodbye

Posted at 9:03 AM on April 22, 2011 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Media

What the staff at KARE 11 did for their long-time boss yesterday was astounding, at least for the normally bunker-mentality world of the media.

KARE 11 fired Tom Lindner this week, where he'd been the news boss since the early '90s. What was astounding is the station's news department didn't treat the story like it didn't exist, and produced this piece which -- intentionally or not -- leaves the viewer wondering how the firing makes the station somehow better off.

(h/t: @jenyoung18)

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The legend of 'Jonny Mac'

Posted at 1:12 PM on April 20, 2011 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

MPR has named Jon McTaggart, the current chief operating officer of American Public Media, to be the new chief executive officer, replacing Bill Kling, the only boss MPR has ever known.

"Jon is a remarkable leader who has been responsible for a great portion of our success over the years," said Kling in this press release. "I'm very happy with the board's decision, and I'm confident Jon will ensure that APMG continues to lead the way in public media's ongoing evolution."

When MPR got into the online business in the late '90s, it was McTaggart who was in charge. He was the company's "technology officer," and presided over a department that featured all of the accoutrements of the era -- Nerf guns, flying blimps, and all the digital creativity you could stuff into a half-dozen cubicles far removed from the more buttoned-down world of public radio news.

Armed with a $1 million grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, designed to show how public radio stations can create an online service, McTaggart appointed John Pearson to oversee the project, then got out of the way and let people do the job they were hired to do, using the talent that was the reason they were hired in the first place, providing a shield when needed (and it was), and inspiration when required.

And isn't that pretty much the entire chapter on "how to manage?"

Here's a story I've told dozens of times internally:

It was early in my tenure as MPR's managing editor of online news. I was about to leave for a weekend with my youngest son; we were about to drive to Cincinnati to watch the Reds play a few games, and take in a few sessions at the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) convention. I had written an e-mail informing colleagues that I would be out of the office.

As I pulled out of the parking ramp on St. Paul's West Seventh Street, McTaggart, in full-suited attire, was running on the sidewalk, flagging me down. I stopped.

He thrust $20 at me and said, "buy yourself a beer and a hot dog. You do good work."

No boss had ever said anything like that to me before (I've got lots of stories about them, but you're never going to read them), let alone risked a heart attack for the opportunity to say it.

And that's how people run through brick walls for the people they work for.

It may not be a lot of fun being the guy to replace Bill Kling, a larger-than-life figure in the world of broadcasting whose vision is singularly responsible for Minnesota Public Radio and its assorted offspring. No doubt there are plenty of people wondering whether the place can effectively emerge from the long shadow he casts in the Twin Cities.

They needn't be concerned. MPR has hired a knowledgeable and decent person for the gig who understands completely the value and commitment to the audience of the people who work here.

The world is full of CEOs who don't have the passion for the product, couldn't articulate a mission statement if you spotted them the first 20 words, view the employee as an expense to be cut, and the customer as a necessary burden to endure. MPR doesn't have one of those.

Although it would be cool if we could bring back the flying blimp and Nerf guns.

(Photo: John Nicholson)

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Texas messes with the president

Posted at 12:29 PM on April 19, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Some people in the media world think a Texas reporter was being too aggressive in an interview with President Obama.

Continue reading "Texas messes with the president"

Behind the microphone

Posted at 2:02 PM on April 15, 2011 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

There are a couple of radio guys who deserve a little extra recognition this week.

This guy, for instance. Tom Robertson is a workhorse reporter who has been called from his home in the Bemidji area to help cover the flooding in western Minnesota. He's done great work while living out of a motel in Moorhead for the last few weeks, but he gets the spotlight this week because he missed his birthday last Friday (we had a small cake for him in the Moorhead bureau) so that MPR listeners could hear (and read, of course) the latest on the flood.

Two years ago, he missed the birth of a grandchild for the same reason.

Then, there's this young man (click image for larger image). Gary Eichten is being given the Frank Premack Graven award from the University of Minnesota. The Graven Award is given each year to members of the journalistic community whose contribution to excellence in the profession merits special recognition. He will receive the award on Monday evening.

"I'm now one step closer to the Graven," he joked during a little celebration in the newsroom this afternoon, shortly before reminding us that we're lucky to work where we work.

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NPR's Facebook app

Posted at 3:24 PM on April 14, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Marketing and advertising, Media

NPR has rolled out a new Facebook app that -- with any luck at all -- might distract your friends from all of those quizzes that suddenly seem to be spamming things.

Andrew Phelps -- if you recognize him from the guy who created WBUR's Hubbub, you really are a public radio nerd -- writes at the Neiman Journalism Lab:

The new Facebook app called I Heart NPR asks fans to put themselves on a map with thousands of others. Users can play games, such as Name That NPR Theme Song (I earned four-of-four virtual tote bags, thank you), and then share the results with friends. Secret games will be "unlocked" with every 100,000 new users, according to Kinsey Wilson, NPR's general manager of digital media.

It's not entirely clear what the point is of the map of NPR listeners since you can only find yourself on it and most people -- especially public radio people -- already know who and where they are...

Find it here.

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When checking facts ruins good stories

Posted at 11:51 AM on April 13, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The anti-corporate hoaxsters struck again today.

The Associated Press was the victim this time when it ran a story -- based on an authentic-looking news release from General Electric -- that it would repay a $3.2 billion tax refund for 2010 to the Treasury Department.

GE has been criticized following a New York Times story that it would pay no taxes on its domestic profits.

There's no indication -- yet -- that this was the work of The Yes Men, who made news in 2009 by pretending to be the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announcing support for greenhouse gas legislation, and last fall convinced news organizations that a large oil company was admitting to policies that damage the environment.

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When journalists go bad

Posted at 2:33 PM on April 5, 2011 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Yesterday, the Center for Public Integrity, run by a former MPR news director, made a big splash in journalism circles, when it announced it would start an investigative journalism Web site. Today, it dropped this bombshell: the FBI used a "mole" in ABC News who fed tips from a source (or sources) in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing.

But it didn't name the reporter:

ABC News told the Center for Public Integrity that it is not certain about the identity of the journalist involved in the 1995-96 episode, but does not believe he or she still works for the network. Spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said the FBI description of its interactions with the reporter raises serious concerns about intrusions on the First Amendment.

"If true, it would certainly be of grave concern to us that the FBI would have created an informant file based on information gleaned from a reporter," Schneider said. "It certainly would be very troubling for the FBI to recruit a news employee as a confidential source."

Former Star Tribune editor Tim McGuire, now a professor in Arizona, is not happy

"I mean, he's not only a rat, he's a really huge rat" says McGuire. "He's obviously decided that helping the government on an ongoing basis is more important than being a journalist... We're all endangered by him playing these silly games. I think when you're an agent for the government, you're putting your fellow journalists in harm's way."

Who was the "rat?"

Gawker reports that it's Christopher Isham, who is now the Washington bureau chief for CBS News.

He ran the investigative unit at ABC News, putting him in regular contact with counterterrorism officials. In 1998, according to his CBS News bio, he organized the first network interview with Osama bin Laden. And his relationship with the FBI went beyond the professional: He was "close friends" with former FBI counterterrorism chief John O'Neill, according to this interview Isham gave to Frontline. (O'Neill was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11.)

This should embarrass ABC, of course, but it should also be an embarrassment to CBS, right? Isham declined to comment on the story (If you're not the snitch, wouldn't you just deny it?), but referred questions to a CBS spokeswoman in New York.

"This is a matter for ABC News." the CBS spokeswoman said.

For the record, the information that Isham had -- that Iraq was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing -- was obviously bogus.

This hasn't been a really great day for the image CBS News. Writing for MPR News' commentary section today, Woodbury teacher Karen Morrill pulled he curtain back on the news division's flagship, 60 Minutes, which broadcast a segment on removing "the N word" from Huck Finn recently.

"Pitts and '60 Minutes' were not interested in my teaching philosophy," she wrote. "They were interested in why I would not speak a virulent racial epithet. In my two-hour interview with Pitts, I tried to discuss the complex ways Huck Finn deals with race. But he was interested in only that one simple word."

Not a good day, indeed.

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What's the matter with a little fun?

Posted at 12:20 PM on March 31, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Last night, congresspeople in Washington got cozy with the people who cover them. The Congressional Corrrespondents' Dinner is, basically, the warm-up act for the White House Correspondents' Dinner, in which all the reporters -- and the movie stars who've sort of taken it over -- rub elbows with one another...

Should journalists and the people they cover be quite so chummy?

A kerfuffle has broken out locally between long-time columnist Nick Coleman, and MinnPost, which is holding a fundraising "roast," featuring local media stars and politicians. Coleman writes that it hurts journalistic credibility:

I contacted MinnPost to request a press pass in order to attend MinnRoast 2011 as a working journalist. I was rejected, even though I made it clear that I wanted to attend in order to report on it, not to snort and cavort until the chablis came out my nose. My reason for requesting a pass was simple: Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton is scheduled to speak at the event and any appearance by the governor may -- and should -- be covered as a (possible) news story. Other politicians also are scheduled to show up and crack jokes at MinnRoast, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman (my brother) and a token Republican or two, along with a gaggle of local media "celebrities" like Don Shelby and Cyndy Brucato, both MinnPost contributors. Mark Dayton was last recorded making a joke in 1997, but he is the governor. Nearing the end of a difficult legislative session and facing big political and budgetary problems, Dayton may not be in the mood for laughs. But his appearance -- and all the rest of the foolishness -- should be subject to free and open coverage -- by anyone who wants. It turns out, however, that the barons of our alternative news media aren't much different from the barons of Old Media: MinnPost editor and CEO Joel Kramer -- my boss at the Star-Tribune from 1983-86 -- turned down my request for credentials not once, or twice, but three times.

But Coleman says his beef isn't that MinnPost's boss wouldn't let him in for free -- it's that journalists shouldn't act like clowns, even on their own time:

There are other awkward connections and possible conflicts among the list of MinnRoast sponsors and benefactors, a list that -- despite a heavy sprinkling of "wealth creation" and investment firms -- runs strongly towards the liberal-left end of the political establishment, which is the kind of thing that causes hard-right conservatives to dismiss MinnPost as a snake pit of Democrats, despite the online site's lack of liberal bite. Am I suggesting anything improper? No. I am suggesting the appearance of impropriety. And that's enough, in my view, to cast doubt on the wisdom of a bad idea.

Does a MinnPost roast reflect poorly on its journalism, or should journalists be allowed to have a laugh with politicians on occasion?

Discuss.

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Major journalism awards for area media

Posted at 11:05 AM on March 31, 2011 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

It's award season on Planet Journalism. Newsrooms all over the country spend much of December submitting awards. It's a small cottage industry for some awards organizations who make a few bucks on entry fees. In return, stations and newspapers get something to promote when the awards start rolling in in the spring. Most of the awards aren't worth much more.

The Peabody Award is not one of those, and today two area news organizations got one.

American Public Media -- perhaps you've heard of it -- won for The Promised Land with host Majora Carter. The program explored "visionaries among us -- men and women with innovative ideas about changing lives and transforming communities. You may find them in the far-flung corners of the world or right down the street."

Here's an example:

The unit returned this week from the Gulf Coast, where it was researching a look at the area one year after the big BP oil spill...

KSTP TV won a Peabody for "Who Killed Doc?" The station investigated the death of a Minnesota sailor and found that "commanders ignored warnings, botched investigations, and failed to protect service members on their own base - where they should have been the safest." (Find it here.)

By the way, public media won 19 of the awards. Many of them were funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Under a House bill passed a few weeks ago, stations would not be allowed to purchase these kinds of programs.

Here's the complete list of winners.

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Radio station's Hmong parody sparks backlash

Posted at 2:29 PM on March 30, 2011 by Bob Collins (64 Comments)
Filed under: Media

KDWB radio in the Twin Cities is apologizing for a song that aired last week by one of its morning show employees. The morning show sidekick -- Steve-O -- sang these lyrics to the tune of "Tears in Heaven." (audio here)

No room for a couch
'Cause we sleep on the floor
One big group of Vangs
Hmong family of twenty-four
Kids work in St. Paul
Hang out at the mall
'Cause I know they dwell so well
Thirty Hmongs in a house

Hmongs get pregnant early
First baby at 16
Seven kids by 23
Over the hill by 30
Like sardines they live
Packed in a two-room house with the kids
But you know they age quite well
They be Hmongs.

On the audio, popular radio personality Dave Ryan laughs and then appears to anticipate the backlash, adding, "I am not laughing at your song."

Rob Morris, the station's program director posted a message on the station's Facebook page. He did not declare the bit wrong, but apologized to those who think it was:

KDWB-FM and the Dave Ryan in the Morning Show are very proud that members of the Hmong community are some of our most loyal listeners and fans.

Our listeners understand that The Dave Ryan in the Morning show is a comedy show meant to entertain, and that much of its content is parody. While we've received positive feedback from many Hmong listeners who let us know that they found the song in question very humorous, we apologize to anyone we may have inadvertently offended, as this was never our intent.

We appreciate the support we continue to receive from all of our listeners.

Morris said the subsequent discussion on the Facebook page about the incident is "healthy."

This afternoon, the Twin Cities chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association issued this statement:

Last week, one of the Twin Cities' top-ranked radio stations, KDWB-FM 101.3, featured a parody song on its morning program that has offended some members of the Asian-American community. The two-minute song by radio personality Steve-O mocked housing issues and teen pregnancy in the Hmong community. The song, which has gone viral, was part of an occasional segment on the popular "Dave Ryan in the Morning Show." After soliciting listener-suggested song titles, Steve-O writes and sings a song, which is often meant to be in jest.

While the Minnesota chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association acknowledges the role of parody, we've heard from members of the community who found these remarks offensive and in poor taste. We know KDWB has a large Hmong listenership. We urge the station to take heed when promoting material that stereotypes and marginalizes a large segment of its fan base. It appears that the station recognizes the legitimacy of these concerns. We commend KDWB for addressing the situation. The station has issued a statement (which can be read below). It has also promoted a healthy discussion on its Facebook page, where many Hmong listeners are chiming in with comments.

In regards to Asian-American issues, we hope AAJA can serve as a resource to KDWB's programming in the future.

Morning radio has a history of incidents of racial and ethnic insensitivity in the Twin Cities. In the early '90s, KSTP fired a show host after a sidekick made jokes about drunken Native Americans. In 2007, some Native Americans protested KQRS after morning hosts made jokes about incest and suicide on the reservations.

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Paper royalty

Posted at 11:39 AM on March 18, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

It was a rather big moment this week when this little number arrived in the MPR newsroom: The William & Kate paper doll book, expertly displayed here by an MPR employee who would not tell us her name (Click image for larger image).

It's important to note, however, that underneath their paper clothes -- including the "sparking plunging-neckline dress that Kate acquired during a 2007 Paris buying trip" -- they are wearing bathing suits, not underwear. Those crazy royals!

The paper doll book was published by Dover Publications. An accompanying press release described it as "America's #1 publisher of high-quality paper doll books." Who says America doesn't make anything, anymore?

In other news, it was revealed today CNN will send 400 150 (updated) staffers to cover the royal wedding.

CNN currently has 50 people covering the disaster in Japan.

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Live-blogging Midmorning: Is partisan news good for America?

Posted at 9:00 AM on March 14, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News

Blogger James O'Keefe's takedown of NPR is the latest incident in what appears to be a growing battle between conservative news outlets and the mainstream media, and raises questions about the future of news in America. Is partisan news what Americans want, and is it good for our democracy?

Midmorning is tackling the question with guests:

CW Anderson: Assistant professor of media culture at the College of Staten Island and a research fellow at Yale Law School and the New America Foundation.
Tom Rosenstiel: Founder and director of Project for Excellence in Journalism. He is co-author with Bill Kovach of "Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload."

I'm live-blogging the conversation. Please share your thoughts and I'll select the best ones to mention on air.

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Another anti-NPR video surfaces

Posted at 3:39 PM on March 10, 2011 by Bob Collins (19 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The conservative filmmaker who took down an NPR executive this week with his hidden camera has released another installment. This one, however, doesn't have a "gotcha" moment. Quite the opposite, actually. A previous video showed NPR's now-former fundraiser criticizing tea party members and suggesting the public radio network could do without government funds.

This video, however, may actually confirm NPR's editorial firewall.

In today's release, Betsy Liley, NPR's senior director of institutional giving, explains to a representative of the group, that it's possible to make a donation and have it credited on air "anonymously," but that the organization does that fairly often.

It's not clear whether the phone conversation took place before or after the luncheon.

Liley, however, makes pretty clear that a donation from the Muslim group doesn't buy any direction of news coverage. "That's a news decision," she says. "A lot of people have an interest in specific areas, including institutions, so they give us support in that area, but we can only accept it to the point that it matches our news judgment."

She goes on to relay that NPR might accept money from institutions with an interest in a topic, but those institutions are not allowed to decide any aspect of news coverage. "This would not go to anyone in the news division. No one in news would have access to this document," she said. "There is a firewall between news and development, and there's a similar firewall between development and news.

She also explains that when liberal financier George Soros donated millions to NPR, "we didn't tell anyone in news because... because we're news, we can't tell the rest of our organization what we're doing."

That, if you're keeping score, is one for ethics and editorial firewalls.

Liley also asks for the group's IRS 990 form, which would reveal the management, and funding of the organization, making clear that the network clearly intended to check out the organization before accepting any donation. NPR did not accept the phony group's offer.

The caller tried to figure out ways to "avoid paperwork," seeming to suggest the donation should be hidden, but Liley appeared to rebuff the notion, citing the requirements from NPR's legal counsel, Joyce Slocum, who has since taken on the role of CEO interim president after NPR boss Vivian Schiller was fired. Liley indicated that any donation would not be subject to a government audit, although it's not clear whether NPR is required to submit donor lists to the government for inspection.

Meanwhile, hosts and reporters at NPR today released an open letter to the public regarding the earlier videotaped comments of the deposed Ron Schiller, NPR's VP of fundraising:

Dear Listeners and Supporters,

We, and our colleagues at NPR News, strive every day to bring you the highest quality news programs possible. So, like you, we were appalled by the offensive comments made recently by NPR's now former Senior Vice President for Development. His words violated the basic principles by which we live and work: accuracy and open-mindedness, fairness and respect.

Those comments have done real damage to NPR. But we're confident that the culture of professionalism we have built, and the journalistic values we have upheld for the past four decades, will prevail. We are determined to continue bringing you the daily journalism that you've come to expect and rely upon: fair, fact-based, in-depth reporting from at home and around the world.

With your support we have no doubt NPR will come out of this difficult period stronger than ever.

Thank you,

Robert Siegel
Michele Norris
Melissa Block
Renee Montagne
Scott Simon
Liane Hansen
Guy Raz
Michel Martin
Neal Conan
Susan Stamberg
Nina Totenberg
Linda Wertheimer
Daniel Zwerdling
John Ydstie
Richard Harris
Tom Gjelten
Howard Berkes
Mike Shuster
Laura Sullivan
Lynn Neary
Jacki Lyden
Mara Liasson

NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard will be Gary Eichten's guest on MPR's Midday on Friday at 11 a.m. (CT).

Update 5:11 p.m. - NPR has issued this statement:

"The statement made by Betsy Liley in the audiotapes released today regarding the possibility of making an anonymous gift that would remain invisible to tax authorities is factually inaccurate and not reflective of NPR's gift practices.

"All donations -- anonymous and named -- are fully reported to the IRS. NPR complies with all financial, tax and disclosure regulations.

"Through unequivocal words and actions, NPR has renounced and condemned the secretly recorded statements of Ron Schiller and Betsy Liley. Mr. Schiller is no longer with NPR and Ms. Liley has been placed on administrative leave, pending an investigation of the matter.

"No stronger statement of disavowal and disapproval is possible. NPR will not be deterred from its news mission and will ultimately be judged by the millions and millions of listeners and readers who have come to rely on us every day."

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The Schiller firing

Posted at 2:41 PM on March 9, 2011 by Bob Collins (74 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Vivian Schiller, NPR's president (who spoke to the National Press Club a few days ago), "resigned," today according to NPR. It's clear, however, that this was closer to a firing than a happy resignation.

Here's the statement from NPR board:

It is with deep regret that I tell you that the NPR Board of Directors has accepted the resignation of Vivian Schiller as President and CEO of NPR, effective immediately.

The Board accepted her resignation with understanding, genuine regret, and great respect for her leadership of NPR these past two years.

Vivian brought vision and energy to this organization. She led NPR back from the enormous economic challenges of the previous two years. She was passionately committed to NPR's mission, and to stations and NPR working collaboratively as a local-national news network.

All of you are absorbing the recent quick turn of events. We want to share a few thoughts from where we sit.

Vivian Schiller has been an inspiration for many inside NPR and organizations around the country.

The most recent events, however, have undermined efforts to protect funding for public broadcasting; have further damaged the already shaky working relationship between NPR, APTS, PBS, and CPB; and we suspect will have negative repercussions on the standing of your organization with your community.

In the long-run, we believe that Vivian Schiller's decision to resign as President and CEO of NPR, and the NPR board's decision to accept her resignation, is in the best interests of both NPR and the station community.

The NPR board will have to make several important decisions in the coming weeks, all in the continuing context of the federal funding challenge. We want SRG to be a source of good strategic thinking in all of this and look forward to your best thinking and support in this process.

A conference call is reportedly scheduled soon with reporters and I hope to monitor that and we'll update this post through the day as need be. In the meantime, share you thoughts.

This latest incident stems from the conservative filmmaker's video of NPR's chief fundraiser, reported on here yesterday.

9:51 a.m. - Media critic Jeff Jarvis has a think-piece about the relationship between NPR and its affiliates. It's more of a "this is what I think" than a "this is what I know" piece in that it suggests the role of affiliates as content producers/distributors is ebbing. That's not really true. NPR only control four public radio shows in the nation. And affiliates have increasingly been turning to new ways to distribute their content to other public radio stations. It also suggests an increase chasm between NPR and its affiliates, when actually that long-standing angst has lessened significantly in recently years. Arguably, there's been more symbiosis than in recent years.

10:00 a.m. Dave Edwards, the chairman of the board of NPR is about to hold a conference call. I'm live blogging it here.

Edwards: The board accepted Vivian Schiller's resignation last night. It was a difficult decision for the board to accept. She came to NPR at a time of great economic difficulty and led the board back from enormous financial challenges.

10:04 a.m.: Edwards: The organization has faced significant challenges. Vivian is not responsible for the mistakes that were made, but the CEO of any organization is responsible for the actions.

10:06 a.m. - Joyce Slocum, the VP of legal affairs for NPR, is now in charge pending a search for a new CEO.

Edwards: It was the wisest decision we could make.

Q: We're hearing from critics of NPR that NPR has a problem and that its executives don't understand how to conduct themselves in ways that are consistent with NPR's mission. What do you think about that?

A: Edwards: When I watched a portion of the video that I saw yesterday -- I'm told its two hours in length and was edited -- but I have to tell you watching that video, I felt that the comments being made were so opposite, so ... I cannot tell you how much it bothered to me to my core as to what was being said. What was being expressed there has never been expressed to me by anybody from the NPR staff, the NPR board. NPR, I believe, is a welcoming organization to a variety of viewpoints.

Q: Obviously the comments crossed the line. But either he accepted it or he was telling the donors what they wanted to hear to get their money. In either case, there's a question of a management culture.
A: Edwards: We have a responsibility as an organization to point out we don't support those kinds of views. The comments we made yesterday should telegraph that and the decision to part company with Vivian Schiller should demonstrate that.

Q: Who in the leadership team are you referring to when you say you have confidence in them?
A: Edwards: The board's primary responsibility is always with the CEO. We are very comfortable with Joyce Slocum moving into this position in an interim capacity simply because she has a relationship with the leadership team and knows what's going on.

Every member of the adminsitrative team in place, including the interim VP of news, we feel is an absolutely incredible team of individuals who care deeply about the future of news and the future of our industry.

As I have said, we will be establishing a transitional committee with the board to make determinations as to how we move forward.

Q: It's been reported that Vivian was asked to resign.
A: The board had a wideranging conversation last night about what has transpired in recent months and about how the organization needed to move forward. Vivian... offered to step aside if that was the board's will and the board decided that was in the best interest of the organization.

Q: What message does this send to Congress?
A: Everything that has transpired in the last six months has complicated our fight to maintain federal funding. We established a public media collaborative to make the case to Congress for why federal funding is so critical to our industry. That does not change with the departure of Vivian Schiller. The board will continue to make the case that without federal funding, a lot of our public radio/TV stations could go dark.

Q: Has anyone in Congress changed their mind about funding after this?

A: I haven't talked to anyone in Congress.

Q: Is this the worst threat ?

A: The funding is so absolutely critical as an industry. We have to articulate that in the best way possible.

Q: Do you still have support from Democrats and the Obama adminstration?

A: I would certainly hope so.

Q: Do you feel NPR was unfairly targeted by the filmmaker? Was this an ambush?

A: Edwards: I haven't focused on how it was staged and set up. The process worked. When NPR was originally contacted by this supposed organization, there was a lot of due diligence done when dollars are offered to NPR. In terms of researching the organization, and making sure the organization understood the firewall when any organization offered a donation. That process worked. It was the comments of the individuals at the table -- presuming they weren't edited -- those comments are what ran counter to the way NPR operates and what NPR believes.

Q: By pressuring your CEO to resign, it seems the problem goes beyond one guy who was leaving NPR anyway. Doesn't that mean there's a problem beyond someone who misspoke at a lunch meeting?

A: Edwards: The events that took place created such a distraction that it hindered Vivian Schiller's ability to lead the organization going forward.

Q: This organization was fictitious. I have trouble understanding how due diligence was conducted to the point your VP even met with them?

A: Edwards: This alleged organization contacted NPR development and I would say... it would be appropriate for an NPR executive to have a conversation with a potential donor. But NPR never accepted a check from this organization and I've been told following the luncheon is when the checking began.

Q: Any changes to that process now?

A: The process worked. We're talking about the comments made by an individual at lunch.

Q: There's been criticism that NPR is bowing to the "right" on this. And that it's going to weaken the organization in the long run.
A: I don't believe it weakens the organization at all. People will believe what they want to believe. If people hold certain beliefs strongly enough, I 'm not going to change that. I live in Wisconsin, take a look at the papers. The interim executive team is going to be able to move forward on the initiatives that took place. We continue to be a preeminent news organization. Nothing stops that.

>>> This concludes the conference call. <<<

10:28 a.m. -- Minnpost's David Brauer tweeted today, wondering if Bill Kling could be convinced to step in as NPR's CEO. The response from APM/MPR's communication director, Bill Gray:

I know that Bill plans to remain involved in the continuing evolution of public media in the United States. He hasn't discussed any specifics beyond that with me. And with the NPR development so new I don't think he'd see it as appropriate to speculate around that.

10:45 a.m. - Bill Kling's message to his staff, e-mailed today:

There is no doubt that this is a challenging time for public media on many levels. But we all need to keep reminding ourselves that these problems are National Public Radio's problems - not ours. Do they affect us? Absolutely. Do they threaten our efforts to make the case for the importance of federal funding? Yes. But do they reflect on APM|MPR? No they do not. We have a deep pool of talented people that have built this organization through the years into a recognized leader in the public media industry, and we will retain that reputation for leadership moving forward.

At this time it is incumbent upon us and our public media partners to step up and provide counsel and leadership to the system as it begins its recovery from these events on the national level. We also need to remember the most important focus of all - the 900 thousand listeners to our regional services and 16 million listeners to our national programming that tune us in each week.

"I obviously had no prior knowledge" of the executive's comments, "and nothing to do with them, and disavowed them as soon as I learned of them all. But I'm the C.E.O., and the buck stops here," she said in an interview Wednesday morning.

She added, "I'm hopeful that my departure from NPR will have the intended effect of easing the defunding pressure on public broadcasting." Ms. Schiller has been campaigning in recent months against potential funding cuts.

10:56 a.m. - Ron Schiller, the former NPR development boss whose comments led to Vivian Schiller's (no relation) resignation, was leaving NPR anyway to take a job with the Aspen Institute. He has now decided not to take that job.

11:34 a.m. - NPR's Talk of the Nation is going to pick up the discussion during today's show.

11:40 a.m. - MPR doesn't carry the Diane Rehm show but you can find today's broadcast with NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard on the Schiller firing here. Other guests were:

Tucker Carlson political commentator and founder of The Daily Caller
Patrick Butler President and C.E.O of the Association of Public Television Stations
Brooke Gladstone host of "On The Media"
David Edwards director and general manager, WUWM Milwaukee Public Radio
chair of the NPR board
Stephen Moore member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
Paul Farhi Staff writer at the Washington Post covering media

1:28 p.m. - NPR's ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, really let's NPR have it.

He's right. Schiller comes across as an effete, well-educated, liberal intellectual - just exactly the stereotype that critics long have used against NPR and other bastions of the news media. It's also a stereotype that NPR journalists try hard to combat every day in their newsgathering.

One has to wonder why NPR's head of development and another senior staffer would meet with a prospective donor who had no history of philanthropy and nothing more than a phony web site as credentials. Don't they research potential donors?

People at NPR yesterday were angry and dazed by this episode, which is just the latest in a series of events that put the company in the worst possible light. Doesn't anyone in NPR's top management think of the consequences before they act?

1:41 p.m. - Shepard has just concluded a "chat" at the Washington Post site. Not much new, but this is probably the essence of it:

Q.How many Republicans work for NPR?

A. Don't know. I wasn't asked that when I joined NPR. And I'm not sure it's relevant. Diversity is more than political beliefs. I'm more interested in how many people NPR has working for it who have blue collar backgrounds, or were in the military, or come from Nebraska.

2:01 p.m. - David Edwards, the NPR Board Chair is now address reporters at public radio stations around the country. I'm live blogging this, too. I'm not going to retype all of his previous comments but I will relay the questions and answers.

Q: How does NPR need to be repositioned?

A: The series of events of the last six months have become a distraction and the board felt it hindered her ability lead the organization.

Q: How does NPR begin to clean up the damage that's been done to the stations who have had nothing to do with this?

A: There are clearly challenges we face. I manage a public radio station in Milwaukee and we've been careful to explain our relationship with NPR. NPR has to make clear that we're an organization that has strong corporate values....we're obviously a very important journalistic organization to the American people. We must have credibility at all times, and we have a very strong executive team in place.

Q: Do you feel Schiller leaves NPR in a more difficult situation than when she arrived?

A: The difficulties are different; I don't know which are worse. She accomplished a lot. We're much further ahead. The collaboration between NPR and stations in journalism and fundraising are in far better shape now than they were two years ago. I don't want to give the impression that Vivian was not an effective leader.

Q: Are you confident that the tape that's out there is complete and accurate?

A: I have not see the two hours. I have to believe that it's somewhat of a portrayal.

Q:There's a feeling among a segment of Americans that NPR has a political bias, and it's not just a few people. How do you combat that?

A: What I heard (on the tape) bothered me to my core. I've been in this business for a long time and I like many of us embrace the values of an organization and an industry that is open to a wide variety of views. They were clearly the views of an individual. Those views are not representing any of the views of anyone inside the company. I found them to be repulsive.

2:13 p.m. Q:Is NPR going to provide training to staff about expressing personal opinions in public?

A: We've asked for a review of our news ethics policy. We obviously have to have a sensitivity to the comments that are shared with different publics.

2:16 p.m. - Q: Do we have a solid top level management team?

A: We have individuals who bring a wide variety of experience. Joyce Slocum has extensive legal experience, the director of news has been in the business for decades. I believe that there is a strong team in place. Once a new CEO is on board, it will be up to that person to take a look at the structure.

2:19 p.m. - We had a tough fall in fundraising because of the Juan Williams situation. Are we getting some help from the network? We're a rural station, we get 30 percent of our funding from the CPB.

A: The development team released some material this morning on how stations might want to pitch given this situation. I'll defer to the experts. The head of the public media association are fully engaged in the messaging to members of Congress.

2:21 p.m. - Why the news ethics review when the problem came from your development wing?

A: The ethics review is something the board called for last November. That is purely focusing on news ethics for the organization. That has not changed because of the events of the last few days.

2:27 p.m. - Is there any NPR policy that an organization with ties to Muslim Brotherhood would be considered for a donation?

A: Every donation that is considered is carefully vetted. Anytime a donor calls and says we'd like to talk, we consider that.

2:28 p.m. Why did PBS turn down the conversation altogether?

A: I can't speak for PBS.

>>That concludes the conference call.

4:10 p.m. - Alicia Shepard just tweeted:

"Ron Schiller said in the full two hour Okeefe video he is a Republican, and was raised as a Republican. that didn't make it in video."

5:42 p.m. - Here's David Folkenflik's story recapping the day.

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Hidden-camera filmmaker targets NPR

Posted at 1:37 PM on March 8, 2011 by Bob Collins (16 Comments)
Filed under: Media

(Updating to add NPR comment)

A conservative filmmaker says he's caught the NPR's foundation senior vice president on video saying liberals are more fair and balanced and conservatives are anti-intellectual. In James O'Keefe's video, Ron Schiller notes he's only giving a "personal opinion," but he does so while meeting as an NPR executive with two men who portrayed followers of the Muslim Brotherhood anxious to give $5 million to NPR.

Schiller also says NPR would be better off in the long run without federal funding.

Schiller joined NPR last year as its chief fundraiser after leaving a VP position at the University of Chicago.

He's leaving NPR, too. Last week, the Aspen Institute announced it is hiring him.

Update 1:55 p.m. NPR's response:

The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check, with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept.

We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for.

Mr. Schiller announced last week that he is leaving NPR for another job.

Schiller's leaving NPR has nothing to do with the video, according to NPR.

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NPR boss at National Press Club

Posted at 11:59 AM on March 7, 2011 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Vivian Schiller, the president of NPR (formerly "National Public Radio"), is speaking today to the National Press Club. It's one of her first major public appearances since the senior news editor at NPR was forced to resign in the wake of the Juan Williams controversy. Her appearance also comes at Congress considers chopping funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

I'm live blogging her speech (12 p.m.) and Q&A session, which is being broadcast on MPR's Midday.

12 p.m. - We're underway with the usual introductions. Mark Hamrick, president of the Press Club notes that this isn't the first financial crisis Schiller has faced at NPR. When she took over, companies were cutting, including their donations and underwriting, and NPR was laying off employees.

12:05 p.m. - Schiller: Begins by reading e-mail from an NPR reporter who made their way into Libya. "We basically pushed our way in, we walked across the border and were lucky to find people to drive us.... everywhere else we've gone, we've been treated with cheers and shouts. This is a country that hasn't been exposed to western media. They were desperate to have their stories told. Everyone was stunned to see us."

"I have never been prouder to be a journalist," the email said.

Schiller: "It is at the core of NPR's mission."

12:08 p.m. - It's been 44 years since CPB was established. "That was a time when the Big Three broadcast networks had foreign bureaus all over the world, and deep reporting staffs. Even then there was concern commercial interests would drive the networks away from news.... The economics of the news business are undergoing seismic change. Demand for the news had never been higher, and yet mainstream news organizations continue to cut back resources for news, particularly at the local level."

12:11 p.m. - "We stay on the story when everyone else moves on," she says. She notes reporters are still covering the West Virginia mine disaster, the Gulf oil spill, and the brain injuries of soldiers.

12:13 p.m. - "The audience at NPR radio is growing and has been growing." Public radio listening in the top 50 audience is at an all-time high. The average listener listens for six hours a week.

12:18 p.m. - "Our coverage has its critics; we're working to expand diversity of sources and we're paying aggressive attention to our ethical decision making," Schiller says. "We hope to deliver in even larger following in the country.

12:19 p.m. - She outlines the funding model for NPR. "We are successful because of the investment the American public has made in public media in 40 years and the way we've been able to leverage that investment to broaden support -- listeners, corporate underwriters... philanthropic individuals and institutions... and continued government funding." Grants to stations from CPB represent 10 percent of the public radio station economy.

12:20 p.m. - The 10 percent government funding is critical to generating the other 90 percent, she says. "It is through diversity of funding that we are able to maintain journalistic independence," she said.

12: 22 p.m. - Schiller takes a shot at punditry. For some reason, I remember this wonderful segment, which made a young man who wanted to go into journalism, sit up and take notice:

12:25 p.m. - She ends her remarks by mentioning this riveting interview:

QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION

Q: Let's get the Juan Williams issue dealt with. You've had five months to reflect on how it transpired. What can you tell people about the way it transpired and how you might have done it differently?

A: We handled the situation badly. We acted too hastily and we made some mistakes and I made some mistakes. The key is to fix systems that fell down on that day. That's the learning experience.

Q: Is there a process in place reviewing that?

A: There were some processes that were followed and we have fixed them.

Q: Do you think you've moved past it?

A: There was some communications issues that didn't work quite as they should have. Since October, we have undertaken a thorough review of our code of ethics to make sure it's clear, up to date with the reality of media in 2011, and is consistently applied. It was created in 2004, so we've finished a process led by Bob Steele, the DePaul expert on journalism ethics, and we'll be making changes.

We are going to be creating a new position at NPR -- a standards editor, who is on top of all the other checks and balances.

Q: The task force has called for an end to NPR journalists appearing elsewhere. How will this affect Mara Liasson and Cokie Roberts?

A: We embrace the notion of NPR journalists appearing on other media. The task force has recommended ending the practice of having long-term relationships between journalists and other news organizations can be confusing. We're not ready to make specific statements about individuals.

Q: Juan Williams was the only black male heard on NPR. What's being done about the lack of diversity?

A: This is a very big priority for us. We have a number of initiatives underway to further diversify our staff, our reporters, the people we interview, and our audience. We've made progress but it's not nearly enough. (She references this article)

Q: Is there a political imbalance at NPR?

A: I wish people could be in our editorial meetings and see the care our journalists take to get it right. We want journalism that reflects no political bias. We tell stories about areas that almost no other news organization is covering. I ask them to point to specific stories and when they do, we take them very seriously.

Q: Is it a perception issue?

A: There's no question it's a perception issue. I take much more seriously when someone says, "I have a problem with this story." When we get a complaint, we take those very seriously.

Q: What is NPR doing to seek diverse talent outside of the j-schools, and the mainstream dailies?

A: We have a reporting farm team, represented by the affiliation stations. (Bob notes: I'm not sure I like the idea of being referred to as a farm team. I believe Martin Kaste and Kitty Eisele are the only MPR people to go to work for NPR, for what that's worth.)

Q: What can you talk about the Gabrielle Giffords' reporting error.

A: It was a mistake, plain and simple. There was no excuse for prematurely reporting her death. We take that matter extremely seriously. We've done a post mortem, we've evaluated processes. I wouldn't say it represents anything more than the one mistake it is.

Background: Slow down NPR (American Journalism Review)

Q: How high is the risk of the deficit cutting environment?

A: It's a significant risk and is a risk to all of public broadcasting. For many public radio stations, it's a much higher percentage (than 10%) of revenue. On top of that, there is state funding as well. It (cutting) would have a big impact on public radio's ability to deliver news or, in the case of TV, presentation of the arts.

Q: How does the liberal perception impact the current debate?

A: This country is facing a $1.4 trillion deficit. I believe that this is driven mostly by an attempt to find cuts to the deficit. That's certainly understandable, but the small amount of money that goes for public broadcasting, and the very large amount of money that small amount of money leverages... is too critical to give up.

Q: What sets this apart from other Republican-led efforts to defund NPR?

A: The deficit.

Q: Why doesn't NPR become a self-funded organizatin?

A: If federal dollars went away, the ability to serve the public to provide universal aspect with free over-the-air information... we would be retreating. You can't isolate funding for this one entity or this station. It is the network effect that strengthens us. Not just the big distributors on radio, but PBS, and local TV stations. You pull out one thread and the whole thing unravels.

Q: Can you talk about listening to radio growing up? And what do you listen to now other than NPR?

A: I grew up in New York so I was listening to AM pop radio. I came late to NPR because for most of the '80s, I was living abroad. I started listening when dating my husband and had just moved back into the country. He had NPR on and that was it. I was hooked to NPR and hooked to him.

Q: NPR engineers complain they're being made obsolete and the audio is suffering.

A: Audio is essential to us. There is a unique quality that's hard to describe. We are not forsaking our heritage, although there has been a reduction in audio engineers. We have fewer audio engineers going to do field reporting. In those cases, perhaps, you're not hearing the same richness of sound and layering, but we're not hearing complaints.

Q: Couldn't NPR raise money by becoming a private company. Why not just air commercials and move on?

A: That's not public radio (Bob: It's also not allowed by the law). We'd like to have more radio from private interests, but the fact is we have no plans to become a commercial enterprise. It's not who we are; we're on the non-commercial end of the radio spectrum.

Q: Your Web site is obviously a rich site. What is your vision for the future? And what aren't you trying to do? Are you staying away from video?

A: NPR.org is just one piece of our whole digital strategy. Our goal is simple: To provide more sources of that to more people. We must be available wherever the audience is. Even though they're listening to radio in record numbers, we also know they're on other devices. In the next year, we'll be rolling out plans to make sure that we provide all of that to our member stations so all of our stations can be as robust on their Web sites and we all are on the radio.

Q: Is there a downside risk?

A: The only risk in all of this is if we ignore what the audience wants.

Q: Have all the positions you eliminated been restored?

A: No. The team made the right decision. Instead of cutting everyone, two shows were cut. In so doing, the rest of the newsgathering operation were not only spared, but we began to modestly invest in those programs. Those investments haven't reached the level of the people laid off from those two shows, but where we invest will be to have more foreign correspondents and more reporters on the beat.

Schiller gets the traditional NPC mug, signifying the end of her presentation.

Update 3:18 p.m. - Current.org reports on the NPR task force report that includes "reining in punditizing."

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Radio is the new wave, baby

Posted at 2:39 PM on March 2, 2011 by Jon Gordon (0 Comments)
Filed under: Marketing and advertising, Media

These days folks who are trying to make money from the whole digital thing talk about market penetration for smart phones, broadband Internet, social social networking and tablet computers. In 1936 it was all about radio.

CBS Radio executives created this gem of a sale pitch designed to persuade advertisers to move their accounts to radio.

"This is probably the dullest story we will tell you about radio," wrote CBS's Victor Ratner. He continues:

It gives you the anonymous millions ... that are the deep source of radio's power. But as you glance through its pages, you may agree with us that even radio's dullest story comes alive with the immense drama of these millions -- within reach of one soft voice.

More than 9 of 10 Americans owned a "wireless" in 1936. In 2010, 96 percent of young adults owned wireless phones.

(ht/ BoingBoing.net)
(Flickr photos by j_barry)

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Debate: Should CPB be funded?

Posted at 1:06 PM on February 17, 2011 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Add category, Media, Politics

It'll be a short debate -- a half hour or less -- but an important one on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

Participating in the broadcast:

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). He supports federal funding for public broadcasting.
Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO). He thinks it should be eliminated.
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, who will provide context of the role of public broadcasting in the media landscape.

1:08 p.m. - Lamborn: "When we get to the reality of actual programs getting reduced, people get uncomfortable. Everyone will have something in this budget where they're not going to be happy. We have to share this with Americans to get our house in order.

Conan says it's a small drop in the bucket. Lamborn says if we used that approach, nothing would ever get done.

"Zero seems like a lot, too," Conan replied.

1:09 p.m. - Lamborn: "I'm fan of public broadcasting. There are a number of programs that have a lot of quality. It would be an adjustment, honestly, but I do think the future is bright for public broadcasting should it become private broadcasting. Because of the quality, there will be a way forward. It'll mean scrambling and finding new sources of revenue, but I really do think there is a bright future for public broadcasting."

1:11 p.m. - Conan asks if government should be involved if there isn't a market in the private sector for arts programming. "If there isn't a market in the private sector, should it exist?" Lamborn replies.

1:12 p.m. - Conan asks, "Don't Republicans believe funding CPB is funding the enemy?"

"I don't know what people are thinking," Lamborn replies. "My bill was in existence before Juan Williams' firing took place. "

Caller (Oswego NY): - "This is taking information away from Americans when you should be more involved in providing information."

"No one is talking about eliminating CPB or NPR," Lamborn says. "We're just talking about not having the taxpayers pay for it. The taxpayer can't keep paying for everything. This cannot continue."

Caller (Philadelphia): "Maybe it is time to cut it. I'd never object to advertising on public TV or public radio. If they need the funding, by all means do it. I would give more if I knew the government was cutting it."

Are the votes there. "Last night at midnight, we beat back the main challenge -- an amendment to eliminate the reduction of funding," Lamborn says. "That was defeated. We had a back-and-forth at midnight."

(Lamborn cut loose)

Enter Tom Rosenstiel.

1:17 p.m. - There are only 31 all-news commercial radio stations left in the U.S. There's really not any street reporting still taking place in commercial radio. On public radio, there was 31% -- in a study -- of the stories on public radio involving international news. On commercial radio, it was 4%.

1:20 p.m. - Rep. Earl Blumenauer. "They wouldn't allow my amendments to come to a vote. They disallowed it on a technicality even though Republicans have routinely waived points of order for their things."

1:21 p.m. - Blumenauer says his idea was to steer subsidies to major oil companies to public broadcasting. He says it's an ideological reason for cutting. "We've seen this movie before," he said. "It has long been an agenda. What's different is up to now we've had a core of Republican supporters who've said, 'this is crazy.'"

1:23 p.m. - Why not just sell advertising? "It's not commercially viable? It costs 11 times to serve Burns, Oregon as it does the Portland area."

If local listeners won't support it, why should taxpayers, an e-mailer asks.

"The money is a small amount," Blumenauer says. "And it is highly leveraged. All of this educational content we revere, you look at the commercial stations, they're not producing commercial-free entertainment. The stuff is made to sell things to kids, not to educate them."

1:25 p.m. Conan asks if poor people are losing heating assistance, shouldn't public broadcasting be on the table, too? "It is on the table," Blumenauer says. "But for less than half a cent a day, this is part of the essential infrastructure of the nation. We need it if we're going to educate and inform them. The real money is going to be defense, and social services. That's where the money is. Tying up the argument over a half a cent a day is a terrible mistake."

Blumenauer is cut loose.

1:27 p.m. - Rosenstiel says there is more news on commercial TV than before. "There's more foreign news on PBS," he says. "Cable news on television tends to take one or two stories of the week and double it. The biggest story is talked about even more. So you have a very narrow range of subjects on cable TV and it's typically something with an ideological edge. Lindsay Lohan should get less coverage on cable news because there's no ideological divide.

Emailer: "One of my concerns is that CPB is a distraction. It's a feel-good moment. If Congress made major cuts and then said "we had to cut CPB," I'd feel it was genuine. But to start with CPB?

Another emailer: "We all have to give up something to balance the budget."

1:29 P.M. - What would happen if 50% CPB were cut? "It would hurt NPR less than local markets," Rosenstiel says. "NPR, which is the political target here, is going to survive. If this is a political fight, there'll be a lot of collateral damage at the local level."

Caller from New Hampshire says funding for public broadcasting is being zeroed out there.

"Lots of things are being cut," Rosenstiel. "Gradually public broadcasting has moved away from state funds. It does two things different: Because you're not tied to commercial audiences, you operate more on a long-term strategy. In the '90s as commercial audiences shrank, the programming became more tabloid and crime was the top subject even though crime was going down. None of that staunched the loss of audience. Public broadcasting has seen its audience grow because they stuck with it. Radio... NPR has seen an enormous growth because it's doing things that can't be found anywhere else."

1:35 p.m. - Conan notes there are several places to get multiple public broadcasting stations. Rosenstiel says the stations end up targeting, becoming all news or all music.

1:36 p.m. Caller:"We have to fund the things that are important. Social Security and Medicaid are the important thing. I listen to public radio every day, it's just not a priority right now. "

That concludes the segment. Audio will be posted later. Comments open below.

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House committee may investigate NPR

Posted at 4:40 PM on February 16, 2011 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Time to reopen the great CPB debate.

There's a line of thought among those who oppose public funding of radio and TV that goes beyond the traditional "they're too liberal." It says that if you create a link between the government and a broadcast operation, sooner or later the government will get involved in the editorial content.

The reality is that the government -- by way of the FCC -- already is involved in content requirements but for the most part, politicians are at an arm's length.

Until now.

Broadcasting and Cable magazine reports that a House committee wants to investigate the editorial standards of National Public Radio:

The House Energy & Commerce Committee plans to "examine certain editorial and employment standards and practices at NPR," as part of its communications oversight, according to a committee oversight plan, a copy of which was supplied to B&C. It cites "recent controversies involving NPR."

Those would be the firing of commentator Juan Williams, an ensuing investigation into that firing, and the resignation of the person who made that decision, Ellen Weiss, NPR Senior VP, News, It also plans to investigate the financing of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides funds to NPR and PBS, to determine whether that funding should continue.

By the way, tomorrow on NPR's Talk of the Nation (around 1 p.m. CT for you MPR listeners), there will be a discussion on the future of public broadcasting.

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Free local baseball on TV disappears

Posted at 3:05 PM on February 16, 2011 by Bob Collins (15 Comments)
Filed under: Media

For a few decades now, the long-tradition of over-the-air broadcasts of major league baseball games has been disappearing. Today, an announcement from Fox Sports North (FSN) suggests, the era is just about over.

The network and the team announced that all Minnesota Twins games -- except for a few that are on the national Fox broadcasts -- will be on cable. There will be no local over-the-air partner for the team.

It's a trend that's not exclusive to baseball, of course. Last month, the Los Angeles Lakers announced that starting next year, there'll be no more "free access" to its games on TV.

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The story from Egypt CBS wouldn't tell

Posted at 4:26 PM on February 15, 2011 by Bob Collins (10 Comments)
Filed under: Media

You're the national TV network people turn to for news. A million happy protesters are cheering the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. It's an easy story line to cover. Everybody's happy. So that's the story CBS has told last Friday:

But CBS knew there was a more sinister story to tell, and today its public relations department -- not its news department -- told it. One of its reporters, Lara Logan, was being attacked by more than 200 people who'd been "whipped into a frenzy" by the day's events, according to an account in the New York Times.

After the mob surrounded her, Ms. Logan "suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers," the network said.

Who attacked her? We don't really know. Were they arrested? We don't know. Why did she have to be saved by women? Why didn't the men in the square do something to stop the awful assault? All fine questions. But we don't know.

You're in charge of CBS News. Should you have told the story of what was happening in that square last Friday? Would you have told it if it involved a woman who didn't work for you?

Here's Lara Logan's appearance on Charlie Rose's show a week ago.

"We have seen Lara's compassion at work while helping journalists who have faced brutal aggression while doing their jobs," Committee to Protect Journalists chairman Paul Steiger said this afternoon. "She is a brilliant, courageous, and committed reporter. Our thoughts are with Lara as she recovers."

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CPB funding issue caught in middle of an old debate

Posted at 1:50 PM on February 11, 2011 by Bob Collins (50 Comments)
Filed under: Media

I have not written about the effort to strip the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of its funding for a couple of reasons. First, I have an obvious interest in the outcome and I try not to write about the obvious. Two, I don't want to be appearing to shill for the home team, although my banishment from the airwaves during pledge drives should give me more street cred on the subject than I have (I swear I was only joking when I said I'd shoot a puppy if you didn't call now). And three, the danger is the discussion surrounding it will lead to the typical -- and frankly, tiring -- debate between the right and left -- another political battle to be won by one side or the other. A lot of truths and facts get lost in those sorts of discussions.

But NPR and PBS picked up an ally today that may not help their cause that much.

US News' Washington Whispers reports today that MoveOn has mobilized its considerable -- and liberal -- members against the zeroing out of the CPB's funding.

It may well have become an ideological battle anyway, but the opportunity to go head-to-head with MoveOn is the stuff some politicians use to fill the campaign war chests.

Somewhat lost in that usual skirmish is a national dialogue about why the United States created public broadcasting in the first place, whether the U.S. still has an interest in how its people are informed, and whether it makes budgetary sense in 2011. Maybe the answer is yes, maybe the answer is no but it's only going to be answered with calmer and quieter voices that usually get shouted down when the far left and far right do their thing.

Fred Rogers' testimony before Congress decades ago about the need for two men to work out their differences could've been an apt metaphor in the debate.

I'll leave the comments area open. Prove me wrong.

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Local writer makes a funny about AOL's Patch, HuffPo

Posted at 12:49 PM on February 7, 2011 by Jon Gordon (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The acquisition of Huffington Post by AOL (Does anyone say 'America Online' anymore, or is it a 'We're not National Public Radio we're just NPR now' thing?) gave Dan Haugen an idea.

Now that Huffington Post, a site that sometimes make insignificant stories look like big news, is owned by the same company that owns Patch, a network of hyper-local news sites, what if Patch adopted the design aesthetic of HuffPo? Voila! Haugen's Fridley Patch is born, HuffPo-style.

I can't figure out what's being made fun of more, Patch or Huffington Post.

BTW, here's the real Fridley Patch.

Do you read a local Patch site? You like?

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More gaffes revealed in incorrect Giffords report

Posted at 2:13 PM on January 18, 2011 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The story of how NPR botched the Tucson shooting story by falsely reporting that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was dead is getting more curious.

NPR's ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, has the nearly unbelievable story of the pain the false report caused, including the insistence from NPR that its two sources trumped Giffords' mother, outside the operating room:

NPR correspondent Ted Robbins is based in Tucson. He was at the scene Jan. 8 when his cell phone rang shortly after NPR aired at 2:01 p.m. EST that Giffords died. The call was a friend, who is also a friend of Giffords.

The friend was sitting outside the hospital operating room with Giffords' mother Gloria, holding her hand.

"Please tell them to stop reporting she is dead," he begged Robbins. "She is in surgery."

Robbins immediately called NPR but was told NPR was sticking to the story since it had two sources.

Scott Simon, who is apparently a friend of the Giffords family, also got a call:

"I couldn't fathom how cops or pols would know more than the hospital," said Simon. "Two sources who are not in a position to know something are not reliable sources."

Good question and one that NPR has refused to answer. It has yet to reveal who the source in the sheriff's office was or what congressperson's office is the knowledgeable second source and, moreover, why either one was deemed more reliable than the source outside the operating room with a name and a close connection to the subject at hand.

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A good fairy tale gone bad

Posted at 5:04 PM on January 12, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

It was only a matter of time before we in the media kicked over that pedestal that we put Ted Williams on. He's the homeless guy with the great voice who, up until six people got killed at an Arizona grocery store, was the obsession of the news media.

After getting into a domestic altercation with his daughter the other day, Williams, who had told the media last week that he's sobered up and is clean, is heading for rehab. He's admitted that he's still drinking.

There were a lot of opportunities for the media to take a serious look at the story they were building last week -- the difficulty of reintegrating into a non-homeless world, the likelihood that he was being used by companies throwing around job offers, the problems dealing with fame -- and the media would have none of it. It would have ruined the fairy tale that never actually existed. Escaping homelessness is more complicated.

In other news, Ted Williams is getting a dental makeover:

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Captain America fights suicide

Posted at 1:01 PM on January 12, 2011 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Media

It can't hurt, but is a comic book about suicide likely to prevent any?

Marvel Comics today released an app as part of "an effort to help raise awareness of suicide prevention."

The company, however, is releasing the app for the iPad and iPhone only. Droid users, for example, are out of luck, although there is an online version. But I'm not sure this is what you want to see when you've reached the point of desperation...

There's no dialogue in the comic (except for the last page). There's a tall building, a bad report card, a note from a parent that isn't helpful, a text message from someone urging the reader, presumably, not to call anymore. It's not hard to figure out what's going on.

Then comes some weird intervention by Captain America against a bunch of people on another building's roof. Why they all have bazookas and weapons, I'm not sure; perhaps they're life's demons:

If only life were that easy. At the end of the comic, the number appears for a suicide hotline: 1-800-273-8255.

Perhaps in the next episode, Captain America will take on the fact when parents often call for help for their in-crisis children in Minnesota, they're told there are no juvenile psychiatric beds available. Fixing that reality will take a real superhero.

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How NPR pronounced Gabrielle Giffords dead

Posted at 1:52 PM on January 11, 2011 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard has, apparently, spent the last couple of days trying to figure out how NPR allowed a false report onto the air that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had died.

She's issued her report.

The most interesting observation (at least to this blogger) was an exoneration of NPR's Two Way blog, which also posted the story, but with a disclaimer, Shepard reports:

The incorrect news was also posted on "The Two-Way," NPR's newsblog. It was attributed to an unnamed source in the Pima County Sheriff's office. However, Two-Way blogger Mark Memmott handled the news just right, continually cautioning that the story was erupting in the midst of panic and pandemonium and nothing was certain.

Which demands that someone ask the question, "if it's not certain, why post it, particularly since it did not come with any attribution"?

But in the reality of how blogs work, she's wrong. Unless the blog has been edited, there was no specific caution attached to the news that Giffords was dead. The caution was actually issued at the beginning of the live blog which scrolls to the bottom of a page as newer items are added to the top. That's just the way blogs work, but the as-it-happens blog isn't read like a newspaper story or, for that matter, like any other online story. On a live-blog, any caution, any disclaimer, any information at all that needs to be imparted, needs to be embedded completely within a time-stamped entry.

Other than that, though, Shepard zeroes in correctly:

NPR had two sources, though neither was identified in any way, and should have been. And the newscast should have put the news in context, explaining that a tragedy had just occurred, the story was changing quickly, and this was what NPR knew at that moment.

A critical question for each source was: "How do you know that?"

It turns out that neither source had accurate, first-hand information. The congressional source had heard it in a meeting on Capitol Hill, where undoubtedly rumors and half truths were flying around.

Moran said his information came from "law enforcement sources, a KJZZ reporter and very early reports on NPR.org."

"I felt supremely confident in the two sources I had but unfortunately those sources were relying on other sources, almost like a game of telephone tag," said Moran. "Unfortunately in this case the stakes were extremely high and I'm sick about it."

Typically, in a big, fast-breaking news story like this, senior editors should have been consulted before going on air with devastating news based on sources NPR would not name.

One other note: Shepard reports that NPR correspondent Audie Cornish provided the second source on the report, indicating it came from "a congressman's office." She didn't identify which congressman, but should have.

Shepard also does not wade into the question of using anonymous sources, which is unfortunate. And while she says senior editors at NPR should've been consulted before the story was aired, she doesn't provide an answer to the question of whether NPR's firing (I'm calling it what it was) of Ellen Weiss from the position days earlier was one of the reasons that wasn't done.

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Juan Williams proving NPR's point

Posted at 10:26 AM on January 7, 2011 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Over the last few months, I've done a fair amount of defending the notion that journalists have and should be allowed to express informed, fact-based opinions on news, but Juan Williams' reaction to the firing -- sorry, "resignation" -- of the NPR news executive who fired him disproves most of it.

As quoted by Business Insider, Williams assessed National Public Radio this way during an appearance on FoxNews, his current employer:

"They have a culture there is not open to real news, that is not open to all points of view, that is not open to the real world around us and to the many different dynamics, perspectives and life stories that animate America."

Williams never said any such thing when he cashed a paycheck from National Public Radio (now "NPR"), so we can only conclude that his assessment stems not from an informed, fact-based reality, but from lingering hurt feelings about his firing in October. As a news commentator, his assessment of reality is too clouded by his opinion. Hurt feelings do not create an environment from which news insight comes and, at the end of the day, insight is a journalist's job. NPR fired Williams because it felt his feelings similarly prevented him from providing that insight and discredited the organization.

It's possible to be close to a story and have an opinion, though (and is anybody seriously doubting that in their private moments, everybody who works at NPR has an opinion on the firing of Ellen Weiss yesterday?). One need only look at -- surprise -- NPR to see how good journalism is done.

David Folkenflik, an NPR reporter, got the unenviable task of covering the story for NPR. He, unlike Williams, did a magnificent job by playing it straight and leaving his feelings out of it.

Put the two assessments (news stories) about NPR side by side, and it's easy to figure out the more trustworthy source on the subject.

Ironically, Williams refused to talk to Folkenflik for his story. Clearly NPR as a news organization was open to his point of view in covering this story. Williams wasn't. That's on him.

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The other Juan Williams shoe drops on NPR executive

Posted at 1:04 PM on January 6, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

NPR president and CEO Vivian Schiller took a ton of heat for the way she fired former commentator Juan Williams after he appeared in his role on FoxNews and acknowledged being nervous when Muslims are on board.

There were more than a few people who wondered whether Schiller would survive the public relations mess. Now we know. She did. A lower executive didn't.

Today, NPR issued this memo, which buries the news that Ellen Weiss, the senior vice president for news, was resigned.

The NPR Board of Directors announced today that it has completed its review into the facts and circumstances leading to the termination of NPR's contract with senior news analyst Juan Williams. The review also included an examination of how other NPR analysts and correspondents have been treated under the NPR Ethics Code with respect to on-air comments. The independent members of NPR's Board (the "Board") worked with outside legal counsel, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP ("Weil"), to gather information related to the contract termination.

"In light of the review and feedback provided to them, the Board has adopted recommendations and remedial measures designed to address issues that surfaced with the review. The recommendations and remedial measures range from new internal procedures concerning personnel and on air-talent decisions to taking appropriate disciplinary action with respect to certain management employees involved in the termination. Some of these changes have already been made and others are in process. Specifically, the Board adopted recommendations that NPR:

"-- Establish a committee comprised of NPR personnel, respected journalists, and others from outside NPR to review and update NPR's current Ethics Code (the "Code").

"-- Develop policies and procedures to ensure consistent application of and training on the Code to all employees and contractors.

"-- Review and update policies/training with respect to the role of NPR journalists appearing on other media outlets to ensure that they understand the applicability of the Ethics Code to their work and to facilitate equitable and consistent application of the Code.

"-- Review and define the roles of NPR journalists (including news analysts) to address a changing news environment in which such individuals have a myriad of outlets and new platforms for their talent, balancing the opportunities presented by such outlets and platforms with the potential for conflicts of interest that may compromise NPR's mission.

"-- Ensure that its practices encourage a broad range of viewpoints to assist its decision-making, support its mission, and reflect the diversity of its national audiences. The Human Resources Committee of the Board is working in conjunction with key members of NPR management on this issue.

"-- Williams' contract was terminated in accordance with its terms. The contract gave both parties the right to terminate on 30 days' notice for any reason. The facts gathered during the review revealed that the termination was not the result of special interest group or donor pressure. However, because of concerns regarding the speed and handling of the termination process, the Board additionally recommended that certain actions be taken with regard to management involved in Williams' contract termination.

"The Board has expressed confidence in Vivian Schiller's leadership going forward. She accepted responsibility as CEO and cooperated fully with the review process. The Board, however, expressed concern over her role in the termination process and has voted that she will not receive a 2010 bonus.

"NPR also announced that Ellen Weiss, Senior Vice-President for News, has resigned.

The NPR Board of Directors announced today that it has completed its review into the facts and circumstances leading to the termination of NPR's contract with senior news analyst Juan Williams. The review also included an examination of how other NPR analysts and correspondents have been treated under the NPR Ethics Code with respect to on-air comments. The independent members of NPR's Board (the "Board") worked with outside legal counsel, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP ("Weil"), to gather information related to the contract termination.

"In light of the review and feedback provided to them, the Board has adopted recommendations and remedial measures designed to address issues that surfaced with the review. The recommendations and remedial measures range from new internal procedures concerning personnel and on air-talent decisions to taking appropriate disciplinary action with respect to certain management employees involved in the termination. Some of these changes have already been made and others are in process. Specifically, the Board adopted recommendations that NPR:

"-- Establish a committee comprised of NPR personnel, respected journalists, and others from outside NPR to review and update NPR's current Ethics Code (the "Code").

"-- Develop policies and procedures to ensure consistent application of and training on the Code to all employees and contractors.

"-- Review and update policies/training with respect to the role of NPR journalists appearing on other media outlets to ensure that they understand the applicability of the Ethics Code to their work and to facilitate equitable and consistent application of the Code.

"-- Review and define the roles of NPR journalists (including news analysts) to address a changing news environment in which such individuals have a myriad of outlets and new platforms for their talent, balancing the opportunities presented by such outlets and platforms with the potential for conflicts of interest that may compromise NPR's mission.

"-- Ensure that its practices encourage a broad range of viewpoints to assist its decision-making, support its mission, and reflect the diversity of its national audiences. The Human Resources Committee of the Board is working in conjunction with key members of NPR management on this issue.

"-- Williams' contract was terminated in accordance with its terms. The contract gave both parties the right to terminate on 30 days' notice for any reason. The facts gathered during the review revealed that the termination was not the result of special interest group or donor pressure. However, because of concerns regarding the speed and handling of the termination process, the Board additionally recommended that certain actions be taken with regard to management involved in Williams' contract termination.

"The Board has expressed confidence in Vivian Schiller's leadership going forward. She accepted responsibility as CEO and cooperated fully with the review process. The Board, however, expressed concern over her role in the termination process and has voted that she will not receive a 2010 bonus.

"NPR also announced that Ellen Weiss, Senior Vice-President for News, has resigned.

" 'We have taken this situation very seriously and the Board believes these recommendations and remedial steps address the concerns raised in connection with the termination of Williams' contract,' said Dave Edwards, Chair. 'The Board regrets this incident's impact on NPR and will work with NPR's CEO, Vivian Schiller, to ensure that these actions will be expeditiously completed, examined, and monitored on an ongoing basis.'

"In conducting the review, Weil gathered thousands of documents from various sources and interviewed many current and former NPR employees and contractors. Weil requested Williams' participation in the review through both his agent and a former NPR colleague. Unfortunately, these efforts were unsuccessful and Williams was not interviewed.

"The Ad Hoc Committee and the non-management members of the Board met on multiple occasions and deliberated on the information provided to them. Weil reported to an Ad Hoc Committee of the NPR Board consisting of Dave Edwards (Chair of the Board), Howard Stevenson (Immediate Past Chair), and Carol Cartwright (Vice-Chair)."

Schiller then issued her own memo which praises Weiss. If you're in any sort of corporation, you've probably seen this before: A person "resigns" followed by a wink and nod. If Weiss departure wasn't because of the Williams fiasco, why mention it in a memo about the Williams fiasco.

"NPR SVP for News Ellen Weiss has notified me that she will be leaving her position. Over her decades at NPR, Ellen has made meaningful and lasting contributions to the evolution of NPR and our newsroom. She is a strong journalist who has brought her considerable talents to how NPR covers the world and meets the ever-increasing expectations of today's audiences. Ellen exemplifies journalistic professionalism and integrity. I'm grateful to her for what she has accomplished at NPR, and I encourage you to reach out to her in the days ahead with your own thanks."

None of the official material says what it is that Weiss did wrong. For that, however, we have this tweet from NPR reporter David Folkenflik.

Weiss gave this lecture at Stanford four months before the controversy:

Update 3:50 p.m. - James Fallows, who occasionally does some work for NPR, writes:

Is letting her go, for one episode (with Williams), any worse than letting Williams go for one comment on Fox News (that he got nervous when people in "Muslim garb" got on an airplane)? Structurally they might seem the same. But NPR's day-after explanation about Williams was that this was the culmination of years-long disagreements with him about his role as a Fox commentator. I know nothing first-hand about the merits of that explanation; but its essence is different from Weiss's situation, in which one instance of misjudgment appears to trump her reputation and achievement over the decades. I am sorry for her and for NPR -- and for the likelihood that in the politicized battle over the meaning of "news" I wrote about originally, she will be presented on the Fox side as a "liberal" scalp collected in atonement for Williams's. That's political reductionism, of which we have so much these days, when we need more people who, like Weiss, have been trying hard to send explanatory reportorial probes out into the world. [For the record: I've had outside roles as a commentator or analyst on NPR shows over the years, never as a staff member.]

Update 5:37 p.m. : Weiss has made her first comments to the Los Angeles Times. "What I would say is that the decision to terminate the Juan Williams contract by NPR, of which I was a participant, was based on the highest journalistic standards," Weiss said Thursday.

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Policy and a Pint: The movie

Posted at 7:23 AM on December 24, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

If you haven't had enough journalism navel gazing lately, here's a video from The Current from last week's Policy and a Pint on the subject of the line between journalism and opinion. We reached no consensus that I'm aware of. The most contentious point seemed to be when I revealed I get much of my daily information from Twitter. But it was fun and the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis is one interesting venue.

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The Schorr files

Posted at 1:32 PM on December 23, 2010 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Even to this day, the thought that a president could put the FBI on the trail of a journalist because he didn't like the reporting sends shivers up the spines of rational people.

That shiver today comes from fbi.gov, which today released the Nixon-ordered probe into journalist Daniel Schorr. The White House justified the use of the FBI by contending it was considering an appointment for Schorr. That, of course, was a lie.

The documents released today contend the FBI dropped the investigation as soon as it realized what was going on. But, even so, many of the names were removed from the documents. We may never know for sure everyone who was involved in the use of a government agency to harass a legitimate reporter:

Mark Memmott, at NPR's Two Way Blog, says the investigation found out that Schorr was a hell of a reporter.

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The mother of online news

Posted at 2:34 PM on December 21, 2010 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

There are a lot of people out there making a good living by claiming to be experts in matters of the Internet.

MJ Bear wasn't one of them. Even though she was one of the original experts of the Internet, she didn't parade herself as one.

Her funeral was held today down in Des Moines. She died last week after a seven-month fight with leukemia.

Those few of us who were around back when MPR was getting into the online news businesses, remember her as a friendly voice at NPR, where she headed npr.org's development.

It's easy to forget now just how revolutionary it was to answer questions about whether an NPR program can be streamed on a local affiliate's Web site (it couldn't), or whether there was any value in expanding online audio. Back then, MPR had a total of 100 live streams available between the classical service and news and after that, you got a message that you were out of luck. Back then, we only streamed Midmorning and Midday because there were no rights granted for the NPR programs, or even the top-of-the-hour news, for that matter.

But someone with a vision helped answer all of those questions. And MJ Bear also helped form the Online News Association, which at the time was a collection of online newsies who had a hard time getting the time of day from their core-media bosses and colleagues.

NPR undersold her contributions today when it cited her work "redesigning and overseeing NPR.org from 1996 to 2001." It was so much more than that. It was hand-holding public radio Web teams across the country as they tried to do something new, in the face of opposition from those who felt it would undercut the role of radio.

MJ Bear was one of the first people to recognize that journalism and the Web were made for each other, and that public media was uniquely qualified to prove it.

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No news is news

Posted at 2:02 PM on November 24, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The hardest news story to cover is the one where there's no news story to cover. We journos set up shop every year at the airport to tell you about the headaches that are evident on this busiest travel day of the year.

There are few lines at Minneapolis-St. Paul. There are no disruptions of note at the security area, and the FAA map shows the only airport delays are in New York City, where it's only news if there's delays there.

Looking at the images from MPR's Tim Nelson, who drew the short straw this year, we're tempted to wonder how things are at the bus and train stations.

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Making news, making sausage

Posted at 2:12 PM on November 23, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

This video, released by Columbia Journalism Review earlier this month, is a perfect example of how the political news you hear on your radio this afternoon gets made. It features NPR's congressional reporter Don Gonyea and two other reporters.

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Policy and a Pint: The Line Between News and Opinion

Posted at 2:56 PM on November 19, 2010 by Bob Collins (9 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The details have been announced for next month's Policy and a Pint session discussing the changing nature of news and the redefinition of the word journalism.

Here's the release:

Event Fact Note
Policy and a Pint: The Line Between News and Opinion
December 15, 2010
Doors at 5:30. Program 6:00-7:00
Varsity Theater

According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Americans are spending more time "with" the news. That means listening to radio, watching TV, reading blogs, opening newspapers and paging through magazines.

But the news sources listed in the research are surprising. It includes the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and network nighttime broadcasts, of course, but also Bill O'Reilly's show, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show and Rush Limbaugh. Where is the line between opinion, news and comedy?

Steve Seel will talk with MPR News' Chris Worthington and Bob Collins about Juan Williams, objectivity, opinion, Keith Olbermann and how different generations get and interpret their news. If Walter Cronkite felt he could venture into commentary, why can't today's anchors and journalists?

Policy and a Pint is presented by Citizens League and 89.3 The Current.

Guests:

Chris Worthington joined Minnesota Public Radio in July 2006 as program director for its Regional News & Information Service. He has more than 25 years of news experience, most recently with the Pioneer Press in St. Paul, where he served as managing editor and senior editor for business and technology from 1997 to 2006. From 1983 to 1996, he worked for the Dallas Morning News as its assistant business editor, assistant state editor and sports editor. He held other newspaper positions with Newsday, the Fort Lauderdale News and the Fort Myers News-Press. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from the University of Southern California and a masters of business administration degree from the University of Dallas.

Bob Collins joined MPR in 1992. He served as broadcast editor and coordinated MPR's political coverage until 1999, when he was asked to direct MPR's foray into online journalism. He previously was vice president of programming for Berkshire Broadcasting Company in Massachusetts, and national desk editor at the RKO Radio Network in New York. He also was editor at WHDH in Boston, where he received the Edward R. Murrow Award for his investigation into the Boston mob scene. Bob is a private pilot and is building his own airplane.

Like just about every other public radio newsroom, we had a meeting after the Juan Williams "situation" to go over this question of how much of "us" we should reveal to people. It's a difficult line to draw. Chris' view is there should be a reasonableness to the expression of any opinion. No arguments there although I enjoyed debating the edges of the assertion with him. Someone in the room said, "you and Bob should debate on the radio." Someone else in the room said, "Bob, you should shut up," so we settled on a format that is halfway between the two.

It'll be fun. You can make your reservations here. If you can't make it, you can always scalp the ticket.

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What do cabbies know?

Posted at 10:25 AM on November 19, 2010 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Roger Ebert today penned an ode to NPR (though he mistakenly linked American Public Media's A Prairie Home Companion with NPR).

This paragraph about Chicago could have easily been written about the Twin Cities.

I've mentioned before that I cannot get into a taxi in Chicago where NPR is not either playing, or pre-tuned when the radio is turned on. The driver is invariably African or South Asian. I ask, "You like NPR?" I have been told, "I hear more about the rest of the world." I've also been told, "I hear more about America." More than once I've been told, "I want to learn."

Update 11:41 a.m. NPR has won the coveted Medal of Fear.

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Politicians and public broadcasting

Posted at 2:26 PM on November 18, 2010 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Media

How deeply involved in radio and TV station programming should politicians be?

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a proposal that would have barred local public radio and TV stations from buying any programming from NPR (formerly "National Public Radio").

According to Radio Ink Magazine:

The House has rejected a Republican push to block public stations from using their Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants to buy NPR programming, voting not to take up the matter. NPR receives little direct government funding, but would have lost a significant part of its funding with the end of CPB-funded programming purchases.

The attempt to block NPR funding came after a poll on the Republican YouCut website showed it as the top choice among respondents for a spending cut. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (VA) and Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) in a joint statement also cited NPR's abrupt firing of analyst Juan Williams -- a liberal commentator who also appears regularly on Fox News -- as proof of political bias at the public broadcaster. Williams was fired after he said on Fox that he gets "nervous" when seeing Muslims in traditional dress at airports.

The proposal will likely make a return appearance once Republicans take control of the House next year.

Make no mistake about it, this is topic #1 in public broadcasting circles. They're very worried that their budgets will be cut by the loss of CPB funds (which come primarily through government grants).

But the threat of it is a big stick that politicians carry, not unlike the one it uses on Major League Baseball through its granting of an anti-trust exemption. Congress has constantly threatened to pull the anti-trust exemption to extract action from this private business (that's why Washington keeps getting baseball teams after it continually proves it shouldn't have one). If they ever actually followed through on the threat, Congress would be giving up power.

(Here's a list of how CPB money is presently allocated in Minnesota)

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In search of real news

Posted at 4:37 PM on November 16, 2010 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Media

It was quite a segment on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation today when the iconic Ted Koppel defended an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that managed to put Keith Olberman and Bill O'Reilly on the same side of an issue.

As you may know, Olbermann returned to his MSNBC program after just two days of enforced absence. (Given cable television's short attention span, two days may well have seemed like an "indefinite suspension.") He was gracious about the whole thing, acknowledging at least the historical merit of the rule he had broken: "It's not a stupid rule," he said. "It needs to be adapted to the realities of 21st-century journalism."

There is, after all, not much of a chance that 21st-century journalism will be adapted to conform with the old rules. Technology and the market are offering a tantalizing array of channels, each designed to fill a particular niche - sports, weather, cooking, religion - and an infinite variety of news, prepared and seasoned to reflect our taste, just the way we like it. As someone used to say in a bygone era, "That's the way it is."

Olbermann, who's become a caricature of himself, fired back last night:

Koppel's problem was using Olbermann as an example at all. There's simply no ethical guideline in the present, past, or future that's ever going to OK giving someone a campaign contribution, then inviting that person on your show, and not revealing the tie. Somewhere between that extreme, and the "old days" lies journalism in 2010.

So it was a good idea for the Talk of the Nation producers to book Jeff Jarvis instead, but perhaps a bad idea to chase the question of objectivity. Jarvis suggested if news is dead, Koppel's industry killed it.

"Television is responsible for killing many of the voices -- the cacophony of democracy -- newspapers, many times 6, 7, 8 newspapers in a town became one, maybe two because television came in an essentially killed them, "Jarvis said. "Television was given a government mandate to have this neutral voice... to have this one-size-fits-all... and I think we lost a lot of democracy."

He called television's news offerings "tapioca."

"The new media is probably going to be responsible for the last few newspapers that are still out there," Koppel replied. But he said his op-ed has nothing to do with a search for truth, but with the corporations who own the cable TV networks "and their interest in making money." He says the problem is too many voices on cable TV.

Here's the full segment:

By the way, next month I'll participate in a Policy and a Pint discussion at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis that considers "The Line Between News and Opinion." I suspect some of these same themes will emerge. It's on December 15. Details later.

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In the Internet age, it's impossible to censor for long

Posted at 2:37 PM on November 15, 2010 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Officials at Benilde-St. Margaret, a Catholic school in St. Louis Park, have removed two articles from the school newspaper's Web site critical of the Archdiocese's DVD mailing against same-sex marriage.

Dr. Sue Skinner, the principal, posted this on the Web site:

The administration is asking that the staff editorial entitled "Staff Finds DVD unsubstantiated" , and the opinion piece titled "Life as a Gay Teenager" be immediately removed from the Knight Errant website along with the online comments for each piece. The reason is that while lively debate and discussion clearly has its place in a Catholic school, this particular discussion is not appropriate because the level of intensity has created an unsafe environment for students. As importantly, the articles and ensuing online postings have created confusion about Church teaching. The administration will be following up with the staff of the Knight Errant to review and discuss the protocol for what is appropriate content.

Is it a violation of the First Amendment? Probably not, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in a case of a public school (Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier) that authorities have the right to censor school newspapers.

"A school need not tolerate student speech that is inconsistent with its basic educational mission, even though the government could not censor similar speech outside the school," it wrote.

In that case, a principal had barred printing of articles about one student's pregnancy and another student's thoughts about his/her parents' divorce.

But that was then. Now, the articles that were banned today can easily be distributed if the students at Benilde-St. Margaret want to push it that far. Any number of Web sites -- including this one, I suspect -- would post the offending articles, or the students could distribute it themselves using any number of social networks or blogs.

Almost two years ago, a school newspaper was shuttered in Faribault after it intended to publish an investigation of one of the teachers. So the students simply started publishing their paper online.

The ability to censor anything inevitably depends on the willingness of journalists to risk the consequences of opposing it.

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NPR to review Williams firing

Posted at 10:46 AM on November 15, 2010 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Media

NPR has hired an outside investigator to review its botched (at least from a P.R. standpoint) firing of commentator Juan Williams last month.

But NPR's ombudsman isn't happy with the notion that some of the resulting report won't be made public.

I'm told it's unlikely the final report will be made public in its entirety, though parts of it may be. I always advocate for transparency, but NPR considers this a personnel issue even though the resulting damage to NPR goes beyond the consequences of firing an independent contractor.

NPR can hire the most sophisticated investigators in the world, but how can such a review have credibility if people who care about NPR can't read the full results of it? NPR needs to find a way to make the full report --or the key parts of it --public.

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Polling problems

Posted at 10:28 AM on November 11, 2010 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Politics

Ouch, that one hurt. But the tweet, posted hours before the hapless Timberwolves were to take on the world champion Los Angeles Lakers this week, is an example of what happens when a definitive poll turns out to be not so definitive.

That's the U of M's Larry Jacobs' problem, which he shares with the Humphrey Institute and Minnesota Public Radio after gubernatorial polls released just before the election appear to be inaccurate -- and not by a little.

MPR issued this news release today:

(St. Paul, Minn.) November 11, 2010--Minnesota Public Radio and the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs announced today that they will undertake a thorough review of the methodology used in polls conducted during the 2010 election season. The process will include an internal review of the poll by the Humphrey Institute and an independent audit that will be made public. The independent audit will be conducted by Frank Newport, the editor and (sic) chief of Gallup.

MPR and the Humphrey Institute partnered this year to conduct four polls leading up to Election Day. The final poll, based on interviewing begun nearly two weeks before Election Day, showed results significantly different from the final election tally. This issue will be examined along with the raw data from other polls to determine whether there is a methodological reason for the difference, or whether external events account for the difference.

"We are committed to a transparent review of our polling methodology because we value the importance of continuous improvement in our efforts," said Professor Larry Jacobs, director of the Humphrey Institute's Center for the Study of Politics and Government. "If a shortcoming is identified, we will fix it. If not, we will have third-party verification that our methods are sound."

"The review of polling methodology is a necessary step in continuing to provide Minnesotans with the unbiased information they need to make informed decisions," said Chris Worthington, MPR's managing director of News.

Dean Brian Atwood of the Humphrey Institute added, "I welcome the opportunity to conduct this self analysis and peer review, a regular process for any academic institution. Professor Jacobs is an internationally recognized expert in this field. He is a professional who looks critically at his own work, as well as at polls conducted by others. We are committed to maintaining a very high standard."

I have not talked to anybody at MPR involved in the polling situation, but one doesn't need to to know that MPR has a problem going into the 2012 campaign. Even if MPR and the Humphrey Institute get the methodology fixed (assuming it's broken) before the first poll of the 2012 campaign comes out, few of them will be have any credibility until Election Day, because there's really no other way to prove their reliability.

On his media-watchdog blog, David Brauer has found a Carleton College expert who may (or may not) be involved in the poll introspection.

While (Steven)Schier won't divulge conversations with MPR, he is willing to critique HHH's methodology. "What I can tell you is that the poll problems may lie in two places -- the likely voter screen and the attempt to factor in cell phone use."

As I noted this summer, HHH does not survey cell-phone-only voters, or CPOs. However, it tries to simulate that 25 percent of households by giving additional weight to land line respondents who also have cell phones.

To be sure, it's comforting that MPR is taking the possible poll problems seriously. Of course, any hits to a news organization's credibility is an assault on its vital organs.

But there's another reason why accurate polls matter: They may influence the outcome of elections. Sen. Kathy Saltzman, a moderate DFLer who lost to a Republican last week, told the Woodbury Bulletin that she thinks Democratic legislators may have suffered defeat because voters saw the pre-election polls showing DFLer Mark Dayton leading in the governor's race.

"I think that people were concerned that a (Democrat-controlled) Legislature would be a rubber stamp for some of the policies that he campaigned on," she said.

Maybe she's trying to come up with ways to make her loss sting less, or maybe she's right. If it's the latter, perhaps a larger discussion is in play for news organizations: If polls influence the outcome of elections, what's the value in doing them?

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Blogger returns to print, a wiser reporter

Posted at 10:15 AM on November 8, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Marc Ambinder, of The Atlantic, has decided to give up the world of blogging and head back to print journalism, but not before unleashing a scorched-earth treatise on his soon-to-be-former medium:

All I will say here is that the mere fact that online reporters feel they must participate in endless discussions about these subjects is something new, a consequence of the medium, and is one reason why it can be so exhausting to do primarily web journalism. The feedback loop is relentless, punishing and is predicated on the assumption that the reporter's motivation is wrong. Unfortunately, the standard for defining oneself as a web journalist depends upon establishing a certain credibility with a particular audience of critics. Responding to complaints about content and structure and bias is part of the way one establishes that credibility.

Ambinder says he misses having an editor to tell him his blog posts, which were really more column than blog, weren't very good.

Really good print journalism is ego-free. By that I do not mean that the writer has no skin in the game, or that the writer lacks a perspective, or even that the writer does not write from a perspective. What I mean is that the writer is able to let the story and the reporting process, to the highest possible extent, unfold without a reporter's insecurities or parochial concerns intervening. Blogging is an ego-intensive process. Even in straight news stories, the format always requires you to put yourself into narrative. You are expected to not only have a point of view and reveal it, but be confident that it is the correct point of view. There is nothing wrong with this. As much as a writer can fabricate a detachment, or a "view from nowhere," as Jay Rosen has put it, the writer can also also fabricate a view from somewhere. You can't really be a reporter without it. I don't care whether people know how I feel about particular political issues; it's no secret where I stand on gay marriage, or on the science of climate change, and I wouldn't have it any other way. What I hope I will find refreshing about the change of formats is that I will no longer be compelled to turn every piece of prose into a personal, conclusive argument, to try and fit it into a coherent framework that belongs to a web-based personality called "Marc Ambinder" that people read because it's "Marc Ambinder," rather than because it's good or interesting.

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The Collins interview

Posted at 9:50 AM on November 4, 2010 by Bob Collins (58 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Here's the most controversial TV interview in the Twin Cities from this week's election.

Last night, Heidi Collins -- a former CNN anchor -- at KMSP battled Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.

Did she go too far, not far enough, or was it just right?

For the record, I am not in any way related to Heidi Collins.

(h/t: David Brauer, MinnPost)

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It's all in the question

Posted at 11:21 AM on October 28, 2010 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Did an NBC affiliate in Texas believe that asking "are homosexuals the downfall of America" was a neutrally phrased question? Or were they just trying to get people worked up enough to make the phone lines ring?

The video also sets the record for the most number of times the same three homosexual couples were shown in a segment about how many homosexuals there are.

The Courage Campaign has sent out action e-mails to NBC to protest.

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Poll: Keep funding NPR

Posted at 4:48 PM on October 27, 2010 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Media

A nationwide survey has found that 45 percent of Americans favored continued U.S. government NPR funding, while 39 percent called for a halt to funding, with the remainder saying they had no opinion. The poll comes from Poll Position, using an automated dialing system. The margin of error is +/- 3 percent.

The poll found men are more likely to favor NPR funding than women.

The same survey found that Democrats are more likely to be comfortable aboard an airplane with Muslim men.

It is not, however, proven that the more comfortable people are with Muslim men on an airplane, the more likely they are to support funding for NPR. But it might make a good guess.

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Christine O'Donnel and the First Amendment - Part two

Posted at 3:45 PM on October 27, 2010 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Politics

A week ago, Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, who has become the poster child for upstart, anti-incumbent candidates, lectured her opponent on the meaning of the First Amendment. Today, she threatened to sue a Delaware radio station if a video of an interview with her was posted online.

It was posted online (available only on Facebook, however)

Things were going well for O'Donnell until the show host, who up to then had seemed to be a sympathetic interviewer for O'Donnell, asked for specifics of where she'd cut a county budget. (Scroll to 11:30). When things got tense, a campaign manager and other campaign officials entered the studio (a no-no for most radio stations), and began writing notes to her. As the show ended, he allegedly told the station the campaign would "crush" the station if the video aired.

Says the radio station:

WDEL's attorney asserted that the interview and video were in compliance with all applicable laws, was clearly protected free speech under the First Amendment, and that the campaign had no grounds to demand the station withhold it from the public.

After seeing the video the attorney for the O'Donnell campaign contacted WDEL's counsel again to apologize for charges made by their campaign manager. The attorney agreed that there was no legal issue with the video and expressed regret for the incident.

For the record, MPR does not allow campaign staff to be in the studio when show hosts interview candidates.

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Fallows on why NPR matters

Posted at 12:02 PM on October 25, 2010 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Media

James Fallows, who was a guest on MPR's Midmorning today on an entirely different subject , opens up on the attacks on NPR in the wake of its firing of news analyst Juan Williams. Fallows, who appears regularly on NPR, has penned "Why NPR matters."

In their current anti-NPR initiative, Fox and the Republicans would like to suggest that the main way NPR differs from Fox is that most NPR employees vote Democratic. That is a difference, but the real difference is what they are trying to do. NPR shows are built around gathering and analyzing the news, rather than using it as a springboard for opinions. And while of course the selection of stories and analysts is subjective and can show a bias, in a serious news organization the bias is something to be worked against rather than embraced. NPR, like the New York Times, has an ombudsman. Does Fox? [I think the answer is No.]

One other factor affects my view of NPR. There are jobs where people are mainly motivated by the hope of big money. (Finance in general.) There are jobs where the main motivation is job-security. And there is a category of jobs where, as absolutely everyone recognizes, it makes a tremendous difference that "employees" care about something beyond pay, hours, and security. Teachers. Soldiers. Doctors and nurses. Judges and police. Political leaders, if they want to be more than hacks. And, people in news organizations.

Find it here.

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After Juan Williams

Posted at 7:55 AM on October 23, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

There probably isn't a newsroom in America -- certainly not a public broadcasting newsroom -- that isn't having a conversation about what its journalists can say when they're out giving speeches, appearing on panels, or hanging around in their own neighborhood.

It stems from Juan Williams' run-in with reality this week. Moving on from the specifics of the case, however, PBS looks at what it means for other journalists.

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What is fact-based analysis?

Posted at 10:08 AM on October 22, 2010 by Bob Collins (27 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The Juan Williams story continues to fester across Planet Public Radio. This morning, Midmorning provided an excellent look at some of the issues surrounding the firing.

NPR, meanwhile, has sent out talking points to its member stations, who are taking the heat for the firing of Williams. They're not much different than what the NPR ombudsman provided in her article this morning (I provided the link in this morning's 5x8). And this is the central issue:

In appearing on TV or other media including electronic Web-based forums, NPR journalists should not express views they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist. They should not participate in shows electronic forums, or blogs that encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis.

This is where it gets difficult. What exactly is fact-based analysis? In many cases, a journalist might connect two facts -- this is common in political "analysis" -- and describe what may be a politician's strategy. They don't really know for sure that it's the strategy being employed, because the people employing it won't say. Is that opinion, fact-based analysis, or just a guess?

These are questions that reveal the true nature of journalism and those who practice it. It's not a black-and-white task.

A blogger I read daily provided an interesting observation yesterday:

As the child of a television executive, I can tell you that growing up we were not even allowed to have political yard signs. Such a visible display of political leanings could be easily construed as representing the news departments of the stations my father worked at. Of course, this was a time (not that long ago, really) will journalistic ethics were grounded in the work of people like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.

Walter Cronkite expressed an opinion -- or was it fact-based analysis? -- in 1968. He was right, as it turned out, because it ended a war. But journalists debate to this day whether he dictated the outcome with his analysis -- because it led to a reversal of public (wait for it)... opinion -- or whether it was destined to work out that way anyway.

Edward R. Murrow -- the very definition of an ethical journalist -- achieved his greatest fame with an opinion. Where did the facts end and the opinion begin?

Ed Bradley, in a reminiscence about his approach to Vietnam stories, makes it clear that he never considered journalism a regurgitation of facts. "I knew we couldn't win that war," he said. Does that come from opinion? From fact? Or a little of both?

In its excellent show this morning, Midmorning asked whether Juan Williams "crossed the line." What NPR did this week is try to define where that line is. Can it be defined? Or do you just know it when you see it?

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Should Juan Williams have been fired?

Posted at 9:32 AM on October 21, 2010 by Bob Collins (160 Comments)
Filed under: Media

(note: There are numerous updates to this post. The latest is posted at the bottom.)

The story of the day today seems to be NPR's firing of Juan Williams, who exercised the poor judgment to go on Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox to admit to being concerned when he sees Muslims on an airplane, but cautioned O'Reilly not to brand Muslims as terrorists. Because O'Reilly makes all discussions about O'Reilly, the forum does not allow a guest the opportunity for full explanation. Williams, by all accounts a pretty smart guy, had to know that O'Reilly uses guests as props for his own version of reality. And last week O'Reilly did brand Muslims as terrorists.

NPR has tried to find a comfortable role for Williams since his failed stint as the host of Talk of the Nation. It kept trying to find a role for him at the network, finally settling on "news analyst," a partial admission that he had opinions.

After he compared Michelle Obama to "Stokely Carmichael in a dress" on Fox in February 2009, NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard wrote that she's not convinced NPR listeners objected to what Williams said, but where he said it:

That may be the cause of the criticism. Williams tends to speak one way on NPR and another on Fox.

His "Stokely Carmichael" comment got the attention of NPR's top managers. They are in a bind because Williams is no longer a staff employee but an independent contractor. As a contract news analyst, NPR doesn't exercise control over what Williams says outside of NPR.

"Juan Williams is a contributor to NPR programs as a news analyst," said Ron Elving, NPR's Washington editor. "What he says on NPR is the product of a journalistic process that includes editors. What he says when he is not on our air is not within our control. But we recognize that what he says elsewhere reflects on NPR, and we have discussed that fact with him specifically in regard to his remarks on Fox News regarding Michelle Obama."

This recent comment may have undermined his credibility with some NPR listeners. But I question whether listeners, overall, object to what Williams says outside of NPR or the fact that he says it on Fox.

There were almost 2,000 comments on the NPR story about Williams' firing, but it's difficult to get a sense of what public radio listeners think about it because one popular conservative blogger urged his legions to go there and fill the comments section.

But here are two that define the general reaction.

First from one who opposes the NPR action:

I have been listening to NPR for decades, literally. I could not believe this story when I heard it. Now that I know that it is true, I am nothing short of furious and deeply disappointed. Juan Williams is one of the few voices of reason out there. He represents a viewpoint, to be sure. But unlike all the screaming voices out there, he is a reasonable and brilliant man. As such he reaches across the great chasm that divides our people. There are others on both sides of the political spectrum that are like Juan, but very few. This was a reactionary and incredibly stupid blunder on NPR's part. Unless he is reinstated, I am done with NPR. No more contributions, no more listening.

I should point out here that public radio stations and NPR are two different entities.

And one from a person who supports NPR's move.

I agree with NPR's decision. NPR is the only news source I trust in the current news media environment where objectivity is either optional or not even on the menu. It is inexcusable to paint all Muslims with a broad brush. His comments about McVeigh and Cristianity do not disguise his intent to promote an unfounded irrational fear of Muslims. NPR saw right through it... and so did I. Thanks NPR.

Your turn:

Williams was an occasional guest on MPR's Midday. His last appearance was in December when he evaluated Barack Obama's first year in office:

Update 11:37 a.m. - Williams responded to his firing today.

Update 1:04 p.m. - Sara Meyer, Midday producer, reminds me that Williams' last appearance on Midday was last month.

Update 1:09 p.m. - The head of NPR has sent this out to public radio stations, who are apparently bearing the heat from NPR's action:

First, a critical distinction has been lost in this debate. NPR News analysts have a distinctive role and set of responsibilities. This is a very different role than that of a commentator or columnist. News analysts may not take personal public positions on controversial issues; doing so undermines their credibility as analysts, and that's what's happened in this situation. As you all well know, we offer views of all kinds on your air every day, but those views are expressed by those we interview - not our reporters and analysts.

Second, this isn't the first time we have had serious concerns about some of Juan's public comments. Despite many conversations and warnings over the years, Juan has continued to violate this principal.

Third, these specific comments (and others made in the past), are inconsistent with NPR's ethics code, which applies to all journalists (including contracted analysts):

"In appearing on TV or other media . . . NPR journalists should not express views they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist. They should not participate in shows . . . that encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis."

More fundamentally, "In appearing on TV or other media including electronic Web-based forums, NPR journalists should not express views they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist."

Unfortunately, Juan's comments on Fox violated our standards as well as our values and offended many in doing so.

We're profoundly sorry that this happened during fundraising week. Juan's comments were made Monday night and we did not feel it would be responsible to delay this action.

This was a tough decision and we appreciate your support.

1:51 p.m. -- Ombudsman Alicia Shepard, appearing on NPR's Talk of the Nation, gave us a preview of the column she's promising on the subject "I think it's just that the different roles that Juan played -- being a news analyst -- worked for NPR but it didn't work for NPR to be more inflammatory. And people think what he said about Muslims was inflammatory and didn't advance the debate," she said.

2:18 p.m. - Poynter is hosting a live chat on the issue. Go here.

3:33 p.m. - Williams gets a big payday from Fox. $2 million over three years.

4:15 p.m. - Here's the Talk of the Nation segment, a portion of which had been cut by MPR because of the membership drive.

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When should journalists 'get involved'?

Posted at 12:56 PM on October 20, 2010 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Media

There's a lot more to the ethics of journalism than rules designed to protect the image of a news organization. There's also the very real -- and much more relevant and difficult -- question of when a journalist should "get involved."

In 1979, the late Ed Bradley waded into the ocean to help refugees whose boat had been swamped by waves. Some ethicists criticized him for getting involved in a story he was covering.

In St. Louis, a newspaper photographer took a picture of a flag in a trash can as part of a story about home foreclosures.

Apparently, some readers said the photographer, David Carson, should've removed the flag.

As a journalist, I'm bound by ethics to only record and document reality. I never stage it or change it, even after I'm done photographing it. There are only rare exceptions when a journalist can and should intervene, like in a life-threatening situation. For example, if I were available to help save a drowning person I'd dive in after them.

Several people questioned my respect for veterans and all they have fought for over the years.

I have great respect for veterans and their service. Both of my grandfathers fought in World War II, and my father served on the U.S.S Enterprise during Vietnam. While I never served in the military, I traveled to both Iraq and Afghanistan to cover American and NATO forces in those wars. On top of that, I'm named after my father's best friend, David Gray Prentice, who was killed in Vietnam.

It raises the question of when a journalist should be "in this world" and not just "of this world." What would have been the harm of removing the flag from the trash after it was photographed? Why can't a journalist get involved only in life-threatening situations? If you were a journalist and you did a story on hunger, why couldn't you slip $5 into the hands of the mother you just interviewed so she could get something to eat?

I frequently photograph the flag being inappropriately -- and perhaps ignorantly -- desecrated, such as this display in Belle Plaine...

This week, I noticed the flags over St. Paul's Wabasha Street bridge are becoming tattered.

If one had fallen to the sidewalk below, I would've picked it up and disposed of it properly. Last year, while covering the flooding in the Red River Valley, I helped sandbag.

I made a few trips into Fargo to pick up some supplies for homeowners who needed some.

I would argue that wanting to help people save their homes did nothing to disrupt the value of the coverage, nor diminish the value of the MPR "brand." I never thought twice about whether ethicists would think less of me. It never occurred to me to care whether they did.

(h/t: Romenesko)

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NPR fires back in wake of Stewart/Colbert rally memos

Posted at 2:29 PM on October 15, 2010 by Bob Collins (16 Comments)
Filed under: Media

NPR is pushing back against mainstream media's favorite whipping boy -- the "blogosphere" -- over reaction to a memo earlier this week that said NPR journalists were forbidden from attending the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert "rallies" in Washington later this month. Both ostensibly are aimed at poking at the high-octane political discourse we're experiencing.

The organization's president, in a memo to stations today, blames bloggers for inciting the masses with the notion NPR was vowing not to cover the the event.

Dear Station Colleagues,

There's been quite a bit of media hubbub about an internal memo we sent the other day reminding employees about our longstanding news code of ethics. We specifically mentioned the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rallies, and that's what caused the stir....and quite a bit of speculation and even false information.

First let me give you the facts, and debunk a few of the blogosphere's mistakes:

We will cover the rally to the extent that it is newsworthy, just as we do with any rally.

We did not specifically send out a similar note in advance of the Glenn Beck rally. That is true. Conspiracy theories aside, the reason we did not send out a note before that rally, or the One Nation rally, is that they were overtly political (e.g. Sarah Palin was a main speaker at the Beck rally). In terms of Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert, that rally could be perceived as entertainment and subject to confusion.

We are not against "sanity" and we do not discourage "curiosity", two charges from high-profile bloggers. No more so than we were against "honor" and "freedom" in applying our policy to the Glenn Beck rally. The fact is the Stewart/Colbert rally is becoming politicized. Witness the close relationship with the Huffington Post which has wrapped itself around the event.

We are not violating the civil liberties of our employees. We understand that our employees are citizens as well as journalists. Our policy is not intended to tell them how to live their lives, nor do we compel anyone to become a reporter or work for NPR. But when an individual decides to sign on with NPR as a journalist, he/she understands that comes with certain rules. This is the case in almost all legitimate news organizations, indeed in many professions. In our case, the rules are designed to protect the impartiality of our content.

We do not bar our staff from voting. We do not bar our staff from attending political debates, speeches, or even tapings of Jon Stewart's or Glenn Beck's programs for that matter.

We believe in common sense and trust our staff. No one is going to be fired if they happen upon a rally and wander through to check it out.

So what is this about? The rationale for this policy is pretty simple. We live in an age of "gotcha" journalism where people troll, looking for cracks in our credibility. We need to err on the side of protecting our journalism, our journalists, and our reputation. While the credibility and trust that attaches to the NPR brand depends principally on the quality of our news reporting, it can be easily undermined if our public conduct is at odds with the standards we seek to uphold as a news organization. This is a pillar of quality journalism, and indeed many quality news organizations including The Washington Post have also reaffirmed their policies in the wake of this debate, also addressing the Stewart/Colbert rally specifically.

While I sent the ethics reminder to all staff, the policy applies only to those staff in editorial positions or those staff outside our newsroom who are in positions where they could be representing NPR in public forums (for example, our communications staff who are quoted in press reports). But I sent the code to everyone on staff because we should all be mindful of the message we send in our activities outside of work. We rely on our employees to understand our standards and exercise good judgment about how our policies apply to them - and seek clarification when needed.

Please let me know if you have any questions. These journalistic ethics are living breathing things that need - must! - be perpetually debated with full transparency and an open mind and heart. That's what makes us who we are.

Vivian

In a post this afternoon, NPR's ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, was a tad less nuanced:

One never truly knows what a lousy job the blogosphere is capable of until one is at the center of a story.

But she misses an opportunity to expand on the admission that the entire brouhaha isn't about reporters not having a bias, it's about you not knowing what those biases are:

Sure, journalists have opinions and causes they support.

But at the end of the day, they have to be professional - and that means avoiding actions that create the perception that they are taking sides in political controversies, including elections.

The issue isn't whether reporters "take sides" in political controversies. They do. They're not mummies. The issue is whether those opinions make their ways into news stories or in the process of selecting what stories to cover in the first place. Not allowing you the opportunity to know what the biases are does nothing to guarantee the impartiality of NPR (or any other organization's) content. It's designed more to prevent the questioning of the impartiality of the content, by not giving you an important piece of evidence by which to prove it.

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Does public broadcasting talk too much?

Posted at 1:39 PM on October 7, 2010 by Bob Collins (27 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Is public radio still too stuffy?

The NPR ombudsman calls out attention to a study commissioned for National Public Radio on ways to increase its audience.

The bottom line? Don't be so elitist. Stop me if you've heard this before.

According to current.org, a newspaper for public broadcasting types....

Some objections to the traits of NPR News are sure to prompt pushback from listeners and producers who value complexity and ambiguity, and don't mind lots of words. Wordiness is a problem for one white woman who spoke to researchers about NPR: "I think it can be clever and quirky, and smart and insightful. But I don't choose to listen to it because it's too much talking for me."

Wait. It gets worse....

The tone and seriousness of public radio programming also presents challenges: 35 percent of those familiar with public radio (including 29 percent of the core) say NPR "needs more energy"; 30 percent describe it as "too monotone," and 28 percent say it's "boring."

The people who did the study correctly point out the challenge: How to appeal to these people who want less talk and more energy without alienating the large number of listeners public broadcasting has now -- the ones who put up the money to build the system in the first place?

For content accessibility, the summary proposes that NPR go for a more open, dynamic and conversational tone in news delivery. "There is an appetite for things that sound conversational, and for people sounding like real people," Kaplan said. "It also has to do with understanding what people like to know about and what matters to them."

It's important to note -- lest the comments section get filled with the "you're too liberal" or "you're too conservative" discussion -- that the report is talking more about style than substance. Or at least, that's what it appears to say to me. But, then again, I change my own oil

Your thoughts?

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In the middle of Keillor vs. Bachmann

Posted at 10:32 AM on October 1, 2010 by Bob Collins (30 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Politics

Long-time readers -- especially those who go back to the early days of Polinaut and/or the "blogs" from the conventions in 2004 -- know that I'm a big fan of transparency in the media. I generally think it's a good thing if people know the secrets of those in a journalism organization. The fact that you may not know the existence of bias, doesn't mean there isn't any. Armed with the knowledge, you can detect whether it creeps into news stories. Truth is: Journalists -- most journalists -- vote and have opinions, just like everyone else. So what's the big deal?

I've come to understand how insanely naive that notion is.

A shudder went through the Minnesota Public Radio newsroom yesterday afternoon: Garrison Keillor went all DFL. Again.

Keillor wrote a fundraising letter on behalf of the DFL challenger to Rep. Michele Bachmann:

Thirty years ago, when I started telling stories about Lake Wobegon, I put it smack in the middle of Minnesota -- in Minnesota's 6th Congressional District, in fact -- where staunch Republicans and loyal Democrats know how to live together without yelling at each other and do what needs to be done to work out our problems.

It's embarrassing to me and a great many Minnesotans that Michele Bachmann, a politician who is so busy grandstanding and giving interviews on Fox News that she doesn't have time to serve the people who elected her, represents the 6th District in Washington.

(Update 12:37 p.m. : Bachmann spokesman Sergio Gor says, "The quota on comedy in Minnesota has been reached with the election of Al Franken. Garrison Keilor should stick to what he knows best, which is fabricating make believe stories. Instead of soliciting support from comics, Tarryl Clark should explain to voters why she voted for higher taxes and more useless government spending - every year. This is yet another sign of a desperate campaign.")

It was big news in Minnesota. "It's huge," WCCO political reporter Pat Kessler told a skeptical Dan Barreiro on KFAN yesterday afternoon. "People love him and where is Lake Wobegon? The 6th District."

He's right. It is big -- if predictable -- news. Lesser endorsements have made our news -- former state epidemiologist Mike Osterholm endorsing gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner comes to mind -- but you didn't read about Keillor's involvement here, or our political blog, or our Web site, or our newscasts or on any of our news programming.

Why not? Nobody, least of all me, wanted to touch it and open up the can of worms that is opened whenever Keillor talks politics in the news.

It's true that Keillor doesn't work for Minnesota Public Radio and it's obviously true that he doesn't work for MPR News. Even when he was based in our building, I never saw him converse with anyone from the newsroom unless it was on the air. He's his own boss at an office far away from MPR headquarters for his own company, which produces Prairie Home Companion.

He's not MPR. Except that the perception is that he is. And that's the problem. Perception.

Let's acknowledge that public radio has a long reputation among its detractors for being socialist bomb throwers. Most of it is undeserved. I've worked here for 18 years and even overhearing private conversations, I can't tell you the political leanings of most of the people who work in the newsroom. They work hard to provide a fair -- there's no such thing as objective -- portrayal of issues, although those who are looking for bias will find it, even when none actually exists. I also acknowledge that plenty of you don't believe a single word in this paragraph.

But Keillor's link to Minnesota Public Radio cannot be ignored based on the fact that he doesn't work for MPR. Let's face it: The joint is the network A Prairie Home Companion built. Even this Web site started as the Prairie Home Companion Web site. The fact that you can hear audio streams here has its origin in a gift to make it happen from the owner of a once-dominant Web browser company. He was a Prairie Home Companion fan.

Keillor is no stranger to politics anymore. His early battles with Jesse Ventura were legendary. As the person in charge of creating the MPR News Web site, I can admit they were also welcomed vehicles. Any story with both Ventura and Keillor in it was page-view gold, the currency of the digital age.

If Keillor's relationship with MPR hurt MPR's relations with Jesse Ventura, it didn't show. By the end of his term, MPR News was Ventura's favorite media haunt. He chose MPR's Midday as the place to announce he wouldn't run for re-election, proving that Gary Eichten's professionalism trumps Garrison Keillor's politics. (Incidentally, my colleague, Paul Tosto, notes that Keillor has not been above taking a few shots at liberals.)

He "came out" during the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004. It coincided with the release of his book: Homegrown Democrat. He gave pep talks to Minnesota delegates (photo) and held fundraisers while in Boston. I covered that convention. I hadn't read his book. I was, to coin a phrase, embarrassed by the perception that followed. I attempted to interview Keillor for a story about mixing a media organization's reputation with politics, but he wouldn't return my calls. I like to think it's because he didn't want to further link two organizations that -- technically -- weren't linked. Still, it didn't make covering the Republicans in New York a week later any easier.

And that brings us back to my discredited theory of media transparency. It was a selfish notion. It failed to consider that the public is quick to transfer knowledge of one person's politics in a news organization, to everyone else in the organization.

In time, perhaps, people may come to disassociate Garrison Keillor with Minnesota Public Radio and, by extension, Minnesota Public Radio News. From the vantage point of the low-end of the food chain, it's hard to see how or when that happens.

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Instant runoff voting may be a winner

Posted at 1:08 PM on September 28, 2010 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Well, a video about it, maybe.

The Online News Association today announced its finalists for its annual awards, and that video, from MPR's Curtis Gilbert and Molly Bloom is a finalist in the category: Online video journalism-small site.

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Controversies surrounding the controversy

Posted at 1:07 PM on September 23, 2010 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Religion

There was a piece of last evening's All Things Considered interview with Archbishop John Nienstedt that didn't make it to the the final product because of time constraints. Nienstedt answered questions about a DVD being sent to 400,000 Catholics throughout the state in which church leaders cal for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage to be put before Minnesota voters.

The story started on KSTP the other night. The archbishop says when he gave the interview to the station, the subject.

"Throughout the conversation, the word homosexual or same sex or gay was never mentioned.

The station's Web site has two stories posted. One is a text story, which quotes the archbishop from a previous speech, called "In defense of Marriage and Family."

A video post several hours later carried two comments from the archbishop, none longer than 10 seconds. None of the facts in the story, however, appear to be in dispute other than the archbishop does not believe the DVD constitutes an "attack" on homosexuals. But that word wasn't part of the station's report.

Given that the station interviewed the archbishop after his speech, it would appear the archbishop's complaint is that the station didn't tell him that it knew about the DVD.

A transcript of the edited interview with the archbishop has now been posted on the All Things Considered page.

In the wake of the story, some have suggested the church cannot be involved in a debate over a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage because it violates laws about the political activities of non-profits.

It doesn't appear to.

The rules for non-profits are they can't work on behalf of a particular candidate. They are free to weigh in on issues.

According to the IRS:

Organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.

It's a somewhat finer line, however, when it comes to lobbying:

An organization will be regarded as attempting to influence legislation if it contacts, or urges the public to contact, members or employees of a legislative body for the purpose of proposing, supporting, or opposing legislation, or if the organization advocates the adoption or rejection of legislation.

Organizations may, however, involve themselves in issues of public policy without the activity being considered as lobbying. For example, organizations may conduct educational meetings, prepare and distribute educational materials, or otherwise consider public policy issues in an educational manner without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status.

The church says the DVDs are educational.

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What's the problem with the "b word"?

Posted at 2:08 PM on September 20, 2010 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Balance. It's the word of the week in the continuing story of why the University of Minnesota pulled a Bell Museum-sponsored documentary about pollution in the Mississippi River.

"I'm not a scientist in this particular area. I was just looking at balance, and it seemed unbalanced," a university official told the Minnesota Daily.

Undefined, however, is the word, "balanced," and what it looks like.

It's a word that has caused more controversy in recent years, although most of it surrounds stories about climate change. Many of those who believe climate change is a scientific fact, resent attempts to present assertions that is not. Balance obscures consensus, they argue.

Balance is what has led to the dominance "he said/she said" news programming. In this particular case, a documentary is not journalism. But would balance -- some of those who viewed the film didn't think alternative farming methods should have gotten so much attention -- change the meaning?

"The world is not a balanced place. Stories that we cover today are increasingly complicated, they're complex. The truth and falsity of information is difficult to know. It's up to journalists to discern these distinctions when possible... to let viewers, readers, and listeners know how much they don't know," Brent Cunningham, managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review told NPR's Talk of the Nation during a 2006 show on the subject.

What does balance look like to you? Is it equal time? Should the documentary producer -- or journalist -- present all sides and let you figure it out?

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The trouble over 'Troubled Waters'

Posted at 9:47 AM on September 18, 2010 by Bob Collins (37 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Media

The attempts of the university of Minnesota officials to explain why they canceled the premiere of "Troubled Waters," a documentary about the Mississippi River and the pollution therein, couldn't get more clumsy.

From the time the story broke in the Twin Cities Daily Planet this week, university officials have paid the price for trying to get ahead of a story, which alleged undue influence by big agriculture, by releasing information in small pieces from different people, who often were unavailable for questions. It's harder to find the smoking gun of influence that way, true, but it's easier to notice that each person telling the real story, is telling a somewhat different real story.

The university is a land-grant institution which exists partly to serve agriculture. The film was made under contract to the Bell Museum of Natural History. The Bell is part of the university.

On Friday, Susan Weller, the Bell's director, explained why she pulled the film:

"Our standard procedure at the Bell Museum is that our exhibits and educational products have at least one researcher who oversees the project's scientific integrity from inception to completion. Unfortunately, this procedure was not followed by the Bell Media unit for production of the documentary, 'Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story.' As Director of the Bell Museum, I am responsible for ensuring these standards are followed, and I regret our error in this case.

Late on Friday, MPR reporter Stephanie Hemphill brought another story to the story. The dean of the U of M's School of Agriculture -- the Bell Museum is part of the School of Agriculture -- said one reason the film was pulled was because it "vilified" agriculture.

Dean Al Levine said the film opens with a lot of drama, and spends too much time discussing agricultural pollution before considering any other sources of water pollution.

"Agriculture is a major contributor to these issues, we know that," he said, noting the film takes a half-hour to talk about other sources of runoff, such as cities or lawn chemicals.

Levine says the film isn't inaccurate, but it's unbalanced. He said it should have included scientists who are trying to figure out how to feed 9 billion people by 2050.

Levine reveals the issue is actually editorial, not scientific as the U of M had asserted earlier in the day. He says it's not inaccurate, but that the film should have included scientists who are trying to figure out how to feed 9 billion people in 2050. But that's not science as much as perspective and that's what asserting editorial influence looks like.

Levine's suggestion seems to be that the Gulf's "dead zone" may be the trade-off for preventing hunger. And maybe it is. It would make a great documentary about the environmental cost of eradicating hunger.

A person who has seen the film says it was fair. He has a perspective, too. He's with an environmental organization.

That's part of the problem. This isn't independent journalism. It's not a documentary. (Add) If content is changed by those outside the production process (/add), it's an infomercial and the debate is over which self-interest owns its soul. That's what often happens when a combination of private and public money -- often with its own intent -- is used to contract with an organization that may have "skin in the game," to produce a piece that will end up being shown on public television under the label of journalism or backed by its journalistic credibility. Any time the word "promote" appears in a mission statement for any editorial project process -- it does in this one -- it disqualifies itself from that classification. (Update: I acknowledge that a documentary is not by definition journalism)

The process in this case is not how journalism works. It's how advertising works. Perhaps iit's too late for "Troubled Waters." By the time it airs on television -- if it ever airs on television -- it may have little integrity because the process that created it is too polluted. The larger question now is how many other "documentaries" around here are produced the same way?

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Harry Shearer vs. NPR

Posted at 2:23 PM on September 17, 2010 by Bob Collins (33 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Every now and again, the curtain is pulled back on the newsroom of National Public Radio. NPR's ombudsman does so today with the story of Harry Shearer's complaint that he couldn't promote his film about Hurricane Katrina on other NPR shows, because he had already been booked to appear on Talk of the Nation.

It also gets into the always-controversial question of "underwriting" on public radio, because NPR refused Shearer's copy for an "underwriting credit" to promote his documentary.

As is now standard, Shearer took his complaint to the Huffington Post.

Well, here's a clue about what NPR stands for now. I've just made a documentary film about why New Orleans flooded, "The Big Uneasy", in theaters nationwide on Monday. Having been denied access to coverage by either of the network's two flagship news programs, I decided to buy in, purchasing some of those "enhanced underwriting" announcements that the rest of us would call ads.

Ombudsman Alicia Shepard (who is leaving NPR) responded:

But NPR has devoted extensive coverage over the past five years to Katrina and the aftermath. And NPR did cover Shearer's new film - just not in the way he wanted it.

Shearer's attitude that it's only worthwhile to appear on a flagship shows ignores how the Internet has changed news consumption. Millions of people hear NPR content on podcasts, online and on mobile phones.

It was disingenuous of Shearer to criticize NPR on Huffington Post without mentioning that he had in fact appeared, for a half-hour, on an NPR show.

Just another day in the news business.

(h/t: David Brauer)

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Live-blogging: Bill Kling

Posted at 11:58 AM on September 10, 2010 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Bill Kling announced this morning that he's leaving MPR next year. He's been a catalyst and a controversy at the same time. He's on Midday with Gary Eichten and it seems appropriate to use the occasion to see what people think, and what direction MPR should take, and maybe reminisce a bit.

From the inside, there's always been a perception that when Kling leaves, MPR will be at a crossroads. Despite all the capable people in the company -- and trust me, they're excellent -- when there are different paths to take, all eyes turned to Kling for which one to take. The track record has been pretty good but it will be interesting to see how the dynamic of the organization changes with his departure.

12:08 p.m. - Q: Why are you leaving?

A: I signed an agreement to stay for five years and that's up in June. There's a time you should be. An organization will atrophy if young people can't rise up in the company. (Bob notes: This implies, doesn't it, that the next president will come within the company?). We have a balanced budget. This is the time to attract that person to come in. We set it up so "he did a good job, but we've got an even greater opportunity."

Q: Were you forced out?

A: Absolutely not. We've had a succession committee for more than a year, headed by an executive from General Mills. I've talked with them about the kind of people who might do it well. We're looking inside the organization as well as outside. We're not done yet. You look at other public radio organizations and they haven't achieved their potential. I want to go out and raise money... to demonstrate how should public media be seen. We have 913,000 in Minnesota, 600,000 in Los Angeles who love what we're doing. But loving it doesn't force us to do better.

Q: Why do you have to leave to do that?

A: I don't want to have the title and not do it justice. Sooner or later, someone has to come in. We have to come up with strong leaders.

(Aside: Back when we were building what's called the ICC -- International Control Center-- at MPR, I was on the committee to decide what technical capabilities it should have. As we considered what technology in the future we should account for at the time, someone said, "Who wants to be the one to tell Bill Kling we can't do something?" That usually settled it.)

12:17 Q: Did you have any thought in 1966 that all of this would come to be?

A: Of course. It was survival. I can remember when the first check for $5,000 came in. At that point, we didn't know if there would ever be any significant audience support. You couldn't think beyond.... you always thought, 'how can we serve our audience?'....

People sent us tapes. We tried to bring the best of what we could get our hands on. As the audience responded, we said, 'if you trust us, we'll do more.' We've gone now to where we have 111,000 members. Your technology changes. Your society changes. Look at what's happening with magazines and newspapers; all of the ways in which people consume news.

12:19 p.m. Q: Why hasn't public radio as a whole taken hold?

A: National Public Radio is something we were all involved in creating. It's hitting on all cylinders. It's got a great president, they're opening bureaus. What we haven't gotten right is the local service and it should play.

(Bob notes: Frankly, the problem here is the changing commercial market. As local news has disappeared from commercial radio, public radio has had a chance to fill the gap. The problem is there's also the tradition of public radio which is we don't do crime stories, we don't do breaking news etc. As commercial radio news becomes extinct, there's a conflict between those who embrace the traditional public radio news model, and those, frankly, who come from a more traditional commercial news model. In the end, the two have to come to an agreement, but that tension certainly exists.)

12:24 p.m. Q: What kind of money are you talking about?

A: We're talking about adding $5 million plus to the budget of these institutions. Yes, it's nice that Cincinnati has four reporters in its station. But they should have 100. If public radio is going to pick up the slack as newspapers disappear, you're not going to do that with four reporters.

12:25 p.m. Q: (Caller Randall) Your article "no good deed goes unpunished" is not going to be true. Are you looking at international models?

A: We're just beginning so we will clearly. Europe in particular has some wonderful models. When I talk about the BBC, I'm talking about the domestic BBC. It plays on all levels -- five live channels of sports and news -- they're with it; they've gone where the audiences are. When you think about this country -- you've heard us say 'no rant/no slant' -- anger is growing. You go to Washington and if you can get a private conversation with our Senate and congressional delegation, they'll tell you the change in the decorum in the House and Senate is total. One told me he's actually afraid of the anger being focused on government.

Why is that happening? Because it makes money. If I said outrageous things today, you'd come back and listen tomorrow and every time I do that, we'd make more money.

You see it on all sides of the spectrum. Look at the British population -- I've done this. I've asked 'tell me what you think about the news of the domestic BBC" and they've all said, "straight as an arrow." That tempers the anger. They have the same thing we have; they have the tabloids going off in all directions, and yet there's a centering institution that calms things down. We don't have that in this country. I'm hoping that's something we can achieve.

12:32 p.m. (Caller Scott) I've noticed a change in the direction of MPR toward social media. If I wanted to hear what everyone thinks, I'd go to their blogs. I think MPR has become too commercial.

A: It's not a commercial endeavor. Sometimes I think the same thing you do and you switch over and see how much there is. On social media: We have to be where the audience is. I love listening to radio. Now, if I'm in Colorado, I can listen to Minnesota Public Radio, and hear high-quality stereo sound, just as I can in my kitchen.

(Bob notes: That's not social media. That's technology. The two are different)

We have 6.9 million downloads a month. The NewsQ page -- it's getting 1.3 million impressions per month. That's extraordinary. We talk about it and we suggest there are ways to interact. Everyone in the media business says it's the future for how print media will be distributed. We need to be there for people who want to read their news.

(Tale from the past: When I was first starting the MPR News Web site in 1999, the MPR billboards didn't have the Web site address. "Why not?" we in online asked. "Because people don't have computers in their cars," was the answer. We were so quaint.)

12:40 p.m. -Q: If you're successful in raising money for stations around the country, does that mean the government can stop subsidizing public radio and TV?

A: No. We'll be able to jump start four or five radio organizations and demonstrate how good they can be. At the end of five years, we'd expect the community to pick up the cost. When we first got funding, we were able to add 6 reporters for five years. Now we have 80 people in the newsroom. We think CPB funding will be critical toward sustaining the leap forward we want to make.

12:41 p.m. Q: People are worried about competition. When you talk about public media, what are you talking about?

A: It's all the way our content gets out. When you send out something by computer, that's not radio, that's media. We can do video. We can do podcasts. We can do streamed audio. We have public insight journalism, where we have almost 90,000 people in the country, who've signed up and said, "I know something about something that might be helpful to you." They make our reporting smarter. Now we're thinking there may be a channel where their knowledge may be sent out on an ongoing basis. It's new ways of getting information to people.

12:43 p.m. Q: (Caller Grace) I don't know where you're going or what you're going to do, but could there be an educational station?

A: We have a lot of options now. We have HD radio. You need to know. HD... I sat in a car the other day, turned on the radio, and there were all three of our channels. On 91.1, there are two other programs you can listen to. It's an opportunity to get content out in radio, get more content to people. We can already do it on the Web. The kind of things you're suggesting, are possible. It used to be there was just one way to get content to you. We may send the content you're talking about in a podcast, or HD radio. HD solves all of the interference problems.

12:45 p.m. - Q: (Caller Matt) - My Republican friends absolutely hate MPR. What can you do to put in people's minds that not only MPR but NPR is educational?

A: It's an old, old out-of-date characterization, but it's there. I don't know what you do about it. Our COO, Jon McTaggart, is on the board of NPR. The head of our Los Angeles operation, Bill Davis, has just been elected to the board of NPR. If we're giving you information that is the best-informed content we can produce... it still may not agree with what someone thinks. There are those who say there's no such thing as climate change and I think you're liberal every time you suggest the melting of the ice cap in Greenland is because of climate change, some people want to kill the messenger. They don't want to agree with what they hear. We don't rant. We don't try to make people angry. We simply try to get the best thinking out to people and I don't know anybody else in media trying to do that. The distortion isn't MPR, it's the people around us.

12:49 p.m. Q: MPR has an aging audience, what's the plan for providing programming toward a younger generation? I was a fan of In the Loop, and that went away?

A: It's one of the reasons why I want a new generation of leadership to come into the company. Some of the media companies have leaders in their 70s and 80s. There's not much hope for those companies. Our biggest strategy is The Current. It just received every accolade it could in City Pages and other music-related press that play to the 20-year-olds in our communities. People are beginning to talk about "The Current effect." It's drawing in young audiences. They're joining in to see what else we've got -- like Policy and a Pint, in which we have people talk about positions, and then people have a beer, and dance, and think Minnesota Public Radio is kind of cool. And then they migrate to our news and information service. And we want to be there where they are -- social media, Twitter. Your point is right on and we're making progrress.

12:52 p.m. Q: Why are ratings down for all three services?

A: They're huge to begin with. Audience measuring systems are up and down all the time. Our trend is a growth trend and I'm not the least bit worried that it's down in one month for some reason.

(Gary reads an e-mail from Wiesbaden Germany)

12:53 p.m. Q: You have a lot of business program. Are you having discussions about creating that frequency of programming about the state of our democracy?

A: We've talked a lot about it. It's behind everything I'm talking about now, in terms of strengthening our programming. You're talking about a civics lesson. What you've got to start with is the information that helps a democracy function.Public media is the key to reaching audiences at all levels to conduct their democracy as well as they can. Jefferson said when the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their government. The people aren't well informed right now.

Q: What kind of person should be the new leader of MPR?

A; A generalist. Someone who's creative. A good manager. A good leader. Someone who can go out in the public and convince them that this is something strong that should be better. We'll see.

Q: Will members have any input?

A: They can apply for the job. Sure, we'd be open to any kind of communication. The search committee is headed by Ian Friendly of General Mills -- a very smart and strategic guy. They'll get it right. And I'm a member of the committee. You can be sure I will have an enormous vested interest in getting this right.

-- End --

(For additional perspectives on the interview, see David Brauer's notes at MinnPost, and also Hart Van Denburg's live-blogging at City Pages.)

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If a Quran burns in the woods...

Posted at 12:03 PM on September 9, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News

As I posted the other day, I had a feeling that Gen. David Petraeus' statement on the plans of a Florida preacher to burn the Quran was more intended for the management of news organizations than it was the Florida preacher. A memo issued by the Associated Press today would appear to confirm that the message got through: Don't show images of someone burning the Quran.

From: Kent, Tom Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 11:53 AM Subject: Standards Center guidance: Planned Sept. 11 Quran burning

Colleagues,

As you know, a group known as the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., has announced that it intends to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11.

In the runup to this event, we've seen a rush of stories, photos and video from points around the world. Let's keep our coverage in proportion. Although many are speculating on the effect the Quran burning could conceivably have, at the moment it's a proposal by a tiny group that may or may not happen.

We plan ONE main spot story on this issue a day. The News Center will coordinate where this story will originate from. Routine spot news -- for instance, comments about the plan by political or other public figures -- should be funneled to the point handling the main story. We should avoid a profusion of separates beyond what any newspaper, website or broadcaster would actually use. This includes stories, photos, audio and video that repeatedly make the same point, for or against the burning. Consult the News Center if you have questions on this.

The concept of this planned event is offensive to many Muslims worldwide. National leaders and spokesmen for other religious denominations have also found the plan repugnant.

Should the event happen on Saturday, the AP will not distribute images or audio that specifically show Qurans being burned, and will not provide detailed text descriptions of the burning. With the exception of these specific images and descriptions, we expect to cover the Gainesville event, in all media, placing the actions of this group of about 50 people in a clear and balanced context.

AP policy is not to provide coverage of events that are gratuitously manufactured to provoke and offend. In the past, AP has declined to provide images of cartoons mocking Islam and Jews. AP has often declined to provide images, audio or detailed descriptions of particularly bloody or grisly scenes, such as the sounds and moments of beheadings and shootings, displays of severed heads on pikes and images of hostages who are displayed by hostage-holders in an effort to intimidate their adversaries and advance their cause. Decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

From time to time, a member or customer will insist that we distribute offensive material to them so they can make the decision about whether or not to publish it. We've had to make clear that a decision to distribute, for us, is the same as a decision to publish for them. We must adhere to our own standards.

Tom

For the record, I agree with the decision. But if it's AP's policy not to transmit images that are designed to offend, how do we explain this image it transmitted earlier this week?

This is the difficulty of being an editor and having to define what is offensive. An editor in this case had determined that the burning of an effigy of President Obama, and standing on the American flag were a legitimate emotional reaction, not something designed to offend someone.

What about this one?

These are all tough calls, and I'm glad I don't have to make them (anymore).

The flaw in the decision, however, is it strips the decision from the editors of newsrooms worldwide. The Associated Press provides materials to newsrooms, which employ editors to decide whether it should go in the local paper or on the local Web site.

Overall, the AP, as you may know, is a fairly conservative (not in the political sense) organization when it comes to journalism. Its standards are high. It is as mainstream as media gets. The memo evokes memories of past discussions in the early days of News Cut -- What standards should non mainstream media have on this story?

(h/t: Romanesko)

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Wary of the experts

Posted at 4:05 PM on August 24, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Back in the old days -- the '90s -- Minnesota Public Radio frequently sought the expertise of a "mortgage consultant" to comment on the housing market. Then one day, a sharp-eyed editor -- fine, it was me -- noted that he often said it was a good time to buy a house. Forgetting for a fact that it really was a good time to buy a house (if you sold before the bubble burst), it didn't make a lot of sense to seek analysis from someone who was in the business of processing mortgages.

Those who often have the most expertise in a given field, also often make their money in that field (that's why they're "experts") and, hence, lack -- shall we say -- objectivity. Political "analysts" in the Twin Cities are quite often people who are directly tied to a particular political party. When's the last time you heard a DFL "analyst" criticize the DFL? Or, similarly, a Republican "analyst" criticize Republicans?

That's why reporters, who cover these people every day for no other reason than that's their job, often make better "analysts" than the analysts. Unfortunately, most political reporters don't want to be analysts because they think it'll hurt their credibility with people who may not agree with them.

This was a particular problem, too, with questions of investing. Prior to the collapse of the housing bubble, and subsequently the stock market, it was always the perfect time to invest in the market, we were told. How many times did you hear that leaving your money in the market was the best thing to do during the market collapse? Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not, but what else would you expect someone in the business of the stock market to say?

National Public Radio provided a good example of the conflicts between "analysts" and reality this afternoon when All Things Considered host Robert Siegel called up a Realtor to talk about today's pathetic housing sales report.

"Houses that were selling for 45-50 thousand are selling in the 70s now. We have very little inventory. We hit bottom in February, " she said, suggesting that the worst is behind us and low interest rates make it a good time to buy a house. And maybe in Manassas, Virginia, that's the case. But today's report appears to contradict that assertion, given that it was the worst one-month drop in 40 years. But what else did Siegel expect her to say? It's a lousy time to buy a house? Save your money?

Fortunately, NPR turned to other "experts" to say that.

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Does a judge's sexual orientation matter?

Posted at 10:37 AM on August 18, 2010 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Media

In its reporting on a federal court judge Vance Walker's decision that California's Proposition 8 -- the anti same-sex marriage law -- is unconstitutional, National Public Radio reporter Karen Grigsby Bates added an aside on Walker:

"He was appointed by the first President Bush - George H.W. Bush. He is generally considered to be very thoughtful, very thorough. And he's gay. He's gay and out," she said.

Whoops.

NPR's ombudsman, Alicia Shephard points out that Walker's sexual orientation is an accepted fact among many journalists, but it may not be.

"But, in a case such as this, the first obligation is to verify that the person is gay and that can only come from Walker or close personal friends or family who are quoted by name. As far as I could determine, Walker has never openly said he is gay," she writes today.

But Shepard's most illuminating revelation may be why so many journos accept it as fact:

When I asked about sources, NPR cited the Chronicle column, a dozen or so Internet links to show it was widely discussed in California and gay press - and that Walker isn't denying it.

It must not be comfortable for NPR reporters and editors to be quizzed by an ombudsman on an issue such as this, but the reporters and editors did themselves no favors by replying with an excuse that is, basically, "everyone says so."

Then there's the question of whether a judge's sexual orientation matters to the story, which Shepard doesn't really think is a question at all:

It only becomes relevant if there is a conflict of interest, and then the news media is obligated to report it.

"If the judge had actively participated in the Prop 8 debate in some fashion - fundraising for advocates or opponents - that would be significant," said Bob Steele, an ethicist with the Poynter Institute. "Such activism would likely disqualify him from this case no matter what his sexual orientation."

If the judge confirmed he is gay that might be an interesting factoid. But since we expect judges to be impartial - even though all judges have some conflict - then it's wrong to assume Walker or any judge can't be objective on a topic that may have something to do with his personal life.

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Timewasters: Attacking reporters

Posted at 12:54 PM on August 17, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Reporters for a Connecticut FoxNews station were sprayed with hornet and wasp spray yesterday, while filming a woman suspected of receiving beer from a beer delivery driver who later shot 10 people at his workplace.

The woman's husband was charged with assault.

It's a tough business.

Sometimes the shoe is on the other foot...

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Wait wait ... don't edit me!

Posted at 10:27 AM on August 17, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Media, Schools

You know what would make a good topic for "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!"? A story about a guy who wrote a play with the words "for God's sake" in it -- a play that was to be used by schools in Texas as part of the English curriculum testing -- and then the deal falls apart because the writer refused to take out "for God's sake."

It's a true story that's happened to Peter Sagal, host of "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!".

The Fort Worth Star Telegram has the story today:

Sagal complained on his blog that the request was irrational and indicative of Texas' reputation as "the state that's leading the charge back into the middle ages in terms of educational standards."

Sagal told the Star-Telegram that he has followed the State Board of Education's various curriculum debates for years.

"We had a joke on the show about them excising Thomas Jefferson," Sagal said, referring to a controversy earlier this year in which the state board cut Jefferson from a section on influential philosophers in its social studies standards. The board later put Jefferson back in. After struggling with the issue and getting advice from fans via Twitter and his blog, Sagal decided that whether or not Texas schoolchildren read his play didn't have anything to do with his difference of opinion regarding other aspects of the state's curriculum.

"I don't think I was going to help the cause of improving the education in Texas, if that's something I could even imagine doing, by keeping my play from Texas students," Sagal said.

Sagal said he was going to use the money he was to be paid by Texas to help defray the cost of a friend's treatment for colon cancer.

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The fine line of editorial cartooning

Posted at 12:16 PM on August 11, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Editorial cartoonists generally get a higher degree of leniency than other commentators on the nation's editorial pages. But Mike Lester of the Rome (Georgia) News Tribune pushes the envelope on the issue of the mosque near the site of the World Trade Center.

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Three words the media can't say

Posted at 1:00 PM on August 10, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

"I don't know."

Those are the three most hated words in America's newsrooms, and a quick scan of the search results on Google News under the subject "Ted Stevens" shows why that, perhaps, should change. Someday. (Click for more readable, larger image)

The rush to quote someone -- anyone -- with the fate of the former Alaska senator reached its most embarrassing point when a TV station in Alaska reported Stevens dead, based on a second-hand -- or possibly third- or fourth-hand -- report. It wasn't until a newspaper double-checked that the "source" said he didn't know Stevens' fate for certain.

"Get it first" is still more important in many news organizations than "get it right."

Is Stevens dead? I don't know. We'll find out eventually. And we can wait.

Update 1:39 p.m. - A spokesman for the Stevens family says the former senator died in the crash.

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When public radio goes bad

Posted at 2:51 PM on July 19, 2010 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Last Friday, NPR's All Things Considered aired its usual letters segment and many listeners complained that a five-minute segment on Mel Gibson's latest transgressions was about five minutes too long. But NPR did not respond to the criticism that questioned whether public radio still stands for what public radio once stood for -- smart information that can exercise the brain muscle.

Today, All Things Considered's executive producer responded by way of a post by the NPR ombudsman. As they say on radio, we caution that what follows might be considered offensive to old-time public radio fans:

The Mel Gibson story is totally defensible," said Christopher Turpin, ATC's executive producer. "To me Mel Gibson is a huge international star. It's a story that everyone is talking about. I was in the coffee shop and what were people talking about in line? They were talking about Mel Gibson. So I don't think we can pretend these things don't happen. I think because there's a huge amount of business involved, there are very interesting questions about the entertainment industry, what happens to celebrities when their personality or character is undermined by their personal behavior."

Fortunately, Alicia Shepard, NPR's ombudsman doesn't let her employer off lightly:

While I understand that NPR programs struggle to find the right balance between serious news and tapping into the zeitgeist in the story of the moment, I agree with many who complained that NPR could have skipped this story and lost nothing. After all, NPR has built its reputation on in-depth reporting of important news and arts and entertainment coverage that rises above the ordinary.

Listeners generally do not turn their dials to public radio for the kind of gossip featured at the grocery store check-out counter. At the very least, if ATC really believed this story deserved airtime, something less than 4 minutes and 31 seconds would have done the job.

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Dereliction of media duty

Posted at 5:25 PM on July 16, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

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Should the media help police?

Posted at 4:55 PM on July 15, 2010 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Since Minneapolis had a good chance of welcoming anarchists the Democratic National Convention in 2012, today is a good day to revisit the role of the media in the 2008 Republican National Convention.

It comes from former NPR ombudsman Jeff Dvorkin, who wonders whether the news media and law enforcement are occasionally too tight. In a blog post today, Dvorkin applauds Utah newspapers who refused to run a list of individuals, who are allegedly in the country illegally.

He says that's in stark contrast to newspapers in Toronto where the G20 summit brought out the anarchists. Subsequently, the police asked the media to publish photos of people allegedly responsible for the some violence and damage, to help identify and catch them.

Some photos show individuals clearly in the act of trashing a police car. That would appear to be enough evidence to convict. (I can imagine what a good defense lawyer might say: "Your honor, my client was only trying to retrieve her property which had been thrown onto the roof of the police vehicle...").

Others photos are "head and shoulder" shots released by the Toronto police. They don't reveal any evidence of law-breaking, beyond the say-so of the authorities.

While the damage to property in parts of downtown Toronto was considerable and the actions of hooligans, reprehensible, is it the role of the media to act as police agents? Are reporters being sufficiently skeptical and asking the police those four most important words: "How do you know?" Or is this an instance when citizen journalism descends into vigilante journalism?

This sounds a little too familiar for comfort. In the aftermath of the St. Paul violence in 2008, local authorities did the same thing.

St. Paul Police and the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office released this photo, for example:

And the media -- and that includes News Cut, for the record -- printed it. The difference, however, is that in this case the police weren't looking for the ID of the attacker; they were looking for the ID of the victim.

But is that different from Dvorkin's complaint. Is this an ethical violation?

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All about public radio

Posted at 12:00 PM on July 13, 2010 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Arbitron, the radio audience measurement company, has released its annual profile of... us. Public Radio Today 2010, How America Listens to Radio, analyzes nine public radio formats and paints a picture of the typical -- if there is such a thing -- public radio listener.

News/talk is the dominant public radio format, beating its next-strongest public radio format (combinations of news and classical music). In fact, there is no age demographic in which news/talk isn't the most-listened-to public radio format.

A "heat index" reveals where news/talk on public radio is heaviest, although the most intriguing note is where it's not:

Nearly 70% of public radio news listeners have a college degree and 92% have attended some college.

Listeners to classical public radio stations jumped 1.7% in the fall of 2009, compared to a year earlier, which Arbitron attributes to the disappearance of the remaining commercial classical stations. More men, apparently, are listening to classical than a similar Arbitron report four years ago. And, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, the classical music listening audience got younger, increasing its below-55 audience from 29% to 32% in a year.

The "heat index" map isn't surprising...

Contrary to their public perception, almost half of public radio listeners drive -- or plan to purchase -- an SUV or midsize car, the report says. The least popular vehicle -- and this isn't surprising anyone, is it? -- is a pickup truck.

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Why you should always read the story under the headline

Posted at 11:23 AM on July 13, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News

The devil may be in the details, but the primary message is always in the headlines. Monday's report from Israel on the commando assault on a Gaza-bound "aid flotilla" provides a perfect example with today's online stories.

Here's the BBC:

FoxNews:

New York Times:

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People worth knowing

Posted at 12:30 PM on July 8, 2010 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Every morning, it seems, we're greeted with another shooting, another fatality in a car crash, an ATV accident somewhere, another life lost. Little effort goes into finding the humanity behind any of the stories but Austin Daily Herald reporter Mike Rose provided a good example today of why we in the business should try harder.

Here's the story as reported by AP:

An Austin teenager was killed and a 5-year-old boy injured in an all-terrain vehicle crash near Albert Lea.
The Freeborn County sheriff's office says 18-year-old Dennis McDermott died at St. Marys Hospital in Rochester.
Deputies found McDermott lying beside the ATV after Sunday's crash. The 5-year-old boy, whose name was not released, was conscious. The boy was treated and released from Albert Lea Medical Center.

And here's what Mr. Rose found: The young man who died had Down Syndrome. He took up wrestling in high school and wasn't very good at it. But he didn't quit:

It wasn't always easy -- because of his Down syndrome, Dennis sometimes struggled with the sport, particularly when he was just starting out. One day, he told his dad about his struggles.

"He hardly ever complained about anything," James McDermott said. "(But) he said, 'I can't win.'"

Never one to give up, Dennis McDermott kept trying. He took his fair share of losses, but he kept pushing himself. During his 10th-grade year, Dennis started practicing and training more -- getting "buff," his mom noted.

That year, the hard work paid off -- Dennis pinned an opponent and won a match.

"I never heard him complain again," James McDermott said. "He just went back to loving wrestling."

Added his brother, Jimmy: "That was one of his proudest moments."

In the big scheme of things, perhaps, Dennis McDermott wasn't much different than a lot of other people. But a lot of other people who are a lot like a lot of other people have stories worth telling and are people worth knowing. That's where a good reporter comes in.

Find the article here.

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Hot or not?

Posted at 10:49 AM on July 8, 2010 by Bob Collins (16 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Politics

A few eyebrows have been raised in the journalism community today with the Star Tribune's front page, specifically whether the Star Tribune is treating a couple of female candidates differently than they would if they were men:

Hot? Hot as in the race is close (There's no public polling in the race so far)? Or hot as if they're two attractive women? The answer might lie in the photographs. Rep. Michele Bachmann's picture seems to have been weirdly "adjusted," possibly to give her a hair color closer to her opponent's.

The picture is actually a "lift" from Bachmann's campaign Web site.

Writing in NewsWeek this week, Julia Baird calls this "The Palin Effect."

There seems to be an insistent, increasingly excitable focus on the supposed hotness of Republican women in the public eye, like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Michelle Malkin, and Nikki Haley--not to mention veterans like Ann Coulter. The sexual references are pervasive: they come from left, right, and center, and range from gushing to highly offensive. The Atlantic asked, "Is Sarah Palin Porn?" as others quizzed the former governor about whether she had breast implants. Right Wing News compiled a list of the hottest conservative women in new media. Playboy even ran an outrageous piece titled "Ten Conservative Women I'd Like to Hate ****," which read like a sick attempt to make rape cool. "We may despise everything these women represent," wrote the author, "but goddammit they're hot. Let the healing begin." Moron.

Giving the Star Tribune the benefit of the doubt, the race is considered "intense." The story itself contained no reference to either candidate's appearance. Still it's hard to imagine a couple of guys beaming from the front page, along with a headline which, while technically accurate, could easily have another meaning.

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Hulu launches subscription service

Posted at 3:30 PM on June 29, 2010 by Drew Geraets (8 Comments)
Filed under: Marketing and advertising, Media, Tech

Continue reading "Hulu launches subscription service"

The myth of the online comment

Posted at 11:25 AM on June 21, 2010 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Forum Communications last week announced it would begin separating readers' online comments from the news stories with which they're associated. It was the latest in efforts some media organizations are taking to rein in the hatred, racism, and stupidity that have become the hallmark of Web site "comments," especially for newspapers.

This weekend, the Buffalo News announced it would now require its online commenters to identify themselves by name, and their identity will be checked.

News Editor Margaret Sullivan writes as if it's as difficult as trying to stop an oil well explosion:

Media organizations all over the country, particularly newspapers with active Web sites, are struggling with this subject. There's no easy answer. The tension is between wanting to take advantage of the freewheeling expression of the Internet and wanting to keep standards of reasonable tolerance and decency on a public site.

There's no easy answer? Of course there's an easy answer. Newspaper editors have been able to tell the difference between something valuable and something hateful, racist, and stupid for generations. It seems an odd assertion that they so consistently profess to struggle with the question.

So what's the real reason? They don't want to spend the time doing it.

There's something else, though, that newspaper people don't want to do. They don't want to talk to you. One of the reasons "self policing" has failed is because there's no sense that there's any conversation taking place.

We know by simple observing of human nature that if someone actually thinks a real person is going to talk to them right back, they'll be less, shall we say, indelicate in what they say. And a real conversation might break out.

It's not hard. There's nothing to wrestle with or struggle over.

Reporters by nature object to taking more time to actually talk to readers and listeners, contending they don't have it to give. But if there's something Twitter has taught us by following reporters, it's that that's an entirely false argument.

(h/t: Quick13 via Twitter)

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Journalists, nurses in ethical dust-up

Posted at 12:34 PM on June 17, 2010 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Media

I'm not altogether sure I understand the fury from the Minnesota Nurses Association (by way of David Brauer's blog at MinnPost) over the fact a meeting the nurses had was closed to the press, but the Strib inflitrated.

According to David:

The latest flashpoint is a Strib story that includes quotes from what the MNA says was a closed-to-the-press union membership meeting Wednesday. The piece, written by Josephine Marcotty and Chen May Yee, includes passages such as:

One nurse stood up and said, "I'm a young nurse and I talk to a lot of young nurses." She said she was worried that some would cross the picket line.

MNA spokesman John Nemo says the media organizations were informed via press release that the meeting was closed.

I'm probably old school here but I'm inclined to respond, "so what?" It's the job of reporters to find information and that's what the Star Tribune did. Did they break the law to get it? Not that I can tell. Did they get the story wrong? That doesn't appear to be the contention.

Far more troubling are two other parts of Brauer's story. One in which the nurses union spokesman seems to acknowledge he'd already been favoring certain media outlets over another. And one in which a TV reporter seems more than willing to accept information crumbs as the nurses are willing to provide them.

In any event, Nemo vows payback. "I told the Strib I'm cutting them out of the scoops. On Monday, they'll have to wait for the strike vote. I'm giving it to [Pioneer Press reporter] Jeremy Olson first."

He makes even that sound charitable: "We don't need the mainstream media to tell our story. We built our whole campaign around social networking -- 10,000 fans on Facebook, and MNAblog.com gets 8-10,000 hits a day. It's not 1988 any more."

Ethical? One can't very expect the media to sit and wait for spoon-fed information from one side in a labor dispute, when the people dispensing that information are favoring some media over the other.

Better to just get the information on your own. You know, like reporters do.

As for the need for mainstream media, it's true. It's not 1988 anymore and the nurses don't need mainstream media to get their information out to nurses, but they do need the mainstream media if they're engaged in a fight for the public's hearts and minds, which they are.

Someday, perhaps, the majority of the not-involved-in-nursing-or-hospitals general public will browse YouTube videos and Web site blogs to get these morsels on their own, but that's not a reality of 2011.

As penetrating as "new media" has become in our daily lives, it hasn't come close to carrying the influence the old guard still wields. Like it or not, that's simply a fact.

It's understandable that in a contentious labor situation, cooler heads aren't likely to prevail when it comes to relationships with the media. The communications individuals have a job to do: To get their story told, preferably just the way they want it.

But that's not the job of journalists. If there are elements of the story that are wrong, a reporter's head should be fair game. Attribution, not insinuation, belongs in news stories. Clearly, two sides (or more) of a particular story should be told. But increasingly, the definition of bias among the communications professionals is that another point of view saw the light of day.

Look at another situation, the oil spill in the Gulf. Other than actually breaking the law, at what point should reporters stop trying to get the full story, rather than just the one BP wants told?

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Behind the scenes of the NPR video

Posted at 10:58 AM on June 10, 2010 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The writer of the viral NPR video reveals the darkest secrets of public radio.

Continue reading "Behind the scenes of the NPR video"

The end of Helen Thomas

Posted at 10:47 AM on June 7, 2010 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Stick a camera in front of an 89-year old woman and ask her for deep thoughts on foreign policy and international affairs, and the odds are you'll be disappointed. If the 89-year old is White House correspondent Helen Thomas, you may be disgusted as well.

Thomas announced her immediate retirement today, a day after the agency that handles her speaking engagements dropped her as a client. It all stems from an incident last month when rabbiLive.com got this interview with her.

It's still unclear why the website singled Thomas out. "We're asking everybody," the interviewer said before the Jewish Heritage Celebration at the White House, but no other videos from "everybody" appeared on the site.

It might have something to do with her reporting after then president George Bush blocked a U.N. call for a cease fire in Gaza in January 2009:

Bush's pro-Israeli Mideast policy and refusal to ease civilian suffering by calling for a Gaza ceasefire reminds us of his similar stance in Israel's war against Lebanon two years ago.

Israel took a beating in that war with Hezbollah and had to retreat. Since then, it appears to have been looking for a way to restore its image of military superiority in the region.

She had also challenged the United States' reaction to last week's assault on the Turkish flotilla heading for Gaza:

President George W. Bush loathed her so much, he refused to call on her at news conferences for more than three years. The White House Press Corps was going to strip her of her front-row seat, not because they intended to police the views of its members -- wink -- but because they didn't think opinion writers should be in the front row.

No matter, Thomas has now been branded as an anti-Semite who conducted her reporting based on her personal views.

It's, obviously, not a good way to go out.

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On Dale Connelly and the art of radio

Posted at 12:17 PM on June 4, 2010 by Bob Collins (22 Comments)
Filed under: Media

After his final broadcast on a Minnesota Public Radio program, Dale Connelly got the send-off by the working folks at MPR News a few minutes ago, even though he asked that no going-away party be held. "It's true what they say about the news media," he told us. "You really don't listen."

We gave him a teddy bear, a pillow, some pajamas, and some tea to help him sleep, now that he won't be getting up early in the morning anymore.

A lot of people -- and correctly so -- will point out that MPR owes its growth to Garrison Keillor. But it also reflects the work of people like Connelly, who reminded us today that few people listened back in the day when he was part of the news operation. "You'd call people and nobody would call you back and why would they?" he recalled.

Many years ago, an MPR executive decided to brand us with a "Your News Source" slogan, which Dale turned into "Your News Horse," and a different slogan: "We may not get there first, but we'll stay longest."

Like most people in the mainstream media, we've gotten pretty good at holding these little going-away affairs with their trips down memory lane. But the institutional memory of organizations like this is fast disappearing, too. And fewer and fewer people who grew up with radio are coming into the radio business because fewer people are growing up with radio as a primary form of communication.

Technology has made the challenges of live broadcasting almost disappear. Twenty years from now, these little parties will have stories like, "hey, remember the time my computer crashed?"

It just won't be the same.

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Registering reporters

Posted at 11:36 AM on May 28, 2010 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Politics

MPR's Tom Scheck calls out attention to this little piece of constitutional savagery as described in the Toronto Toldedo Blade.

A Michigan lawmaker crafted a bill that requires reporters to be registered.

Says the columnist:

"I mainly just wanted to stimulate discussion," he told me. "I didn't think the bill would be likely to pass, but I thought I'd put it out there and if there was any support from your profession, we'd move forward. Heck, I thought it might be helpful to legitimate journalists," he said.

Indeed, he made some valid points. "There are fewer legitimate reporters who cover the legislature all the time. I see stuff being written by people I never heard of, and I don't know whether they have any credentials.

"You have bloggers and editorial writers who write about what we are doing who never come up here and have no idea what's going on. If I need a plumber, I want one who has credentials and who is licensed by the state."

So, he reasoned, why not reporters? His bill would set up a governor-appointed board to determine who could be a Michigan Registered Reporter. According to his specifications, successful candidates would have to show that they had a journalism degree, three years of experience, or other qualifications, including letters from already sanctioned reporters.

The columnist -- an ombudsman -- points out the bill also requires registered reporters to be of good moral character.

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Bachmann vs. Twitter

Posted at 4:11 PM on May 19, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Politics

A week or so ago, a Newsweek reporter followed Rep. Michele Bachmann around and dispatched his observations via Twitter. It's still not entirely clear what Andrew Romano's story was supposed to be about -- Twitter or Bachmann. But it had enough "legs," as we like to say in the dying-media business, that all of his "tweets" were retweeted with great regularity, as if they provided some insight.

They didn't, and in a Web column today, Romano let's on that that appears to have been the point.

I sounded, in other words, like a kneejerk Bachmann hater. But that wasn't really the case; I hadn't spent enough time with her to decide if she was unserious, or crazy, or whatever. Instead, I was simply doing what Twitter demanded: being pithy and provocative. Straightforward narration would go unnoticed. Quotes from Bachmann's old friends would seem un-newsy. Nuance would cost too many characters. So I became a color commentator, casting off the reporter's traditional cloak of detachment and publicly weighing in on the proceedings at regular intervals. And because observation and publication were now compressed into a single act, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to phrase my tweets that I otherwise would've spent absorbing a scene or speaking to locals. I don't remember much about the crowd in Monticello, the businessmen in Blaine, or Bachmann's larger themes. I do remember what I wound up tweeting, and that's about it. Real magazine profiles require more.

Still, Romano found reporting advantages to Twitter, including the somewhat scary notion that he didn't have to approach some people for comment; they came to him.

But the Bachmann camp also read his tweets and, suddenly, she didn't have time for an interview:

My guess is that her staff read my tweets and decided that it wasn't in Bachmann's best interest to talk to me. And that says as much about Bachmann as anything I observed on the road. Given her mastery of the provocative soundbite and her recent ranking as the most influential Twitterer in the House, I'd initially believed that Bachmann, love her or hate her, was emblematic of a new, niche-media breed of politician. But it turns out that she's just a louder-mouthed version of the old model: happy to attack her opponents from afar, happy to play the victim, but unwilling to engage, mano a mano, with anyone she deems insufficiently friendly. What Twitter revealed about Bachmann is that she's not democratic enough for Twitter--or the new era it embodies.

And so, Newsweek killed the print piece -- the in-depth look at one of the country's most polarizing politicians and leaving Romano with another online blog entry that sounded "like every other Bachmann hater."

Maybe Romano has stumbled on another story idea, though. In 2010, is that pretty much all we want anyway?

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Moments with Don Shelby

Posted at 11:18 AM on May 11, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Don Shelby will announce his finalized plans for retirement from WCCO tomorrow. Let the remembering begin!

Unfortunately, I can't find any video of Shelby doing David Letterman's Top 10 in the mid '90s, in which he uttered the classic line, "there is a gopher in my pants."

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The price of holding a grudge

Posted at 11:51 AM on April 29, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

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A day in the life of the media

Posted at 10:41 AM on April 19, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

A situation in Somalia today certainly leads us to appreciate the First Amendment even more than we obviously do.

Proclaiming that music is un-Islamic, insurgents in Somalia have warned radio stations to stop playing music. The government of Somalia -- there's a phrase that's as strange to write as it is to read -- has told any radio stations that comply that they will be shut down.

What's a radio station to do? The New York Times has the answer:

"We have replaced the music of the early morning program with the sound of the rooster, replaced the news music with the sound of the firing bullet and the music of the night program with the sound of running horses," said Osman Abdullahi Gure, the director of Radio Shabelle radio and television, one of the most influential stations in Mogadishu.

The previous director of Radio Shabelle was gunned down last year.

Elsewhere on Planet Media:

At a high school in Seattle Spokane, the principal has confiscated every copy of the school newspaper after a column in which students were asked, ""If you could be famous for anything, what would you be famous for?" Some of the answers included, "Dropping a nuke on the Middle East." "Being JFK's assassin." "Leader of the KKK." "Killing the president with a trident."

Meanwhile, in Virginia, police A raided the offices of James Madison University's student newspaper Friday, confiscating hundreds of photos of an off-campus riot last weekend, according to the Roanoke Times.

The police and the county attorney intend to use the seized photographs to find those who broke the law at the riot.

"The community was really upset about what happened," the editor of the paper said. "I understand that they want to find all these people. But this is between what's right and what's wrong."

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WCCO.com walks The Wire

Posted at 11:19 AM on March 18, 2010 by Bob Ingrassia (5 Comments)
Filed under: Media

WCCO-TV unveiled a new way to interact with the news today. "The Wire" is a graphical way for Internet users to explore news, events and comments.

Trying to describe the The Wire highlights how different it is. Is The Wire a news site, a web service, a platform, an application, a social network?

David Brauer at MinnPost struggled with terminology, winding up calling The Wire a "news-buzz-graphical-interface web thingie."

Good for WCCO-TV for trying something new. The project, led by WCCO's director of new media John Daenzer, has been in the works for months.

The station hopes The Wire drives traffic to its main news site and eyeballs to its newscasts. It also aims to generate some direct revenue -- CenterPoint Energy is a main sponsor right now, using the site to promote its product repair plan.

It's a noteworthy play for WCCO. Like newspapers, local TV news stations have been struggling to overcome falling income and declining audiences for their "legacy" products.

Local media outlets across the nation are aiming to grow their digital operations, even as they cope with staff reductions, a tough economy and huge shifts in their traditional business models.

KSTP-TV is taking a different approach, recently announcing a push into the "hyperlocal" space. The station plans to launch a series of sites serving neighborhoods and suburban cities.

WCCO's The Wire is too new for anyone to know whether it will develop a sizable audience or languish as an Internet curiosity.

But it certainly looks innovative. News, events and comments appear in bubbles along a timeline. The site, built by WCCO and the Twin Cities web-development shop The Nerdery, is smooth and cutting edge.

The interface may be a bit much for some users, especially at first. You don't really know what to do when you get there, so it takes a bit of learning.

Will The Wire be like Google Wave, where many first-time users wondered, "What do I do now?" Or will it build a loyal base of users and become a prominent part of the Twin Cities news landscape? As they say on TV, stay tuned.

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Sid the Kid

Posted at 4:28 PM on March 15, 2010 by Than Tibbetts (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

It's become an annual Minnesota media tradition. Every year, on the Ides of March, we mark one more revolution around the sun for our close, personal friend Sid Hartman. Sid's marking his 90th birthday this year.

MPR's Jim Bickal profiled Hartman on the eve of his 89th birthday last year.

Proving I'm not kidding about this being an annual tradition, the Star Tribune's "Yesterday's News" blog dug up Hartman's first column three years ago, when Sid was at the tender age of 87.

Update: MinnPost's David Brauer point us to a WCCO Radio collection of Sidisms.

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Kennedy's tirade

Posted at 5:11 PM on March 10, 2010 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media, War

Rep. Patrick Kennedy had a meltdown on the House floor today, calling the press "despicable" for not covering "the most important national issue of the day," which he says is Afghanistan.

There's two press people in this gallery," Kennedy yelled during a debate over an anti-war resolution. "We're talking about Eric Massa 24-7 on the TV, we're talking about war and peace, $3 billion, 1,000 lives and no press? No press."

It's true, as I indicated on 5x8 this morning, that the 24-hour cable TV news crowd is weirdly obsessed with tickle fights, but he's wrong that "the press" isn't covering things. But after awhile, talking about ending a war isn't quite as newsworthy as actually ending one.

And, by the way, most reporters who monitor all the talk on the House floor don't do so in person. They do it by watching TVs in their cubicles.

As for "despicable," here's the front page of today's New York Times:

And how many press releases on "the most important issue in the nation" has Rep. Kennedy posted on his Web site since his last election? None.

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The medium is the message

Posted at 11:49 AM on March 10, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Last year's debate surrounding the Nobel Peace Prize was whether a president in office for just a few weeks had done anything to earn it.

This year, it might come down to this question: Does the Internet promote peace?

The Nobel Prize committee reportedly has received more nominations for the award this year than ever before, and various media outlets are reporting that one of the nominees is "the Internet."

The nomination was pushed along by a group called Internet for Peace, whose manifesto reads:

We have finally realized that the Internet is much more than a network of computers.
It is an endless web of people. Men and women from every corner of the globe are
connecting to one another, thanks to the biggest social interface ever known to humanity.
Digital culture has laid the foundations for a new kind of society.
And this society is advancing dialogue, debate and consensus through communication.
Because democracy has always flourished where there is openness, acceptance,
discussion and participation. And contact with others has always been the most
effective antidote against hatred and conflict.
That's why the Internet is a tool for peace.
That's why anyone who uses it can sow the seeds of non-violence.
And that's why the next Nobel Peace Prize should go to the Net.

There are certainly cases to be made. This video of a dying woman during the uprising in Iran led to worldwide condemnation, although it didn't appear to have any effect other than convincing Twitter users to turn their avatars green:

Of course that which can used for good can also be used for evil. Take Jihad Jane, for example, who is accused of using the Internet to recruit terrorists.

In any event, the Internet is not unique to galvanizing world opinion. Back in the earlier days of television -- 1984 in this case -- images of famine in Africa were so shocking that it led to a worldwide effort to alleviate the suffering.

Here's the section of a New York Times article that year:

The plight of starving Africans had been recounted previously in newspapers and on television but it was not until a film report by a British journalist appeared on NBC late last month that governments and individuals were galvanized to help. Catholic Relief Services has received nearly $3 million in donations and Save the Children, $1.4 million since the report, according to officials of those organizations, and other groups have reported a similar influx. In recent weeks, the United States has increased its food assistance to Africa, including an estimated $37.5 million worth of grain for Ethiopia and several other countries.

The irony? The very medium that shocked us into action, also desensitized us to the problem.

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Spreading rumors

Posted at 4:02 PM on March 4, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Those of us who are big fans of social media, are occasionally reminded that it can be a terrible way to get accurate information.

The best example of this in years came today when a rumor swept across texting-land that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was resigning. According to the New York Times, a subsidiary of the National Enquirer picked up the story, and then Matt Drudge's Web site linked to that story, and it was often and running.

The blog, Above the Law, traced it back to a class at Georgetown Law School where a professor deliberately told the class that Roberts would resign tomorrow. He waited a half hour before revealing that he was fibbing. He expected that what would happen, is exactly what happened.

The blog quotes the story from a student in the professor's class:

Our criminal justice professor started our 9am lecture with the news that roberts will be resigning tomorow for health reasons- that he could not handle the administrative burdens of the job. He would not say how he knows- but halfway through our lecture on the credibility and reliability of informants he revealed that the Roberts rumor was made up to show how someone you ordinarily think is credible and reliable (ie a law professor) can disseminate inaccurate information.

[B]etween the hour when the class began and when he revealed that he made it up, plenty of students txted and imed their friends and family.... [So] there's a very good chance that the Roberts rumor that spread like wildfire on the internet was sparked by an eccentric law professor trying to make a point.

The professor hasn't confirmed the story, so none of this might be true.

It says something about the next generation of lawyers, however, that a professor who insists that information be checked for accuracy is considered "eccentric."

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Role reversal

Posted at 3:48 PM on March 4, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

It's been around for a few months, but this ad from a Finnish newspaper offers the opportunity for some thought -- What if it were the Internet that was dying and newspapers that were the upstart media?

Somewhat related: MinnPost's David Brauer reports the Pioneer Press' owners have emerged from bankruptcy, with the company's president scoring a big payday.

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One picture

Posted at 2:53 PM on February 12, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

This is the image of the year in the annual World Press Photo competition announced this week. Taken by Pietro Masturzo of Italy, it shows two women shouting from the rooftops of Tehran last June. Click for a larger image.

Here are some of the other favorite images in the competition:

Afghan woman rushed from the scene of a suicide bombing in Kabul in December. Photo by Adam Ferguson, Australia, VII Mentor Program for The New York Times.

The winner in the spot news category. Bloodbath in Madagasca. Walter Astrada, Argentina, Agence France-Presse

1st prize: General News Singles Gaza photo album: Tuzzah, Gaza Strip, 3 March. Kent Klich, Sweden

1st prize General News Stories. Guinea Bissau. Marco Vernaschi, Italy, for Pulitzer Center

2nd prize People in the News Singles, US soldiers respond to Taliban fire outside their bunker, Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, 11 May. David Guttenfelder, USA, The Associated Press.

1st prize People in the News Stories. Inauguration Day, Washington DC, 20 January
Charles Ommanney, United Kingdom, Getty Images for Newsweek

1st prize Arts and Entertainment Stories. Rainbowland, New Mexico. Kitra Cahana, Canada, Fabrica for Colors

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The obituary minefield

Posted at 1:47 PM on February 4, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

One of the great things about National Public Radio is it's still willing -- and enthusiastic -- about employing an ombudsman to respond to questions about some of its news stories.

And today, Alicia Shepard got the job of sifting through the furor caused by this David Horowitz quote that was included in an obituary of Howard Zinn:

"There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn's intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect,. Zinn represents a fringe mentality which has unfortunately seduced millions of people at this point in time. So he did certainly alter the consciousness of millions of younger people for the worse."

Yeow! That brings back memories of the time I wrote an obituary on a former governor of Minnesota and included the factoid that his detractors once referred to him as "Governor Goofy." Accurate? Yeah. Tasteful in an obit? No way.

Shepard's ruling:

Writing an obituary can be a challenging assignment because it is often the last thing that will be said about someone, and the subject can no longer speak on his own behalf. It must be fair. It must provide context and it must tell warts and all -- all in a limited space.

Critics are right that NPR was not respectful of Zinn. It would have been better to wait a day and find a more nuanced critic -- as the Washington Post did two days after Zinn died --than rushing a flawed obituary on air.

Here's her column. And here's the original obit:

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Super Bowl: Are you ready for some religion?

Posted at 2:24 PM on January 26, 2010 by Bob Collins (13 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Usually the discussion about Super Bowl TV ads is reserved for the day after the Super Bowl.

For the last few months, I've been wondering how the nation as a whole will react to Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, a tremendously talented player (and, from all accounts, a wonderful kid) who is one part quarterback and one part preacher. When his NFL career starts next season, the league is likely to get him to tone down the religion. He might be better off with a Bible Belt team.

We don't need to wait long to find out if his "in his face" religious views will cause a controversy in the NFL. An advertisement from James Dobson's Focus on the Family organization, aimed at the Super Bowl audience, will tell of Tebow's mother's decision not to have an abortion. The baby turned out to be Tim Tebow.

Generally speaking, Super Bowl ads are politics free. A few beer ads with calmations dalmations and clydesdales, some pop superstar drinking Pepsi, and babies spitting up while selling stocks are the usual fare.

But some of the big money is pulling out of the Superbowl commercial biz, and CBS is trying to attract advocacy ads to replace them.

It's not going over well with some groups. "An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year, an event designed to bring Americans together," Jehmu Greene, president of Women's Media Center said. It and others women's groups are protesting the ad.

The irony here, of course, is that in protesting the commercial, the groups are giving the Focus on the Family message far more than it could get for the $2.5 million it costs to buy a 30-second ad in the Super Bowl.

Update. 3:05 p.m. - The Guardian (UK) points out that this ad was rejected by CBS for the Super bowl in 2004. Here are some of the other ads rejected.

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Obama vs. President Obama

Posted at 1:11 PM on January 19, 2010 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Long-time political columnist David Broder was on MPR's Midday today, assessing President Barack Obama's first-year performance.

But Broder's use of "Obama" instead of President Obama rankled listener Robert Devine of New Brighton, who wrote, "It seems disrespectful to eliminate the normal title given to a high-office elected official ... in the ongoing discussion and refer to them just by their last name. I would expect more from someone who has a deep background in journalism."

This, you may recall (since I wrote about it here) is one of the most common complaints fielded by NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard, who notes that the format has been the NPR policy since the '70s.

Frankly, we don't hear it very often at MPR, where we use the Associated Press Stylebook, which instructs us to use President Obama on first reference and the last name on second and subsequent references. The Stylebook, though, isn't infallible. After all, the AP says people who enter pleas in court of "not guilty," should be described as having entered a plea of "innocent," even though there's no such plea in the American judicial system.

Mr. Devine points out, too, that what might work in a newspaper, sounds entirely different on the radio:

"My opinion is that live discussion should consistently maintain the title throughout the dialog. I tuned into the middle of Mr. Broder's discussion and hearing him refer to the present and former presidents by their last name cause me to wonder how a person in his position could endorse a disrespectful practice. I realize he had no ill intention by that practice, but it did not reflect well on him, in my opinion. Modeling good respectful behavior in speech and conduct is something every younger generation greatly needs to witness."

Mark Knoller, who covers the White House for CBS News, says that organization's policy is to refer to the president as Mr. Obama on second references. During the Bush administration, he said people found that offensive, too.

If on every reference I called him "President Bush," it would grate on the ear. By calling him "Mister Bush" on second reference, we make the report easier to understand - while at the same time - showing our respect.

Is there a political motivation in the complaint? Clark Hoyt of the New York Times certainly thought so when he responded to it in 2007. Besides, he said, nobody who actually puts his feet up in the Oval Office seems to mind.

But because she, Leslie and some other readers are disturbed, I went to the White House to see what folks there think about how the president is referred to in The Times.

Are they upset at the title "Mr. Bush?"

"No, not at all," said Tony Fratto, the deputy press secretary. "There are lots of things we find disrespectful to the president, usually on the editorial page or in a news analysis, but we take no offense at his titled reference in news articles," Fratto said.

"Remember," he said, "We have citizen presidents. Mr. is a perfectly fine title."

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A Tale of Two Late Nights

Posted at 2:26 PM on January 15, 2010 by Than Tibbetts (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Let's play another round of News Cut's "Who said it?" (cue theme)

"I feel like a guy who has bought a car from somebody, painted it, fixed it up and made it look nice and then the guy comes back and says he promised to sell the car to his brother-in-law."

If you guessed Conan O'Brien, circa January 2010, try again.

That was Jay Leno in December 1992, as NBC network execs publicly fretted whether to hand the Tonight Show to Leno or then Late Night host David Letterman. Letterman, of course, left NBC to form the Late Show on CBS after Leno was handed the keys.

Mr. Leno said he would "obviously leave NBC immediately" if the network decided to give the "Tonight" show to Mr. Letterman. He said he would absolutely refuse to do a show in the 12:30 A.M. spot now occupied by Mr. Letterman's show, "Late Night," and would indeed consider creating the same problem for NBC that Mr. Letterman's proposed deal with CBS caused.

Conan's crack advice to kids rings true even in 1992: "You can do anything you want in life. Unless Jay Leno wants to do it, too."

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Fresh Eye on the Radio: Conan's letter

Posted at 5:16 PM on January 12, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Fresh Eye on the Radio (with Mary Lucia), Media

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NPR's Tea Party cartoon

Posted at 3:14 PM on January 8, 2010 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Politics

In the last few days, some of my conservative online friends have sent me the link to a cartoon on the npr.org Web site as proof of the anti-conservative nature of National Public Radio.

I don't work for NPR, and I don't spent much time reading the opinion/editorial sections of most online news sites, so I wasn't aware of "Learn to Speak Teabag" and, having read it, didn't think it was funny and reinforced my belief that most political discourse in America isn't going to be mistaken for challenging intellectual endeavors.

Today, NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard gave her colleagues the chance to explain how it got on the npr.org site, and then noted the obvious:

That said, there are problems with the Tea Bag animation. Chief among them is it doesn't fit with NPR values, one of which is a belief in civility and civil discourse.

Fiore is talented, but this cartoon is just a mean-spirited attack on people who think differently than he does and doesn't broaden the debate. It engages in the same kind of name-calling the cartoon supposedly mocks.

And why is NPR running a cartoon from just one perspective?

NPR is a lightning rod in the ongoing political struggle. But it's a credit to that organization -- and others -- that in a time of big cutbacks, they employ someone to answer complaints from the audience and hold people accountable to explain editorial decisions to the people who matter most -- the readers and listeners.

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The Augsburg Fortress story

Posted at 9:29 AM on January 6, 2010 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Media

It's been awhile since we've seen a story get as much reaction as an Associated Press-distributed story (based on a KSTP report) about pensions benefits at Augsburg Fortress Publishers. The original story has been taken off the MPR site, but here's what it said:

The publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is cutting off retirement benefits for current employees and retirees.

KSTP-TV reports that Augsburg Fortress sent notices to about 500 employees and retirees last week saying it will terminate its retirement plan March 5.

Former employee Karen Walhof told KSTP the letter stated that as of Dec. 31 the company owned members more than $24 million, but only had a third of the money in assets. If the company kept paying out monthly benefits, the plan would run out of money in five years.

Most people in the plan will receive some type of lump sum payment. Minneapolis-based Augsburg Fortress blamed the money problems on fewer book sales, shrinking ELCA congregations and increasing competition on the Internet.

The Associated Press issued a corrected version last night, but it had already circulated. Today, a public relations firm issued a clarification:

1. It was Augsburg Fortress that terminated the program, not ELCA. They are separate entities for this purpose. Augsburg has its own board and made the decision.

2. Benefits were not "cut off" for retirees and current employees. The vast majority in the defined benefit program will receive a lump sum payment in the coming weeks based on their time of service and retirement status. That is not a "cut off." Also, current employees have participated since 2005 in a defined contribution program similar to a 401(K), with a company match, that is not affected by this move.

3. The company's theoretical total liability is roughly $24 million, based on estimates of mortality and the time value of money, etc.. It doesn't "owe" people $24 million due in a defined period of time. They are different concepts and are commonly addressed as such.

4. The causes for the problem cited in your article are accurate, but incomplete. All those factors have been present for some time but were manageable from the point of view of maintaining retirement benefits. The key change was the market decline from 2007-2009. The portfolio fell sharply, as did most organizations', but AFP had to continue paying out close a quarter million dollars per month from that market bottom, which compromised its ability to capitalize on the market recovery. As the AP story said, if it did nothing we'd have run out of money in five years and some 300 current and former employees not currently collecting benefits would have received nothing.

This press release was also attached from the ELCA News Service:

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Augsburg Fortress, the publishing ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), announced in a Dec. 31, 2009, letter to participants that it will terminate its defined benefit retirement plan effective March 5. The action, approved by the board of trustees of Augsburg Fortress Dec. 18, affects 500 plan participants.

Not affected by the decision is the company's current retirement plan -- a defined contribution plan -- in which Augsburg Fortress' current employees can participate. That plan is a 403b plan "common for non-profit organizations," according to information from the publisher. Approximately 150 current employees are enrolled in this plan.

Most participants in the defined benefit plan will receive a lump sum payment, said Beth A. Lewis, president and chief executive officer, Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis. The trustees amended the plan to provide for a "more equitable allocation of plan assets among plan participants," she wrote in the letter to plan participants. Without the amendment, more than half of the plan participants would have received nothing at all, Lewis wrote.

"We wanted to make certain that we had the most equitable distribution of assets possible," she said in an interview with the ELCA News Service. "If we had done nothing, the plan would have run out of money in approximately five years and left about 60 percent of those in the plan with no retirement benefits. We didn't think that was equitable or fair."

In 2005 the Augsburg Fortress board of trustees took action to freeze the defined benefit plan, and began offering its 403b plan to its employees. The costly defined benefit plan "has been underfunded for about nine years," Lewis said.

She explained that the defined benefit plan appeared to have enough funding to provide payments to plan participants for many years, but all of that changed when financial markets turned downward in 2008 and early 2009.

As of Dec. 31, 2009, the plan's retirement benefit obligations totaled about $24.2 million, the company said in a series of questions and answers sent to plan participants. The plan's assets were only $8.6 million.

The company said other options to fund the shortfall were considered, such as trying to find sources of external funding, declaring bankruptcy and selling company assets, or doing nothing. In the end, the board chose to terminate the plan and amend it to spread assets more equitably.

"This decision breaks our hearts," the document said. "But, among four bad options, we truly believe this is the best of them. Not good. Just the best of the hard choices facing us."

Augsburg Fortress is a separately incorporated unit of the ELCA churchwide organization. The company said it sought support from the churchwide organization, but was advised that it "has no obligations or fiduciary duties with respect to the Augsburg Fortress plan." The publisher's retirement plan is separate from any ELCA-sponsored retirement plan.

John Rahja, Augsburg Fortress' chief financial officer, said assets of the defined benefit plan are separate from the company's assets. "The plan operates independently from Augsburg Fortress. Terminating this plan really doesn't affect Augsburg Fortress operations and how we run our business day to day," he told the ELCA News Service.

The company reported to plan participants that it could not cover the retirement plan's shortfall "because of our own operational challenges resulting from fewer sales to shrinking ELCA congregations, and increasing competition from the Internet and publishers outside of the Lutheran tradition."

Rahja explained that a defined benefit plan is funded solely by the organization, and benefits are determined by average earnings and length of service. The current 403b defined contribution plan gives employees the option to contribute and the organization the option to match those contributions. Employees also determine how their retirement funds are invested, he said.

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When is a suspect's politics newsworthy?

Posted at 11:21 AM on January 5, 2010 by Bob Collins (43 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Is the political affiliation of alleged perverts a legitimate part of a news story that's not about politics?

The Star Tribune thinks so. In today's story about Twin Cities businessman William Wanner, who is charged with fondling a 10-year-old girl at the Minneapolis Club, this paragraph stood out:

Records show that Wanner is affiliated with Wanner Engineering Inc., a maker of industrial pumps, and has been a significant contributor to local and national Republican candidates.

There is no further mention of Wanner's politics, so it's not clear what the point of identifying his political donations are to the story of his arrest on molestation charges.

The description as a "significant contributor" also invites inspection. He gave $1,000 to the Mitt Romney campaign, far less than the $2,300 a person is allowed to give. He gave $8,000 to Norm Coleman's PAC, far less than $42,700 a person is limited to in a two-year cycle.

This isn't the first time the Star Tribune has linked political connections to the Republican Party with an arrest on morals charges. I pointed it out in an August 2007 Polinaut post ("Does the Strib think Republicans have a thing for hookers?") a similar situation. When a man was arrested in a prostitution sting on St. Paul's East Side, the Star Tribune said:

"Recently, he publicly supported a candidate seeking to replace state Rep. Steve Sviggum. All three elected officials were Republicans."

But the Star Tribune wasn't alone in connecting today's story to the suspect's politics. Fox9 News did the same thing:

Wanner is licensed to practice law in Wisconsin. He contributed $8,000 to the Norm Coleman Victory Committee and $1,000 to the Mitt Romney For President campaign in 2008.

The Star Tribune turned the Web site comments off on today's story, so we don't know if anyone has noticed the assertion.

Incidentally, the arrest of Tom Petters was arguably one of the top crime stories in Minnesota in 2008. Petters, since convicted of running a Ponzi scheme, contributed $14,200 to Democratic candidates in 2008. When he was arraigned in October 2008, the newspaper made no mention of his political contributions.

Emails to editors and reporters at both institutions have not yet been answered.

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Carl Kasell's farewell

Posted at 2:24 PM on December 30, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media

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WCAL sale upheld

Posted at 11:51 AM on December 29, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The Minnesota Court of Appeals has upheld St. Olaf College's sale of Northfield's WCAL radio to Minnesota Public Radio. The station became The Current. MPR was not a party to the suit.

In its decision, the court upheld a district court ruling that the group SaveWCAL waited too long to file its complaint. "Despite its notice that the attorney general would not intervene to prevent the sale, SaveWCAL did not initiate legal action to pursue its breach-of-charitable-trust theory prior to finalization of the sale. In fact, SaveWCAL did not participate in any legal proceeding related to the sale until 2007 and did not file the petition that is the subject of this lawsuit until four years after the sale closed," the Appeals Court said in its ruling (available here).

But the court gave a nod to the disappointment that a classical radio station was replaced by one playing alternative rock:

We acknowledge and respect the loyalty and devotion that SaveWCAL has shown to this radio station. We also recognize that our decision may be unpopular. Nevertheless, we are obligated to follow the law.

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Take my money

Posted at 9:24 AM on December 13, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

About 10 days ago, I mentioned the effort by former MPR reporter Chris Julin to pay for his online access to the Duluth News Tribune. He doesn't get the dead-trees edition, so he asked the paper if he could just send money for the Web version. The paper said "no."

Here's an update:

Today the paper's editor, Rob Karwath, writes that Julin wasn't alone. Another couple tried to give the paper some money. It's a reminder, he says, of the value of the local newspaper, regardless of what form it takes:

That value is beat reporting. Stahl covers Duluth city government and Lawler has the arts and entertainment beat. By assigning reporters to cover beats and develop relationships with sources, we get stories TV stations in town don't. In smaller operations, everyone usually becomes a general-assignment reporter. Stories get missed.

Julin and the Farrells put their money where their hearts are. It's something they didn't have to do. It's understanding what our business requires in order to continue providing the value they enjoy.

And for us at the News Tribune, it's encouraging.

Now the frustrating part. You can't read the editor's letter unless you register on the site.

(h/t: Chris Julin)

Meanwhile, over at the Pioneer Press' Christmas party...

"It's a Wonderful Job" from Ben Garvin on Vimeo.

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The Body's back

Posted at 1:36 PM on December 1, 2009 by Bob Collins
Filed under: Media

Jesse Ventura is back in his favorite spot -- the limelight.

The former governor is on a promotional tour for a new TV show, Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura, on truTV.

Here's a heaping helping.

On Larry King's show on CNN, the former governor took on foreign policy:

Well, it still angers me, because it reminds me a great deal of Vietnam. The Russians couldn't beat they will. The English couldn't beat them over there. You are not going to get a military solution, in my opinion, in Afghanistan. It's impossible.

Yet we're just like Vietnam. Are we propping up a phony government like we did in Vietnam? Remember, the United States blocked free elections in Vietnam? Had there had been elections in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh would have won in a land slide.

Well, is this the same thing going on? We're propping up an unpopular government. We're sending our military in.

I tell you what should happen, Larry. We need an immediate Congress to pass a war tax, because you know what? We're involved in two wars now and this country is feeling no pain. Well, I got news for you. When you're involved in war, everyone should feel a little bit of pain. We need to pass a war tax to pay for this war.

And I'll tell you something else. It's time to bring back the draft. These guys are on their fifth or sixth tours over there. I used to be advocate for a professional military. I'm not anymore. It's too easy for these people to take our young men and women to war and not account for it.

And let's pass one more law, Larry. The next time the government votes to go to war, I think every congressman and senator should be required to pr predesignate someone in their family begins immediate military service. I'm tired for these people voting to go to war and then they have no dog in the fight.

In a 2002 interview with MPR's Tom Scheck, Ventura made an observation that potential viewers of his new show might consider. "I always tell everybody that I believe 50 percent of what I read or hear in the media," Ventura said. "So let them take it with a 50 percent; half and half, because that's how accurate the media is."

The fight for the hearts and minds of the American people

Posted at 12:05 PM on December 1, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The most influential man in American journalism today declared that the future of journalism is bright.

Speaking at an FTC conference on the state of journalism, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch said news editors are more concerned about winning prizes for journalism rather than giving the people what they want. "I can't tell you how many newspapers I see have a wall of journalism prizes and a declining circulation," he said during the Federal Trade Commission-hosted panel, "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?"

According to Business Insider, Murdoch said that newspapers have prospered because the communities that they serve trust them to hold governments accountable and to provide their readers with pertinent information.

You know, like this:

Most of these breast-beating panels on the future of journalism miss the point. It's not a question of whether journalism will survive. It's a question of whether good journalism will survive.

On many days -- and with the war in Afghanistan about to be escalated, this is one of them -- it becomes a question not of whether journalists are giving the people what they want. It's whether the people are right in the journalism they want -- for many, that's the latest on Tiger Woods and the gate crashers at the White House -- at the expense of journalism they need.

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The Future of News redux

Posted at 11:13 AM on November 20, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News

Earlier this week, MPR hosted a day-long forum on The Future of News. Colleague Julia Schrenkler, who handled most of the online action, has posted the video of the keynote, which featured Ken Doctor. He runs the Web site Content Bridges.

He's also written a post about the conference and, in particular, the one portion where teeth were bared. Star Tribune Publisher Mike Sweeney and his editor-in-chief, Nancy Barnes, declared that MPR was engaged in a "land grab," because it had advantages as a non-profit over the Star Tribune.

Doctor's take:

Some participants had joked about how MPR was putting on a self-serving conference, one that asked the question about the future of news and came pre-equipped with the two-word answer: Public Radio. Not untrue, but the conference managed to bring not only Sweeney and Strib editor Nancy Barnes into the room and onto panels. It is also brought in Joel Kramer, publisher of MinnPost (as well as Voice of San Diego's Scott Lewis), knowing that Kramer might be (and was) vocal about MPR's unwillingness to partner with MinnPost.

If Sweeney came concerned, he might have left more worried. Yes, Public Radio's legacy business is radio, and, more recently, audio, via podcast and streaming. What Sweeney heard, though, was a larger Who, public radio's nascent attempts to assert itself as a major online (and then presumably mobile) news player throughout the country.

You can find the whole Future of News Web site here. Incidentally, I didn't see this fabulous piece of work until yesterday:

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Behind the scenes of A Prairie Home Companion

Posted at 10:46 AM on October 29, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, Media

CBS Early Show host Harry Smith was one of the guests on A Prairie Home Companion last Saturday and produced a nice piece for his show this morning on what it's like to be a guest, including the pitfalls of a last-minute Keillor re-write of a song Smith was scheduled to sing.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Here's an extended Smith interview with Keillor.

In his segment on TV today, Keillor offered this piece of advice to Smith: "Wherever you go in broadcasting, never take calls from the listeners.

Or as we like to say here in the newsroom: The public. At least in these cubicles, we love to hear from you.

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The value of not making money

Posted at 10:38 AM on October 12, 2009 by Than Tibbetts (4 Comments)
Filed under: Media

As I see it, there are now approximately two types of media.

First, there's the media outlet that has an open, or at least an unhidden, political agenda. Your Fox Newses and MSNBCs and your Huffington Posts and Drudge Reports.

Then, there's everybody else, just trying to grab a slice of the online-traffic mongering, banner-ad clicking revenue pie.

I'm kidding (mostly), but there is an interesting space in which the average, struggling media machine is trying to fit. A space where the organization can produce quality content while still making money.

That's why this announcement from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is so interesting.

Going forward, our board will use its unique position to work for readers in pursuing with candidates the issues that are critical to the future of our community. The board will provide readers with clear, concise information about candidates' positions and records. The AJC will no longer endorse political candidates.

In an era where journalism is "non-profit," the AJC's move might literally be a step on company's path to becoming a non-profit company. Whether the move is a viable one remains to be seen; MPR, along with National Public Radio, are among the few bona fide successes in non-profit media. Newspapers have been operating on a member-based model — instead of tote bags, a paper shows up on your doorstep every morning — and that model hasn't exactly been thriving lately.

For the sake of discussion, if the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, Duluth News Tribune, the St. Cloud Times, or even your hometown rag became a non-profit, would you support it?

See also: Imagining a future without journalists

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Pioneer Press: Go Star Tribune!

Posted at 8:37 AM on October 4, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Here's something we didn't expect to see in the Sunday Pioneer Press - an ad talking up the competition Star Tribune, which emerged from bankruptcy this week:

That should stoke the speculation that there's already a dance underway that might lead the Twin Cities to becoming a one-newspaper town.

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Our dereliction of duty

Posted at 9:57 AM on October 3, 2009 by Bob Collins (11 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News, War

Every now and again -- when I'm speaking to some group -- someone will ask, "how do you determine what news is?" They're looking for a definition I can't give them. It's not an algorithm (sorry, Google); it's a feeling from your heart to your head. You know it when you see it or when you feel it.

You have to be some sort of heart-dead or brain-dead person not to see the stories within the story of Pvt. Travis Hafterson, whom I've been writing about this week (here, here, here, and here). The 21-year-old Marine from Circle Pines left Camp LeJeune in North Carolina on leave last month only to find out his orders had been rescinded. He was looking for help for post traumatic stress disorder and his mother suggested he come home to get it.

We can argue -- and we have, respectfully, in the posts I've made on News Cut this week -- about whether he should have done that, but one thing cannot be denied: Travis Hafterson is a broken human in need of help and we did this to him.

We sent a kid off to war -- twice -- with all the bravado we could muster on lawn signs, bumper stickers and radio talk shows, and while we lived a comfortable life supporting our troops here with our yellow-ribbon magnets, Hafterson and thousands of other combat soldiers were accumulating memories that turn into nightmares.

Here's just one of several I lifted from a psychological report he underwent last Saturday:

"He watched as an Iraqi police member opened the door of the house, only to have the back of his head explode from enemy fire. He tossed a grenade into the home. ... Though (the enemy) had lost limbs, he was still alive. So Hafterson had no choice but to kill him with a knife through the throat."

Hafterson's primary story isn't the only one that went largely unreported this week. So was the amazing story of how Minnesota's system worked. Psychologists and psychiatrists gave up their days off last weekend, social workers stepped in, attorneys donated their time, court-appointed experts reacted with diligence, a Ramsey County judge and the staff of the Civil Commitment Court acted swiftly, sensitively, and urgently, purely because they recognized the need to help a kid -- "one of our own," you might say -- who came home for help.

On Thursday, the Marines swept in, grabbed Hafterson before he could get it, and sent him to a military prison. He's disappeared into the closed society of the military again, and the public symptoms of a wider mental-health scandal disappeared with him.

The Marines couldn't have done it without the indifference of the news media in the Twin Cities.

Almost a year ago to the day, another Minnesota soldier also had a problem. Gwen Beberg befriended a dog in Iraq but had to leave "Ratchet" behind when she returned to the states. The local media sprang into action. The local newspapers carried the story on page one. Local TV news personalities wouldn't let the story die, and finally the military relented. When the dog came home for a happy reunion, the TV stations were there live.

No such luck for Pvt. Hafterson or, for that matter, the hundreds or maybe thousands of soldiers like him who may exist if only we in the news media were interested enough to find out. No TV station picked up the Hafterson story this week. The Pioneer Press was the only newspaper to do so. The Star Tribune, which announced a "military affairs" beat just a week ago, ignored Hafterson's plight. The Associated Press took a pass. The Huffington Post rejected the story as did National Public Radio. The alternative online news sources around here who fancy themselves the future of journalism -- MinnPost, The Uptake, and City Pages, for example -- proved that they can shrug their shoulders as well as the big boys. Of all alternative online sources of news, only Rick Kupchella's new Bring Me the News "covered" the story.

If the news media here had treated Pvt. Travis Hafterson like a dog, it would've been an improvement.

While the Hafterson story was playing out in the Twin Cities this week, a summit on the future of journalism was being held in San Francisco, where the San Francisco Chronicle noted the theme:

Key to survival in the digital media age is rapidly responding to the preferences that consumers reveal every time they click a link, view an ad, read a story or post a comment, said Michael Franklin, professor of computer science at UC Berkeley. He is also the founder of Truviso, a San Mateo company that creates tools for analyzing consumer data.

Each online action represents clues that media companies can use to customize content, products and ads to particular consumers. That, in turn, can increase customers' engagement with the site and the likelihood of responding to marketing, he said.

Fancy talk, indeed, but it leaves out the two most important elements of journalism. It needs to employ people who give a damn and it needs to make you look, when your instinct is to turn away.

At some future point, the PTSD story will resurface in the form of some tragedy, and the media wags will ask "how could this happen?" When it comes time to ask the question, we should be looking in the mirror.

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Perils of the photo op

Posted at 2:01 PM on September 17, 2009 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Media

"Photo opportunities" are always risky business for a president. The demands of office put you in some pretty weird situations, especially with the media constantly looking for the "money shot."

This was the "money shot" in most newspapers today.

President Obama was promoting Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Olympics during an event on the White House lawn. Somehow, someone happened to have a light saber handy.

Depending on your political views, you either thought "Hey, cool! The president is a regular old Stars Wars fan," or "The president is diminishing the decorum of the office."

Lots of opponents of George Bush circulated this video under the latter category...

... and few of them know that what President Bush was promoting that day was Malaria Awareness Day.

Yeah, well, whatever. I'm in it for the laughs. So are the newspaper photo editors, which is why this picture wasn't on the front page:

That's Joel Pool, Louis Schaab, center, and Nate Murray, right, all with the National Rehab Hospital sled hockey team, a sport which I've never heard of before.

Sled Hockey -- I've since learned thanks to this picture -- "is played on a standard size ice rink with standard size nets and pucks. There are six players on the ice for each team -- three forwards, two defense men and a goalie. Subs may be made when stopped or on the fly. Most of the same rules for hockey played in the United States apply to Sled Hockey." (See Web site)

You can learn a few things from a good photo op.

(AP Photos/Charles Dharapak)

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Is Keillor coming or going?

Posted at 11:28 AM on September 17, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Garrison Keillor is planning to retire, the Star Tribune says:

"A Prairie Home Companion" host Garrison Keillor said Wednesday that he is "not counting on doing it [hosting the show] more than a couple more years." He added that he would like to see the show continue with more of a musical focus, and that he would love to serve as that show's producer.

No, he's not, the Associated Press says:

A couple of friends "made a serious attempt" to get Keillor to retire, he said. "They gave me a beautiful sales pitch. They drew a lovely picture of what it would be like, and I could work on writing books and I could write at my own speed, and I could travel, except I travel now," Keillor said.

Keillor was unavailable to comment to MPR today.

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Making the news

Posted at 11:13 AM on September 11, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News

CNN today framed a Coast Guard training exercise on the Potomac River near the Pentagon as "felony stupidity." But the case actually shines a light on the journalistic rules of CNN.

A few minutes after the president appeared at a ceremony honoring the dead in the 9/11 attacks at the Pentagon, CNN reported that the Coast Guard had fired shots at a boat on the Potomac, sending the nation, apparently, scurrying for word of a terrorist attack.

It turned out to be a training exercise, which sent the CNN anchor team into hyperbole over the Coast Guard decision to have a training mission on 9/11, where it could be mistaken for an actual terrorist attack.

"Is there any admission on the part of the Coast Guard that they made a terrible mistake?" a CNN anchor asked a reporter. But the mistake was CNN's. There were no shots fired, and along the Potomac, there was little indication anything was wrong, and a Coast Guard statement suggested the training exercise was primarily on a radio frequency. A CNN staffer heard the words "bang bang" on a newsroom scanner, and the news organization went with its report.

Later, a CNN reporter cited "sources in the newsroom" while saying the news network put the story on the air before calling the Coast Guard -- or anyone else -- to ask what was happening. It once was a well-observed rule in the news media that journalists don't report anything heard on a news scanner without verifying its truthiness.

"Coast Guard Confusion: Training Exercise Sparks Panic on 9/11 Anniversary," the headline on ABC News' Web site screamed. Well, no, it was CNN that caused whatever panic might have ensued (Note: There's actually no indication anyone outside the CNN newsroom had panicked.)

Try as CNN might in the aftermath to focus the spotlight on the Coast Guard, Washington officials weren't biting. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says if law enforcement felt there was a need for the exercise it's "best not to second-guess." the Associated Press reported.

Gibbs sharply criticized CNN for airing an inaccurate report that shots were fired during the exercise, saying "before we report things like this, checking would be good."

As an old colleague-comic in a newsroom used to say, "Never check the facts, son. You ruin a lot of good stories that way."

(AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

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Ira on Ira

Posted at 11:31 AM on September 9, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media

PRI just posted this video of Ira Glass of This American Life accepting the Edward R. Murrow Award.

Begin your Ira Glass impersonation now.

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What's the story?

Posted at 9:49 AM on September 9, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media, War

The rescue of a New York Times reporter in Afghanistan is providing a glimpse into how several news organizations have different headline takes on the same story.

Sometimes, apparently, there are different views within the same organization.

The headline on the New York Times around 6:30 this morning said "New York Times Reporter Freed in Afghanistan." But only within the story itself was it noted that Stephen Farrell's translator was killed. That, Al Jazeera notes, is a huge part of the story.

At 9:50 a.m., the headline was changed.

NPR, using Associated Press copy, went with the "freed reporter" headline.

The translator's death was below the headline.

But even that only tells part of the story. A British soldier was killed, too. The Guardian, on the other hand, views the story differently... from its perspective:

But that's not the whole story, either. The BBC -- and apparently only the BBC -- played the story without injecting a perspective.

The number dead is not entirely clear. It's lost in a hail of other parts of the story. Whose bullets killed whom? And how did the women die?

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Did NPR whitewash Ted Kennedy's career?

Posted at 10:48 AM on September 2, 2009 by Bob Collins (13 Comments)
Filed under: Media

National Public Radio ombudsman Alicia Shepard has blown the whistle on her employer's news staff for its coverage of the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy:

But on that first day, in the 23 on-air stories, only one mentioned the name Mary Jo Kopechne and 5 mentioned Chappaquiddick.

Shepard was responding to complaints from listeners who suggested the network was whitewashing Kennedy's biography:

Kennedy may have been a great legislator. He may have been a wonderful uncle, a terrific father, a faithful friend and rejoiced in his second marriage, but there were warts too. He got kicked out of Harvard for cheating. He was known in his younger years for womanizing and drinking too much. In 1991, he was carousing with his son, Patrick and nephew, William Kennedy Smith in Palm Beach. Later that night, a woman accused Smith of raping her. Smith was tried and later acquitted.

Not everyone loved Teddy Kennedy. He was a complex man with a family history that defies belief when all the tragedies are strung together. To accurately portray any man or woman, it is just as important to fully include what is unpleasant or unflattering -- especially since those events for Kennedy went a long way toward shaping who Teddy Kennedy was when he died.

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Notes from Planet Journalism

Posted at 12:28 PM on August 6, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Two items testing ethical waters in journalism today.

CLUNKERS VS. KATRINA

NPR's ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, takes NPR's Mara Liasson to task for this:

Says Shepard:

Nearly 2,000 people died and thousands more were injured or lost their homes during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Bush administration's inability to help hundreds of thousands of people in New Orleans after Katrina is considered one of the greatest recent examples of government incompetence.

It is inconceivable anyone could compare that disaster to Cash for Clunkers, which simply gives people a voucher worth up to $4,500 to trade in an old car for a newer, more fuel-efficient vehicle.

Liasson, meanwhile, is contrite. "I said something really stupid, which I regret," Liasson told Shepard.

NAMING VICTIMS

Anytime a news organization plays the "withhold the name/don't withhold the name" game, it runs into a minefield of ethical questions.

Generally speaking, news organizations in these parts withhold the name of people who have been arrested until they've been charged. But most apply the guideline inconsistently.

One canon that the Associated Press has is not naming victims of a sexual assault.

But the AP couldn't see the case of the Wisconsin man coming who, apparently, played around on his wife with four (or more) women, and then was attacked by them. The AP did not name the man because he's a victim of a sexual assault. So far, so good.

Then he got himself arrested on an allegation of child abuse. Now is he a victim? Or a perpetrator who can be named? This morning, the news organization named him once he was charged.

But by afternoon, the AP issued this advisory:

Please note BC-US--Cheater Assaulted, 1st ld-Writethru, which makes an important change deleting the suspect's name because he is named as the victim of a sexual assault in another case.

The AP named three of the women charged in the case, but didn't name the fourth.

Because he's the man's wife, identifying her would identify him.

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Ink, dead trees and you

Posted at 9:42 AM on July 29, 2009 by Ken Paulman (6 Comments)
Filed under: Media

On Midday today, host Mike Edgerly will be discussing the future of newspapers with Rick Edmonds, a former reporter, editor and publisher who is now a researcher for the Poynter Institute, and Ken Doctor, former managing editor of the Pioneer Press.

We all know the simple version of the story. The web is displacing newspapers as a mass medium, newspapers therefore are doomed. Various offshoots of that narrative tend to blame the content - because the "MSM" is too liberal/conservative, they've alienated their readers who are now turning to the vast cornucopia of perspectives available on the Internet. Or something like that.

But in reality, newspapers don't have a content problem, they have a business problem.

It's important to distinguish newspapers as an advertising vehicle and newspaper journalism. Demand for the latter is higher than it's ever been, but it's the advertising - the print advertising - that has always paid the bills (and still does). As I've noted on this blog before, a good chunk of the journalism you're reading online is subsidized by those ads. Fewer readers = fewer ads = fewer reporters = fewer readers, and on we go.

The paradox should be familiar to media-watchers by now: Absent a new revenue model for newspapers, most of the newspaper journalism we read online goes away. No such thing as a free ride.

When you compare a printed paper to the web as a means of transmitting information, the printed paper is impractical to the point of being absurd. But, for the sake of discussion, let's put practicality aside for a moment. Are there things that the printed newspaper does that technology can't displace? And are those things valuable enough to allow newspapers to continue as a viable commodity?

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'Nightline' fights back

Posted at 8:11 AM on July 28, 2009 by Ken Paulman (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Remember "Nightline"?

When Ted Koppel left the late-night news program in 2005, it was written off for dead. A news show, without the star power of its lead anchor, had no hope of competing against Leno and Letterman, or so went the conventional wisdom at the time.

But according to a story in the New York Times, the program is not only holding its own, it sometimes comes out on top.

Granted, a lot of those ratings can be attributed to coverage of the death of a certain pop singer, but the executive producer also notes that the program beat the talk shows with a show about Afghanistan and an interview with President Obama.

"Nightline" is not exactly Charlie Rose. It's not even "60 Minutes." But amid such topics as "Does Satan exist? Debating the Devil" and "Hookers for Jesus preach to unlikely flock" you'll find segments on consumer protection, endangered species and the Iranian election.

A common refrain is that with all the Internets and the Tweeters and whutnot, we've become so preoccupied with pop culture that we're no longer in touch with important issues (as opposed to a generation ago, when people ignored such temptations as "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "Laugh-In" and instead gathered the family around the woodstove to recite the speeches of Abraham Lincoln). So on one hand, the fact that people are switching off Letterman and turning to the news instead is a Good Thing. But one could also argue that TV "magazine" shows give short shrift to serious issues in favor of slick, candy-coated segments designed to draw an audience, and that we end up less informed as a result.

But in the end, can the fact that one of the major networks still sees journalism as one of its top contenders be anything but positive?

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Trust

Posted at 11:36 AM on July 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Media

It took a few days but "Cronkite backlash" has started. The backlash in the wake of the deaths of icons, comes after a period of hyper-testimonials (See Russert, Tim).

It's Jack Shafter at Slate who argues that you can't trust trust:

If Cronkite were working in today's news environment, painting the news from the same palette he used when he anchored the CBS program, would viewers still invest their deep trust in him? (Assuming, of course, that the public did regard Cronkite as the nation's most trustworthy man.)

I doubt it. The news business has both expanded and fragmented in the post-Cronkite, post-Fairness Doctrine era. The news monopoly the three broadcast networks enjoyed for two decades has been shattered by the three cable news networks, all of which embrace (and thrive on) the controversy that Cronkite eschewed. The Web, which can make the cable news channels look positively Cronkitian, has only reshattered the shards.

Yeah...yeah, but let's get to the money quote:

Beware of those who fetishize trust, Monck and Hanley counsel. "Trust is a shoddy yardstick. It doesn't gauge truth, it gauges what looks close to the truth: verisimilitude," they write. It's not just the naive and undereducated who end up trusting people and institutions that they shouldn't. The sophisticated and the well-schooled are vulnerable, too.

Be skeptical, news consumers, especially of the journalists you trust most. It will make you smarter and keep them honest.

Trust your spouse. Trust your dog. That ought to do it.

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Is the radio obsolete?

Posted at 10:55 AM on July 20, 2009 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Media

An article on a journalism blog has Public Radio and the future of "old" media in its crosshairs.

The question comes down to this:

Do we still need radio?

Public Radio Dangerously Close To Making Public Radio Obsolete on PaidContent.org argues that smart phones and apps to to turn phones into "radios" have made the old transistor obsolete:

Now with the addition of what's playing on my favorite stations right now, I have a lot more choices in one screen that I had previously: so instead of enduring "A Prairie Home Companion" on the weekend (not my cup of tea), I could try "On The Media" on at the same time on WBEZ Chicago public radio. And if I happen to join a show after its start, chances are I can get the latest edition of the show on demand (helpfully linked from the live version). In the car, where a lot of public radio consumption happens (especially in SoCal) with one of the options to connect the iPhone to the radio speakers, it makes the local public radio station redundant, to a large extent. Of course you can argue this is only true for the 20 million or so iPhone users, but you can see this playing out on other smartphones like Android and others, when the same app launches of their platforms.

Rafat Ali frets that the funding mechanism for Public Radio -- primarily local pledge drives -- would suffer because people don't have a connection to their local station.

The future will be the death of us all. And therein lies the Catch 24 for all media in the digital age. Content is still king and content still comes from local stations. If people enjoy the breadth of possibilities across the Public Radio spectrum and stop supporting their local stations, it seems likely that the content they enjoy would begin to disappear. So the key, one supposes, is whether the audience in this environment understands that.

American Public Media, the parent of MPR, is one of the entities that helped develop the application. Incidentally, MPR News has an IPhone app. You can learn more about it here.

I'm not exactly in the iPhone app demo. I don't have a smart phone. I do have an iPod stuffed with all sorts of great music that I listen to while I'm mowing the lawn or am stuck in a big aluminum tube somewhere. I've tried using podcasts but I can't get into the habit of updating them enough nor listening to them regularly. So even with this "tool," I have not found I listen to less radio; I actually find myself listening to more.

How about you? How do you see your digital future?

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On Cronkite

Posted at 8:11 AM on July 18, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, Media

I've written -- twice -- about Walter Cronkite in the last month or so. You can click the "icons" category over there on the right and find them. So I won't go into his death too much. But I left out a couple of obvious videos that marked his career:

The death of Martin Luther King Jr.

And the moon landing:

A lot of people this weekend will lament that Cronkite was the last vestige of the "just the facts" newscast. And it's true, each story he introduced may have appeared to have no underlying message. But the dirty little secret of journalism -- one of them -- is that why a story is chosen to air is every bit as important as what a story says, and you can't make that decision without having an opinion about why a story matters enough to be told.

At the National Scholastic Press Association workshop at the University of Minnesota on Friday, a high school journalism teacher asked me how she could get her students to understand "objectivity" (a word I don't use, I prefer "fairness"). "Don't explain it to them" I suggested. "When they turn in a story, just ask them 'why?'." Why they pursued the story? Why they took a particular angle? Why one sentence appeared before another? Why they talked to the people they talked to? As they answer each question, the part of us -- the personal us -- that is part of the process, will be more clear.

Cronkite, it is said, influenced thousands of people to get into journalism. That's probably accurate. But I didn't find Cronkite to be the most inspiring journalist on the show. I found the person who was always at the end of his broadcast to be the most compelling:

News is supposed to be a snapshot of our world. He knew that a single note from a piano, for example, can still make us cry. And that 90 seconds of video of the world just being the world, can lead us to contemplate it far more than a babbling head. His stories were consistently the most memorable and I always wondered what it was -- and still is -- about journalism that kept them from leading the news.

I often wondered whether anyone asked Cronkite that question.

The part about us that's good, is every bit as newsworthy as the part about us that isn't.

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How a Minnesota man blew the whistle on the New York Times

Posted at 11:58 AM on July 8, 2009 by Bob Collins (37 Comments)
Filed under: Media

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Sign of the Franken

Posted at 12:42 PM on July 6, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media

They came. They saw. They made a big fuss. Al Franken, the beneficiary (sort of) of eight months of seeming non-stop coverage, draws a crowd even when he's not there. At the Capitol, a worker put a sign up outside his new office, and a gaggle of reporters was there to document its every word.