'Internet con men' hurt publishing: Harper's MacArthur

Providence Journal writer Robert Whitcomb posted a lecture by Harper's magazine publisher (and PJ contributor) John R. MacArthur that was presented at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and expresses deep doubts about the usefulness of the Internet to publishing.

He's no Luddite, but offers an often-overlooked perspective: What are writers getting out of the World Wide Web? Here are a few sharp observations from the very insightful 4,000-word speech:

"Youthful members of my editorial staff were imploring me, demanding even, that I meet the Internet revolution head-on by posting free what they also described as 'content' on our brand-new Harper's web site. The Internet, I told them, wasn't much more than a gigantic Xerox machine (albeit with inhuman 'memory'), and thus posed the same old threat to copyright and to the livelihoods of writers and publishers alike."

"Print advertising is remembered longer and more clearly for the simple reason that readers spend more time with a printed article in a magazine than with pieces posted on web sites."

"Out of physical sight, out of mind. At some point you've got to turn off your computer or your iPad, but the mail and the brochures and printed matter just keep coming. Advertising on the Internet is just too easy to avoid. Unless the Tea Party and the Democrats kill off the U.S. Post Office, I wouldn't bet against print."

"As Daniel Defoe wrote in 1709, unauthorized reprints of his work by pirate printers meant that 'a Man, who has studied several years to perform this most elaborate work... has his labor destroyed, his expenses lost, and his copy reprinted by sham and piratical booksellers and printers, who eat the gain of the poor man's labor...' The same is true today with illegal downloads."

"The Internet huckster/philosophers are first cousins -- in both their ideology and their sales tactics -- to the present-day promoters of 'free trade'."

"In the long run, I think I'll be vindicated, since clearly the advertising 'model' has failed and readers are going to have to pay (in opposition to Google's bias against paid sites) if they want to see anything more complex than a blog, a classified ad or a sex act."

"As much as I object to free content, I am even more offended by the online sensibility and its anti-democratic, anti-emotional, even anti-intellectual effect. Devotees of the Internet like to say that the web is a bottom-up phenomenon that wondrously bypasses the traditional gatekeepers in publishing and politics who allegedly snuff out true debate. But much of what I see is unedited, incoherent babble indicative of a herd mentality, not a true desire for self-government or fairness."

"Can it be seriously argued that popular government in America -- with our two-party oligarchy, 90 percent-plus re-election rates, and money-laundered politics -- has progressed in the age of the Internet? Have WikiLeak's disclosures on Afghanistan moved us any closer to withdrawal from that country? Would America be any less democratic without e-mail?"

"All those millions of eyeballs glued to Facebook do not a revolution make, or even a reform movement. The energy devoted to the 'net is an astonishing waste. This is time that obviously could be better spent talking to a friend or a child, reading a good book, or marching in a political demonstration."

"I'm still offended by the whole Internet pretension of universality, freedom, and democracy."

Readers, communities lose big when media execs shutter newsrooms

Northern California has a "news emergency," according to digital news observer and author Ken Doctor (Newsonomics) and radio listeners phoning in about the Bay Area News Group combining 10 of its 15 titles into two new ones: the Times and the East Bay Tribune.

The 137-year-old Oakland Tribune was one of the papers closed.

The business decision may result in gains in savings, but it'll also mean reader loss, Doctor says.

"It's a community loss and points to the wider impact of news cuts on the society in which we live," he writes, recalling a caller bemoaning fewer reporters.

"'The news is our last great hope for justice'," Doctor quotes a woman who advocates for the elderly and hasn't been able to get help from local government. "'We've been working with a reporter... and to see the newspapers get cut back is really hard'."

The corporate decision-makers are being short-sighted, Doctor says.

"Newspapers are all about community identity; they have both reflected it and provided rallying symbols for it," he says. "How many corruptions, large and small, [will be] unfound? We don't know what we don't know.

"How much of the reporting that does see the light of day will be 'local'?" he continues. "What's local to one reader [of the new regional papers] won't really be local to another."

Nevertheless, it's up to the reporters, photographers and editors to persevere --- and hopefully prosper individually in their careers.

"It's important for all the journalists to do what jouralists need to do: Forget the uncertain usiness around them and report the news as best they can," Doctor says.

Understanding the participatory news consumer

According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project and the Project for Excellence in Journalism, almost two-thirds of Americans get daily news from a combination of print and web, and almosts half used multiple media platforms daily.

The Internet is generally a more popular source of news than print and radio, making it the third most popular news platform overall, behind only national and local television news.

The survey, "Understanding the Participatory News Consumer: How Internet and Cell Phone Users Have Turned News into a Social Experience," was based on responses from more than 2,000 American adults. Its findings include:

•Nearly 60% of Americans get daily news from both Internet and print sources.
•46% obtained news from four to six media platforms per day, while only 7% get news from a single platform.
•33% of cell phone owners access news on their portable phones.
•28% of Internet users have a homepage personalized with news sources, and 37% have participated in news creation, commentary and dissemination.
While the Internet is an increasingly popular news source, the survey found that Americans have mixed feelings about it. While more than half say it is easier to keep up with news and information today than it was five years ago, 70% feel overwhelmed by the amount of news and information available. In addition, nearly 75% of respondents have concerns that many news sources are biased in their coverage.

Young journalists' conversation yields 'benchmarks'

The national J-Lab convened a weekend meeting of a group of youong journalists, who came up with examples of stories that were inspiring or otherewise effective.

In the discussion, those gathered came up with a list of 10 ways "content providers" can produce good work. They are:

We can produce good journalism if we:

1) Challenge knee-jerk master narratives

2) Reach for new kinds of accountability

3) Add historical context

4) Impart a sense of community, sense of place

5) Seek authenticity

6) Have impact

7) Make the invisible visible

8) Strive for attachment vs. detachment

9) Do less harm

10) Anticipate the future

Students still hear J 'calling'

Despite the loss of jobs last year -- besides well-known impressions from newspapers, television news jobs dropped by more than 4% in 2008, according to TV Week -- students are still drawn to Journalism as a calling.

"If I were entering the profession — probably going back to the beginning of the 20th century — there’s no time I’d rather enter it than now," said Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo founder and editor, "notwithstanding the challenges that the profession faces right now, but precisely because of it.

"It’s the people who are entering the profession right now who are going to create the editorial models, the publishing models, the business models, that define journalism in the 21st century," he added.

Multi-media producer wants news background

The executive producer of Seattlepi.com, the news-site spinoff from Seattle's Post-Intelligencer, says even the so-called Web 2.0 needs journalists with solid skills in the fundamentals.

"We're leaning toward candidates with strong news background who are not tech-phobic and don't belong in that small class of people who seem to be unable to pick up new technology," Michelle Nicolosi said in a post by Renay San Miguel of TechNewsWorld. "Our experience at Seattlepi.com has been that most people with a news background can learn basic HTML, pick up our CMS fairly easily, grasp the basics of SEO [search engine optimization] and learn fairly quickly all the other skillls they need to produce the site."

Newspapers still strong: Inland Press Assn.

Adolfo Mendez in the new issue of Inland Press Association's Inlander has a news feature with some perspective on the newspaper industry's health and future.

Titled "Stop the presses: Newspapers have a future," the piece puts into context the strengths of newspapers even in financially challenging times.

"Although our industry is evolving, the foundation of our business is very strong,” Mendez quotes Illinois newspaperman Larry Maynard. A newspaper has “one of, if not the, strongest brand equity” in its local market, Maynard continued. “More often than not, nobody is more familiar with the name of any media than they are with your company.”

Newspapers "have the strongest and longest relationships with advertisers — some of those go back 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years,” he said. “Nobody has longer advertising relationships than the newspapers do.”

Other media don’t come close, he added.

College pays off: BLS

Buried down in Table 4 of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' report on "usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers" through the second quarter of this year are numbers that can be reassuring or chilling to students, depending on their attitudes toward school.

The Educational Attainment breakdown shows that Americans who've earned a Bachelor's degree earn 63% higher pay than high school graduates on average.

High school only -- $630/week.
Bachelor's degree -- $1,031/week.

The report also has breakdowns based on gender, age and race. See it at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t04.htm

Ex-Clear Channel morning host still connects with people

Connecting with people was generally more important than specific skill sets when Michelle Maloney was coping with getting laid off from hosting a morning radio talk show in Cleveland by media giant Clear Channel, according to a short news feature broadcast on WCPN-FM 90.3 in Cleveland.

The story by the National Public Radio affiliate touches on the experience of three people from TV, a magazine and a daily newspaper -- all now pursuing other opportunities made possible by their talents.

Here's a portion of a transcript dealing with Maloney --

MALONEY: You can’t be worrying about, “Ohmygod, ohmygod, am I going to get fired?" Because that’s no way to live. And then, of course, it happens to you, and you’re blown out of the water. It was hard.

Maloney sent out hundreds of resumes --- to radio stations, ad agencies, public relations firms. Nothing seemed to be working. But, [a Cleveland] Plain Dealer story about her prompted a response that came out of left field. The manager of a local car dealership sent an e-mail, offering her a sales position.

MALONEY: I e-mailed him back and said, “That’s really sweet of you. I appreciate it, but I know nothing about selling cars.” And he said, “That’s okay, you don’t have to, we’ll teach you that. The big thing is connecting with people. And you’ve been doing that for 18 years, in radio”

SOUND : (PA system at Lexus dealership “Bob, pick-up line 7 please.")

The waiting room of the Classic Lexus store in Willoughby Hills looks like the lobby of a posh hotel, with comfortable couches and a big plasma screen playing the afternoon soaps. To the right and left, new model cars glisten in the showroom. This is Michelle Maloney’s new workplace.

MALONEY: My first month I sold five cars, (laughs) which they say, in this economy, isn’t bad.

She says she misses radio, but finds it hard to listen to her old station any more. It’s just not the same. Right now, she’s cautiously optimistic about her new circumstances.

MALONEY: Somebody said, “What are you driving?” And I said, a pick-up truck. And I’m going to drive it into the ground. I make my last payment in August. So…that will be nice to have a little relief for awhile.

Young columnist confesses: 'I murdered news'

Youthful syndicated columnist Brian Till on December 15 asserted that newspapers giving away their main product and service -- journalism -- can't continue.

And he did so dramatically.

"A lot of conversations I've had over the past few weeks have centered upon the American decline, not in terms of global influence and economic standing, but in terms of journalism," he wrote. "I've found myself speaking with students of the field, freelance writers and grayed reporters, all of us solemnly reflecting, as if a good friend had died.

"And then something struck me," he continued. "I spend hours a day reading news, digging into any paper I can find, from Lebanon's Daily Star to the Buenos Aires Herald, but I've only purchased about a dozen American papers in the last year.

"I, I realized, am the murderer of news."

Each of us are "free riders " -- and fail to see how we've contributed to the stress, if not death, of U.S. newspapers, he adds, and charging a reasonable fee for information is an answer.

Check out his whole column, distributed by Creators Syndicate -- http://www.creators.com/opinion/brian-till/i-am-the-murderer-of-news.html

'Twentysomething journalist' worth checking out

An interesting site for undergrads to visit focuses on discussions about news media today -- especially how it concerns imminent or recent grads.

Check out twentysomethingjournalist.com -- http://twentysomethingjournalist.com/