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“Internet punk” Rob Curley has some most instructive commentary about how local newspapers can and should operate, in the Internet age, to cover breaking local news.
He does a moment-by-moment recount of how reporters for the Las Vegas Sun covered the fire at the Monte Carlo casino in what was virtually non-stop coverage. This PRINT publication used its blog and website to post updates, videos, photos and even background stories – as the fire was still being fought.
It’s not news that newspapers are facing tough times. Technology has created new challenges for print news gatherers, and change has come so fast that publishers’ heads must be about to twist off from the constant spinning around to check out the latest thing.
This may be Curley’s most cogent statement:
Now more than ever, newspapers have to show our communities that we are as relevant now — if not more — than we have ever been. Yet, as an industry, does it feel like we are doing that? Or does it seem that many in our ranks are just yearning for things to be like they used to be before that damned Internet?
The news business is no longer just about what will be on the front page tomorrow morning. Readers (I hate to use this term, but news consumers) now set the terms for how, when and what kind of news they receive. With a newsroom full of news gatherers and data researchers to draw on, there’s no reason why newspapers can’t be the news source of first choice.
(While you’re reading Curley’s blog, check out his additional comments about “hyper-local strategies” for increasing readership. It amounts to focusing on news in and of the community in which the paper circulates. This shouldn’t be news, but for some reason it is).
An article on Ars Technica raises perplexing issues about privacy, government intrusion and warrantless searches in the era of the iPhone and the Blackberry.
The rise of the Internet will put newspapers and television out of business. Everybody knows that, right? “Don’t write the obituary yet” might be the more accurate prediction, according to a story published by MediaWeek. Media research firm Borrell Associates studied where candidates for political office are spending their advertising dollars:
More than 80 percent of all political dollars, nearly $4 billion, will be spent locally, with 60 percent or $2.9 billion going to broadcast TV. Newspapers are forecast to capture 17 percent of dollars, followed by radio at 10 percent and cable TV at 5 percent.
The story adds that success on the Internet hasn’t translated into success at the polls:
…But as Ron Paul has discovered, heavy traffic on the Web site isn’t enough. Paul’s site garnered 37.9 percent of political traffic, but his candidacy has been unable to break through in the polls or in the primary races….
You’ve probably read the wire reports about the study by media groups that found the Bush administration put out more than 900 lies that led our country into the war in Iraq. Here’s the opening paragraphs of the actual report by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism:
President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.
On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.
It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose “Duelfer Report” established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq’s nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.
Read the full report here.
From “Editor and Publisher” magazine:
NEW YORK Already the media have found at least two dozen angles to approach the sudden death of actor Heath Ledger in New York City today. The Los Angeles Times entertainment blog, Web Scout, used the occasion to look at the way the news emerged, almost in “real time.”
The Times now reports on its site, pointing to the danger, “that preliminary reports that pills were found scattered around Ledger’s body” were “inaccurate.”
Here is part of the posting at www.latimes. com :
If you watched the story of Heath Ledger’s death explode chaotically across the Internet, with facts, errors, inconsistencies and confusions flying every which way, you may have concluded that in the new digital media’s race to break stories in minutes, accuracy has been left in the dust.
Chief among the media’s switchbacks was the early non-fact that Ledger’s death had taken place at the New York apartment of Mary-Kate Olsen. Celebrity news site TMZ.com and even the New York Times’ City Room blog reported this piece of misinformation before they unreported it.
Importantly, however, neither the New York Times nor TMZ got it wrong. It was the NYPD spokesman who had the story mixed up — the media were simply parroting incorrect information.
When the spokesman later corrected himself, the sites rushed to update the story, but readers were critical of the changes.
“TMZ is in such a rush to break the news,” one commenter wrote, echoing dozens of others, “that they are usually wrong first.”
But here’s the problem: Stories have never arrived to the world fully formed or vetted. Journalists have generally had hours — not minutes or seconds — to craft a story from the blast wave of facts and factoids that comes in the wake of a bombshell.
What people are seeing now is an old-fashioned process — reporting — as it unfolds in real time. If the public wants its information as raw and immediate as possible, it’ll have to get used to a few missteps along the way, and maybe even approach breaking stories with a bit of skepticism, like a good reporter would.
Here’s a slightly different perspective from Columbia Journalism Review.
From Ars Technica:
After commissioning a 2005 study from LEK Consulting that showed collegiate file-swappers were responsible for 44 percent of movie studio “losses” to piracy, the MPAA then used the report it bought to bludgeon Congress into considering legislation to address this massive problem. Now the MPAA admits that the report’s conclusions weren’t even close to being right; collegiate piracy accounts for only 15 percent of “losses.” Oops. And that’s assuming you believe the rest of the data.
Read more here.
“Inside Higher Ed” has another take on the revelation.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080107110356.htm
ScienceDaily (Jan. 8, 2008) — A new Brown University study reports that U.S. states that require voters to present identification before casting ballots have lower levels of political participation. The research also indicates that voter I.D. policies discourage legal immigrants from becoming citizens, particularly for blacks and Hispanics, reducing odds of naturalization by more than 15 percent.
Since 2000, and stimulated by new security concerns after 9/11, there has been an upsurge in state requirements for voter identification. By 2004, a total of 19 states required some form of documentation of a voter’s identity, sometimes in the form of photo I.D. Proponents of such requirements believe identification is a necessary tool to prevent voting fraud, such as voting by noncitizens or people who are otherwise ineligible to register. Others argue that whatever its intention, I.D. policies have the effect of suppressing electoral participation, particularly among minorities.
The report, co-authored by S4 Director John Logan and graduate student Jennifer Darrah, concludes that voter I.D. is one of many factors that negatively influence civic participation in the United States. The report states, “At a time when many public officials express regret that immigrants seem to lag in their participation in mainstream society, even small suppressive effects on naturalization — the formal step to becoming an American citizen — work in the wrong direction and should be taken into account as people evaluate the benefits and costs of more stringent identification requirements.”
The new study extends previous research on I.D. requirements by analyzing not only voter turnout, but also voter registration and — “the key prior step for immigrants” — the decision to become a citizen, across racial and ethnic groups.
Key findings include:
- in states with a voter I.D. policy in 2000, the odds of naturalization for foreign-born residents of the United States were reduced by more than 5 percent, with the strongest impact on Hispanics;
- in election years from 1996-2004, the odds of being a registered voter among citizens aged 18 and older were higher for whites by about 15 percent in states with voter I.D. requirements. But this effect was more than counterbalanced by a reduction in white voter turnout. In 2004 alone the net effect was to reduce white turnout in these states by about 400,000 votes;
- in this same period, voter I.D. policies reduced Asians’ registration and diminished voter turnout by blacks and Hispanics, by about 14 percent and 20 percent respectively. The net reduction in minority voting in these states in 2004 was more than 400,000 votes;
- the suppressive effect of voter I.D. disproportionately affected not only minorities, but also persons with less than a high school education and less than $15,000 income, tenants, and recent movers. While persons with these characteristics are substantially less likely to participate in civic affairs regardless of their state of residence, they experience an additional significant reduction in participation relative to others in voter I.D. states.
“It is incredibly clear how voter I.D. requirements disproportionately affect and suppress minorities,” said Logan, professor of sociology. “This data shows that if voter I.D. policies had not been in place in 2004, voter turnout would have increased by more than 1.6 million. That is a strong argument in itself for change.”
The constitutionality of voter I.D. provisions is now under review by the U.S. Supreme Court with oral argument scheduled for Jan. 9, 2008. The case, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, challenges the 2005 Indiana law requiring all voters who cast a ballot in person to present a photo I.D. issued by the United States or the State of Indiana.
The full study was published by the American Communities Project at Brown’s Initiative in Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences (S4). This study, supported by a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation, is based on two more extended analyses of naturalization and political participation recently completed by Logan, Darrah, and Sookhee Oh, adjunct assistant professor of population studies.
Adapted from materials provided by Brown University.
Chrysler Shifts Ads to Sports, Web as Writers Strike (Update1)
By Mike Ramsey
Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) — Chrysler LLC, the third-largest U.S. automaker, is shifting its television advertising dollars to live sports and the Internet and out of primetime programs as the Hollywood writers’ strike heads into an 11th week.
The temporary move may become permanent, because primetime commercials don’t have as much viewer impact they did a decade ago, marketing chief Deborah Wahl Meyer said yesterday in an interview at the Detroit auto show. Meanwhile, Chrysler is reaching buyers on car-enthusiast Web sites, she said.
The strike “is changing the whole broadcast model,” Meyer said. Unlike the last writers’ walkout, in 1988, “the biggest thing we’ve noticed about the strike is that nobody is talking about it,” she added.
Advertising on sports telecasts and on the Internet allows Chrysler to keep reaching consumers while the strike forces cancellation of many of the programs where the automaker placed ads. Meyer wouldn’t say how much Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler spends on TV ads.
“I don’t think this will mean a crisis for network TV yet,” said Research Vice President Brad Agate at New York-based consulting firm Horizon Media. “It could have an impact on pricing” if demand falls for 30-second ads on primetime shows, he added.
The writers’ strike forced Wahl to seek a new advertising strategy after joining Chrysler in August from Toyota Motor Corp., where she was in charge of marketing for the Lexus brand.
Union writers walked out on Nov. 5 after failing to agree with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers on how they would be paid for use of their work on the Internet and mobile devices.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mike Ramsey in Detroit at mramsey6bloomberg.net
Source: Bloomberg.com
Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (CRONEM)
Nationalism, Ethnicity and Citizenship:
Whose Citizens? Whose Rights?
30 June – 1 July, 2008
University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
CRONEM’s 2008 conference will address issues bound up with nationalism, ethnicity and citizenship from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Multicultural societies raise crucial challenges for traditional conceptions of nations and citizenship. Ethnic diversity can mean that significant numbers of people are excluded from national projects, while the ‘melting pot’ metaphor belies the complexities of societies in which minority communities seek to protect their heritages and resist incorporation into the nation or state.
At the same time, conceptions of citizenship appear to be undergoing transformation. Civic engagement and participation is frequently viewed as being more effective in achieving social change than traditional forms of political representation. Levels of both civic and political participation vary significantly across ethnic communities, while political institutions are required to adjust to accommodate marginalised communities more effectively into democratic processes.
At the international level, the sovereignty of the nation state has been increasingly challenged in the name of protecting or asserting universal human rights. Regimes, deemed oppressive by powerful external actors, have been subjected to sanctions or military intervention. The question of national citizenship, with its attendant rights and obligations, is being reframed in the light of new expectations. The implications of this process for the future of states and their citizens remain unclear, but they appear to encourage the erosion of national sovereignty in favour of participation at both sub-national and international levels.
Themes: · Conceptualising citizenship in ethnically diverse societies · Comparisons of old and new forms of citizenship · Political versus civic engagement and participation · Incorporating marginalised groups into democratic processes · The concepts of intercultural, multicultural and cosmopolitan citizenship · Citizenship and religion · Citizenship and migrants · The role of civic/citizenship education in multicultural societies · National citizenship and universal human rights · Ethnic conflict regulation and the roles of international actors Confirmed speakers:
- Hans van Amersfoort, Emeritus Professor, Cultural Geography and Population Geography, Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Michael Byram, Professor of Education, Durham University
- Nick Emler, Professor of Social Psychology, University of Surrey
- Jonathan Friedman, Professor of Social Anthropology, Lund University, Sweden
- Montserrat Guibernau, Professor of Politics, University of London
- Lord Bhikhu Parekh, Labour Member of the House of Lords and Professor of Political Philosophy, University of Westminster
- Oren Yiftachel, Associate Professor of Political Geography, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Please send your submissions to Mirela Dumic (m.dumic@surrey.ac.uk). Deadline for submissions: 1st February 2008. Notification of acceptance will be sent to presenters by 3rd March 2008.
Registration and venue details http://www.surrey.ac.uk/Arts/CRONEM/registration08.htm
Write a new word in the blank pages of your dictionary: “Britney.” Noun. Definition: A woman’s sexual organ, as in “Her skirt was so short that when she sat down you could see her ‘Britney.’” Etymology: Paparazzi photographs of singer Britney Spears’ nether regions revealed as unclothed as she exited, ungracefully, from automobiles. When I read that, I laughed. Admit it – you did too. But I was immediately embarrassed. Laughter is a wholly inappropriate response to the tragedy that is Britney Spears. Nothing that happens to the talented singer seems too gruesome, too disgusting, too disgraceful, for the media to keep it out of the printed page or off the air.
If you accept the argument that the media creates celebrities, then the Spears case has to be seen as that of a parent eating its own child. Is our fascination with celebrity really an addiction that can be sated only by devouring the last drop of blood from the cherished star? What amount of restraint should the media exercise in reporting on the failings and peccadilloes of the “beautiful people?” Writing on the Spears situation, Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute says journalists must look beyond the titillations of the moment to find the teaching moment:
And here, for journalists, is the crux of the problem: While we linger beyond imagination on the dissolution of one young celebrity, mental illness is an almost invisible story in the American news media. I came to this conclusion after reading the book, “Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness,” a Pulitzer finalist. In it, Pete Earley, an experienced journalist, reveals the terrible truths that should be on the pages of America’s newspapers every day: that we have not progressed as far as we think from Shakespeare’s day when the mentally ill prisoners of Bedlam Hospital were put on display as public entertainment.
Clark continues:
Is there a way to cover the Britney Spears story responsibly? I’m no Puritan when it comes to gossip, and I’ve grown up reading the tabloids, but there is clearly a danger zone, when life and health are at stake, when the best thing the press can do is back off. That time for Spears is probably now. Avoiding the daily soap opera does not require journalists to abstain from critical and analytical pieces on celebrity, addiction, gender and mental illness. And perhaps the troubles of a particular celebrity might be an occasion to turn the camera away to the less intriguing but more important cases of mental illness in our own communities.
To read Clark’s complete commentary, go here.
