Mediaocrity, U.S.A.

What a bunch of Twits

2009-06-17T19:09:00.000-07:00

Watching the unrest in Iran can be depressing, and not just because of the sham election.

It's depressing to watch major news networks on cable dismiss the protests as riots, or prattle breathlessly about the so-called Twitter revolution.

For starters, the Democracy movement unfolding right now has been in the works for years.

Smart, sophisticated organizers have deftly and courageously merged the interests of numerous factions of a complex, nuanced society ... and all while evading the oppressive thumb of the theocratic rulers.

Anyone with a brain and some familiarity with organizing people at any level can appreciate the great skill, passion and determination of the organizers.

Yet, if you just watch the cable news, you'd think there was an election, some people woke up mad because their guy lost and, because of Twitter, they had a bunch of riots.

As if the cultural obliviousness isn't bad enough, there's more.

News corporations that have been cutting foreign bureaus and other journalistic areas of their operations are trying to present unfiltered, unverified, unvetted Tweets without context as an adequate replacement to reports from culturally literate, professionally trained and experienced journalists on the ground.

To rub more salt in the wound, they audaciously claim this style of news is necessary because the Iranian government has thrown reporters out of the country or placed them under house arrest.

Professional journalists have reported from Civil War battlefields, WWI trenches, produced live radio during the Blitz in London, delivered an iconic shot of marines raising the flag on Mt. Suribachi.

Yet we're told, by the styled and pressed studio anchors with million-dollar contracts paid for with the money saved by slashing foreign affairs coverage, that they can't manage to get professional journalists into Iran because the desperate figurehead of a crumbling regime doesn't like the news.

And we're expected to believe it.

I'm not suggesting that news organizations should ignore Tweets and Facebook updates.

I'm saying if they were really interested in delivering quality information they would maintain robust bureaus in places like the Middle East and employ culturally literate, trained journalists to analyze and interpret the information so it could be delivered with the context Americans need to form credible opinions and press for constructive solutions.

Keep the paper in newspapers

2009-03-13T07:53:00.000-07:00

With newspapers shutting down throughout the country, there's talk in several major cities of online-only versions of former print products.

The Hearst chain even appears to be positioning to make online-only a business model, beginning in Seattle and then, perhaps, in San Francisco.

Newspapers in Madison, Wis., and Detroit have also gone wholly online or mostly online.

I'm not going to dispute newspapers are in legitimate trouble, revenue from print ads is falling faster than GM sales.

But in many places the newspaper in print is still a profitable product, more so than newspaper Web sites.

There's a reason for that. Here in Las Vegas hundreds of thousands of people still read the print product every day. It's mobile, easy to scan, high-resolution and the most thorough singular presentation of local news.

It also costs just $1 per week, an insanely low price considering the quality of the news and the fact the price includes delivery to your doorstep.

Despite these advantages, there are still many customers who prefer the online versions of either the Review-Journal/Sun or from other sites to printed editions.

Online advantages include an even lower cost to the consumer, free, and the ability to e-mail articles to other people or post them to social networking sites and blogs for further discussion.

The Internet has also snagged most of the classified advertising that was once the lifeblood of newspapers.

I still don't think all is lost when it comes to print, though.

If newspapers did a better job merging their print and online products, it would benefit each.

For starters, I would make readers, aggregate sites and bloggers pay for news content online.

People who buy an article or an online subscription should have to pay more if they intend to post it for viewing by others than if they simply want to read it themselves and perhaps e-mail it to friends, family or colleagues. (ie., Ariana Huffington should pay a higher rate to poach content she uses to drive her own site than, say, my mother would pay to read an article and e-mail it to my sisters.)

In the short-term, the newspaper site would lose a lot of readers.

But given a choice between 10,000 paying readers and 1 million freeloaders, I'd take the paying crowd.

I'm sure plenty of advertisers would also appreciate the targeted, dedicated audience of a premium news site.

And here's where the print product comes in.

I would offer free online subscriptions to everyone who buys a print subscription.

It would be a good way to introduce online-first people to the print product and advertisers in print would certainly appreciate the new eyeballs.

Recognizing that not everyone wants to commit to an annual subscription, I would also find a way to link online access to single copy sales.

One way might be to print a code inside the print edition each day that, when plugged into the site, provides access for 24 hours.

To give even further incentive for buying a single copy edition, I'd make sure the readers who paid 50 or 75 cents for the print copy also received one of the greatest advantages of online news with their purchase, updates.

The newspaper could tag all the stories in each daily edition with a code that coincides with the 24 hour access code.

When a reader plugs in for the 24 hours of access they got by buying the daily print edition, they could also sign up for e-mail updates on any or all the stories that were in the paper on the day they bought the print edition.

This doesn't solve the classified ad problem, but that can be done too.

Newspapers should continue to charge for classifieds, they just need to make sure they deliver a better product and service than the free classified listings like Craigs List.

Anyone who has used Craigs List knows what needs improvement.

There needs to be better screening to weed out scams, there should be a way for non professionals to get a professional photo with their ad, there should be customer support by phone, the ad listing service should cross reference your listing with others like it so you can see where your price fits with the marketplace and the listing service should offer a central voice mail service so you don't have to give out your own phone number if you don't wish to.

It won't recover all the ads lost to Craigs List, but it is an opportunity to carve out a niche with people who prefer something a little nicer than the free services.

In the end, though, it is all about quality.

For the most part, newspapers are still delivering a quality product relative to the competition.

But that advantage is eroding and the papers need to act fast and decisively to maintain it.

Conservatives, listen to Dean Wormer!

2009-03-09T20:55:00.000-07:00

Wormer is the guy in Animal House who told Flounder, "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life."
Yet that's exactly the path the conservative movement is following behind leaders such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and other TV yakkers.
I recently wrote a note to a columnist in the conservative mag Townhall .
The writer, Derek Hall from the group Americans for Tax Reform, wrote to slam President Barack Obama's stated desire to extend the reach of broadband Internet access further throughout America.
Hunter leads with some good points that question the very premise that broadband access is a necessity worthy of government intervention, a great start for a conservative argument.
Then, sadly, he goes off the rails. Since I couldn't find the column on the Townhall Web site, you'll have to glean the gist of his inaccuracies from the text of the e-mail I sent to object.
"Mr. Hunter:
I recently read your piece in Town Hall criticizing the government effort to
increase access to broadband Internet access.
While I'm certain the government will provide many credible targets for
criticism with its effort, your article failed to identify them.
Specifically, the statement, 'The Internet has not developed into the
economic powerhouse it is because of government, it's done so without
government,' is flat out wrong.
I won't bore you with the
details<http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml>,
but the very concept of what became the Internet was developed in 1962 in a
series of memos by an MIT trained scientist who was the first head of
computer research at DARPA <http://www.darpa.mil/about.html>, the Defense
Advanced Research Project Agency -- which is funded by the government.
Further, the idea was refined into rudimentary networking at DARPA and
further developed into what we might recognize as an early version of the
Internet at University of California, Los Angeles -- a publicly funded
university.
Also, you attempted to draw an analogy between your incorrect statement
about the Internet with yet another incorrect statement about the
development of the automobile.
You wrote, 'When the car was introduced, it was an innovation that changed
the world, yet the government didn't subsidize it (until recently) to make
sure everyone could afford one.'
The government has spent billions -- maybe trillions -- on roads, highways,
bridges and other infrastructure that make it feasible for individual,
privately owned cars to be practical modes of transportation.
The government also spends billions -- maybe trillions -- to defend the
petroleum supply chain we rely on to have affordable gasoline that fuels the
cars we drive. (Even if you accept the premise we're fighting for freedom in
the Middle East on its face, the alleged freedom fighting has the fortunate
byproduct of maintaining access to massive oil reserves.)
If you want people to take seriously the conservative movement espoused by
your magazine, it would behoove you to check your facts and avoid using
misleading and incorrect statements to support your sweeping arguments
against government programs."
What's sadder than the fact Hunter didn't bother to check the facts behind his column is the fact it was printed in a prominent conservative magazine.
With the political left in control of the executive and legislative branches of government, smart conservative criticism is more important than ever.
Yet poorly researched writing like the Townhall article and mean-spirited and ill-informed rants by the aforementioned TV jabberers have seized lead roles for the opposition.
Which brings me to my greater point regarding the media.
Media outlets driven by ideology are no substitute for fact-driven, market-supported sources of information.
The former are too likely to put ideology ahead of readers, which means making the story fit the ideology by any means necessary.

NPR responds

2009-03-09T08:10:00.000-07:00

Kudos to the staff at National Public Radio, Adam Davidson specifically, for the quick response to Mediaocrity's questions about the recent This American Life report "Bad Banks'.
(The background and link are in the post previous to this, scroll down.)
One of the dramatic points in the NPR report was the description of a chart that compared consumer debt to GDP.
The expert pointed out that the last time consumer debt outpaced GDP was in 1929, right before the nation into the Great Depression.
I was moved by that fact and sought to replicate it here on the blog, but when I searched for confirmation I found a link to another report that seemed to refute it.
Davidson responded to my request to clear up the discrepancy. He pointed out the report I found looked at different types of debt besides consumer debt.
He also said there was some discussion of consumer debt at the source I found that came to the same numeric conclusion as the NPR expert, that consumer debt had indeed grown to the highest point relative to GDP since right before the depression.
So, we can conclude NPR is right on the facts here.
But, the report I found and NPR came to different qualitative conclusions.
NPR implied, but didn't state flat-out, that the chart suggested we are on the cusp or already in another depression like that of the 1930s.
The report I found said the consumer leveraging surge is, "a relatively recent one and not necessarily massive in scale," implying it could be unwound without creating a major depression.
As Philosopher-Poet Larry David once said, through his earthly medium Jerry Seinfeld, "That's a pretty big matzo ball hanging out there."

Boy, was I wrong

2009-03-07T08:04:00.000-08:00

The NPR program "This American Life" is running an episode titled "Bad Bank" that attempts to explain the economy, and its drastic problems, simply and clearly to the listeners.
I heard the show last night and thought it was great. I'll spare you the details and just tell you the NPR finance reporters did an excellent job explaining the complex systems and problems and the producers delivered highly credible, yet conversational, experts to elaborate.
The part that struck me most about the show was when one of the experts presented a dire scenario. Apparently, the nation's combined debt surpassed the size of the GDP sometime in 2007.
The last time this happened? About 1929.
The expert described a chart that tracks debt relative to GDP throughout the 20th and early 21st century. The chart was two big peaks. We all know what happened after the first peak.
This was such a striking and compelling example I woke up today determined to find this chart and post it here with the suggestion that it is time to start describing the economy as being in a depression.
But as so often happens to reporters, the slam dunk evidence that was going to blow the lid off the story isn't as easy as that.
Instead, I found a report on the Business Insider Web site that says the debt-to-GDP chart and analysis is flat-out wrong and meaningless.
Check it out here.
Meanwhile, I'm going to try and track down the reporter for the NPR story for some reaction.
I'd like to hear what he and the expert have to say. The reporter has some pretty fancy credentials and his NPR bio credits him with filing, "the greatest explainer ever heard." So there's a darn good chance he has a good explanation for this discrepancy.
As a bonus, we'll find out what kind of sway Mediaocrity has in its field. (Don't hold your breath waiting for a response, in other words.)

Value added news

2009-03-03T18:28:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of criticism directed at newspapers lately, much of it valid.
But an experience I just had reminded me why traditional news organizations offer added value to readers.
I filed a blog update on a local airline with my own employer, the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
About 30 minutes later my phone rang, it was a copy editor from the paper.
She was reading the entry before posting it and had a question about how I described an increase in traffic.
The way I filed it was accurate, but just the fact that someone else is reading the copy before it goes live tells me there's value for readers in newspapers that is greater than one-person operations or other post-first-ask-questions-later-type sources of information.

Homeowner bailout bill

2009-02-21T07:56:00.000-08:00

Everyone is writing reaction stories to the $75 billion foreclosure prevention initiative President Obama detailed Wednesday.
The hardest-hitting coverage comes from reporting on resentment among solvent homeowners toward people suddenly getting government help to pay their unsustainable mortgages.
Those pieces have generated their own share of reaction from anti-resentment hand-wringers who say, with some accuracy, that even solvent homeowners benefit when their neighbors avoid foreclosure.
The economic story I'm yet to see is some reaction from home-shoppers, or at least discussion of how non-homeowners will be affected.
By propping up home values, or "stabilizing" the market as proponents like to say, the government is keeping people in homes than other people may already be ready and willing to buy.
The tough question is, why is it good public policy to keep some people in homes they can't afford on their own at the risk of inserting a false bottom on prices that could prevent others from becoming homeowners.

To charge, or not to charge

2009-02-20T20:47:00.000-08:00

I found myself in an interesting discussion this morning with a conservative opinion columnist at the Review-Journal.
We were discussing the merits and drawbacks of newspapers charging money for content.
Interestingly, I was the one arguing on behalf of charging while Glenn, my free-market friend, was wary of the notion.
It reminded me of this post I recently read on one of my favorite media blogs.
The passage was in this interview, which is worth the read.

"What’s going to kill newspapers is not the Internet or the spectre of “free” — the fact others have gotten rich on “free” suggests there’s still money to be made even if it’s not directly extracted from the readers. What’s going to kill newspapers is that they’re frequently not that interesting; the corporate blandifying process has been largely successful, one newspaper generally looks and reads like another, and readers — particularly younger ones — don’t find anything that brings them back for more."

Why analysts analyze, and why reporters quote them

2009-02-20T20:33:00.000-08:00

I recently reported on an investor who has research that suggests stock in one of the most prominent employers in Las Vegas stands to lose as much as 65 percent of its value.
The investor, Reggie Middleton, isn't widely quoted in the media but has a strong track record forecasting the commercial and residential real estate crises and downfalls of companies long before executives and business publications acknowledge problems.
Middleton's track record surpasses that of many widely quoted analysts. Which has me thinking about why we quote who we quote.
It's funny, I think there are a lot of people who think if an analyst doesn't move markets immediately the analyst isn't effective. Conversely, there are alleged gurus out there who with a raise of the eyebrow seem to make markets dip or jump.
That's backward.
If an analyst is depending on a panicked reaction to his/her work then something is wrong, they're writing to idiots and probably counting on a lack of critical thinking to obscure thin research.
An effective analyst is one who can report -- before others -- forces at play in the economy or at a particular company and explain why those forces are relevant.
And that research is most effective when it forces other smart investors to look at the issue differently, investigate and verify the information on their own, and come to an independent conclusion.
If reporters did a better job seeking quality analysis, instead of simply accepting work of widely quoted analysts, perhaps we could have noticed the nation's economic problems as they were forming.

Let's stop the myth

2009-02-19T11:36:00.001-08:00

I read this paragraph in a recent story out of Palm Springs, Calif., and it reminded me of how reporters have been sucked into accepting lazy reasoning when it comes to business stories.
"After purchasing his Palm Springs home in 1997 for $240,000, Jim Franklin watched his home's value soar to about $900,000."

The writer here accepts the premise Franklin's home was actually worth $900,000 at some point.
And by accepting the premise the writer allows greedy or irrational homeowners, banks and mortgage brokers off the hook and perpetuates an argument that anyone was victimized by the market.
Franklin's home was only worth $900,000 if someone had paid him $900,000 to sell it. That's because the only true way to determine value of an asset is by witnessing what a willing buyer pays a willing seller to acquire the asset.
The story goes on to say that Franklin didn't buy into the home-value hype. He didn't borrow against his old mortgage based on a phony value and is now doing just fine.
My only point is that Franklin recognized what the writer didn't.
Ridiculous home values were a mirage.
The sooner we all recognize that fact the sooner we can work productively to repair the damage wrought by the home value myth.

Olden times

2009-02-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

The issue of older workers, or retired folks seeking a return to work out of need or desire, isn't unique to the media.

With the markets wiping out years of gains in retirement accounts just as the boomer generation is ready to start tapping their savings, it seems likely to remain a hot issue.

But the more I think about the issue, the more I think employers, hiring managers and supervisors should look at the situation as an opportunity.

Older workers not only have experience and years of institutional knowledge, they are also more likely to have flexible schedules and are freed from career-ladder ambition.

Also, many are married to spouses who may already be drawing health and retirement benefits from another source.

If I'm a hiring manager in tough times, I might not be able to get my boss to approve a new full-time hire. But I might be able to land a part time hire, or a free-lancer willing to do some of the work I lost in the last round of cutbacks or freezes.

And given the duty of any hiring manager to find the best talent available for the job, expanding the applicant pool beyond college students and interns can only aid that effort.

Morning media routine

2009-02-18T06:42:00.000-08:00

The hour of 6 to 7 a.m. is one of my favorite times of the day.
It's usually quiet, the dog is calm and I have a chance to relax with some coffee and the news.
I usually crack open my laptop, on which I'll read selections from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, some blogs (I enjoy Wonkette), Facebook and whatever else catches my eye.
At my side is the printed edition of the Review-Journal, which is conveniently tossed onto my doorstep every morning.
Any modern consumer with a brain will tell you the option of including several major newspapers in his morning routine without leaving the house is great.
But there's also some value in the printed product, which I routinely read about as being a tired, static, dated platform for carrying the news.
I was going to explain why I enjoy the hybrid print-online routine, but I'll defer to Jason Preston who posted this on his blog Eat, Sleep, Publish.

"And for purely selfish reasons, I also want someone to figure out how to save the printed New York Times. I’ve been reading it daily for thirty years, but my fondness is not just dewy-eyed nostalgia. That expertly laid-out and edited, brilliantly browseable/scannable/skimmable 17-by-22-inch, ultra-high-resolution display–which rolls up and fits in my pocket without concern for damage–is not going to be matched in electronic form any time soon, if ever.

For me, the whole cohesive package of content, design, and format is far superior to what any electronic device can deliver, given those devices’ inevitably tiny display windows (tiny, at least, compared to a double-truck newspaper spread)."

Small is the new big

2009-02-17T20:26:00.000-08:00

I attended the MAGIC show today in Las Vegas. It's a twice-annual trade show for the clothing industry.

When I rolled up to the Las Vegas Convention Center the Gold Lot where I parked was about 1/3 full. It was a little surreal, considering this is typically one of the most important shows for the city.

Although an abundance of elbow room was no surprise given the sorry state of the economy, it was definitely an eye-opener. And not just for me.

There was a lot of frank talk among the exhibitors and the attendees -- something that's becoming more common these days.

When people are worried about the future, existential discussions can break out on any corner.

The big one I encountered at MAGIC was about the show specifically and conventions in general.

Everyone is wondering if advances in online publishing will make meeting in person passe, like fedoras on reporters or phone booths.

Most of the genuine optimism I ran into came from small business people in attendance.

The reason for their confidence is they feel they have good products people want and are small enough to slip between the cracks as the big guys crumble.

It tells me agility and authenticity are two key ingredients for success in the new, contracting economy.

I think that applies to publishing, too.

Agility for a newspaper means shifting resources from internal bureaucracy to news gathering and reporting and delivering news not just in time for the presses to roll, but in a continual IV drip hard-core consumers crave.

Authenticity means breaking down the wall between readers and news gatherers.

We need to show readers more than the story. We need to show them how we gathered the story and be willing to explain why we chose to tell it.

We're all pundits now

2009-02-17T19:57:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to a recent appearance on Nevada Week in Review, it's a local public affairs program here in Las Vegas.

The host invited me on to talk about a beef by Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman over a crack by President Barack Obama.

I won't bore you with the details here, suffice to say Oscar thought Barry slighted Las Vegas during an anti-corporate excess riff that used Sin City as a rhetorical garnish.

So why am I posting this, besides vanity?

Because I'm fascinated with the way print reporters react to television opportunities. Some of my colleagues turn down the offers, reasoning they say their piece in the paper and there's no need to elaborate.

I'm in the other camp. It's a good chance to take a story to a wider audience or give newspaper readers a new way to experience the content.

It's either too trashy or it isn't

2009-02-17T19:30:00.000-08:00

Lurid allegations of an affair between casino mogul Steve Wynn and a British woman have the tabloids, and Las Vegas gossip wags, atwitter.

The funny part about the story is the schizophrenic response that's typical among journalists who didn't break the story.

On the one hand they're quick to turn up their noses and dismiss the story as tabloid trash, not worthy of coverage.

But as the story evolves, they're perfectly willing to post details gathered by hard-working tabloid journalists, albeit with a detached air.

I've never understood why so many so-called mainstream journalists turn up their noses at tabloid reporters.

They work as hard as anybody to break stories of public interest and act as an important check on the behavior of the subjects they cover.

If it weren't for tabloids, who knows how far John Edwards would have gone in the Democratic primaries?

Welcome to the fabulous future

2009-02-17T18:40:00.001-08:00

Welcome to Mediaocrity, U.S.A.

The last thing the world needs is another media pundit.

But here I am.

As I'm writing this, Greta Van Susteren's interview with Bristol Palin is blaring from a nearby computer.

"Is this bothering you," I'm asked.

On so many levels.