Ah, to be blissfully ignored

Much has been written on how newsrooms are hard places to change, resistant to innovation, etc. -- so much so that the best thing is just to point you to a Google search and let you graze.

But sometimes there is a moment in time when things become just a bit clearer, and it was on the way in to work this morning listening to NPR talk about, of all things, the nation's power grid.

The report contained this, from Martha Duggan, vice president for government affairs at solar energy company SunEdison.

Duggan, who began her career in the regulated utility world, likes to tell a story about a utility engineer who said the nature of his job was either to be ignored when the electricity was on, or criticized when it was off.

"And so his goal, really, was to be ignored," Duggan says. "When you apply that kind of thinking across an organization — as you might imagine — the opportunity for creativity or new ideas is not necessarily in top of mind for folks who work in that environment."

I've written here before how papers in the 1970s through 1990s, as competition fell away and staffs grew to meet "peak demand," became more and more like utility companies. But as I heard this today, it also explained so much about newsroom psychology.

For all those supposed "free spirits" among journalists, let's be honest, the real goal for most was simply to "get the paper out." Miss a deadline, you get noticed. Screw up a story or even write one that is solid as hell but draws some angry calls, you get noticed. And "getting noticed" in a newsroom in those kinds of ways was at least an invitation to take some antacid.

(At the AP, for instance at one time, even the smallest of "correctives" required an extensive packet that went to New York and ultimately the president's office.)

In other words, their real goal inside the organization and outside was to be ignored - at the same time they wanted the world to pay attention to what they were writing.

Sure, it came from the top of the organization, but, like utilities, it was so ingrained that it permeated every facet of corporate culture.

Is it any wonder journalists are a bit neurotic?

Despite all the talk about blowing up newsrooms and all the new fancy titles, I've really yet to see any news organization effectively address this ingrained problem. Or to put it another way, if the publisher got a bunch of angry calls tomorrow about something the newsroom had put out, even if it were the most solid thing in the world, what are the chances that at least some crap would not run downhill? Or what if someone said, hey, we really need to be late on that paper tonight because we really need to get it on the Web first and think of some new ways to do it in print?

I'd love to hear of some places that have figured out how not to have that happen.

Just as I feared, dammit

Have had my nose buried in grading and getting senior semester copy prepared all week as we close the semester, so I had this really, really bad feeling after seeing the news that The Baltimore Sun had cut a third of its newsroom -- 61 positions.

So I guess I was not surprised when I went to John McIntyre's blog this morning, just po'd. John, the AME of desks at the Sun and a good friend, was among those cut.

The Sun's ax fell heavily on management positions - 21 according to the various stories -- with the object being to keep reporters and reposition as a Web-heavy, social media, online-first operation. Good enough

But not good.

McIntyre was one of the good -- really good - guys in this business, someone who cares for language, accuracy and, above all, journalism. And beyond that, a gentleman above all else. As usual, he made his exit on his Sun blog with class.

He is a former president of the American Copy Editors Society, and so perhaps it's eerily fitting that this happens in the same week ACES is gathering in -- or rather straggling into (BTW, I recommend David Sullivan's post for so many more reasons than that little aside) -- Minneapolis, its future and that of many of its members far from clear.

For me, this goes beyond "newspapering" or "news" or "journalism" or whatever we want to call it today. It's a bit of a death in the family -- the family of folks I have come to know as friends and colleagues who care deeply about language and journalism & etc.

Oh sure, McIntyre isn't dead, and he promises to be blogging elsewhere. That seems to be the phrase of the age, doesn't it -- see you on the blog - somewhere else. I'll be sure to link. But it's unfortunate it probably won't be at the Sun. The "paper" could use the digital "juice."

Update: John's new blog is http://johnemcintyre.blogspot.com/
Columnist Laura Vozzella has a column lamenting John's leaving and praising his work: Last seen in a bow tie, columnist's dictionary goes missing.
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The best line of the 80+ comments on his blog lamenting John's leaving comes from one Mark Murphy: Hearing that a newspaper has laid off John McIntyre is like hearing that Noah has laid off the one crew member who knows the most about caulking.

This one's a 'Shoe-in' ...

From my local -- and ever thinning -- local paper, The State of Columbia, this week, some wonderful "Job Hunting 101 for New Grads" advice. To wit:

Just because you look good on paper doesn't mean you're a shoe-in for the job.

Great. Let's hope those new grads don't have to learn their language this way, because the term is shoo-in.

Turns out this comes from one of those helpful hints articles on CareerBuilder that's been out there since 2005. Time to get CareerBuilder editor Kate Lorenz a new dictionary.

(There's also this: And that doesn't mean waiting tables at your neighborhood cafe or serving drinks at your college stomping ground. As pointed out here before, the preferred term in American English is stamping ground. And this: While interviews can be nerve-wracking, employers are looking for candidates who show grace under pressure at all times. The preferred spelling is nerve-racking. But neither is so clear-cut as shoe/shoo.)

Vimeo

I just got pointed to this good article from Slate's Farhad Manjoo about Vimeo, the "other" video upload site that we at Newsplex have used for a number of years.

In the process, I discovered Majoo's link to this fantastic video by Jonathan Jarvis explaining the credit crisis.



The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Dear AP: Turn the damn "embed" code off

Over at Seeking Alpha, another example that "apparently doesn't get it" starts with AP. It goes like this:

• AP broadcast member discovers AP video channel on YouTube
• Member notices the videos have the "embed" code enabled (in fact, the entire channel has an embed code - see below)
• Things with "embed" turned on in the world of online etiquette signal they are there to be shared.
• Member puts embed on its Web site.
• Member gets cease-and-desist letter from AP.

No, the station was not an AP video member, apparently. But see bullet point three above. Will someone please drive the Rent-a-Clue truck over to AP headquarters?

AP later apologized and said go ahead and post. But I'm sure all that publicity helped.

The channel embed:

Comment spam

Some idiot posted 100 or so comment spams on the blog last night. For the moment I've hidden comments till I can clean it out. So my apologies if you wonder where commenting has gone.

I've also implemented moderation for comments on posts older than a certain date. So please bear with me on that.