THE NEW YORK TIMES has eliminated its TimesSelect program, its subscription-based service that provided full access to the Times' content (and in particular, much of its meatier op/ed and analysis reporting). This means the full Times is available, each day, to everyone online, free.

We subscribe to the print edition and had enjoyed TS access as part of our subscription. From a business perspective it's an interesting decision. The WSJ, I think, has succeeded online precisely because they charge for full access, honoring the adage that in the experience economy you are what you charge (the thinking being that charging "admission" for your content forces you to ensure your content is worth the fee). Perhaps this means the times isn't as differentiated as they had suspected (or hoped? ) ...

Regardless, go and enjoy your fresh, free Thomas Fredeman ...

Pulp / Money Update

THE "A" TO A "Q" I submitted at the Inky forums:

Carrie, perhaps you would explain to me why the newspaper bag for my Sunday, November 5, 2006 Inquirer was a full-length "Vote Rick Santorum" ad, paid for by the NRA? Doesn't this equate to a strong endorsement for Santorum by the paper? Will there be equal time, with the Casey ad coming on tomorrow's paper? Or does the Inky, and it's journalist ethics, stop with the pulp?

Alan Nelson, Berwyn, PA 11/05/06

Thanks for your question. I heard about this from other readers, as well. I've passed the complaints along to editors. It does not equate to an endorsement for Santorum. The Inquirer editorial board, for one, endorsed Casey. Nonetheless, the bag is a paid advertisement. If Casey supporters wanted to do the same, they could. I can only speak for myself and my editors on the news side: We try our best every day to be fair, no matter what happens elsewhere at the paper.

Carrie  Budoff 11/05/06

I had not yet counted ten when I wrote that. Regardless, I read "I can only speak for myself and my editors on the news side: We try our best every day to be fair, no matter what happens elsewhere at the paper." as meaning "Management may have lost their minds, but we just keep trying to be professionals." I buy that. Of course, that sentiment, and the need for advertising dollars in general at the Inky, doesn't bode well for our local rag. The popular opinion among our seat-mates at the opera last night was that the Inquirer is a sinking ship but deservedly so, given how average it has become. Seems a vicious cycle. It's not the paper it used to be, so it can't sell ads. And as it can't sell ads, it's not the paper it used to be. Seems credible to me that it's management after all, although this year KR sold the paper to PMH (and perhaps they have the taste for political ad dollars)

It's a shame. The Inky is the third-oldest surviving daily paper in the United States. It used to be truly great, and has 18 Pulitzers on the wall--17 of which were won between 1975 and 1990. For the history, see Wikipedia, and look for similar trends coming to a paper near you.

Where The Pulp Stops and Money Begins

AN INTERESTING JUXTAPOSITION. Yesterday I saw that Gannett is fundamentally changing how they run their newspapers (via SN) in response to changes in how people are producing and consuming news. My take was that this is a smart, progressive move--and selfishly, the focus on local news and the inclusion of everyday citizens in the process reflect suggestions I made to the AP Managing Editors in 2004.

This morning I see something that reverses the field and makes me wonder what those ladies and gentlemen who publish newspapers could possibly be thinking. Each morning Kate and I send our energetic golden retriever, Cassidy, down the drive to retrieve our newspapers. I read three: The Philadelphia Inquirer (our local rag), the New York Times (for the perspective of the left and the crossword puzzles), and the Wall Street Journal (though online, for the perspective of the right and the business coverage). When ol' Cass brings in the Inky this morning I see something that surprises me: The bag in which our Inquirer sits presents a full-length political advertisement for US Senate candidate Rick Santorum (click the photo for a larger view).

For those not of these parts or not engaged with national political reporting, the Santorum (R) / Casey  (D) Senate race is one of the most hotly contested in the country, and one of the few races upon which control of the Senate may rest. It's been everything for which Pennsylvania politics are infamous: Tough, dirty, expensive, personal. It's also trending  Democrat, with Casey holding an eight point lead in the latest Morning Call poll.

Between the Santorum / Casey Senate race and the equally contested Murphy (D) / Gerlach (R) House race (also one of the closest, dirtiest, most expensive, and personal in the nation), we've experienced a deluge of political advertising for months. We've had calls, visits, and ads. We've had the positive and the extraordinarily negative (think "Candidate X likes to eat baby brains after stomping on the heads of small puppies. Can Pennsylvanians AFFORD to eat baby brains after stomping on the heads of small puppies???"). Lois Murphy was at the local train station last Thursday shaking hands, and yesterday we received no fewer than seven ads in our mail.

But this morning's Inky bag struck us as beyond the pale. I neither expect, nor wish, to see campaign advertising in my newspaper. Political commentary, yes. Endorsements, sure. Stories with a whiff of bias, of course. But campaign advertising -- a direct exchange of money for message placement -- no. Nor do I want to. Not for Santorum. Not for Casey. Not for Willie the Clown.

For those who might say "Why not? Free speech is free speech," my reply is: "Ethics." A visit to the Society of Professional Journalists presents one with a full page devoted to their Code of Ethics. I can't say who at the Inky is a member of the SPJ, but one can reasonably presume that their code of ethics is similar to, if not a model for, journalism ethics and standards in general. Among the standards they list we find (enumeration added by me):

Act Independently
Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know. Journalists should:

1. Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
2. Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
3. Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.
4. Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
5. Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.
6. Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
7. Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; avoid bidding for news.

I'm just a layman, but it seems to me the Santorum ad takes a pretty good run at #2 and #3. Given that the Inky endorsed Casey this same day, we could probably ask about #1, too. "What about equal time?", you ask. Actually, the Equal Time Rule applies to broadcasters, not to print journalists, as broadcasters use a public resource (the airwaves) to ply their wares, which subjects them to a different level of regulation. The First Amendment Center tells us that there have been attempts to apply the Equal Time Rule to newspapers, but the Supreme Court has declared such laws unconstitutional: "A responsible press is an undoubtedly desirable goal but press responsibility is not mandated by the Constitution and like many other virtues it cannot be legislated."

And rightly so. Press responsibility is a virtue, and should not be legislated. But the idea that a news outlet that lives by a code of ethics grounded in impartiality would treat qualified political candidates equally is a reasonable virtue to expect, no? That expectation would cause one to ask: Did they offer the same advertising space to Casey, at the same price and time?

If the answer is "No" there's no legal consequence, just an ethical one -- and perhaps no more than the Inky looking dirty, commercial, and self-interested on the eve of an election. But it's their brand, and they're welcome to tarnish it as they please.

How is this different than political advertising on TV? Because TV stations are broadcasters first, and journalists only when a news show is on TV. Newspapers are journalists all the time, and as such, have always been in the difficult position of managing the competing obligations of being at once a commercial and journalistic enterprise. (Of course, the history of yellow journalism in this country suggests the position hasn't always been so difficult). But given the proliferation of news sources today, this reader has come to hope his newspaper, even with its unavoidable biases and overt endorsements, would retain some measure of professionalism amongst the din.

Not so much, it seems. In Philly, commercialism seems the greater of equals. The Inky may claim their professional and ethical obligations end with the pages on which they print, but the plastic the thing comes it as much a symbol of their priorities as the pulp of their paper. Perhaps someone took leave of their senses, or perhaps the fee was simply too good to pass up. Either indicates I've subscribed to a paper that is solidly a business first and a font of journalism second, and that's a subscription I'm not willing to renew.

* * *

POSTSCRIPT: After drafting this piece I found this page at the Newspaper Association of America, which states:

Political advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry and growing every year. But newspapers have had difficulty capturing a significant share of this revenue. That's because political advertising is unlike any other kind of advertising. The political industry is dominated by consultants, not traditional agencies. These consultants control the decision-making and placement process. To a large degree, today's consultants are broadcast-oriented, and simply not familiar with the opportunities newspaper advertising can offer their clients.

The Newspaper Association of America is working hard to change that. NAA has undertaken a multi-faceted campaign to educate the political consulting community about the advantages of newspaper advertising.

...

The NAA's outreach effort to the political consulting industry is ongoing. If you would like more information on what NAA is doing to increase political advertising revenue for newspapers, contact Jack Brady at bradj@naa.org.

Seems there's much more of this to come.

They May Never Learn

HO HO HO, HEE HEE HEE, HA HA HA ... Isn't it FUN to abuse the public trust?! Ethics? Heck -- those were for Murrow!

We have a word for folks like these where I come from: Liars.

(Thanks, Doug, for the link. Kate and I had seen it on the Daily Show but are delighted to have the video.)

Relevance

A conversation that just occurred in our kitchen ...

Me (reading my Gmail and affecting an over-the-top "oh my God this is important pay attention now!" news broadcaster voice): "How about this ... a CNN BREAKING NEWS ALERT ...  ACTOR MEL GIBSON ENTERS REHAB!!!"

Kate (former PR flack in the financial services industry): "This affects my life how? His publicist made him do it."

She's right, of course. This is relevant to the 30,000 people on CNN's Breaking News Alert list how? And regarding Kate: Where to begin with the cynicism? Of course, it's well earned, and my views on CNN are already on the record.

New Media Speech Video

In 2004 I gave a speech on new media to the annual meeting of the Associated Press Managing Editors. I've had the prepared remarks online for some time, but this past weekend I came across a DVD of my comments. New Mac-enabled powers in hand, I've put the address online here, and it runs about 30 minutes.

If you choose to watch the video note that it should stream from the site, meaning you shouldn't need to download it prior to viewing (although it might take a minute for the first bit to download and for an image to show on your screen). You might, however, need Quicktime viewer -- which is free, powerful, and something you should have anyway. You can get it here.

It's always a strange thing, watching yourself. Seeing this I take away three things from my 2004 self: Lose weight (in progress), get more sleep (doing much better), and speak more slowly (perhaps a lost cause).

Goodbye CNN, Hello Reason

/ RANT ON /

HERE'S A SCREEN CAP of CNN online this morning (click the pic to see it full-sized). It's an important screen capture, one I'll likely keep and maybe even print, placing it in the same Rubbermaid bin we use to keep important newspapers for our yet-to-be-born children.

Let's see ... what's in that bin ... "Too Close To Call," from Nov. 8, 2000 (the day after the 2000 election); "Pope Dies," from Apr. 3, 2005; "U.S. Attacked," from Sep. 12, 2001 (and others from Sep. 13, 14, 16, 17, 29); "Baghdad Hit," from March 20, 2003 (the Command Post's birthday, BTW).

Surely "U.S. murder suspect faces UK court" has a place among such meaningful historical artifacts.

Note the bold headline. The photo of Neil Entwistle and the family he apparently murdered. The striking, blood-red "BREAKING NEWS" banner across the masthead. Also note the smaller, less noteworthy stories to the right: "Libby: My 'superiors' authorized leaks," "Israeli, Palestinian diplomats face of on peace process." We should be glad our computer monitors have high resolutions lest such less meaningful stories slip entirely off the page.

If you've not noticed, the news media has lost its collective mind. Yes, we've always had tabloids, yellow journalism, and jingoist editors. Indeed, some would claim that for much of its history advocacy and sensationalism was what the news was for. Half the founding fathers got into the news biz so they could have a stage upon which to beat their political drum. Newspapers in the 1850s were instrumental in building the shrill divisiveness preceding the Civil War. In the 1940s the news often served as an external outlet for the Roosevelt / Truman propaganda machine.

But today is different than 1776, 1876, and 1976. Today, with web pages and pager alerts and Blackberrys and web-enabled phones and 160 TV channels and satellite radio and AM talk radio and FM radio and broadband Internet connections and wikis and chat rooms and instant messaging and online forums and static web pages and podcasts and streaming video and Flikr and social bookmarking and blogs ...

... today with SARS and avian flu and Darfur and Hamas and China and outsourcing and Dow 10,000 and hedge funds and GM layoffs and Davos and WTO and global warning and el Nino and immigration and the Olympics and sex trafficking and briefcase nukes ...

... today we need help navigating the noise. It's a complex world. The stakes are high. We need news that helps us identify the wheat of our world from the damn chaff.

And the fact that Mr. Entwistle may have murdered his family and has been caught does not help me live my life, it does not entertain me, it does not make me more learned, it does not help me reason. It's an excruciating, terrible, sad story, one deserving the greatest sympathy ... and CNN is blaring it from the headlines simply for its shock value and base appeal. Like motorists passing an accident, most of us can't help but look. CNN knows that, and they're using the murder of a wife and child to sensationalize and sell their product.

It's wrong, and it should stop.

Today we need our news editors to actually act the part -- to muster the guts to make editorial choices based on what will add the most value to their audience. Not because they're an elite class that knows best, but because they have common sense and appreciate what it takes for the average Joe to reason about the world.

Back in the day, when my grandfather was editor of the Logan Herald Journal and taking my dad down to tear the early stories off the AP wire, he wouldn't have talked of journalistic ethics or editorial obligations. He would have simply said that as the person who held the keys to the news, who knew everything that was happening in his small town, serene or sordid ... who had the power to inform, educate, distract, and ruin ... he needed to show good sense. He would have said he felt a duty to his community, to his neighbors, to judiciously exercise that power. And he did.   

That's what I long for: News media that shows good sense. Some glimmer of obligation not to attract attention and sensationalize, but to inform and educate. To help us reason.

I was struck by this passage from last month's Atlantic Monthly, to which I subscribe, and which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year:

[I]f some things about The Atlantic Monthly have changed in 150 years, the most important things have not.

First, the founders of the magazine understood that breaking news was not always worth paying attention to, and in fact could distract the public from important stories that needed to be told—and that took more time to tell. One of our early contributors, Henry David Thoreau, noting the impact of the telegraph, warned that soon we would be hearing minute-by-minute updates on Princess Adelaide's whooping cough. This concern is all the more relevant in our own era of round-the-clock cable and Internet news. Nobody in America complains, "I'm not getting my news bites fast enough!" People do complain that they're not getting the full truth. They do complain that the foam of headlines, and of what Philip K. Dick might have called "pre-news," conceals vast shoals of reality.

Second, from the outset the magazine's vantage point had no roots in political ideology. The Atlantic would be a forum, not a pulpit. It would cover potentially anything and be open to the sharpest thinking and reporting, no matter how contrarian. There is of course nothing wrong with partisan newspapers and magazines—they are one of the glories of the free press in America. But The Atlantic was designed to be something else.

Third, the magazine has always tried to be entertaining as well as informative. From the beginning it has set aside a place for a special kind of humor, a kind that may be gentle, cerebral, or utterly off the wall, but is rarely broad. Mark Twain once said that he liked writing humor for The Atlantic because the editors allowed him to be funny without asking him to paint himself in stripes and stand on his head. Garrison Keillor (whose poetic parodies are published in this issue) and Christopher Buckley carry on this tradition.

Finally, the founders of The Atlantic believed in what they called "the American idea." This was not some saccharine notion of American exceptionalism or a hyper-patriotic American boosterism. It was a recognition that America was an experiment, based on certain principles—an experiment that could fail, but would if successful offer a rare kind of hope. It could be easily contaminated—by ignorance, venality, selfishness, hatred, hubris. The founders were realists: the biggest threat of all, the slave system, was at the peak of its power, and the challenge of race, they knew, was destined to become the nation's central concern.

What is "the American idea"? It is the fractious, maddening approach to the conduct of human affairs that values equality despite its elusiveness, that values democracy despite its debasement, that values pluralism despite its messiness, that values the institutions of civic culture despite their flaws, and that values public life as something higher and greater than the sum of all our private lives. The founders of the magazine valued these things—and they valued the immense amount of effort it takes to preserve them from generation to generation.

That is the tie that binds fifteen decades. In the years before the Civil War it was not certain that the American idea would have a future. It still isn't.

[T]he foam of headlines, and of what Philip K. Dick might have called "pre-news," conceals vast shoals of reality. Indeed.

Fortunately for me, this is something over which I have control. Our media is a marketplace, one with many choices. So goodbye CNN. Goodbye ticker with your inane, superficial factoid distractions. Goodbye Larry and your fawning, grumbled interviews of tragic figures. Goodbye overhead news-chopper coverage of petty criminal car chases. Goodbye Wolf and your breathless, urgent Situation Room lacking meaningful situations. Goodbye Nancy and your morbid, shrieking courtroom voyeurism. Goodbye Paula, goodbye Anderson, goodbye Lou.

Goodbye FOX. Goodbye MSNBC. Goodbye local Action News. So long, goodbye, good riddance.

Hello Atlantic. Hello NewsHour. Hello FRONTLINE. Hello New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Hello Glenn, hello Kos, hello Manolo, hello citizen journalism.

Hello self-empowered editorial license.

Hello reason.

/ RANT OFF /

Tags: cnn, journalism, citizen journalism

All Super Bowl XL Ads, Courtesy Google

MISS THE SUPER BOWL ADS? Google has them all in one place. (Link via PVR Blog.) Not that it matters -- I agree with the pundits that this year's crop lacked creativity. Of course, I watched the game on TiVo, so I sped through most anyway.

A question worth asking: As you look at the page of ads, wonder -- Did the agencies add value beyond their fees and the cost of the ad buy? I think the answer is, "No." Frankly, an agency worth its salt would take payment based on measurable performance -- belief shifts and impressions of brand attributes would be easy to measure in a pre-ad / post-ad research design. Not how many people saw the ad (recall), but how their beliefs moved having seen the ad. Was it effective in getting the audience to know, believe, or feel what the client wished them to know, believe, or feel? Personally, I'd love to see some major corporation challenge the status quo and drive for payment based on impressions created. Shareholders would get more value, and we'd get better (and I wager, more authentic) advertising.

This is presuming, of course, that DVR technology doesn't kill traditional TV advertising. And it probably will.

Tags: advertising, super bowl

The WSJ Rides The Cluetrain

LOOK CLOSELY at this screen capture I made of this morning's Wall Street Journal online edition front page (click the pic for a bigger view). Notice anything? I did: Three podcasts and a blog on the law. Of course, the content has to be good -- I've not yet listened to the podcasts, although the law blog (subscription may be required) is substantive and appropriately "bloggy" -- but this is great to see from the Journal.

Last year I gave a speech to the Associated Press Managing Editors (full text here). The theme of the day was "The Newsroom of the Future," and I spoke about how the Internet was changing journalism (with blogs as a case in point). One point I tried to make was that in a connected world newspapers needed to focus on truly being editors -- professionals that (1) know their audience better than anyone else, (2) know the news (and more likely, some element of the news) better than anyone else, and (3) connect those two things by scanning the world and surfacing issues relevant to their audience. This is not how most news sources typically act: They're much more like brokers, treating news as a commodity that they simply pass from source to consumer. As I said then:

I think that in the newsroom of the future the role of the editor will change from someone who works primarily as a gatekeeper of the facts with an interest in quality, to someone who “serves” the reader as a consumer based on an understanding of what readers will consider relevant ... and on an understanding that readers will judge the veracity of the content based on comparisons to a much larger and transparent flow of information and ideas.

I also asked ...

So where is the value for the newsroom of the future?

It might be in doing little to no national or international coverage ... coverage that’s highly commoditized and democratized ... and instead offering a deep, detailed level of local coverage that’s unrivaled and that readers value highly.

Or it might be that the writing in the newspaper of the future looks more like news magazine writing ... a level of detail and analysis that the wire services don’t provide.

Or it might be that ... like stock brokers ... you become more of a consultant, and less of an information broker ... offering not just news to your readers but expertise and counsel in how to deal with that news.

Regardless, you’re absolutely going to have to find a new way to add new value.

My performance was well-received, but the reaction to the content was (as I'd expect) mixed: Some enthusiasm, some energy, some suspicion. A year later, when you review how many papers are using the connectivity the web affords, most still aren't getting it right. While many certainly have said "We gotta do this blog thing," many made an equally superficial attempt, usually launching blogs that were simply web-based versions of traditional print features, or blogs that were simply links to items in non-newspaper blogs (there's nothing wrong with link-based blogs, but there are many other choices that do a better job).

I think the Journal's got it right. They seem to appreciate that blogs and podcasts are unique mediums adept at communicating specific types of content, and rather than fitting existing content in to a new channel, they've made an appropriate match (admittedly, I judge the podcasts by their titles).

That content appears to be specific expertise, even counsel, that plays well to where the Journal would be credible as an editor of the world -- specific financial topics -- and that is relevant to its readers. Finally, the blog seems a "real" blog: Full entries, first person, comments (not essential, but nice if we're trying to engage readers), frequent updates, permalinks, and trackbacks.

So, good for the Journal. They continue to lead the way online. Let's remember that the Journal was one of the first papers to have a "pay-for-full-access" online version, which many derided at the time. They're now in the black. In the Q&A of the APME speech I suggested that it would be strategic for papers to charge not only for the full online version, but to charge significantly more for the full print version. This was taken by several folks as heresy, but in keeping with the logic of the experience economy, "you are what you charge." Start charging three bucks a paper and it forces the question: What are we doing to make the paper worth three bucks?

A final note: While the law blog is the only WSJ blog to date, it sits in the "blogs.wsj.com" domain -- here's hoping there are more Journal blogs to follow.

Tags: journalism, newsblogs, newspapers, citizen journalism, apme, wall street journal

JoHo: Wikipedia

DAVID WEINBERGER offers an excellent deconstruction of the Seigenthaler / Wikipedia affair in his latest JoHo; very worth reading. My favorite passage:

The media — amplifying our general cultural assumptions  — have come to expect knowledge to be coupled with arrogance: If you claim to know X, then you've also been claiming that you're right and those who disagree are wrong. A leather-bound, published encyclopedia trades on this aura of utter rightness (as does a freebie e-newsletter, albeit it to a lesser degree).The media have a cognitive problem with a publisher of knowledge that modestly does not claim perfect reliability, does not back up that claim through a chain of credentialed individuals, and that does not believe the best way to assure the quality of knowledge is by disciplining individuals for their failures. Arrogance, individual heroism, accountability and discipline ... those have been the hallmarks of the institutions that propagate knowledge.

Technorati tags: JoHo, Seigenthaler, Wikipedia.

* Scheduled post, written earlier.

Thank Goodness

THIS IS GOOD NEWS, and should make the show worth watching for the first time in years. And has anybody else noticed that TDS has quitely become the most credible biased news show on television?

FOR YOUR "DOG BITES MAN" FILES are these two headlines from mainstream media: Rich People Are Happier Than The Poor and Horrors Of War Take Mental Toll. What's tomorrow's special edition, an exclusive on Congressional relations headlined "Democrats and Republicans Disagree"?