Let journalists do their jobs

Last year the science journalism community had a spirited discussion  about the practice of allowing sources (in this case, scientists) to "fact check" and approve quotes in news articles before publication.  One of the best tick-tocks I found was from Seth Mnookin.

The gist I got from the discussion was this: some scientists think their work is simply too complex for reporters to understand, so they should get the final review before an article is published. (I got a wry chuckle out of this Guardian editorial.) Some journalists pushed back a bit, saying journalism was an independent process and they, not the interview subject, are the more proper final arbiters of unbiased information.

I fall on the side of journalistic independence. I don't have a problem with a reporter returning to a source to confirm facts. The best reporters do that all the time. But the reporter (and editor) should have final say on what appears under their byline. And for those who think their scientific fields deserve some special status of "really hard" where they alone deserve this right to review, I'd like them to explain, say, the United States tax code in three paragraphs.

As a PR guy I'd love to review and sign off on all stories related to my clients before publication.  A lot of my clients are science-based companies. But I'm fairly certain people would raise a red flag about this for any number of reasons, and they'd be right to do so.   My job is to strengthen and protect a client's reputation, and I work hard to influence what people say about my clients.  A journalist has to make sure I'm not spinning something so she or he can report the facts.  But here's the thing: my presence or absence in this discussion doesn't change the journalist's job.  As distasteful as it may be to some, journalists also are vetting their sources for personal agendas, biases, or conflicts of interest.  Scientists are no better and no worse than any other group in this regard.

So I'm pleased the National Association of Science Writers took note of recent reports that political campaigns are reviewing and editing quotes from their spokespersons before article publication. They also note (via Poynter) that Associated Press has a different policy than the New York Times.

In politics, spin is basically baked into the process.  The good news is everyone knows it.  Look at the political coverage in any major "beltway" news publication.  You'll see candidates' quotes, and then you'll see analysis from dozens of others as to what those quotes "actually mean" based on their financial and political interests.   Political reporting is arguably the most transparent reporting there is - practically everyone mentioned in an article is identified with a party affiliation.  Even pollsters are labeled this way.  If someone fails to disclose a financial interest in a discussion, a reporter has a real scoop.  Right now, the presumptive GOP nominee for President is catching a lot of flack for not following the custom (not law) of releasing roughly a decade's worth of tax returns to the media.  This failure to voluntarily disclose - not the content of the returns themselves, but simply the unwillingness to share them - is having a measurable impact on the Governor's chances in the election.

The sad thing is, this condition lies at the core of America's lack of faith in its politicians.  We actually expect our politicians to lie to us and to cover things up.  We have groups like "Politifact" even analyzing the degree to which someone is lying - and then we have people who fact-check politifact. Beltway journalists often joke that a "gaffe" is when a politician tells you what he's really thinking.  Today, when politicians say something that's demonstrably false or otherwise ridiculous, they're more likely to "double down" than to back off.  Clarification is actually a sign of weakness. 


So it's quite convenient to have the luxury of sanitizing one's quotes before publication.  It eliminates that messy step of being held accountable for what you actually said. Without this accountability, more and more Americans wisely refuse to take a politician's published statements at face value.  And the faith Americans have in the political process continues to disintegrate. 


My fear is the reputation of science will follow a similar path if scientists try to exercise similar influence over the process of journalism.  If you encourage the media to hold you accountable, your credibility is only improved.  If you try to own the process, you look more like a spin doctor than a PhD. 


Even if the reporter gets it wrong, I say that's often a blessing in disguise. It gives you another chance to talk with the reporter and get your work publicized.  More importantly, if you handle the situation diplomatically and effectively, it gives you an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with the reporter, making it more likely that you'll be seen as a resource (and not a jerk).  

All you sucka sci blog networks better REALIZE you play for second place

Bora launched his blog network at Scientific American.  He took his time, did it right.

Don't get me wrong - I love the writing at Wired Science, ScienceBlogs.com, Discover, Scientopia, Guardian Science Blogs, Nature Network, PLoS Blogs, and so on - but Bora was really smart about this. He saw the growth in the niche, looked at what was working best, saw what could improve, and just plain NAILED IT:

Another thing I was particularly interested in was to find bloggers who in some way connect the “Two Cultures” as described by C.P.Snow. Some connect science to history, philosophy, sociology or ethics. Many are very interested in science education, communication and outreach. Some make connections between science and popular culture, music, art, illustration, photography, cartoons/comic strips, poetry, literature, books, movies, TV, video, etc. Several produce such cross-discipline and cross-cultural material themselves – at least two are musicians, two are professional photographers, several produce videos, two are professional artists, a couple are authors of multiple books, some produce their own blog illustrations. But there are also commonalities – they all have strong knowledge of their topic, they strictly adhere to the standards of scientific evidence, they are all very strong writers, and they are all enthusiastic to share their work with a broader audience. 

When I put together this group, with such diverse interests and styles, it was not surprising to discover that, without really having to try hard to make it so, they also display diversity in many other areas: geography, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, personal/professional/scientific background and more. This is something that is important for science, and is important in the science blogging world.

This is brilliant for two big reasons: first, diversity is a source of enormous strength in science and pretty much everything else.  It's the right thing to do.  Second because it makes science immediately relevant to people with diverse interests - music, art, history, pop-culture, sports, education, and so on - the network has the capacity to grow its readership much more than other science blog networks.

My initial reaction is that SciAm's emergence with a large, smart roster may thin the herd of networks a little bit. I notice some writers have left their networks to join SciAm's, and since there are only so many blog posts you can read in a day, readers will go for the quality content first.

I may flesh this thinking out a bit more but here's one prediction/caution for those writing for another network. If you start to get several emails from your editors or managers providing "guidelines" on how to write in ways that generate more traffic like throwing celebrity references in the titles or providing more posts with repetitive phrases, your network is following an unsustainable strategy.  Your editors care more about Google search terms than you.  They want your words but not necessarily your thoughts.  The first network to do this will probably be the first one to go.

UPDATE: PZ Myers is already declaring ScienceBlogs.com "dead" and hinting that he's leaving.  Pharyngula is basically half of SEED/SB's traffic and I notice that the new SciAm network has at least a couple of SB peeps on it. I'm guessing the folks at National Geographic aren't pleased.  Leave it to an evolutionary biologist to tell us what happens when something doesn't adapt to a changing environment...

Note to self: don't pretend to be a lesbian blogger in Syria.

One of the more prominent and unfortunate global news stories circulating today is the hoax perpetrated by Tom MacMaster, an American student currently living in Scotland.  For months he's published a blog called "A Gay Girl in Damascus" and assumed a fictional identity named Amina Abdallah Araf al Omani.

The blog included fascinating stories of politics, culture and intrigue.  There were breathless accounts of going into hiding, standing up to police, demonstrating in the streets, and assuming the voice of the opposition in one of the world's most closed off countries in the midst of this historic "Arab Spring."  There were detailed personal accounts of coming out as a lesbian in a highly conservative, highly religious country.  Then there was the gripping note that Amina had been captured.  The stories rallied thousands and Amina became a heroine.

And it was all fake.

Of course, while he seems to think he hasn't really done much wrong, smarter people like Ethan Zuckerman beg to differ with him. Zuckerman is the founder of Global Voices Online, one of my favorite sites on the 'net and a global aggregator of citizen-journalist-generated content.   Zuckerman's take is a thorough smackdown and well worth reading, and here's just one of his points:

MacMaster’s project is going to complicate the work of anyone who tries to bring marginal voices into the dialog through citizen media. The question I’ve been most often asked since founding Global Voices is a question about authenticity: “How can we know that any of these people blogging and tweeting are real people?”

As a PR guy, my inclination is often to spin the upside - MacMaster has managed to do one thing no one else has.  The downside, of course, is that "one thing" is "add credibility to the government of Syria," as they denied ever holding Amina.

Perhaps it shouldn't amaze me that people still ignore or forget a very basic rule of public relations - don't pretend to be someone you're not.   Doing so essentially guarantees that whatever message you're trying to send gets lost.  This example is perhaps a bit more colorful, and a bit more tragic, but it's not even the only incident in recent memory. In my business we see companies all the time who want certain messages or facts to "get out there" but don't feel confident speaking in their own voice, often with good reason. All I can say is it's not often you can be successful making a point without telling people who you are.

What upsets me most right now is MacMaster's protestations that coverage of his hoax is drawing attention from real people facing real crises in Syria.  That he fails to understand he was the one drawing attention from the real conflict by hijacking Syrians' voices is beyond ironic.

Obama, Trump, and Sheen - do we get the news we deserve?

I was walking through the reception room at my office yesterday when I noticed the television.  There was Donald Trump, declaring victory for compelling the conventional wisdom to conclude that the President of the United States was a citizen of the United States.  Or something.

Captain Comb-over has been all over the idiot box lately, insisting that the President's citizenship status was questionable, and his crack research team in Hawaii was unearthing some mind-blowing stuff.  Or something. Sadly, the news media just ate it up despite knowing it was all fake.  It got to the point where the President decided to stop doing his job for 30 minutes so he could go down to the press room to explain once again  that yes, he was born in this country, and perhaps the media might want to cover real news for a change.

This constructive criticism predictably injected a dose of responsibility in the press corps, compelling them to "fact check" and scrutinize Donald Trump's outlandish claims...

Oh, wait, they fact checked the PRESIDENT'S suggestion that this ridiculous side show was item one on their agenda.  In doing so they trotted out the "percentage of the news hole" metric - one that conveniently ignores the editorial decisions of what leads the broadcast or is "above the fold" and what's on page 8.  And buried in their defense was the admission their volume of coverage of the twice-bankrupt bluster-box eclipsed their coverage of the President for a week.  So now the media is covering their coverage of one of the most ridiculous non-stories in recent memory.  Somewhere Jon Stewart is saying, "hey - fake news is MY job."

But how big an issue is this, really?  I thought I'd take a look at "coverage" from a (perhaps) more appropriate perspective - in the age of media convergence, you can't ignore blogs from the rest of whatever Pew decides to call its "news hole."  Online discussions are not perfectly reflective of mainstream media coverage, but I don't think you can deny an association.  Bloggers invariably discuss what's in the news, and many bloggers are indeed journalists.  So how did the online discussion of these events really stack up - and are there any other stories out there we could include for some context?

So I decided to look at the last 90 days of online chatter for three discussions:

1. The Trump-Obama birther debacle (I excluded references that only mentioned Trump because they may have been related to his TV shows or other business interests),
2. Any blog reference whatsoever to the term "Social Security," and
3. Charlie Sheen.

Here's what I got, using Nielsen's BlogPulse Trend Search:

Even today, in what is presumably the nadir of the Charlie Sheen saga, he's still arguably bigger than "birtherism"  and social security.  His initial burst in March dwarfs both of those other issues combined.  And don't get me started on the royal wedding.

Of course, bloggers are consumers of news more than they are creators of it.  Maybe the media is just giving the people what they want.  But I thought journalism was supposed to include some kind of professional, editorial judgment on what is news and what isn't.  In my opinion, editors are letting us down here.

What, no Pulitzer? - the evolution of crisis communications

Yesterday the Pulitzer Prizes were awarded, and several people noted that for the first time no award was given in the category of "Breaking News Reporting" in a year filled with major disasters.  The reason given by the selection committee - the entries weren't impressive enough - strikes me as missing the mark.  Sad as it sounds, 2010 was a banner year for crises and crisis communications.  However, this development prompts us to examine how "breaking news" is compiled, processed and shared today.

First, we all know that financial pressures facing media companies have rocked journalism.  Corporate news organizations have cannibalized their news reporting functions for several years now.  Our largest media outlets are closing entire bureaus.  Daily papers and TV stations in mid-sized cities are lucky to have even a handful of news reporters working full-time. Independent reporting in radio (other than public radio) is virtually gone.  As seasoned (and therefore expensive) reporters leave, institutional memory goes with them.  So when a crisis hits, editors throw any and all resources they have at the story - and a huge chunk of the resources left are in the sports department.  So the 25-year old kid who has 2 years of experience quoting cliches from the local basketball coach is suddenly the "man on the scene" and the local weatherman is tabbed as the source of "expert commentary."   Local journalists have had no time to get badly needed background and context and they're immediately playing catch-up.  Product quality definitely suffers.

Second, social media tools have turned us all into breaking news reporters.  Individuals using Twitter broke the stories of Captain Sully's amazing landing in the Hudson, the gunman at the Discovery Channel building, the terror attacks in Mumbai, and even a fire in the Old Executive Office Building.   These tools have given people the ability to "fact check" reports (like the protests in the Middle East) and crowdsource information so you can get an amazingly accurate and fast picture of events - if you know who to follow.  However, I'm not completely comfortable getting my news from "some guy on Twitter."  The core process of journalism is easily lost here.

So if you're an organization in the middle of a crisis, you can't depend on news organizations to bring ample, experienced resources to bear and you can't depend on "some guy on Twitter" to get all the facts, what do you do? I say prepare for your crisis now.   Build up more sophisticated monitoring systems that incorporate social media tools.  Understand how information travels today - for example pay attention to the large and growing network of journalists on Twitter, and create lists of beat and trade reporters and other influentials.   Most importantly - build relationships with those influential people now.  Their learning curve isn't as steep because they already know you and your organization if and when a crisis hits.  They will also be more likely to seek out your opinion or give you the benefit of the doubt.  You're never going to get everything 100 percent right in a crisis, but these steps give you a fighting chance.

News on the iPad - Zite is the early winner

I'm not much of a tech gadget guy, but as a self-confessed news junkie, Zite at first blush seems to be the iPad app I've been looking for.  I've been trying to mold my iPad into a super-news device, and Zite is a big piece.

Basically it's a smart RSS reader that attempts to customize the news you receive based on your preferences and feedback.  The format is crisp and easy on the eye, similar (though not identical) to Flipboard.  I'm surprised at how good the news sources are and I'm stunned that they are offering the app for free.    As they keep learning more about my "preferences" it will be interesting to see what kind of marketing profile I generate, and what they'll actually do with that information, but from a usability and performance standpoint I'm quite impressed.

I'm still looking for a top-notch "breaking news" tool.  That's considerably harder to pull off, though I'm sure it will involve some combination of Global Voices Online people (like Amira Al Hussaini, who just got a great writeup in NYT from Jen Preston), the major journalism-industry sources of breaking news (i.e., the wires, BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN, etc.) and Twitter.  The challenge comes in curating this tool - once news "breaks," you have to identify the most credible sources of information and ping them often for updates.   You also have to be flexible enough to accommodate multiple stories and then manage multiple streams of content with an effective visual interface.  I'm also looking for something that can add radio streams in the background.

By the way, I would pay for these apps and for subscriptions to content.  So there's a business model to be won here.

Huffington Post - AOL is a bigger deal than you think

"Rosebud." 2.0

So it's all over the news this morning that AOL just bought Huffington Post for $315 million, and Arianna Huffington will be in charge of all of AOL's content development. AOL owns a number of niche media properties - sites like TechCrunch, Moviefone, and Mapquest.  Huffington Post has been trying to diversify its offering into many of these niches.

I think we may be witnessing the first real digital media business model that will be profitable over the long term.  I also think the feisty global digital media startups that have tried to have a global impact could very likely be eaten for lunch.  Consider what Ms. Huffington says in her announcement post:

At the first meeting of our senior team this year, I laid out the five areas on which I wanted us to double down: major expansion of local sections; the launch of international Huffington Post sections (beginning with HuffPost Brazil); more emphasis on the growing importance of service and giving back in our lives; much more original video; and additional sections that would fill in some of the gaps in what we are offering our readers, including cars, music, games, and underserved minority communities.. 

By combining HuffPost with AOL's network of sites, thriving video initiative, local focus, and international reach, we know we'll be creating a company that can have an enormous impact, reaching a global audience on every imaginable platform.

Remember my New Year's resolution? It's coming true -- and it's only the beginning of February. Let's go down the checklist: Local? AOL's Patch.com covers 800 towns across America, providing an incredible infrastructure for citizen journalism in time for the 2012 election, and a focus on community and local solutions that have been an integral part of HuffPost's DNA. Check.

Expertise on local focus, global reach, leveraging citizen journalism to cover important issues, with a flair for politics.  Sound familiar?  That's what Global Voices Online does right now.  (And their coverage of what's been happening in Egypt has been excellent.)  Their model of tracking and aggregating local bloggers in every corner of the world is a good one - but they've done it from a non-profit mindset.  I'd argue they do it from an anti-profit mindset.  GVO has been very resistant to work with for-profit enterprises (though there have been some exceptions) because they see it as a threat to their independence and credibility.

GVO is less than a year away from getting a titanic competitor in the form of a global media network with real financial backing, political clout, and strategically audacious leadership.  I don't think GVO will die - there will always be a place for non-profit media - but I think the leaders of GVO and groups like Internews better be thinking long and hard about evolving, adapting to the new marketplace, and looking for new partnerships.

The REAL State of the Media, 2010

CNN's media critic Howie Kurtz has a show called Reliable Sources that now broadcasts online.  Everything about the show's first segment - the topic, the panel, the format - goes directly to the state of journalism today.   Seriously, it's so dead-on it's ironic. It crystallizes where we are in the business of journalism so much it almost becomes a caricature of itself.

It's a panel featuring a pundit, a former managing editor of a newspaper chain that has had severe cuts, and a blogger.   They spend their time essentially saying that journalism has been reduced to a "he-said, she-said" spectacle of political sniping.  They talk about how the news media misses the real story and goes directly to the stupid/crazy show, and even throw in Michael "heckuva job, brownie" Brown.  The money quote, from David Frum:

A conversation that ought to be about how the President has not done a good enough job has turned into how a disgraced former federal official may or may not be insane.

John Aravosis is a long-time pal. All the panelists were great.

Making Science Relevant

A couple of months ago I wrote a blog post called Science Has a Serious PR Problem and it got some notice on twitter, mainly thanks to Bora Zivkovic.  I'm very grateful for the feedback I got from science bloggers about it.   While it will no doubt take some time, I'm committed to doing something about it.  In the blog post I tried to convey two major points. First, the nature of the problem:

Science has a serious PR problem, and it's this: Critics of science are searching people out and talking with them in the simplest terms possible. Scientists and "science writers," if they talk at all, are basically talking with each other.

 Second, the beginnings of a solution:

I've heard people say "we need to make science cool" - a lot of that talk was at ScienceOnline 2010 - and that would be nice, but I don't think that's really the answer. "Science" isn't really going to beat out American Idol or the NFL or whatever.

Cool is important, but I think we need to make science relevant. There's a difference.

Since then I've been having some conversations with some science bloggers, some mom bloggers, some people who fit squarely in both camps, and some people who fit in neither camp on a project we could do to help address this.  (More on that later.) But earlier this week I saw an example of what "making science relevant" looks like:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 Yes, that's Rachel Maddow talking with an actual scientist - Dr. Edward Overton at LSU's School of the Coast and Environment - about the goop that's floating around in the Gulf of Mexico right now, what can be done about it, and why that's important.

Without a doubt, Dr. Overton did a tremendous job.   First, he knew his audience and avoided technical jargon, opting for terms like "the consistency of roof tar" and "chocolate mousse."  Second, he did a great job keeping his language moderate and his tone calm when prompted to expound on doomsday scenarios. This is critical. Media types are trained to focus on the controversy and the crisis - "if it bleeds, it leads" is a common mantra in the journalism industry, and cable news takes it to the next level - but Overton stuck to his guns, explaining what was cataclysmic versus what was simply bad and reminding us all to think about both the "possible and the probable."

Most importantly, by doing a good job in the interview he put the role of science in its proper context for an important current event.  You just can't overstate this.  Maddow and Overton flipped the current thinking of science in the media on its head.  Instead of trying to shoehorn a "science story" into the current news stream without context, they took a relevant, salient issue and explained the role scientists play in addressing it.

Think about how it works right now.  On television, sometime after the story about what the President said today and what the stock market did, but before the story about a panda coming to the zoo, you'll sometimes see a story that starts with "A new study was released today by a medical journal that says coleslaw causes cancer in ferrets" or something.  So on top of all the other things you're thinking about you have to remind yourself to not eat coleslaw, you know, because of the ferrets.  (The next day science bloggers will say the  article wasn't the definitive word on the slaw-ferret cancer connection, the methodology was flawed, correlation doesn't mean causation, and the media got it all wrong, and so on.) 

In newspapers, or at least in big newspapers, there's a science-technology section that comes out once a week - all neatly packaged and self-contained, chock full of cool stories about a solar eclipse in Bhutan or the DNA of fruit bats or maybe the dinosaur bone exhibit.

But it's all segregated from the rest of the news, even when there's arguably a strong role for science to play in a major story.  Think fast - what's the first thing you remember in the news reporting about the volcano erupting in Iceland?  Admit it - you remember all the flights in Europe being canceled.  BREAKING NEWS:  ABC News reports Whitney Houston has to take a boat.   Seriously.

I'm not suggesting we should stop publishing science sections in newspapers or talking about new health studies on TV - while the reporting is occasionally flawed, you can still find boatloads of great stories that educate, entertain, provoke, and even inspire you.   I'm suggesting science isn't an "angle" to be exploited in a story.  It's a big part of every day life.  Scientists and those who want science to be a more meaningful part of large discussions have to make the case for relevance and enter those discussions in a non-intimidating way.

The first step in this, I think, falls on scientists and science communicators.  The good news is they have to do something I know they already do well - listen and pay attention, and search for common ground with others.

More soon.

Paying Reporters to "Move the Markets?"

Sometimes I read something and I just do a double-take.

So I read this week's New York Times piece by Stephanie Clifford about how BusinessWeek is being absorbed into Bloomberg Media, and it seemed to be this interesting story of this nimble ninja of a media company absorbing one of business journalism's last dinosaurs, but I sort of looked past the angle of the uneasy meshing of two corporate cultures.  If I want to learn about those issues in the business news industry I usually check out Chris Roush at UNC, and he had that angle covered.  What really caught my eye was this:

At Bloomberg News, where writers’ salaries are tied, among other factors, to how many “market-moving” articles they have produced, BusinessWeek is fitting in like — well, like an 80-year-old print magazine in a company that is all about terminals. 

Emphasis mine.  The story actually reiterated the concept, and credited the idea to editor Matthew Winkler - a.k.a. the guy who runs the place:

Mr. Winkler said magazine articles would be evaluated on the same metrics as articles for the terminal: did they move markets? 

 Again, emphasis mine.

So am I to understand that reporters at Bloomberg are actually "incentivized" to have an impact on the stock prices of the companies they cover?

Does it matter which way the markets move?  

This doesn't sound like a bonus for good reporting, this sounds like a bounty for corporate scalps.

I asked a good friend - an editor who just happens to have a Peabody Award to his credit - what he thought of this.  I won't quote him because I thought of writing this post after I emailed him about it - but let's just say he wasn't particularly pleased with this compensation structure.

And if you're not upset about this, if you think this is just a tried-and-true practice from a reputable media source, just replace the words "Bloomberg Media" with "Huffington Post" or "Pajamas Media" and see how you feel about stories designed to move corporate stock prices.

What Cable News Looks Like

What Fox News covered this weekend

A few years ago my friend Brad Levinson and I were talking about how one might use text clouds as an analysis tool rather than an organizing tool.  Social media in public relations and issues management was a relatively new concept at the time, and we felt strongly that companies in our industry focused far too much on things like "your company needs to build a blog" and not nearly enough on online communities and the opinion leaders in them.  So when we set about developing the ideas for Virtual Vantage Points, the blog at our company, we thought it was important to put the focus on what other communities were talking about, and we came up with the "community cloud" idea.

All we did was mash up the RSS feeds of leading blogs in specific communities - environmentalism, medicine, education, and so on - and pushed the combined feeds through a cloud generator that we had one of the developers at our company build.  We paid particular attention to political blogs - liberal blogs and conservative blogs in the US, and four communities of political blogs in the UK - Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and Greens.

What MSNBC covered this weekend

After a few months we weren't surprised to see that the various online political communities used very different terminology to discuss things - but we were a bit surprised to see how little the discussions changed over time.  While there are a few exceptions, the most prominent American political bloggers generally talk about their adversaries more than anything else.  Even when the topic is a particular issue, that issue isn't described in depth nearly as much as the outrageous thing someone on the other side said or did.  Using our company's blog to say "bloggers are talking about the other side again today" grew old quickly, so we decided to expand the roster of contributors there and focus on more substantive things.

Now we live in the world of increasing "media convergence." Bloggers are more involved in the news as pundits, reporters, and sources, and news networks are using social media tools more often.  Nowhere is this more obvious than on cable news - the 24 hour news cycle forces networks to leverage the blogosphere and social networks for content.   And of course, politics (and political viewpoints) dominates cable news.

So are cable news networks acting like political bloggers?  Are they just talking about their perceived adversaries?

What CNN covered this weekend

I've pulled the "top news" rss feeds from Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN and pushed them through Wordle's cloud generator.  The pictures in this post represent the "top stories" each network covered over the weekend.  I'll be checking the clouds from time to time to see what kind of news they're reporting from the 30,000 foot viewpoint to see if convergence has bled into perspectives as well as tools.   I have some technical kinks to work out (notice "undefined" and other silly words in the clouds right now), but this could be interesting.

"Bloggers vs. Journalists," a.k.a. The Great Distraction

A colleague of mine forwarded an interesting piece from Tech Crunch with the headline "Study: 52 Percent Of Bloggers Consider Themselves Journalists." The study (link to the social media release) is a survey of "1,568 traditional and non-traditional media and, for the first time, 1,670 PR practitioners." The survey was sponsored by PR Newswire.

Set aside the fact that if companies and PR folks REALLY thought bloggers were journalists, they'd never send emails like this.

I think the survey is helpful, though I'm curious to see the actual questions asked, full results etc. For example, I'd like to know if any of the bloggers they surveyed were already full-time professional journalists who have started blogs. I'm not saying you should exclude journalists-who-blog, but I'd like to know if the survey sample was randomized.

I raise it because the online communities where I do the most work have very different stories. The editorial team at Global Voices Online? Sure, they're journalists. However, among online moms, I'd be shocked if more than 10 percent of them consider themselves journalists. Science bloggers generally self-identify as scientists. I think the green bloggers with whom I work generally consider themselves "journalists" of one stripe or another, though they don't seem to discuss the tools of the trade much - there isn't much talk about "on the record" versus "off the record" versus "on background," or about respecting embargoes, etc. There's also not much of an attempt to hide personal opinions or bias. As for political bloggers, some may say they are journalists but many professional journalists clearly disagree.

But here's the point: the "bloggers versus journalists" debate is nothing more than a distraction. It's a time-sucking discussion about nomenclature. It's the bizarre need to make sure round pegs fit in round holes and square pegs in square holes and make all the colors match.

More importantly, among PR professionals, I really think it's about laziness. PR pros are used to working with journalists, and want desperately to make this relatively new phenomenon of personal online publishing fit their pre-existing methods and rules. While it's appropriate and valuable to learn as much as we can about the media, We can't let this lull us into thinking that it's the bloggers who need to adapt to our methods and not vice versa.

Entrepreneurial Journalism and Rebuilding Trust

My boss has asked me to take a long look at media convergence issues - you know, how the Internet changes the way people consume news and how journalists report it - and I'm incorporating much of it into some social media training materials for the company. More and more I'm realizing this isn't a story about technology, and it really isn't a story about journalism.

"Media convergence" is really just one of countless stories about entrepreneurship. It's nothing new. It's about large companies clinging to the methods and products that made them successful 20 years ago, and remaining steadfast in the belief that any effort spent doing something other than selling that product or using that method is a wasteful distraction. (For example, television news has become formulaic, almost rote in its delivery.) It's about smaller companies and individuals trying something new, most of them failing, and trying again.

The Pew Project's State of the News Media 2010 Report came out last week. I found it via Tom Johnson's post on Media Convergence Matters. Johnson cites one of the report's conclusions:

For online news to become a profitable enterprise, either consumer attitudes need to change or the industry must do more. That more could be developing new better-targeted products that people are willing to pay for; new forms of advertising that work better, including local search; or new forms of revenue other than display advertising, including perhaps online retailing.

The "consumer attitudes need to change" is a reference to consumers not being willing to pay for a lot of content or clicking ads. In truth, consumer attitudes are constantly evolving. The report includes a lot about how news needs to move online, and it has. It includes a lot about aggregating and curating content to better fit the needs of the consumer. This is all good, but to me it doesn't get to the heart of the matter.

Sadly, it doesn't have a lot about improving the quality of journalism generally or helping people understand why the news is relevant to them. In America at least, I think people have developed a significant detachment from what we commonly refer to as "the news." I think there's a strong mistrust of the news industry. People want to know who's paying for it.

At the source of it, I think, is the news industry's oft-repeated "if it bleeds, it leads" mantra has devolved into the basic formula "conflict = news," and if information doesn't have loud, competing sides, it really isn't newsworthy. I see science bloggers express some version of this sentiment on a regular basis.

The most important recent example of this is the coverage of health care reform over the last year. Some conservatives had legitimate disagreements with the Democrats' proposals, and other people decided to equate reform with genocide. The media made its choice early on what to cover - and so we heard wild tales about socialism and death panels. And once that decision was made, conservatives realized that the only way they could get their message out to the general public was to push the rhetoric further and further out, past the fringes of sanity.

As a result, people still don't know what actually passed in the health care reform law, after a year of debate.

Of course there are people in journalism who do a great job and should get more attention. But ask yourself - is that where the media industry is as a whole?

So yes, innovation in how news is developed, curated, and delivered is a must. (I like the idea of a business incubator for journalism.) But so is quality control - and that's the hard part.

Media Convergence Done Right

Global Voices Online and BBC News team up.

Congratulations to Ivan, Solana, and everyone at Global Voices - and to BBC News for having the courage to try something new.

ABC News Embraces Kubler-Ross Stage Five: Acceptance

"Media Convergence" starts with the death of "traditional media," which has been withering on the vine for a while now. The latest casualty is a big one - a huge chunk of ABC News.

It's not just layoffs due to the lousy economy. It's the simple fact that the news industry has held on to a business model and cost structure that hasn't worked well for years. I was struck by something ABC News honcho David Westin said in his memo to staff.

The memo listed several provisions of the news division's restructuring plan, including an expanded use of digital journalists (who both produce and shoot their own stories), the combination of weekday and weekend operations for both "Good Morning America" and "World News," and, at the newsmagazines and other long-form programming, "a more flexible blend of staff and freelancers."

"The time has come to anticipate change, rather than respond to it," Westin said in the memo.

Actually the time to anticipate, rather than respond to, change came about four years ago. But it's nice that the media is finally embracing the final stage of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief: acceptance. (I went through how the media grappled with the other four stages here.)

The good news is the industry can look to several business models to overcome its many problems. Here's something I wrote back in March, and it sounds somewhat similar to what Westin wrote yesterday. (of course, I'm not the only person writing stuff like this.)

...if you want to see the news network of the future, just look at Global Voices Online or Green Options today. These networks leverage resources (i.e., writers) that are already in the places old-school networks would establish bureaus. Most of these independent writers already have their own platforms - and since they're freelancers, they have the ability to shop their work to a number of outlets at once. Right now it may seem weird to think you'd see the same reporter working for multiple papers or networks. But I follow the reporters I think do the best work, just as I look to specific bloggers who demonstrate their expertise in certain subjects. You could still have one network send a particular reporter to, say, a war zone and pay their way for exclusive content. But getting paid by the job might work best for both sides.

This business model would still be ad-driven, I think. I like the pro publica idea but it's limited to the resources of the foundation community. BBC is also an interesting model but difficult to justify in the US.

I'd argue that my pals at Live Oak Media are probably a better example today than Green Options, but I contribute there so take it with a grain of salt. And I readily acknowledge the ad-driven model has limitations, but we've already seen how paywalls fail.

I also think the news industry is ignoring a very important resource and process - business incubation. Non-profit media relies quite a bit on foundations; those foundations are not going to fund organizations forever. But if a few foundations got together to establish a virtual business incubator for the journalism industry, with a path toward "graduation" and profitability for fledgling news companies, we'd probably develop a few business models that worked.

Haiti Speaks - Who Listens?

It's now more than a month since a horrific earthquake killed almost a quarter million people and displaced thousands more in Haiti. Arguably this is when we truly learn about the amazing resilience of the human spirit, because this is when the shock has worn off, most of the global mainstream media has left, and crisis responders have other crises to address.

It's a bit of a shame, really - while it's somewhat understandable that the world's attention is focusing elsewhere, there are amazing stories of perseverance and inspiration being told. Perhaps more importantly, Haitians are telling the stories themselves.

I've sung their praises countless times before, but Global Voices Online deserves so much credit and respect for bringing these personal stories from citizen journalists forward. I make special note of a recent post by Fabienne Flessel that looked at how Haitians were celebrating Valentine's Day this year.

GVO's commitment to this story and to covering it from the perspectives of those living it is unique among "professional" media, yet amazingly common in the world of social media. Something for communications "pro's" like me to keep in mind.

Why Journalism is Dying, part 84,037

Of course, new technology has allowed "citizen journalists" to publish their own work, providing more competition for traditional journalists. And this technology allows people to customize the news they receive more than ever before - so what was once the half-hour newscast everyone was forced to watch is now the dim sum menu from which anyone can choose.

But a big part of it - much more than many journalists want to accept - is just how canned and over-simplified the news is these days. I've spent some time talking with scientists and health care providers lately, people who have fairly complex things to talk about. But so many journalists today don't want complex - they want controversial. And they stick to a formula they think has worked for some time. Science and medical folks think this format means a lot of important, subtle details are necessarily missed and controversies are played up at the expense of facts.

I'm learning that science bloggers like to express their frustration in some fairly creative ways. Here's one example, a priceless clip from BBC4 that I saw on Living the Scientific Life thanks to a tweet from @BoraZ:



Enjoy your weekend, everyone.

An Outsider's Take on #scio10

The ScienceOnline 2010 Conference was held over this weekend, and I'm proud that my company was one of the sponsors - and the only public affairs firm to sponsor. I hope it demonstrates our willingness to think beyond the trite, formulaic, "how you can drive sales with Twitter" world and directly support online communities that are doing much more than blogging about blogging.

There have been dozens of posts written by the conference participants - I thought I'd add my non-scientist perspective and reactions, as well as my warmest thanks to Anton Zuiker and Bora Zivkovic for their leadership in organizing the conference.

The first thing I noticed was rather typical of the blogging conferences and meetings I've attended - people are very excited to see each other. There was no question this was a community of like-minded souls who were thrilled to be among friends and colleagues. Some even talked about feeling somewhat isolated where they lived, and felt "at home" here. As a non-scientist with few friends in attendance, I could tell people were looking at me and wondering why I was there. (It happens.)

The second thing I noticed was how many members of the "mainstream" media were there not to cover the event, but to listen and learn. The Charlotte Observer, Reuters, The American Scientist, US News & World Report, and dozens of freelance stringers were there. The Federal government had people here as well - NASA, Energy, EPA, and NIH were represented. So there's obviously a core group of people who see this community as essential to their communication and professional efforts in 2010 and beyond.

There were also a lot of bloggers who had very specific and strategic professional goals and pursued them in earnest. Lots of bloggers/writers wanting to score book deals, get paid writing gigs, things like that. I hadn't seen that before.

And while this wasn't present in all the sessions, the "bloggers vs. journalists" meme was clearly an underlying struggle in many panel discussions. In the PR world we have similarly distracting discussions that focus on nomenclature. To my new friends in the science world let me offer this piece of advice: let it go. It doesn't matter. And to those who insist it does, I say go write a 30-volume treatise on the topic, and get back to me when you're finished so I can throw it away.

Finally, there were a few things that really gave me hope that the science community can extend beyond its current discussions and engage others on important issues. Science journalism is more niche now, and there are fewer mainstream pubs that make a point of sharing science with lay audiences. Scientists must bypass mainstream media more often and speak to people directly through social media channels.

To that end I was excited to learn about Scienceforcitizens.net and to know that so many science bloggers want to have an impact on the issues that affect everyone. Building conversations across communities is a very difficult thing to do, but there are people who are passionately committed to doing this, and I hope I have the chance to work with them.

The Myth of the "Green Media Bubble"

The Wall Street Journal's popular and influential Environmental Capital blog shut its doors last week, without much notice. This led to some speculation that the WSJ is part of some climate change denialist conspiracy, and others claimed there's some sort of "green media bubble."

Ummm... No. On both counts.

This is more a reflection of the reality of the media industry and how some companies are approaching it. I've spoken with some colleagues about this. We wouldn't be at all surprised to see some reincarnation of Environmental Capital behind a paywall. After all, that's where the Murdoch media-empire is headed - their approach to intellectual property frowns on giving people free access to popular content, and they're clearly not sold on the advertising-based online business model.

The question we should be asking is who will step up to be the leading provider of content in this space. Environmental Capital was a green business content powerhouse. The most popular "brands" in online green media - places like Treehugger, Worldchanging, Grist, etc. - are not business pubs.

Obviously there's the New York Times' Green Inc., but the rumors are flying that their days are numbered (again, a reflection of larger business issues in the media industry and nothing more). Another mainstream alternative is Reuters' Green Business, which has a more global feel. The GreenBiz Network, my pals at Live Oak Media's Earth and Industry , Triplepundit, and Energy Boom are next-gen social alternatives to the mainstream guys, but they're also more likely to have a pro-green bias. Alt Energy Stocks is where I go to look at thoughtful commentary and analysis on green finance. Marc Gunther also writes regularly at the same level of quality as the team at Environmental Capital. There are dozens more, and now that the all-powerful WSJ brand has retreated from the field, I'm expecting at least some of these sites will see their readership rise. If you create a netvibes tab or google reader category with these sites, you have instant access to all of it.

And this is why I'm really questioning WSJ's move. Their content was great. But it's not like there's an absence of similarly great content in this space. In this business, you can obviously assert your intellectual property rights and say people should pay for your content. But this is 2010, and the amount of excellent, insightful, and free content is increasing daily.

Why Newspapers Are Failing, Part 3,489

Most newspapers are watching the bottom drop out of their readership - even when they double-count readers. It would seem to me that newspapers (online and offline) really want to reverse that trend - at least that's what I hear a lot. So when I read that Rupert Murdoch is seriously considering removing his news sites from Google's search engines - to the point where he's negotiating with companies that have a mere fraction of the search volume of Google - I really get confused.

Restricting access to your content is not a way to get more people to see your content. That seems pretty basic to me.

Here's an analogy that works a lot better than most journalism types care to admit. A long time ago - way back before there were iPhones or Playstations or even the Wii Fit - we had this thing called a "phone book." The phone book was made of paper and had lists with contact information of all the people and businesses in your area. It was the thing people used when they wanted to know how to contact you on the phone - and remember, back then phones were actually attached to the wall by a cord. You can still see them in old movies or in museums. Phone books had sections - individuals were listed on white pieces of paper and businesses were listed on both the white and a separate section of yellow pieces of paper. (Those were called "yellow pages" - sheer genius, right?) Consumers never paid directly for the phone book - the money to make phone books came from ads that companies placed in those yellow pages near the sections that you would go to search for things like "pizza" or "plumbers" or "personal injury lawyers."

Back then phone books were really important - if you weren't in the phone book, people who didn't know much about you didn't know how to find you. Which was bad, because most people used the phone book. Sometimes other companies tried to come up with a different phone book, a better phone book, but most people still used the same phone book that they got in the first place. It had the most listings and was set up in a format that everyone understood.

So now we have a new phone book called Google. And YES, it's amazingly similar to that old phone book because, as Rupert Murdoch and his business partners keep insisting, information is (to them at least) a commodity. Sure, there are a couple of alternative (and fairly spiffy) phone books, but the overwhelming majority of people are still using the Google option, and the data seem to suggest that won't be changing anytime soon.

So now Rupert Murdoch and a few others are saying they're ready to take their names and numbers out of the phone book and if you want them, you have to go to this other phone book that pays them a fee. Of course, the original phone book will still have plenty of information and product remarkably similar to the product Mr. Murdoch "produces."

This journalism-as-commodity model, complete with artificial barriers to access, doesn't strike me as a path to long-term profitability. First, some players in this commodity model want to charge for the finished product but haven't considered the new costs they'd have to incur once the original sources of news discover their rightful place in the "value chain" of news. Second, it's just resisting the trend toward innovation and consumer empowerment. Consumers dictate the marketplace - they will find information they want to fit their interests and world view.

I think the folks at News Corp. are in for quite a shock if they think their brand is so powerful that people will use the search engine News Corp. tells them to.