media – Page 12 – Hank Kalet

News that hits home

I’ve been following this story — “News Corp. Makes a Bid for Dow Jones” — with a bit of trepidation, partly for personal reasons and partly because of what a Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal might mean for the industry and the Journal itself.

On the personal side, my wife works for Dow Jones on the business side and any sale could have major ramifications for the workforce. Basically, I have no idea of a sale would mean layoffs or what it would do to her benefit package — the uncertainty is a bit scary.

As for the industry, the bigger Murdoch gets, the more his brand of tabloid-style journalism spreads. Right now, the Journal news pages are among the finest in the business, offering a level of in-depth reporting found few other places.

Just as important, as Ari Berman points out in The Nation’s Notion blog, a sale to Murdoch could mean the end of the Journal’s impressive separation of news and opinion — the extremely conservative editorial page has no bearing on the reporting elsewhere in the paper.

Murdoch is known for pushing his publications, such as the once-liberal New York Post, to the right. Under Murdoch’s purview, would the news pages of the Wall Street Journal become more like its conservative editorial section?

I am hopeful that the announcement that the announcement by the Bancroft family at 4:30 today that the family, which owns a controlling interest in the company, “will vote shares constituting slightly more than 50 percent of the outstanding voting power of Dow Jones … against the proposal submitted by News Corporation.”

The Journal and Dow Jones have their problems. I just don’t see how Murdoch is the solution.

Jeff Jarvis isn’t so sure. Here is his BuzzMachine item on the potential sale.

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Pointing to the future of newspapers?

Jeff Jarvis’ offers some interesting ideas on the potential nexus between blog-like online publications and traditional newspapers on his BuzzMachine blog. The gist of his argument can be summed up with his opening line:

Try this on as a new rule for newspapers: Cover what you do best. Link to the rest.

It is, as I said, an interesting idea, one worth considering, though I’m not sure how useful it will be for community weeklies like the Post and Press that focus on the most local of issues.

For bigger dailes — especially for papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post — this may be an approach that can allow them to provide real, useful and important news without ignoring the fluff and celebrity stuff that seems to be of interest to many out there. It is a way of targeting resources toward their best use.

“(I)n the age of the link,” Jarvis writes, the old ways are inefficient and self-defeating.

You can link to the stories that someone else did and to the rest of the world. And if you do that, it allows you to reallocate your dwindling resources to what matters, which in most cases should be local coverage.

This changes the dynamic of editorial decisions. Instead of saying, “we should have that” (and replicating what is already out there) you say, “what do we do best?” That is, “what is our unique value?” It means that when you sit down to see a story that others have worked on, you should ask, “can we do it better?” If not, then link. And devote your time to what you can do better.

We make this decision nearly everyday, picking and choosing what to cover, how much space and time to devote and how to play it. No newspaper can cover everything or devote the kind of resources we would like to the stories we do cover. And our resources are shrinking at a lightning pace.

So we have to rethink the “architecture of news” by finding new ways to cover things. Is the Jarvis model the right one? Perhaps, though there maybe other approaches. It is, however, something that is very much worth thinking about.

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Of titles and school board candidates

I received the following e-mail today:

Would you please explain to me why Harry Delgado is routinely also described as “South Brunswick Police Capt. Harry Delgado”, when other incumbents or others running for the school board for the first time are not also identified by their jobs? (see “Deadline Looms for Board“)

The answer has nothing to do with qualifications, Capt. Delgado’s or anyone else’s as the rest of the e-mail implied. Capt. Delgado — and all police officers — is identified by rank in all stories in the same way that all religious leaders carry their honorifics with them (it would be the Rev. Francis Hubbard whether we were writing about something going on at St. Barnabas Epsicopal Church or happened upon him while doing a story at a local ice cream shop).

We also refer to school board member Matthew Speesler as Dr. Speesler on second reference, even though his medical degree has nothing to do with his service on the board.

Politeness is part of it, but there is a practical reason for this with police officers, as well. Officers, though they work in shifts and can be said to be “off duty,” are always on the job.

I’m comfortable with the policy, but i’m willing to hear what everyone else thinks. Send me an e-mail.

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No duh

Why was the little dust up between the Clinton and Obama camps the other day such a big story? Isn’t this the kind of thing that usually happens during a presidential campaign? Did we really think that everyone was going to make nice when the stakes were so high?

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Remove the cloak

I saw this on Glen Greenwald’s blog on Salon and had to link to it because it pretty much sums up my own feelings on anonymous sources. It is from a Frontline interview with Dana Priest of The Washington Post, excerpted in E&P.

Q. In Washington, people have lots of off-the-record or confidential conversations all the time on all kinds of things, not just secret prisons.

Right. I think the press is guilty of allowing sources to ask for anonymity in far too many places.

Q. To getting spun, you mean, by the sources?Even if the information is not spun, but they just don’t want their names attached to it. You have spokesmen who are paid by U.S. taxpayers to be the spokesmen for their agencies, and they won’t put their name on simple statements.

That’s in part because we’re not calling them on it enough, and I think that we should.Papers and networks are not good at working together, but I would absolutely support an effort by us collectively to say, if you’re a spokesman, you have to have your name on the record. We need to crack down on the use of anonymous sources when it’s not absolutely necessary.And now you’re going to ask me when is it actually necessary. It is all a judgment call, but it has gotten overused, absolutely.

Q. Out of control?

It’s gotten out of control. USA Today stopped using them, and they were successful. They got people to be on the record with things that they initially said they wanted to be on background and not quoted. So I think we should do a better job trying to get people to be on the record.

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