Obits: Killing the golden goose?

James Naughton is no stranger to the news industry. So when the former president of the Poynter Institute lashes out at newspapers for their policies on obituaries, I take notice.

I think Naughton has a point - they are about to choke the valuable - both economically and civically - obituary stream.

As prices go up, competitors surface. This is something publishers still seem to struggle with (but perhaps it's because for so long there was no pricing competition, so there hasn't been a good determination of market price yet).

At the same time, numerous metrics I've seen from newspapers show that obits is often one of the top entry points to their online sites.

Publishers are doing the same thing with wedding announcements. And as they price them out of range of the less well off, they also weaken their ties to the majority of the community.

Legal ads fall into the same category. Behind all the crocodile tears and protestations of civic accessibility from publishers whenever some agency or legislature considers putting legal ads online only, there is a simple fact - they are profitable and a guaranteed monopoly revenue stream.

The general newspaper tack has been to argue that people won't see them if they are online, they can be hidden away by ne'er-do-well government officials, etc. Yeah, perhaps, if each agency were left to its own devices. But centralized online sites could combat that. Egads, the newspaper industry even has its own. The difference is that online there could be several sites providing price competion.

But don't be fooled by the civic argument - it is as much, if not more so, an economic one.

(Here's a research paper from Newspaper Research Journal on the topic.)

Funnies: World News Now TSA parody

From the folks who brought you the annoyingly funny "World News Now Polka" (http://vimeo.com/2239164 - see if you can get it out of your head once you've listened to it)

Here's a TSA Parody Polka video. (Caution, language has slight yellow tinge.)



Happy travels!

In Massachusetts, a significant tweak on 'journalist'

Was reading this story in Boston.com about how the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, responding to the reality of modern technology and journalism, has proposed expanding cameras in the courtroom to include a third one for Web journalists (in addition to one for TV and one for newspapers).

Now, one could also question who isn't a "Web journalist" these days, but we'll leave that for another day because I think the more significant thing is the revised definition of journalist the court is proposing:

“[T]he news media would be defined as those who are regularly engaged in the reporting and publishing of news or information about matters of public interest.’’

Others may disagree, but that seems to me to be a significant departure from other definitions that tend to be media- and business-centric. (For example, see RTDNA's 50-state guide to cameras in the courtroom.)

"Regularly engaged" is a broad term that can be defined in many ways, as is "matters of public interest." True, such imprecision also can cause legal heartburn as the system works out those definitions. But what it also means is that they are flexible and give more running room in the future.

It will be interesting to see how many others cite the Mass. SJC rules going forward to try to open up not only the courts but other bodies.


I've said before that the courts tend to be a decade behind technology. I think one of the big stories for the 20-teens is going to be some dramatic shifting in legal policy in view of the new digital realities.

Oursourcing copy editing - Pagemasters profile

I won't say the debate about outsourcing or centralizing copy editing has been settled, but for all practical purposes, it is largely a fait accompli in a greater and greater part of the news industry.

Along that line, Sean Ireland has an interesting profile of Pagemasters North America, one of  the best known of the outsourcing services, in a recent edition of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association eBulletin.

(Pagemasters has branded it "nearsourcing" because, in an obvious shot at services based in India and elsewhere overseas, it is promoting that Pagemasters centers are geographically near groups of clients so the editors are, for instance, well-versed in the English idiom of a region.)

For instance, Stewart Muir, managing director of Pagemasters North America, estimates a third of most newsroom resources to into production that can largely be moved offsite.

It's worth reading.

For your reference library - Green's Dictionary of Slang

With Christmas approaching, wordsmiths might want to add the massive Green's Dictionary of Slang to their wish list.

At $360 and three volumes, this is not for the faint-hearted. But it gets high marks all around (so much so that it already has its own abbreviation, GDoS, according to World Wide Words).

(If you want something a bit more manageable, both in size and price, Cassell's Dictionary of Slang, also by Jonathon Green, is a good option.)

Tech Tip: Bitly click through stats

Hadn't realized this until I saw it in a comment, but adding a "+" to the end of a bit.ly link gives you the click-through stats on that link.

Check it:
http://bit.ly/hagapx+

ICE seizing domains

Why does this scare me? On one hand, the effort to stop counterfeiters is noble. On the other hand, this opens the door to some serious mischief.

http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-seizes-bittorrent-search-engine-domain-and-more-101126/

Myth No. 6? -Dicussion about journalism without snark

Is it possible to have an intelligent discussion of journalism these days without a heavy dose of snark?

There are times I wonder. Recent exhibit: Mark Luckie's "5 Myths about digital journalism" and Andy Boyle's response "Somebody on the Internet is wrong."

Taken together, I think they make a valuable package of reading - for current journalists and for journalism students - and an excellent stepping-off place for some serious discussions.

Luckie, as I read him, isn't saying, for instance, that journalists shouldn't be familiar with the ins and outs of social media or that they shouldn't be familiar with databases and what they can do. You can't be an effective journalist without knowing something about these things because you must be able to a) gather the necessary material in a form it can be best used and b) discuss intelligently how to use it with those who actually have the expertise.

Boyle provides a counter dose of reality, explaining, for instance, that in his times in his current job and past internship past positions at papers in St. Pete and Erie, for instance, the reality has been more of the "jack of all trades" model. In doing that, he helps highlight some real questions, such as is this the best way to do things or are news organizations once again careering into the future more reactively than intelligently - or, perhaps, Luckie is a bit off base when the reality of running a business - including the labor resources you can afford and how to employ them - has to be factored in.

As I said, all worth intelligent and extensive discussion. But Boyd Boyle tends to move to snark instead, which I don't think serves him - or the discussion well. My comment at the end of his post points to one specific thing. Luckie, for instance, says Myth 2 is "Social Media is the Answer." And he starts it out this way, which Boyle quotes:

We’ve all heard it before: Twitter, Facebook, online commenting, mobile check-ins and the like are what’s going to save journalism. The truth is nobody knows what’s going to save journalism. Nobody. Not even the social media gurus.

Boyle's response:
The basic premise of this is flawed, too. Just repeat after me, everyone: NO SINGLE THING IS GOING TO SAVE JOURNALISM. What are people wanting to go back to? A time when one single thing saved journalism? THAT TIME DIDN’T REALLY EXIST (Okay maybe a monopoly in classifieds). But discussion like this is sort of pointless.
Of course social media isn’t going to be THE answer. It’s just one of those things that you can use to help make more people come to your website, which, of course, helps the bottom line. It can also help you brand your product and thus bring more people to your product, whatever it may be.
So let’s all just once and for all stop discussing whether or not it’s worth using social media. Because it is.

But Boyle leaves out the second part of Luckie's post, which is critically important to context. My comment on his site:

Andy:
Taken together, I think yours and Mark's make a valuable complete package. But I also think you shortchange him on No.2. I don't see him arguing against using social media, but to be intelligent about it. You left out the second part of his post:

"What we do know is that social media can help augment and improve the distribution process of news stories. It also makes news audiences more invested in the development and discussion of news, something that wasn’t possible before the rise of social media. Is this the money-maker that’s going to stem the tide of red ink? That remains to be seen."

In fact, through most of his post, I don't see his arguing against any of that stuff. What I read is someone trying to say let's be intelligent about all this, that too many "truisms" have cropped up that may need just a little leavening.

I think your arguments are good, but your snark is misplaced.

These are important issues. I don't think we have to be ponderous, but a little less snark would sometimes help, too.

AP Style - driving thru some recent changes

Some recent changes in or additions to AP style:

• drive-thru: AP has adopted the more colloquial spelling "thru." (It's the most common and makes sense to me.)
• firsthand: One word for adjective or adverb. (Conforms to AP's previous style on secondhand.)
• handheld (n.) / hand-held (adj.): Now all we have to do is wait for the rants about "handheld" as a noun. You may safely ignore them.
• cardholder: For those holding credit cards, for instance. But credit card holder. (Credit cardholder, of course, could mean something entirely different.)
• nonprofit: AP really shouldn't need to have clarified this; I thought its existing language was eminently clear. But there were enough questions about hyphen or not, so it decided to weigh in.
• bed-and-breakfast: Note the hyphens.
• problem-solving: So, it's always been clear that "the problem-solving plan" was the correct use as an adjective. But I guess we now also write "he is problem-solving" or "Problem-solving" is fun? I have a better idea - skip the jargon and write "Solving problems is fun."
• do's and don'ts: Was there really any question on this?

There are a few others, but, hey, you really should buy the stylebook.

Useful Resource - American Medical Association Archive

From Research Buzz: The American Medical Association has opened access to American Medical News.

There are about 15,000 articles, and the AMA (unlike some publishers) is welcoming links to them.

AP style - considers spelling out state names again and other issues

After being kind of smacked down last year by anxious copy desks when it came close to issuing a fiat that all state names would be spelled out instead of being abbreviated, AP is edging toward that precipice again. The notice it is sending out, according to Teresa Schmedding of ACES:

As part of the annual AP Stylebook review, editors are taking another look at state abbreviations in an effort to create a more consistent style for international and domestic use.
We’re proposing to spell out state names in the body of a story, but continue to abbreviate them in datelines.
Currently, we use state abbreviations when a city is followed by a state name. Under the proposed change, Jones, major of Henderson, Ky., would become Jones, mayor of Henderson, Kentucky, in the body of a story. State names in datelines would continue to be abbreviated.

 This sort of arcane stuff really does have real-world consequences in news organizations that have used a particular style for many years, often because it saves space. Silly as it sounds to those outside a newsroom, perhaps, there is a serious retraining period for people who have had the "old" style injected into them from j-school on. There also are workflow considerations because invariably some outside material will come in using the old style.

And then there is the space consideration - those few extra letters can add up over a page of type. There was a reason to abbreviate to begin with, and this often is it.

Yet, I think newsrooms better get used to it. In the era of globalization and the Internet, AP (and many other news organizations) is no longer a stateside operation when it comes to readers. (Yes, AP has had country-specific wires for year, most of which it has sold, but that's not what I'm talking about.)

Those readers now come from around the globe, even to the South Succotash Gazette, if it has a decent Web site. We can grouse all we want about how those folks are not the traffic "we" want- they don't buy anything locally. But for the AP, they are its new readers.

They are also the readers of many of the new-media businesses the wire service covets serving.

So expect to see state names spelled out, if not this time around, then very shortly, especially since CEO Tom Curley recently said that newspapers now provide only 20 percent of AP's revenue and that it effectively subsidizes them with other services.

Simplify

But why keep the state abbreviations in datelines? Let's just make things more complicated, as it already is, in spades, with AP's number style.

Numbers: I once again have urged the powers that be to simplify their number style to spelling out one to nine for everything except where there is a dollar sign or some other symbol before it, or where it traditionally is used as a numeral, such as dates and recipes.

The Wall Street Journal has done it quite successfully for years.

(Or, if you want to, go all figures. Just simplify that hydra-headed mess!)

Quotes: In some round-about logic, I've actually concluded that seeming to make things more complicated with quotes actually will simplify things.

AP simplified things a few years ago when it mandated that abbreviations, such as months, states, and things like Sen. and No. 1, be used in all cases. Until then, a few, such as "Senator" and "Governor" when used as titles had been spelled out in quotes but abbreviated in regular text. There were a select few, however, and that made it confusing.

So AP did simplify things, except when you talk to students. For the ones I talk to, spelling out in a quotation is the more natural of the two ways to go. Their reasoning: I don't say "Jan.," I say "January"; I don't say "N.H.," I say New Hampshire; I say "number one," etc.

So in this case, I'd say AP should consider going back to the old way, only with a much-expanded list of things to spell out.

Newsgames - slowly maturing

One of the original "news games" was by the Hampton Roads, Va., paper, a simple little find-the-shoplifter affair that showed you the inside of a store, and you had to guess which people were part of the shoplifting team - roll your mouse over a person and it gave you the answer.

Sadly, it no longer seems to be online. But I made a screen video and show it in lots of my classes because it shows how relatively simple (OK, you need some Flash skills, but these days the simple rollover technique can be accomplished relatively simply) things can promote interactivity. Add quizzes and time lines to that list - things not used as much as they might be.

J-lab has been championing news games for some time. They can be excellent ways for helping an audience understand complex, dynamic issues. But they can also be as simple as the shoplifter game mentioned above.

Still, I think they remain too scarce. But I also think they are going to get more impetus as we become more mobile, a platform that, from purely personal observation, seems to lend itself more to the casual game. Gaming also is being baked into many mobile applications (think things like the badges that are part of Foursquare).

At the Georgia Institute of Technology, researchers have been looking into the intersection of news and games. Ian Bogost elaborates in this recent post on Culture Lab.

He's also lead author of a new book, Newsgames: Journalism at Play, which I hope to get to read soon.

Those folks, including one commenter on Bogost's blog post, who argue that news games are not really journalism have a point, if you look at journalism in a somewhat restricted way of continually trying to uncover new facts about institutions, poeple and the way things work. But facts don't always provide knowledge; however, examining those from various perspectives and combinations, which is what games allow, does produce knowledge.

And in an age when we are looking for user engagement, I think they are a very important piece of the puzzle.

Another org reshapes its name as "media" - magazine publishers

Just noticed that the Magazine Publishers of America is the latest organization to get the idea of publishing out if its name in favor of the more nondescript, but eminently more flexible, "media" or "digital."

Henceforth, it shall simply be known as MPA, with the tag line "The Association of Magazine Media."

(Sorry, but the copy editor in me starts asking WTH is "magazine media"? That could be the paper it's printed on, the digital device it comes on - whatever. Perhaps that's what they intended, but they could have done better, methinks.)

The MPA joins organizations like the American Society of News (nee, Newspaper) Editors and the Radio and Television Digital News Association (Formerly RTNDA: Radio-Television News Directors Association) in throwing off the shackles of names perceived to be outmoded.

(Athough you have to ask, are they making implications about the perceived hopelessness of news directors? Any reason they can't be digital under the original name? And you have to wonder about ASNE, with a basic website that does not display correctly in all browsers.)

If he's a spokesman, name him dammit

Been away for a bit and lots to catch up on, but let me start with a bit of a rant. From an AP story today:

A spokesman for Level Global confirmed that FBI searched the firm's offices.

"We can confirm that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited our offices this morning as part of what we believe to be a broader investigation of the financial services industry discussed in media reports over the weekend," the spokesman said in a statement. "We are cooperating fully with the authorities and, at the same time, we are fully operational and continue to work diligently for the benefit of our investors."

Diamondback portfolio manager Andrea Feinstein declined to comment about the search. A spokesman for the Securities and Exchange Commission did not respond to requests for comment.

Well, dammit, if the person is a spokesman for Level Global, then why won't you use the person's name?

Either he's a spokesman or an official speaking on condition of anonymity. You can't have it both ways, even though the AP and more than a few Washington media types seem to think you can.

(The SEC spokesman gets a pass for now - give him more of a chance to comment. But at some point, if he does not -- and if you were directing the question to a specific person -- then that person ought to be named. And certainly if he won't comment, he should be named.)

Explaining and exploring gerrymandering

During the next year, and especially after Tuesdays' elections, we will have to deal with the intricacies of explaining redistricting/reapportionment to readers and viewers.

It simply won't do to throw our hands up in disgust or bewilderment. When, for instance, voters in one S.C. county have not had a general election choice for state Senate for 14 years, when double-digit percentages of districts go without any competitive races in an election, and when it's likely to get worse - but certainly not better - after the election, it has become, to my mind, a very real and present danger to democracy itself.

If journalism is to exist in the service of democracy, then it seems to me we owe it to readers to at least try to make it real and explain it for them, not to mention keeping an eye on the pols as they start moving things around on the map like so many commodities.

I hope we'll see a lot of effective use of multimedia to do this, especially the kind that allows people to draw their own districts so they get the experience of dealing with the issue.

To get your juices flowing on this, check out something Peter Pappas has put together - a paper-and-pencil exercise on redrawing your districts. If nothing else, you could do something like this and even hold a contest for best solution.

I hope we'll see more of this online. Maybe someone will create a "redistricting shenanigans" database.

Sure we lifted your story - pay us

File this under unbelievable.

From The Consumerist - small magazine Cooks Source lifts a writer's story wholesale off the Web. Claims the Web is "public domain" and then, when the writer asks for payment (in form of donation to Columbia journalism school), tells her she should pay the mag for editing her work.

The crowd is piling on on the "Cook's Source" Facebook page ... and on  another page, created after the tsunami hit. Good for them!

And here's a running update of various reactions from Storify. See also Washington Post story.

At Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, there is a proposed new definition for editor Judith Griggs' name -- to be Griggsed - have your work plagiarized and then have the plagiarist demand payment from you for the privilege.

Here's the original post from the writer and some more backstory from a friend.

And Edward Champion has a long list of things Cooks Source has apparently lifted without permission.

Update: The magazine has now apparently shut down. This is a cache of Griggs' statement. And, in fairness, a writer on Tech Crunch suggesting it was a case of internet mob violence.

The once and future Charlotte Observer

Walker Lundy has written a wonderful - if bittersweet can be called wonderful - piece for Charlotte Magazine on the wrenching times at the Observer.

The vacant desks at the Observer today sit like tombstones for the departed staffers and monuments to better times in the news business. It is the same in hundreds of newspaper and television newsrooms across the country. The impact is painfully clear: The Charlotte Observer is no longer the paper it was and likely never will be again.

The 124-year-old Observer has been the scourge of crooked Carolina politicians and winner of dozens of national awards, including three Pulitzer Prizes and a share of a fourth, and a finalist in 2008. But today, with 100 fewer journalists chasing the news, readers are learning less about how Charlotte works—and when it doesn’t. Because information is the lifeblood of a democracy, a healthy, aggressive paper can be among a city’s most important institutions, whether or not readers always like what it publishes. A newspaper is a combination blabbermouth and conscience for a community. No one else can play those roles as effectively.

For all the hue and cry over the cuts, this story is not just about that. It’s also about a newspaper that is scrambling to reinvent itself. Even as its staff shrinks, the Observer is experimenting with new ways of news gathering and reporting, exploring previously unthinkable collaborations, and trying to work with the Internet instead of fight against it. It’s too early to know if any of the new strategies are long-term solutions, but at least the paper isn’t going down without a fight. ...

Of course, much the same thing could be said of many McClatchy papers, including The State here in Columbia, where you could fire a shotgun in the newsroom these days and have trouble hitting anyone.

Having said that, however, the paper did a wonderful piece of journalism this weekend looking at how state budget cuts are starting to affect health and safety issues such as restaurant inspections, truck inspections and forest fire protection.

With any luck - and call me skeptical - it will start a long-term conversation about what exactly the functions of government should be.

AP Style - bedbug

For those of you keeping score at home, AP has now decreed "bedbug" as one word to be the style.

There had been a bit of a scuffle over this, as Michael Quinion discussed recently in World Wide Words, with some folks taking the etomological position that since these were true "bugs," it should be a two-word name.

But as Quinion observed:

The rule about inserting spaces in insect common names seems to be a modern creation, an informal way of using the spelling of these names as an aide memoire to distinguish Diptera or Hemiptera species from other little beasties. It’s highly unlikely ever to affect the usual spelling of bedbug, since the tendency in modern English is to amalgamate multi-word terms into single words, not split them apart. The spelling has long since become standard for everybody except professional entomologists.