Nielsen contradicts Pew on online news use

More than 13 times as many U.S. Internet surfers list pornography and other miscellaneous uses than news, according to a new Nielsen report on social media summarized by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

Further, Americans spend more than 22 percent of their web time on blogs and social networks.

Just 2.6 percent of the online audience noted "current events and global news."

This contradicts recent Pew research that shows that reading news online is becoming a regular American pastime. Internet news readership is increasing among consumers of all ages, Pew reports, and 75 percent of online Americans look for news on the web. Other figures suggest that up to 78 percent of Americans look for news online and 21 percent of social users are “News Junkies,” constantly looking for breaking information on the web.

Nielsen's report is being received with more than a little doubt.

"Skeptical readers may note that blogs could relate to news, and portals post news stories, so take that into account," writes Poynter's Steve Myers, who listed Nielsen's findings:

Activity % of Internet time spent on it
Other (including porn) 35.1%
Social networks & blogs 22.5
Online games 9.8
Email 7.6
Portals 4.5
Videos/movies 4.4
Search 4.0
Instant messaging 3.3
Software manufacturer 3.2
Classifieds/auctions 2.9
Current events & global news 2.6

Meanwhile, the New York Times this week noted the supposed drift away from mass-market news could be tied to a fragmentation of the Web.

David Carr writes, "Like newspapers, portals like AOL and Yahoo are confronting the cold fact that there is less general interest in general interest news. Readers have peeled off into verticals of information — TMZ for gossip, Politico for politics and Deadspin for sports, and so on."

Singer here last Fall ailing, needs help

Anne Feeney, the troubadour, labor activist and citizen journalist who performed with David Rovics on campus last October and locally in a benefit for WTND radio last April, has been hospitalized with a lung tumor and is undergoing tests to find out what can be done.

Regardless of doctors' advice, the recording artist faces months of lost income and is welcoming donations -- of no more than $50.

"I really don't want any larger donations," she says on her web site. "I have enough dear friends who are doing okay that those of you who are struggling shouldn't spend a second worrying about my finances."

Still, the selfless woman is in need, so if you appreciated her music and attitude last year, please consider letting her know -- and include a few bucks if you're able.

Mail to Anne Feeney, 2240 Milligan Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15218.

Her web site is http://www.annefeeney.com/ and her blog is http://fellow-travelers-advisory.blogspot.com/

Documentary filmmaker visiting J program April 16

At 11 a.m. on Thursday, April 16 in Simpkins Room 027 , journalist, author and documentary filmmaker John De Graaf will speak to interested students.

Here's a biographical sketch of him:

John de Graaf is the national coordinator of TAKE BACK YOUR TIME, an organization challenging time poverty and overwork in the U.S. and Canada (see www.timeday.org) and a frequent speaker on issues of overwork and over-consumption in America. He is often a guest lecturer on college campuses.

John is the co-author of the best-selling AFFLUENZA: THE ALL-CONSUMING EPIDEMIC (Berrett-Koehler, 2001/2005—now published in eight other languages as well.). He is the editor of TAKE BACK YOUR TIME (Berrett-Koehler, 2003) and of the children’s book, DAVID BROWER: FRIEND OF THE EARTH (Henry Holt, 1992). He also wrote the first chapter (“Childhood Affluenza”) of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ seminal book on childhood, ABOUT CHILDREN (2004). His articles have been published in dozens of magazines.

John has worked with KCTS-TV, the Seattle PBS affiliate, for 24 years, as an independent producer of television documentaries. More than 15 of his programs have been broadcast in Prime Time nationally on PBS. He is also the recipient of more than 100 regional, national and international awards for film-making, including three Emmy awards. He produced the popular PBS specials, RUNNING OUT OF TIME, an examination of overwork and time pressure in America, and AFFLUENZA, a humorous critique of American consumerism. His other national PBS specials include FOR EARTH’S SAKE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF DAVID BROWER; VISIBLE TARGET; A PERSONAL MATTER: GORDON HIRABAYASHI VS. THE UNITED STATES; BEYOND ORGANIC; ESCAPE FROM AFFLUENZA; IT’S UP TO US: THE GIRAFFE PROJECT and CIRCLE OF PLENTY.

He recently completed three new documentary films, SILENT KILLER: THE UNFINISHED CAMPAIGN AGAINST HUNGER; BUYER, BE FAIR: THE PROMISE OF PRODUCT CERTIFICATION; and THE MOTHERHOOD MANIFESTO.

Prior to his work in TV, John was Public Affairs Director for KUMD Radio in Duluth, Minnesota. He has taught documentary film production at The University of Washington and The Evergreen State College. He has also taught on Time, Consumerism and Sustainability issues at Evergreen. He is the founder of the Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival and former president of the Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Network. He is also the recipient of the Founders of a New Northwest Award for his work in environmental media. The de Graaf Environmental Filmmaking Award, named in his honor, is presented annually at the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival in Nevada City, California.

He is also a member of the steering committee for the Simplicity Forum, a national think tank for the Voluntary Simplicity movement. In 2005, he was the World Food Day George McGovern lecturer at the FAO in Rome. He is a member of the Balaton Group on International Sustainability, which meets annually in Hungary, and a member of the steering committee of the Forum on Social.

Courier adviser, teacher makes Nevada HoF

Western Courier adviser Rich Moreno this month was one of four people honored by the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

The former publisher of Nevada magazine, author of seven books about Nevada, and a travel/history columnist for Nevada newspapers, Moreno is completing his next book, Nevada Curiosities and maintaining his blog, The Backyard Traveler [ http://backyardtraveler.blogspot.com/].

Here's the entire story from the University of Nevada Reno -- http://www.unr.edu/nevadanews/detail.aspx?id=2327

'Watchdogs, not lapdogs'

Network television newscasts are no more informative than Comedy Central's "Daily Show," according to research announced at a recent event in Indiana, where the editor of The Nation magazine commented about these "perilous times."

"We're getting US Weekly fed to us like bad heroin," said Katrina vanden Heuvel. "We need watchdogs, not lapdogs."

Indiana assistant professor Julie Fox studied coverage of the 2004 election campaign, comparing Jon Stewart's "fake news" and network TV.

"I found them equally substantive," she said, "which is to say, not very substantive at all."

For Jonathan Hiskes full article on the event, go here --
http://journalism.indiana.edu/news/nation-editor-we-need-watchdogs-not-lapdogs/

Saner heads prevail at Fox: the audience

It's not the first overly hyped TV show that lasted all of one episode, but Fox's "Anchorman" was canceled Aby the network Thursday afternoon after its Wednesday-night premiere.

The program -- about a former model and World Wrestling Entertainment performer named a local news anchor -- attracted a tiny 1.0 rating in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic.

Fox News makes a mockery of TV journalism

Associated Press TV beat writer Frazier Moore this weekend filed a short, insightful piece on Fox's latest debacle -- a story that ran in some places headlined 'Fox making a mockery of TV news.'

It effectively shares details about "bosomy bottle-blonde" Lauren Jones, soon to be the newest member of KYTX-TV 19 in Tyler, Texas, and star of the network's new reality show, "Anchorwoman."

Tongue firmly planted in cheek, Moore writes, "With a resume that includes the titles of Barker Beauty on "The Price is Right," former Miss New York and featured WWE Diva, she's a natural to join the hallowed profession of Murrow and Cronkite."

Turning a bitr more serious, the AP reporter adds, "This show (and KYTX) are doing their part to make a laughingstock out of local TV news."

Here's a link to an online version of his story, published by -- you got it -- Fox News. http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Aug18/0,4670,TVLookout,00.html
So what? Much of it already is.

Musings of a Journalist

Dave Bakke is a long-time writer at the State Journal-Register in Springfield, where the following essay first appeared this spring:

I am a journalist.

It is my fault that the majority of Americans do not support the war in Iraq.

It was my fault when Americans turned against the war in Vietnam.

I am the reason your teenaged girl dresses like that.

I made “Lady In The Water” tank at the box office.

I am unfair to the president. Every president.

When you feel bad about the future, it is because of me.

I do not know what is important.

I am biased.

I misspell your name and get your address wrong every time.

I snoop around into your business and tell everyone about it.

I am a dinosaur on my way to the dust heap of history.

I am a pest.

Global warming was dreamed up by me.

I don’t get it.

I only print the bad news.

I need you more than you need me.

I get sued, hung up on, shouted at, thrown out and punched.

I am too big for my britches.

I have no business being where I am most of the time.

I print your divorce in the paper.

I print your marriage in the paper.

I dwell on your failures.

I blow things out of proportion.

If your kid robs the liquor store, I print it.

If your kid makes Eagle Scout, I print it.

I tell people about your anniversary, your birthday, your wedding, your award, your promotion, your retirement, your death.

I tell you about unknown people doing wonderful things for other unknown people.

I end up in your scrapbook and on your refrigerator.

I print the quirky, the unusual, the heartwarming, the sad, the happy, the inspiring, the surprising, the awesome and the trivial - all of the goulash that makes up life.

At dawn, I am in a car somewhere on my way to talk to someone who just saved a life.

At midnight, I am on the way to a fire.

Sometimes I like to do the unexpected. Like this.

I do not expect to be liked, admired or trusted. So when you do, it means more.

You do not expect me to be likable, admirable or trustworthy. So when I am, it means more.

I tell what I have to tell about you, despite your importance, what position you hold or how much influence you have.

I tell what I have to tell about you even if you are nobody, do not hold any position or have any influence at all.

I could have done something else with my life and escaped your blame for things that go wrong.

But, no, I could have done nothing else with my life. This is what I’ve always wanted.

I am a journalist.

I tell stories.

You read them.

It’s as simple as that.

And as complex.

Reporters without Borders calls for action after record Iraq toll

The advocacy group Reporters Without Borders wants a special police unit to investigate media killings in Iraq after a record 12 journalists were slain in May, reports Paul Tait of Reuters.

The Paris-based group expressed shock after the deaths of four journalists in five days and said police should also set up a witness protection program to help in investigations of media killings.

Since the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein, who controlled Iraqi media, Iraqis have seen the proliferation of newspapers and television. Many are controlled by political or religious factions, and Iraqi journalists, dozens of whose colleagues have been killed or kidnapped, complain some officials put them under heavy pressure.

Read Tait's piece here --
<http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSCOL13415920070601?feedType=RSS>

Jon Stewart can teach un-funny journalists

American Journalism Review has a thorough critique of The Daily Shoe parody -- and finds a lot of journalism there as well as comedy.

"So-called fake news makes fun of that concept of balance," says Martin Kaplan, associate dean of Southern Cal's Annenberg School for Communication. "It's not afraid to have a bullshit meter and to call people spinners or liars when they deserve it. I think as a consequence some viewers find that helpful and refreshing and hilarious."

Read the whole piece here: http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4329

Recalling 9/11's free-speech casualties

While some of the media audience still thinks about Don Imus' firing, Los Angeles Times columnist Patt Morrison recalls two journalists who also were fired -- not for being stupid, but for being skeptical.

By Patt Morrison
April 19, 2007
via the Los Angeles Times

All the ink and the airtime that's been expended on Don Imus being fired for saying something controversial and stupid got me thinking about two other media guys — working stiffs, not multimillionaires; professional informers, not inflamers — who got fired for saying something controversial and wise.

Imus was canned after he slagged a women's college basketball team. The two newspaper columnists were canned from their small-town papers after the 9/11 attacks for criticizing President Bush.

I know what you're thinking: If that's grounds for firing, the editorial offices at the nation's news operations would be as empty as a Laura Bush stare, right? Nowadays, sure — when Bush's approval ratings are circling the drain. But remember the tetchy, proscriptive atmosphere after the 9/11 attacks, when the nation was circling the wagons around anything American, starting, as far as some people were concerned, with the president? Then-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer took his own blue pencil to the 1st Amendment when he warned that Americans "need to watch what they say."

In Grants Pass, Ore., at the Daily Courier, and at the Texas Sun, down in Texas City, journalists Dan Guthrie and Tom Gutting — separated by about 30 years in age but not at all by their conviction — were thinking: Where was Bush? Where was the presence that the nation craved in that terrible aftermath, but wasn't getting?

As Guthrie wrote: "He didn't storm back to the capital and lead us through our darkest hour…. He skedaddled" to one Air Force base, then another. Guthrie praised New York firefighters and the passengers aboard United Flight 93 as "the heroes of this rotten week." As for Bush, Guthrie wrote: "We're praying for him." That was after he used, fatally, the word "cowardice."

Hundreds of miles away, Gutting, who'd been a newspaperman since he was an Indiana teenager, was writing what turned out to be his last column. He praised Rudy Giuliani's decision to be "highly visible." He lambasted Bush: "It's time we snapped out of the 'support our president' trance and start to be vigilant citizens, as our Constitution demands."

Well. The reaction didn't stop with the men's firings. An Alaskan fisherman professed a wish to use Guthrie for crab bait. In Texas, Gutting became, as the more colorful threats went, "a man who needed killin'."

In the half-decade since, the men, like the country, have moved on. Gutting, 28, researches grants at a Houston university and goes to law school. Guthrie, 67, teaches at a community college; the flags he put in his garden for dead soldiers have bleached to white, like so many of the flags slapped on bumpers after 9/11.

Of the 1st Amendment, Guthrie says: "I realize it comes with stipulations. You're free to say what you want, but that doesn't mean you can't suffer repercussions." Evidence Imus. Guthrie sometimes watched Imus and had to wonder whether the man even knew what he was saying. Did he "even know what 'ho' means? Did he think it meant a member of the 'hood? We have ageism dueling with racism."

Gutting's first thought was "what a damn fool thing to say." But should Imus have been fired? "I just can't say that. As much as I abhor what he said and there's real pressure to say 'yeah he should be fired'…. "

I was writing a column as the World Trade Center towers were toppling, and in the heat of such a singular moment, I hoped I got it right: cautioning about the assaults we ourselves could mount on our civil liberties, so that 9/11 would be a "test of how much Americans truly believe in America."

Guthrie's and Gutting's firings made my point faster than I could have imagined. Five years on, Guthrie says he hated more than anything else the letters and phone calls telling him to "leave, just leave — that's our response to the dissenter: Just leave."

And Gutting? "I still think about it a lot. It's when you get [your] ideals tested and you pay consequences for them [that] you find out whether you believe what you espouse to believe. And I wouldn't change a damn thing."

Can Imus honestly say the same? Watch for it: Some network somewhere will probably give him the chance.

Former area photojournalist wins Pulitzer

Renee C. Byer, left, celebrates her Pulitzer Prize with Cyndie French, one of the subjects of her touching series "A Mother's Journey."

A photojournalist who went to school and got her first media job in west-central Illinois won the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography, it was announced yesterday.

Renee C. Byer, 48, of the Sacramento Bee, won for her work on "A Mother's Journey," a series published last summer chronicling the final year in the life of a dying boy and his mom.

A graduate of Bradley University, Byer was a staff photographer at the Peoria Journal Star in the 1980s before moving to daily newspapers in Holyoke, Mass., Hartford, Ct., Portland, Ore., Seattle, Wash. and Sacramento.

"In presenting the $10,000 feature photography prize to Byer, the judges described her entry as an 'intimate portrayal of a single mother and her young son as he loses his battle with cancer'," writes Bee reporter Dorothy Korber, who also quoted Byer.

"In a situation like this, your instincts as a person are to try to help," Byer said. "But as a journalist, you have to step back and let things unfold as they naturally would. It can be very, very painful.

"I was documenting a story that needed to be told, and it was a gift to be allowed to be there. Throughout, I had a bigger vision that -- because of what I was witnessing -- it would bring hope to other families."

Byer said she saw "A Mother's Journey" as an exploration on several levels: the financial impact on a family struggling with a tragic situation, health care shortages that led to maddening delays, and, finally, the very personal and heartbreaking loss of a child.

One of the first people to congratulate Byer was Cyndie French, the mother whose son Derek passed away.

Here's a link to the Bee story (free registration may be required) --http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/156190.html

Here's a link to a Peoria Journal Star piece -- http://www.pjstar.com/stories/041707/TRI_BCV5LT90.029.php

Classic Dave Barry column from '98 revives 'boob tube' during sweeps weeks

Humor columnist Dave Barry is on an extended leave of absence, but newspapers are reprinting some of his classic pieces, and in the last couple of weeks, papers from New York to Peoria reprinted Barry's hilarious take on local TV "investigative reports."

It's not long before "Sweeps" -- when stations contrive all kinds of multi-part series, sensational topics and special promotions to attract bigger audiences for the time viewer numbers are measured by Nielsen. So be warned.

And amused.

"My point is that, pound for pound, the most dramatic and entertaining programming on television is your local TV news shows," Barry writes.

Onion expands fake news franchise

The Onion is notorious -- celebrated -- for its on-the-mark print parodies of AP Stylebook newswriting -- apart from the ridiculous, hilarious substance of its newspapers, books and web site.

Now the brains and breath behind the Onion are launching the Onion News Network, which rips cable news more than "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" satirize both cable news AND newsmakers.

Before you starting enjoying ONN, read the Associated Press's advance story on the newest phoney-baloney news outlet -- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17804342/