OJR front page archive for October 2011
Wherever you see a demonstration, journalism has failed
October 28, 2011
Wherever you see a demonstration, journalism has failed.I know that this might sound harsh to some readers, but people don't take to the streets to support a cause that's getting wall-to-wall news coverage. They take to the streets when they feel their voices aren't being heard - and won't be, unless they make a public demonstration.
Dahlia Lithwick nailed it in Slate this week:
We are the most media-saturated 24-hour-cable-soaked culture in the world, and yet around the country, on Facebook and at protests, people are holding up cardboard signs, the way protesters in ancient Sumeria might have done when demonstrating against a rise in the price of figs. And why is that? Because they very wisely don't trust television cameras and microphones to get it right anymore. Because a media constructed around the illusion of false equivalencies, screaming pundits, and manufactured crises fails to capture who we are and what we value.
It's not just Occupy Wall Street. Journalists missed the story behind the early Tea Party rallies, too, not to mention the stories that drove hundreds of thousands to take to the streets in support of immigrants' rights and against the Iraq war, earlier in the past decade.
One year ago, I suggested the five most important beats for a local newspaper or website. One of those was labor. That's because the business desk at most news publications and channels is devoted to covering the business news of what Occupy protesters call "the one percent" - the top one percent highest-income individuals in the country. Business news coverage obsesses over the management class - daily swings in the stock market and personnel moves among high-level executives. The business desk typically looks at public policy from the perspective of owners and rentiers - too rarely from the point of view of labor, renters or borrowers. I suggested that start-up news publishers establish a labor beat to counter this imbalance and to meet a need for storytelling within their communities that isn't being met by traditional news organizations.
Why don't some media pros 'get' social media?
October 25, 2011
An OJR reader recently emailed:"I am amazed at how behind the curve some/many/most PR people seem to be with social media and I keep wondering why they don't 'get it' - their field is communication and [social media] can be such a powerful way to communicate. But the people doing the PR seem to be stuck in the mud. Why?"
I wrote back that PR people who are used to serving as gatekeepers between sources and the press (and by extension) the public, aren't going to be thrilled to embrace a medium that allows their clients to connect directly with the people the PR agent's been setting them up with for years. It's the same hang-up that many journalists have with social media - if you've built your career as the go-between for readers and sources, would you rather support or try to tear down an innovation that makes your go-between role unnecessary?
Unfortunately, too many journalists and PR people are either ignoring or trashing social media when they should be taking notice of the many new opportunities that social media's created for media professionals. No, we're not needed as gatekeepers anymore. But that doesn't mean that there isn't still much for us to do.
Here are five new roles for media professionals in social media:
Tips for promoting your news website or book on TV
October 21, 2011
Last week, I shared some tips for promoting your publication on the radio. This week, I'm expanding the list of tips to include ones specific to appearing on television.All of the radio tips apply to TV, too. But on television, you're adding a visual element to your presentation, one that can undermine your message if you don't take the time and make the effort to work within the opportunities of the medium.
So prepare as you would for a radio interview - know your "talking points" and have those easy-to-remember facts and anecdotes ready. Warm up, but keep your cool when you're on the air. And follow these tips, too:
I work out of a home office, which raises an additional issue. If the TV crew is coming by at an hour when the rest of the family is home, make sure you talk to the kids beforehand about how to behave when the crew is there. In short, keep quiet and stay out of the way.
Don't just blame the player - blame the game, too
October 18, 2011
I would have hired former Politico.com reporter Kendra Marr.Why? Because her resume and my resume are so alike.
Same journalism undergrad and grad school. Same love of journalism. We both worked in the San Francisco Bay Area region. Both women of color. In other words, if I was a hiring editor interviewing her for a job, I would figure that we shared the same journalistic values.
Yet I also understand how the kind of plagiarism accusations lodged against her could lead a young reporter to resign from a good job.
Sure, the player has to shoulder the blame. But I blame the game, too.
These days chances are shrinking for an ambitious journalist to get a job that pays a middle-class salary with benefits. Young journalists no longer have the luxury of making mistakes out of the spotlight. If you want a job, you have to go directly into the big leagues. More likely than not, your job will be on the growing digital media side of the business. The side, to be polite, that is more like the Wild West than reasoned halls of journalism school.
What's more, the Internet, and its research techniques, make it easy to find facts, stories, sources and so much more. A lot of the material is already written in coherent sentences and has attribution, which under the current rules of the game, can be an embedded link to the original news story.
Don't get me started about cutting and pasting. Yes, I can understand how someone can cut and paste reference material on the wrong take (Google Docs, anyone?) and, in the rush to deadline, forget what is yours and what belongs to someone else. These days it's just too easy to make a series of career-ending errors early in the game.
But the game deserves blame, too.
Tips for promoting your news website or book on the radio
October 14, 2011
When you achieve a leadership position in the journalism business - whether that be within a newsroom or running your own publishing business - promotion becomes an indispensable part of your work duties. You'll need to become a spokesperson for your efforts - and that includes appearing on radio and television programs to promote your work and the brand name of your publication.In my experience, many reporters freak out at the thought of becoming a source. Especially a source on camera or on a live mic. But you don't need to be nervous or feel intimidated. You're a communications professional, after all. If you feel comfortable asking questions, you should feel comfortable answering them, too.
Or, at least, you should feel comfortable with learning how to answer them. That's what we're going to talk about today, and next week, here on OJR. I'll be listing some of my tips for writers and editors who need to appear on radio and television to promote their work. We'll start with radio today, and add some television-specific tips next week.
First, you need to get the gig. Use the contacts you've built during your career. If you've got a project, a site or a book that you think would be of interest to the audience at a particular show, reach out to the people you know at that program and offer yourself as a guest. Keep the focus on the audience, though. Don't "pull strings" or call in favors to get on shows where you or your work isn't a good match. That won't help you build readership or sales, and will only damage your relationships with colleagues. (Not to mention their relationship with their employer. No one wants to be the one responsible for booking a bum guest.)
A social media wish list for news publishers
October 11, 2011
You've started a Facebook page for your publication. You tweet several times a day. You're even hawking stories over on Google Plus now.But that's not enough for you.
If you're like me, the tools and metrics you use to connect with your audience through the major social media services aren't enough. We're greedy consumers, we news publishers, and we want more.
In that spirit, here is my wish list of tools I'd like to see the major social media services provide to news publishers.
On Facebook
I'd love to be able to see, somewhere, a list of everyone who has liked a URL from my site that has been posted to Facebook. Or even just a reliable number of how many people might be on that list. As it stands now, I see different numbers on the "Like" buttons we post on the articles themselves, and on the links posted to my sites' Facebook pages. And I have no way to track likes of that URL if it is independently posted to FB by people with which I'm not friends or to whom I don't subscribe. C'mon, Facebook. Let publishers see exactly how many people like their stuff.
I'd also like to know what people are saying around Facebook about the pieces published to my websites. I've started using Facebook's comments application on one of my websites, and like how it cross-posts comments made on my site to commentors' Facebook walls (increasing the visibility of the post). But how cool would it be if I had the option to allow that app to also display all comments about that URL posted anywhere on Facebook? Or, if I didn't want to use Facebook's comments app, if I had the option on my site's Facebook page to pull in all FB comments about that piece? For pieces that generate hundreds of comments, give the page administrator the option to select the top comments for display on the page. Either way, this tool would encourage greater interaction between publishers and Facebook, and empower publishers to better connect with the audience that's talking about their work.
Steve Jobs and business of inspiration: A lesson for journalists
October 7, 2011
When was the last time you inspired someone?I thought of that question while reading the many tributes to the last Steve Jobs this week. Those recollections prompted me to tweet:
"Steve Jobs' greatest accomplishment was inspiring the kids who one day will make stuff 1000x better than anything Apple has done so far."
Steve Jobs' Apple products help inspire my son to fall in love with computers, photography and filmmaking. The elegance and ease of use of Apple products helped my son to see past the technical hassles that frustrated so many others' attempts at digital creation in the past and to focus instead on the joy of expressing himself in communication with others.
I know toddlers who play and explore with iPads, even before they can walk, and elementary students who think nothing of creating sophisticated digital cartoons and short films. I know grown-ups who listen to more music and read more stories (yes, including news!) that they did before, thanks to Apple products developed under Jobs' stewardship.
With all those people reading, shooting, thinking and creating, I believe that it is inevitable that some of them, one day, will create new digital technology that will surpass anything Apple created under Jobs. Perhaps it will be current Apple engineers who carry on Jobs' legacy. Perhaps it will be some toddler with an iPad. But inspiration cultivates creative expression. It cultivates engagement and advancement. Jobs' ultimate legacy therefore, is not a collection of cool consumer products, the iTunes store, or even Pixar Studios (yeah, he founded that, too). Jobs' legacy is inspiring a digital generation to connect and to create.
What does 'job security' mean for a journalist, anyway?
October 4, 2011
First, I want to recommend that all online journalists take a look at Howard Owens' excellent piece on what AOL is asking its Patch editors to do on a daily basis: You should only work this hard if you own the business.I tweeted that link to my followers this week, and got some push-back from friends and colleagues. Their reaction boiled down to: "What about job security?"
They tried to argue that Patch editors have job security that self-employed news publishers don't enjoy. But working for someone else doesn't equate to job security. From my perspective, it's not working for someone else that provides the ultimate in job security.
An agreement from an employer to cut you a weekly check means nothing if that employer goes under. Or if it cuts you loose. Patch hardly looks like a stable employer at this stage, with reports of multi-million dollar losses and few signs of black ink anywhere in its network.
But even profitable employers lay off workers. The Los Angeles Times was still fat with cash from the real estate bubble when it bought out me and dozens of other employees in 2004. Unless you are the owner of the company, you're always at risk for a lay-off. (Which is why I now work for myself. Given that I wasn't born into some rich newspaper family, this was the only way I was ever going to be the owner of a publishing company.)
That's also why the "job security" argument just doesn't resonate with me. Even an argument that full-time employment delivers income security leaves me skeptical. While it's nice to know that you are supposed to have a consistent income from week to week over the upcoming months, what happens if your boss taps you on the shoulder and says "I need to see you in my office" and you find a HR department rep waiting there?