I work at the fifth-worst career

In case you've not heard about it, newspaper journalism was listed by some career site earlier this week as the fifth-worst career in the U.S.

Throw out my best newspaper job, at a group of suburban Dallas weeklies before they went belly-up (which of course ties to why newspapers are getting ever worse) and I easily believe it.

Last two papers?

A national chain that believes Facebooking everything is the "answer" for driving both website and mobile app advertising sales, even though the website is still free and, IMO, the disparity between mobile-based ads and traditional online ads will not be a long-term deal.

And currently, a paper with "old-school" newspaper vets, Type A male yellers, the senior of whom, I think, believes this Texas Hill Country town can be a new Fredericksburg, when it won't. Sorry. Ain't. Gonna. Happen.

And, it works on the "margins" as far as staffing size, even for today's newspaper world, to boot.

That's even as the national chains continue to engage in forced furloughs, job cuts, or both, at the reporter/editor level at local newspapers, while simultaneously paying out bigger bonuses to top brass precisely for making those cuts.

And that's the dirty secret of why top brass of most national chains have no interest in a nonprofit newspaper incorporation bill, should one ever get real consideration by Congress. They'd rather skim now, and "apres moi, le deluge," than engage in responsible management. Local operations, meanwhile, continue to dream of "new angles" while stretching themselves ever thinner between hardcopy, traditional web, and mobile content delivery, while barely having the staff to do justice to hardcopy coverage.

Sure, lots of college students still study journalism. They may believe the myths of liberal media. They may be clueless about the business-side issues. They may be in love with online journalism while remaining clueless to the fact that about nobody's figured out how to monetize it yet.

And, while they're still taking journalism classes to be a new exploitable crop, and others, formerly in the traditional biz, now work at various demand mills, the fifth-worst ain't going to get much better. It's that simple.

Kids in J-schools should be required to take a class in newspaper business management first. Second, they ought to be disabused of much of their belief in the "liberal media," if they hold it for good, unlike Faux News types.

As for the current disparity between traditional web ad rates and mobile-specific ad rates, reportedly as high as 5-1? Within in a decade, that difference will be no greater than 2-1, driven primarily by greater use of mobile devices, greater competition for eyeballs, etc.

Remember how much higher traditional web ad rates were a decade ago? The same things drove them down as will drive down mobile rates.

The Net, in its various delivery forms, has just the opposite problem as old newspaper media. You got plenty of room for editorial content, of course, but, because of ephemeral attention in many cases, there's limited "space" for ads. Plus, add in ad-block software, etc., and web rates plummeted.

I have no doubt that for both Android and iOS for Apple, somebody will invent the equivalent of ad-block programs, too. It's going to happen.

Oh, and as for the current locale, that's not just my opinion.

A cover story about your "app"?

Yeps, that's the newspaper I work at now. Last fall, the cover story for their weekend entertainment section was about their new smartphone app.

Now, I've seen papers bigger than this tout their new apps. But, they did so as straight news, and in 300 words, not 1,200.

But, the entertainment section here is supposed to be so artistic.

Geez.

Just shoot me.

Between this "entertaining" cover story, a quarter-page house "app" ad every week and more, let me say that this, no more than Facebooking everything by everyone in an office, is any "solution" for struggles.

Online journalism follies continue

Problem 1: This Reuters story in the Chicago Trib about Embridge pipelines. Entirely a US/Canada story. Entirely reported and edited from Bangalore, India. Meanwhile, friend Leo Lincourt notes "I like how it had the unlinked URL and the placeholder for where the factbox was supposed to go." Hmm, maybe the Trib is outsourcing website content management.


Problem 2: The L.A. Times has a paywall. It appears similar to the NYT's. I know of know "LAClean." But, in Firefox, going to "private browsing" defeats it.


This isn't some small chain, some small newspaper.


This is the L.A. Times, with a paywall even more "fake" than the New York Times.


And, the MSM wonders why it continues to struggle financially. Web-savvy readers dodge fake paywalls, to get news stories that are relatively "thin" because papers still don't "get it" on paywalls and financial hemorrhaging.

From frying pan to fire

Having left the daily newspaper which, personally and at the corporate level, came to the belief last summer that massive Facebooking and Twittering by everybody,  including copy editors who never are out and about  on news stories, was the "answer" to today's journalism revenue streams even as the company refuses to paywall websites, I may have gone from the frying pan to the fire.

(Oh, and now that I've left, I'll identify that previous newspaper as the Odessa American, part of Freedom Communications. And, despite being in the middle of the Permian Basin oilfield boom, the parent company, now owned primarily by its pre-Chapter 11 creditors, is continuing to tighten the editorial screws; I was replaced by a three-day-a-week person.)

Anyway, I'm now at a semiweekly, part of a group of newspapers owned by two "veterans," which is worse yet.

1. The owner allegedly published the exec editor to make him a minority owner, and it never happened. A recipe for bitterness right there, eh?
2. They're both "yellers."
3. They compete with another paper in the same area, which actually has more staff, and expect staff here to do more.
4. And, I've worked at many "community" newspapers that had "advertorial" special sections. I've never before worked at one that assigned stories about a particular advertiser before the sold ad was in the bag. I've worked at one now, though.

Well, if life has "learning experiences," there's plenty here.

And, at least Odessa was well organized as a newspaper. This place isn't. And, I may well be posting more about that soon.

Is #AP prostituting itself?

Possibly, if you look at this story:

The Associated Press said Wednesday that it has entered into a partnership with WhoSay Inc., a company that helps celebrities manage interactions with fans through social networks and traditional media outlets.

The AP will give celebrities who are members of WhoSay the option to provide exclusive, personal photos and videos to the AP for licensing to major media companies worldwide. ...

The company puts celebrities in greater control of —and offers the opportunity to profit from— their photographic lives. It also allows them to spread their social media posts easily across sites like Twitter and Facebook. As an example, (Sofia ) Vergara posted a picture of a family lunch in Miami last month. The photo has a copyright symbol, indicating she owns it and can make money from it if, say, a magazine wants to publish it.

At the least, it sounds like it's cheapening itself. Basically, WhoSay looks like an elitist version of Twitter. Which makes it look very much like AP is doing celebrity butt-kissing. Great. AP's entertainment feed will look like TMZ soon.

And, shock me that Dean Singleton, as ongoing chairman of the board (who should have been canned when MediaNews filed Chapter 11) would think this is a wonderful idea. Hell, look at AP's whole board of directors.

Singleton/MediaNews? Chapter 11. Mary Junck/Lee Enterprises? Chapter 11. Donna J. Barrett/CNHI? Should be in Chapter 11, but, being owned by the Alabama state pension system, probably can't be. Craig A. Dubow/Gannett? Should be. Still doing mandatory furloughs, isn't it? Michael Golden/New York Times? The company that has a fake paywall and lies about it. Paul C. Tash/St. Petersburg Times? Lives on its Poynter reputation. Katharine Weymouth/Washington Post? Would be in Chapter 11 if not for Kaplan. Gary Pruitt/McClatchy? Wouldn't surprise me if it winds up there.

As Michael Hirschorn at The Atlantic notes, it's precisely strategies like this that have made the general public undervalue daily newspapers for years if not decades. Add in the AP board originally selling its content to online aggregators for pennies, and the circle is complete.

Court: Blogger isn't journalist - he may be right

Let's see the new media fluffers' take on this:

A federal judge in Oregon has ruled that a Montana woman sued for defamation was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon lawyer acted criminally during a bankruptcy case, a decision with implications for bloggers around the country.

Crystal L. Cox, a blogger from Eureka, Mont., was sued for defamation by attorney Kevin Padrick when she posted online that he was a thug and a thief during the handling of bankruptcy proceedings by him and Obsidian Finance Group LLC.

U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez found last week that as a blogger, Cox was not a journalist and cannot claim the protections afforded to mainstream reporters and news outlets.

Is this just a matter of Oregon needing a better shield law? That's one claim.

“My advice to bloggers operating in the state of Oregon is lobby to get your shield law improved so bloggers are covered,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. 

Dalgish may or may not be right on that. She is right on this:

“But do not expect the shield law to provide you a defense in a libel case where you want to rely on an anonymous source for that information.”

That's because Hernandez went further:

The judge ruled that Cox was not protected by Oregon’s shield law from having to produce sources, saying even though Cox defines herself as media, she was not affiliated with any mainstream outlet. He added that the shield law does not apply to civil actions for defamation.

But, Dalgish is not guaranteed to be right on this, if Cox is indeed not a journalist.


Now, contra new media fluffers who accuse old media of trying to maintain a guild system, I'm not doing that.


Let's read WHY Hernandez ruled as he did:

Hernandez said Cox was not a journalist because she offered no professional qualifications as a journalist or legitimate news outlet. She had no journalism education, credentials or affiliation with a recognized news outlet, proof of adhering to journalistic standards such as editing or checking her facts, evidence she produced an independent product or evidence she ever tried to get both sides of the story.

Emphasis on the last clauses are mine. Hernandez, although he appears to start from the "guild" point of view himself, goes beyond that to use generally recognized journalistic standards as a large portion of his decision.


And Cox's response, if anything, justifies Hernandez's decision:

Cox said she considered herself a journalist, producing more than 400 blogs over the past five years, with a proprietary technique to get her postings on the top of search engines where they get the most notice.

“What could be more mainstream than the Internet and the top of the search engine?” she said.

Let's try riffs on that:
1. Twenty years ago: What could be more mainstream than junk mail and a filled mailbox?
2. Sixty years ago: What could be more mainstream than Joe McCarthy and a stack of papers waved in one's hand?
3. Seventy-five years ago: What could be more mainstream than Father Coughlin?
I think you get the drift.


I'm sure Dalgish's organization and others will file amicus briefs in any appeal, but, really, they shouldn't. Both for the actual defendant and for the material facts involved.



Here's my response.


First, blogging may be journalism. It isn't automatically journalism. That's reason one professional media organizations should be wary of offering amicus briefs in this case, at least without actually taking a look at Cox's blog first.



Second, I'd potentially partially disagree with the judge that that plaintiff is not a public figure. I'd have to see the details of how big his tax shelter advice was, whether he's a defendant in the fraud case against some of his advisees and other things. He may be a public figure.


This isn't a slam-dunk one way or the other, unlike the Houston-area blogger of a few years ago, who was reporting on a criminal case, a felony, and using anonymous sources.. There's no indication that Cox was even using anonymous sources, or doing anything more than writing opinion pieces. And, even if attorney Patrick IS a public figure, while case law cuts more latitude on opinion pages in conventional newspapers and magazines, even there, there isn't a license to libel.


Given that Cox is using a "proprietary technique," which is probably called paying $99 to some SEO optimizer outfit, and boasts about that, she's not a journalist from where I stand, and probably stands guilty of the failings of effort Hernandez found.


I do agree with media analysts that a case like this shows we need SCOTUS to eventually wade in. BUT, this case ain't the vehicle for it.

New media fluffers profit from dissing old media?

Just wow .... Columbia Journalism Review takes Clay Shirky, Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis, et al, to the cleaners. And, the article is very good overall, not just in the claim that these and other new media fluffer leaders, through consulting fees, teaching at public universities, etc., profit, and perhaps hypocritically, by being old media dissers.

And, it's one thing to disagree on what the future of media should be. It's another to profit off of saying what the media SHOULD be, while pretending to be disinterested. And, it's yet another to ignore "concentration" in social media, ethics issues at some social media, and other factors.


Item No. 2 in the paragraph above is why I largely not just mistrust but actually dislike new media fluffers, at least the new media fluffing part of their personalities. Hey, I'm not denying the right to make a buck. BUT, be honest that your new media fluffing is anything but disinterested.


Anway, let's take a look at CJR.


I'm going to run a string of a few quotes, then start commenting;

The establishment is gloomy and old; the (Future Of Newspapers) consensus is hopeful and young (or purports to represent youth). The establishment has no plan. The FON consensus says no plan is the plan. The establishment drones on about rules and standards; the FON thinkers talk about freedom and informality. FON says “cheap” and “free”; the establishment asks for your credit card number. FON talks about “networks,” “communities,” and “love”; the establishment mutters about “institutions,” like The New York Times or mental hospitals....

The problem is that journalism’s true value-creating work, the keystone of American journalism, the principle around which it is organized, is public-interest reporting; the kind that is usually expensive, risky, stressful, and time-consuming. ...


Not only does the FON consensus have little to say about public-service journalism, it is in many ways antithetical to it. For one thing, its anti-institutionalism would disempower journalism. Jarvis and Shirky in particular have reveled in the role of intellectual undertakers/grief counselors to the newspaper industry, which, for all its many failings, has traditionally carried the public-service load.

So far, I'm in total agreement. The FON crowd largely ignores costs and overheads, as do many of their fellow travelers. And, by over-touting social media, etc., can trivialize news. (See below.)

And, is there a solution? Solutions?

Many of Shirky’s prescriptions for the economics of journalism are commonsensical and even wise. A point I find inarguable is that while some news models have been found to work in some contexts-—The Wall Street Journal’s pay wall, ProPublica’s fund-raising model (basically, one big donor), Talking Points Memo’s online ad-based system—nothing to date is scalable. There is no news business “model” at all. And who can argue with his call for constant experimentation?

I would tend to agree. And, that's why I'm not always as hard on this aspect of Shirky's thought as on Rosen's or Jarvis'.


Meanwhile, is the FON crowd counter-cultural? The story suggests so:

If some aspects of peer-production theory and its FON offshoot sound familiar—anti-institutionalism; communitarianism laced with libertarianism; a millennial, Age-of-Aquarius vibe; a certain militancy—some scholars have traced its roots to 1960s counterculture.

I'd say look to today, instead; Shirky, et al, sound like the utopian wing of Occupy Wall Street.

Meanwhile, CJR gets to "throwing under the bus" time, saying Jarvis, as example, and most the FON crowd are ... hypocritical leeches:

Like other FON thinkers, he lives the contradiction of extolling peer production and volunteerism from the security of an institution. It is doubly jarring in Jarvis’s case; an opponent of publicly funded journalism, his journalistic entrepreneurialism is, in fact, publicly subsidized. The “C” in CUNY stands for “City.”

CJR then raises a related issue: the claim that news is a commodity. Of course, the FON crowd starts with one half of Steward Brand's famous quote:

Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine - too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, 'intellectual property', the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.

And, of course, the FON crowd is coming down emphatically, and simplistically, IMO, on the "free" side. That's why they fight paywalls, diss micropayments and other things.  But, as the CJR story notes, paywalls are working, and getting adopted by more and more dailies.

Meanwhile, here's more of that intellectual dishonesty:

I would note that there’s a point at which predicting institutional decline blurs into rooting for it, and then morphs into hastening it along, as the anti-pay wall debate shows. ... “We need the new news environment to be chaotic” to facilitate experimentation, Shirky writes. In fact, though, only consultants “need” the news environment to be chaotic.

CJN's Starkman goes on to say he expects some "media establishment" to remain in place for quite some time.

I’m going to make a bold leap and predict—eenie meenie chili beanie—that for a long time the Future of News is going to look unnervingly like the Present of News: hobbled news organizations, limping along, supplemented by swarms of new media outlets doing their best. It’s not sexy, but that’s journalism for you. 

And, here's why he's at least halfway comfortable with that statement:

It pays to remember that the most triumphalist FON works were written in 2008 and 2009, during journalism’s time of maximum panic. But now, panic time is over.

It is ... and as he says, "muddling" time continues. And, that is no thanks to the FON crowd:

The cruel truth of the emerging networked news environment is that reporters are as disempowered as they have ever been, writing more often, under more pressure, with less autonomy, about more trivial things than under the previous monopolistic regime. Indeed, if one were looking for ways to undermine reporters in their work, FON ideas would be a good place to start.

Indeed, especially about the trivialization. Working at a newspaper that thinks Facebook and Twitter posting will magically fix things seems to illustrate that. When everything is news, nothing is.

Finally, Starkman says that what he calls "Neo-institutional journalism" can be rebuilt, but that it will take work.

Shirky responds, but, IMO, as a kinder, gentler Jarvis more than anything else.

Beyond that, the new media fluffers fail to address how social media, Internet 2.0, etc. threaten us all, not just journalists, with being crushed beneath the wheel, whether like in Hesse's novel of that name or some other way.