AP losing Union Leader

The Manchester, N.H., Union Leader announced yesterday it is dropping AP in favor of McClatchy and Reuters.

I expect to see more of this in 2011.

There are these telling paragraphs in the story:

[President and Publisher Joseph] McQuaid said the cost of Associated Press, coupled with its diminished New Hampshire coverage, were factors.

"We were providing more of AP's New Hampshire report than we were receiving,'' he said. "We would prefer that New Hampshire news consumers get that information directly from us.''

Skip the cost factor stuff for now.; AP can work on that and has shown it is willing to bend when pressed. It's that last graf that should concern AP staffers about the news cooperative's long-term stability and structure at the state level.

Though New Hampshire is a bit different in that most of the news is geographically concentrated in the same area where AP's pared-down efforts largely coincide, it is not unique. I'd estimate that in at least half the states AP eventually faces a similar problem:

• One or a few major papers dominate and the news is relatively concentrated geographically.
• Those papers are becoming less and less interested in statewide developments or even Statehouse developments, or if they are interested it is largely for briefs, not longer coverage.
• What they need they increasingly are getting from news-sharing agreements from any other papers of significant size.
• Smaller papers break into roughly two minds - those that want some AP state coverage but are focused primarily on local, and those for whom local is the sole focus. In any case, AP's business model is not supportable by smaller papers - there aren't enough of them and their financial underpinning of the wires service is far less than their larger brethren.

There's still a somewhat larger market for the national and international feeds. But on the state level, where AP already has largely eviscerated its bureau chief corps and concentrated its editing in hubs, further major restructuring is likely. Many of the state reports already are shadows of their former selves. I expect the AP will shed more of its bureau system in the coming year or two, instead assigning "correspondents'" to work out of Statehouse offices or their own homes, moving more of broadcast (much of which still is produced locally) to centralized operations, and spreading out remaining staff.

AP, which used to see its state reports as valuable in-state sales tools, with New York (now the hubs) cherry-picking the best stuff for the national report, is likely to simply fold most state coverage into a larger national report, keeping in mind that in some larger states that have numerous midsized news operations, which remain the state reports' "sweet spot," a state report might remain viable for some longer time.

Georgia's "unwelcome" center

The Grinch was alive and well in Georgia on the day after Christmas.

We stopped at Georgia's welcome center on I-20 east at the Alabama line about 6 p.m. Sunday.

As we left, a guy put up a closed sign and locked it, supposedly for cleaning.

It's snowing. It's a day when, obviously, a lot of families with children are traveling. Several walked up to the door with children clearly in distress, only to be turned away.

The bathrooms have sections; one can be opened when the other is being cleaned. (At least the men's did, because there was this big roll-down steel door with a sign on it that said "this section closed for cleaning. I assume the women's was similar.)

Other states keep the bathrooms open. Heck, I've gone to bathrooms at S.C., Kentucky and Mississippi welcome centers, for instance,  in the wee (yeah, yeah) hours of the morning. Even the Georgia DOT website says the bathrooms are supposed to be open until 11 p.m. (see link above), though one has to wonder why they can't be kept open all night since the lobby area is locked off from the welcome center itself.

(Yes, there are gas stations and fast-food restaurants down the road about four miles. Tell that to a family with a screaming kid about to pee in his or her pants. And I'm sure those restaurants, for instance, appreciate the nonpaying business.)

I don't know whether the bathrooms eventually reopened. My wife and I watched for a few minutes - even drove around the building just to see if there was an alternate "night" entrance as some visitor centers have. But to close them for even a short time at the peak of the traveling hours would be a major fail in common sense.

Great impression about Georgia for those travelers. I think the state owes them an explanation and apology.

Worth reading: Nieman Reports issue on beats

Nieman Reports always has some good stuff, but this winter issue is one of the better ones. It focuses on beats, especially how things are changing in the digital age.

For all those who want to go into sports reporting, I especially recommend the section on the sports beat and most especially these two:

• David Kindred: The sports beat: A digital reporting mix - with exhaustion built in
• Lindsay Jones: The sports tweet: New routines on an old beat
• Malcolm Moran: It's a brand-new ballgame -- for sports reporters

Newseum and Freedom Forum troubles

Former Gannett employee Jim Hopkins is known for his pointed work to cut through the corporate spin at his former employer through his Gannett Blog.

But Hopkins also is a good reporter - and he has delved into the finances of the Freedom Forum and Newseum in Washington and come up with some serious questions. Among them, what kind of financial controls have been in place at a time when spending on the Newseum soared over initial estimates and the Freedom Forum's endowment dropped by half during the past decade?

The Newseum, the glass-and-concrete, $450 million paean to the news industry on pricey Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and White House has had its share of criticism, including almost ignoring copy editors and their roles in the nation's newsrooms.

Now, it looks like a ripe target for some more enterprising reporting. I have my doubt's though, that this and the multimillion dollar Freedom Forum will get the same scrutiny as, say, the United Way did almost two decades ago, from the Washington Post and ABC.

Anyone want to suggest their own morning line on that?

Worth Reading: Steve Lovelady on writing and editing

I really, really am behind in some areas and just have gotten to some back reading of Roy Peter Clark's writing column for Poynter.

In the course, I came across his tribute to Steve Lovelady, a tribute that includes a reprint of Lovelady's speech about writing and editing (or teaching), and how they interact (or at least should, for as he points out, we too often fall short in that) -- and the niceties of grammar, language, etc.

It's worth bookmarking and coming back to from time to time. I'll give you just a taste to, I hope, entice you to follow the link:

My belief has always been, and remains, that good writing cannot be taught, but it can be nurtured and cultivated and encouraged. I’ve become convinced that there are a fair number of people who are, by all accounts, intelligent and pleasant folks who can never learn to write. 

There is a gift of some kind. One must kiss the Blarney Stone or some such. But by “nurtured,” I mean that a writer can be in an environment where good writing is given praise, like the right newspaper where there are people whose praise can serve to inspire and offer help.

Data visualization in sports

I'm of the camp that says data visualization is one of those "skills" that j-school grads are going to have to be familiar with. (Remember, familiar does NOT mean everyone must be an expert, but that you have to know about it to communicate with those who can help you pull it off.)

Here's an interesting data viz from the Syracuse-Morgan State game.

Worth reading: Ken Doctor's predictions

Ken Doctor has a thoughtful post on all those things we "know" that are likely to be tested in the next year.

Is there an editor in the house? Confusion on Aisle 6

OK, tonight's challenge, untangle these grafs from a story about a push to get S.C. legislators to take roll-call votes:

Sen. Larry Martin, R-Pickens, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, told The Nerve last week that he favors a roll-calling voting law – despite criticism he has received to the contrary – but only with an accompanying constitutional amendment.

Without an amendment, any new law likely could not be reviewed by the S.C. Supreme Court if challenged, given past court rulings, said Martin, a businessman. That, in turn, could result in a future Legislature watering down a newly passed law without any legal recourse, he said.

“I think the two (state law and constitutional amendment) have to go together because everything we talked about last session is just window dressing,” Martin said. “I don’t have a problem with a roll-call voting requirement, but I will tell you that I will defend the constitutional principle.”

Any constitutional amendment would have to be approved by a two-thirds vote of the Senate and House, and a simple majority of voters statewide.  Martin said he has spoken with Senate Minority Leader John Land, D-Clarendon, about an amendment, and “he has no problem with it,” adding, “I think we’re going to get substantive Democratic support of it.”

Land, an attorney, told The Nerve on Monday that he would support an amendment to accompany a bill, noting, “A statute alone would not be binding because it’s violative of the constitution.”

OK, is it a problem because the law could be watered down in the future without any court review? Or is it a problem that the law itself would be plain unconstitutional - in which case, why couldn't the state's highest court review it since it's job is to pass on the constitutionality of state laws (and how would you know it was unconstitutional if the court could not rule)?

Please, break the glass and pull the emergency editing lever. This would be one reason I don't agree that copy editing should be deprecated in the online era. The heck with piddly language issues; leaving your audience massively confused is the greater sin.
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Here's another, this from  a recent edition of The State:

 Call it a trend. South Carolina’s jobless rate dipped slightly in November to 10.6 percent, marking the third consecutive month the state’s jobless rate has dropped — from 10.7 percent in October and 11 percent in September. 

For the year, unemployment has dipped nearly 2 percentage points.

But, compared with November 2009, there are nearly 40,000 fewer people unemployed.

First of all, we can do without the useless "call it a trend." Second why "but" in that third graf. Fewer people unemployed is good news, right? Or did the writer mean fewer people employed?

AP Style - blood alcohol

AP has now clarified an issue that was a bit muddled by an "Ask the Editor" post of a couple of years ago - the form to use for blood alcohol levels.

With blood alcohol figures, it's probably better to now use "percent" (though the entry does drop it in the example in the last sentence). Also notice the leading zero before the decimal and no hyphen in "blood alcohol":
The concentration of alcohol in blood. It is usually measured as mass per volume. For example, 0.02 percent means 0.02 grams of alcohol per 100 grams of an individual's blood. The legal limit for intoxication in most states is 0.08 percent. The jury found he was driving with a blood alcohol level above Florida's 0.08 limit.

Updated Feb. 7 - Warning: AP probably has that measure (graps per grams) incorrect. See the comments below.

A couple of others:
serviceman, servicewoman: But service member.
Post-it: A reminder that it is a trademark for small pieces of paper with an adhesive strip on the back that can be attached to documents.

Also a reminder that "war" is capped when referring to specific wars, including Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.

Spam, spam everywhere - MechanicalTurk

Probably shouldn't be surprised by this, but Mechanical Turk is infested with spammer requests for people to do things like try to game social media sites or online ads, according to a new study.

Reapportionment in S.C.

Before the Carolina Reporter crew left for the semester, they put together a nice package of what reapportionment could mean for S.C. Now that the Census figures are out, it's worth looking at again:
http://bit.ly/epd2mH

Buttry: Time to weigh the value of clean copy

Steve Buttry, former copy editor, trainer for the American Press Institute, editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, and now director of community engagement for TBD.com, weighs in on balancing the value of clean copy to today's digital realities.

To summarize (but you should read his entire post because a summary never adequately picks up the nunances) and my thoughts (in italics):

• "But as someone working on journalism innovation, I know that costs and value propositions are a critical factor in financial success and even survival." Yes, and much of this falls at the feet of copy editors. I still haven't seen them make an effective cost/value argument in the language executives use: Dollars and cents. In some quarters, I still sense a sense of fantasy - a fantasy that somehow there will be a massive lawsuit somewhere that will make "the industry" stand up and notice. Not going to happen.
• "My first newspaper had no copy desk and it was nowhere near as good as the Register, but it was good enough. ...I knew the city editor was just going to give my copy a quick glance, so I had to take responsibility for the quality of my copy, and I made it pretty good." "Good enough" still scares me as a standard because I don't know what it means. "Perfection" also scares me because it is a) not attainable and b) as a result tends to lead to paralysis. But striving for a level of perfection seems to be a useful glide slope if we are wise enough to know when the slope is too steep. But Buttry's ultimate point here that we MUST inculcate in all staff that editing is now everyone's responsibility is well-taken.
• "We have no copy editors at TBD (and got criticized for that after a famous correction). While the newsroom staffing was Editor Erik Wemple’s decision, I fully support it. You can’t do everything, and a digital operation can correct after publication with less damage than a print publication (very few people saw the original error that we were correcting; it was the correction that went viral)." Too facile. That original error is likely to be cached somewhere, and even with "very few" (please define - hundreds, a few thousand?), the network effects power means it still can get into the digital bloodstream. Errors have long tails just as much as corrected copy does. Yes, I agree we have to rethink - the digital environment is more plastic than print. But there are some realities that the "we can correct it quickly and few will notice" camp also conveniently overlooks. To TBD's credit, the correction is prominently displayed, something you are less likely to find elsewhere. 
• "Erik gave everyone a writing test in the interview, so we could see their raw copy. You do need to screen for copy quality. If copy editing resources can’t be what they used to be, then maybe you can no longer afford that staff member who’s a good reporter but a mediocre (or even bad) writer. Or even a good writer but a lousy speller. (Or you need to demand that they get better and start compensating for the weaknesses they know they have.)" Amen. Unfortunately, in most newsrooms it's not the case, with reporting and content creation valued far more than the integrated writing/editing skills. Dan Conover even has made a case that journalism's future lies more in a data-intensive model that should value reporting at least equally if not more than writing/editing. As he puts it: "A print journalist is supposed to do both things well, but truth be told, if you can't tell a good story in a compelling way, your print-reporting career is toast. Weak reporter? We'll coach-you-up. Fundamentally clueless as a writer? Consider another line of work. ... Journalism is a profession for storytellers, and our newsroom culture celebrates romantic myths that are generally hostile to structure."
• "Quality has always been a relative matter, with publications deciding how much they could afford to spend in pursuit of unattainable perfection. I hope the value equation continues to support copy editors at most operations, but that’s a decision individual editors, publishers and group presidents will have to make with their budgets, their value equations and their communities." See my above comments about perfection and groups like ACES yet to make the value proposition.
• "Here’s a practical question: Has the chain consolidated editing functions? That’s not as good a solution, in terms of quality, as having copy editors at each location. But if an organization doesn’t have or can’t afford quality editing at each location, consolidation might provide better, more efficient editing and design." If you define editing as "production," this makes absolute sense, and that's where copy editors failed to see their blindside. They assumed they were all about "quality," a squishy, largely unmeasurable term. Their bosses saw them as "production," a very measurable cost. If editing/copy editing is to find a new equilibrium in the digital age, editors are going to have to rethink how to reframe the quality argument.
• "Another thing to consider is whether an organization is spending too much time editing wire copy. I know local copy editors add value when they edit wire copy, having done it myself. I also know that wire copy has already been edited by professional copy editors. The local editing can and should be cut back or nearly eliminated. Or certainly wire editing could be consolidated among affiliated newspapers." I was a wire-service correspondent and later editor. Trust me, consolidate the editing, but don't abandon it.
• The truth is that grammar and editing skills are declining in the population and among journalists. Newspapers are in a difficult spot. Readers are older and learned grammar in a different era when it got greater emphasis (though you’d be amazed how many arrogant, critical letters I received from readers, taking us to task for our errors but containing errors of their own). But many staff members are young people who grew up txting “lol, omg” and the like." Newspapers have always been in a difficult spot - how much to follow and how much to lead. That's why you had editors. I'm unclear what Steve is trying to say here - abandon ship because grammar and editing skills are declining overall - or take a more measured approach and try to lead more? What is the role of media in all this? I tend to favor a leadership role because what I hear from others in the business community outside of media is a great wail about declining language skills. So it would seem there is some value proposition in this. If you have any doubt that business does and will influence things, consider the language/writing changes in the SAT. (And here's a quiz question - find at least one language error in that article I linked to - hint, look for the apostrophe misused to make a plural.)
• "Anyway, I think in today’s value analysis, clean copy (especially AP style) isn’t as valuable as it used to be (or has been surpassed in value by some other factors). As an editor, I did occasionally field calls from people complaining about grammar and spelling, but never about AP style." Why do these things always come down to the straw man of AP style? I agree with Buttry - people who obsess about AP style need to get a life (click on the "style-AP" tag below to see some of my suggestions for removing some of AP's inanities). On the other hand, many publications, not just newspapers, still use it as a unifying element (you want to talk about inefficiency, especially with consolidated editing, try dealing with multiple styles - local variations are bad enough). So for now, in j-school, we probably are still obligated to teach some style (just as we have to teach APA, MLA and Chicago, if those writers are doing academic papers - style is just a fact of publication), but teach it in a balanced, enlightened way, not one that turns people into style enforcers.

My bottom line here: Buttry's post is valuable for again highlighting the modern realities and issues surrounding editing and the need to develop its value proposition and not just bemoan "quality." But it's too facile in some areas, as much of this discussion tends to be. I can't make the ACES meeting in Phoenix this year (I have to be at the AEJMC Southeast Colloquium the same weekend), but I'd use Buttry's as the centerpiece around which to start a serious conversation about where editing goes. So far, most of what I've seen are editors hanging on for dear life, along for the ride, not trying to really take charge of what they can about their futures.

And editing educators should have the same conversation - continually.

(Disclaimer - I have no editor on this post, so there probably are some errors. I'm happy to correct them if you point them out.)
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Update: One might also consider this article from across the pond by Allan Prosser commenting on some of the editing cutbacks and rearrangements there. Not only does he manage to get in "Gadarene," he has this wonderful quote from his boss when he asked for a pay raise for handling the especially difficult copy from a star reporter: “His job is to provide the words, but your function is to provide the music. Now piss off.”

Yahoo's cuts, Delicious, etc., and dealing with ambiguity

Lots has been posted around the Web on Yahoo's decision to cut some services, such as the Declicious social bookmarking service. There's also some word that Flickr could be in danger.


Yet, as at least one comment has noted, this is also the Web and in five or 10 years, we may well be mourning the loss of Twitter or Facebook or, who knows, Google

These two - Delicious and Flickr - are what I would call "core" services, used by so many people and so interlinked by other sites that their demise would cause some serious damage. So let me just toss in my two quick cents:

• This does highlight something we have yet to come to grips with: deciding if we should have a way to preserve such "core" services and, if so, how. It's easy to put a list out of alternatives to something like Delicious, but at some point a service has so many users and crosslinks that the reality of wholesale shifting is impractical.
• If there is to be some way to preserve and provide an orderly transition, how do we fund and accomplish this? Delicious, for instance, says it is considering ways to exit from Yahoo and not shut down, but the impression is that this is more of a fire drill than the result of careful planning (more here on the problems).
• This decade will gradually see the erosion of such "free" services. The Web is not free; there are server and bandwidth and other costs. And there probably will always be neat new useful services that will be free out of the starting gate. But at some point past the newness and the optimism and idealism, a business crossroads is reached - can an ad-based model or a freemium model actually support them? I think we will see more services closing or switching to some kind of subscription model. The challenge is how to keep the prices low enough that they are accessible. I'm thinking it has to be in the $5 to $10 a year - yes, a year - range.
• I'm worried that this will just reinforce the paranoia some media managers/companies have about "free" and open-source services. As a result, they cut themselves off from useful innovation. News organizations must be willing to use all forms of software and services that can advance their journalism. The successful manager will be one who can evaluate what services are critical and must be kept on more proprietary platforms the organization can control and what are more flexible and short term and can be experimented with on free and low-cost platforms provided by others. Part of that will be keeping up with alternatives and having plans and strategies for migrating as the Web changes.

If there one thing we should know by now, it's that the Web is a living, morphing thing and that if you cannot deal with its ambiguity, your chances of success are much slimmer.
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UPDATE: Read this post on ReadWriteWeb to get an idea how journalists can use sites such as Delicious to stay ahead of the competition.

Winston-Salem copy desk's last day

Sad but classy good-bye to Winston-Salem Journal's copy desk that is going away under Media General's consolidation:

Could OneTrueFan help news sites - and some R&D thoughts

Earlier this year, I did an extensive post on how Amy Webb was peering into the future of technology and how it might affect people's online interactions and journalism.

One of her trends was that aspects of gaming were being incorporated into more sites as a form of social media - think of Foursquare and its ability for users to collect location badges and become "mayor" of a location.

But how to do that on a news site? One answer might be OneTrueFan. Here is Tech Crunch's description:

OneTrueFan is a service for web publishers that allows visitors to earn badges for interacting and sharing content on the site. The startup revolves around a game-format for visitors that allows you to see who is reading content in the site, compete for the most engagement and encourages you to share content within the service and on social networks.

But - and here we go again - why haven't publishers gotten together and created something similar, especially something that can be customized locally? For years, publications have been running "Best of" lists and contests (nominate your favorite dry cleaner, restaurant, pet grooming service, etc.) - often with competing lists among publications in a market.

But isn't this really the foundation of social media in a crude, print-oriented way? In other words, the idea was there, but as we've too often seen, the digital execution eluded media managers.

Yes,  OneTrueFan is more about the entire Web, and I'm then projecting the idea onto the local market, ala Foursquare (or maybe OneTrueFan is projecting the Foursquare idea onto the entire Web - whatever). But that's actually my point - the underlying idea is the same, and media companies had the concept within reach and little to nothing to develop it.

We can all trot out the usual reasons - intransigence, lack of vision, print-centricity. And they all play a part. But I also think the fragmentation of publishing plays a role. It makes sustained innovation difficult. I still cling to the idea (however misguided) that publishing still needs a central, industry-funded R&D center, or at least a clearinghouse, that can develop white-label apps that would be easy to adapt, from the largest operation to the smallest.

Ideally, this center, or perhaps a more formalized but decentralized association of research centers, would also solicit ideas and challenges from inside publishing companies (how often have we heard the complaint that good ideas died inside recalcitrant newsrooms) and somehow publicize them to other developers. The ideal would be to avoid the potential stifling of innovation that can come from centralization, but yet:

• Give publishers (and, again, I use the term broadly, from the biggest media company to the smallest hyper-locala site) access to the best of emerging technology.
• Provide a sort of "Good Housekeeping" seal of approval that might overcome some of the skittishness I still find among many journalists and media managers about freeware, shareware, and shared services which is where much of the innovation is occuring.
• Keep it simple so that even the most time- and resource-pressed operation can reasonably hope to adopt useful innovations.
• Provide some focus, if nothing else, to enable decision-makers to have a more centralized and analytical place to understand what is happening specifically in the technology and how it may affect their operations. (Not discounting the efforts already  by Nieman's Media Lab, Media Shift,  Knight Digital Media Center and Media Info Center, among many others)

It would be refreshing to see one of the existing journalism organizations step up and take on this role in a way that embraces inclusion and openness.

Yes, I am being idealistic here. I could spend another 500 words just highlighting all the downsides and operational challenges (not the least of which is the industry's long line of failed cooperative ventures and almost pathological aversion to working together). But for now I just want to throw out the idea.

More J-reality bites and the reality of PR and journos

Folks have been having fun with Xtranormal, producing all sorts of videos about the new realities in journalism. (See earlier post.)

A few samples. Let's start with Freelancing 1.



And Freelancing 2:



Another bit on the relationship between journos and PR:

AP Style - A couple that can stand alone, and those tea 'partyers'

Some quick AP style updates ...

No longer any need to spell out "grade-point average." GPA can now stand alone.

IV is also OK without any need to say "intravenous."

And "911 call" is already widely known as the emergency call, but AP now blesses it without any explanation.

And those wild and wacky tea party folks (yes, AP lowercases it unless you are talking about a specific tea party organization) should be referred to as "tea partyers" (unless of course they're wearing lampshades or panties on their heads, eating goldfish and overdoing the Earl Gray - then they are tea partiers).

J-reality bites? (and a cool resource thrown in)

Going around the e-mail, Facebook and Twitter circuits is this Gawker post pointing to an online video, So you want to be a journalist?




It's a cynical dose of reality. I also have mixed emotions. I do get annoyed at those students who seem to think the end all and be all of "journalism" is writing for the N.Y. Times or the Wall Street Journal. That kind of elitism bothers me. Yet - and you can call it shamanism, if you want - there needs to be a certain amount of that idealism, and I don't want to crush it. Idealism is important in most professions - it is what pushes the envelope forward.

So as a colleague pointed out in an e-mail, if you show this to a class of j-students, you probably should also show "All The President's Men" as a reminder that journalism does have purposes other than making money and hanging out in all the cool spots.
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Tech Tool: The dialogue in the video is a bit robotic, but that's because it is created, essentially, by a robotic computer. Translated, actually, into a video from what you write. In watching this, I discovered the Xtranormal site on which it was created. Type in your dialogue, pick a set of characters, and create a video using the text-to-video converter. (And if you know where to look in the embed code, you can download the finished product as an MP4.) I could see using this to create some short visual presentations for class.

Useful Resource - technical glossary

Ever need to know what 1080p vs. 720p really meant? Or 3GPP or M4V? (Don't say no - as journalists these days, we are more likely than even to encounter these tech terms - or have to actually produce in some of them.)

In my wanderings I came across a useful resource, a tech glossary from afterdawn.com. There are some others out there, but this is one of the better ones. Most of the definitions are simplified enough that, even with a few tech-talk spots, you can work your way through them, and the site internally links to lots of other guides.

Networked neighborhoods study

Out of London, an interesting set of documents forms a study of online network neighborhood news sites, how people use them and the impact on those who do use them.

You'll find them at networkedneighbourhoods.com.

I've only gotten to the summary (PDF), but the general thrust is this: "The research shows that they serve to enhance the sense of belonging, democratic influence, neighbourliness and involvement in their area. Participants claim more positive attitudes towards public agencies where representatives of those agencies are engaging online."

Among other things:

• 42% of those surveyed said they met someone in their neighborhood online
• 75% said participation on the sites made it more likely people would pull together to improve their neighborhoods
• 69% felt a greater sense of belonging
• From a quarter to about two-thirds (depending on the site) said people make negative remarks online, but three-quarters said they are quickly countered.

In other words, these are the sorts of things traditional community media once did and, where they continue to exist, often still do. I have not come across details yet on what community media might have pre-existed in these areas, the attitudes of those surveyed toward any existing media and their community-building roles, or any effect such sites might have had on those relationships.

But this looks to be useful reading and a block on which to build further research.

AP Style - one you safely should ignore

AP is out with some new style updates, and there's one you can safely ignore, if you choose to:

flood plain - two words

But that easily gets flooded out by "floodplain" as one word. While the Random House Dictionary at Dictionary.com shows it as two words, even the two other references cited there show it as one. Merriam-Webster shows it as one, American Heritage (through Yahoo) shows it as preferably one, and the New Oxford on my Mac also shows it as one.

Webster's New World 4, the dictionary tied to the AP Stylebook, shows it as two words, with the single word alternative, but I increasingly find WNW4 falling out of step with common usage and increasingly turn to American Heritage, which steers a more moderate path between the conservative WNW4 and the liberal M-W. (For example, look up gauntlet and gantlet in the "big three." AHD is probably right in its reasoning that usage has shifted to gauntlet, as in run the gauntlet, even though I grimace.)

Most federal and state agencies I can find use it as one word.

And, while not definitive, a Google search for the two-word version, returns 2 million (with some overlap from reference works showing "floodplain" as first choice but the two words as second), while the one word version returns 20 million.

This is one I won't be insisting students learn.

Some other style updates:

• hand-washing (prediction, the hyphen form goes away quixkly
• "don't ask, don't tell" - settling the various uppercase/lowercase, quote/no-quote versions out there. However, I think after you use the quotes once in a story, you should be able to safely drop them on subsequent use. Otherwise, it can start looking like you're being snarky.
• check-in as noun and adjective, but checkout
  

And useful reminders that:

• The preferred term is dwarf because some people find midget offensive
• Iran is not an Arab country

Augusta Chronicle to begin charging for some access

The Chronicle is one of the first of the area's larger papers to do it, but I expect to see more in the next year.

Worth Reading - Kramer's take on the future shape of media

At Seeking Alpha, former Marketwatch and CBS Digital head Larry Kramer has what I think is a pretty well-measured, solid take on where media is heading. To sum: Lots of different pay models, focused content.

Nothing tremendously new, but it's very well laid out.