MMMM # 157 Six Simple Steps To a Media Hoax!

 

     Last week's "news" hoax---the supposed report that found Internet Explorer users are dumber than those using other browsers--- might not have gone as far as it did back when there were editors on duty for almost everything.

     Now that the newspapers have laid off, or outright fired, so many people, and now that there are a billion rogue websites (like this one) that provide "news", anything goes when it comes to folks jumping on a story.

    I do not believe that I have ever been caught up in one, but I can tell you how to create the perfect hoax news story, one that will get quick attention by at least some of the MSM and lots of the rest of us.

1) The "story" must re-enforce existing beliefs (or, better yet, prejudices) in some way. ("Hell, I always knew those IE people were idiots!")

2) Include at least two of the following: sex, government waste, studies with obvious results, a threat to readers/viewers of some kind. (i.e. Government rresearchers find sex on Reality-TV shows is making women less amorous!)

3) Include a local connection...."the research was conducted by a Montgomery Alabama marketing company."...without being so specific that it can be checked.

4) It must arrive in reporter/editor in-boxes at the worst possible time for them to fact-check....close to airtime for a broadcaster (but not too close!), near "publication" time for the print media, and always on or near a weekend or, better yet, a holiday weekend. That accomplishes two things: a scarcity of news and making it hard to check because people who would normally comment on the story are not at work.

5) Make the story as detailed as possible. Most people think you should keep lies simple, but the reality is that they are more believable if they are filled with rich detail. Include links that lead nowhere. They'll presume there is something wrong with their machine.

6) Buy a disposable phone and leave a convincing sounding voice mail message ("Our offices are closed for the weekend, but we do check this voice mail, so please leave a message and we'll get back with you as quickly as possible! We apologize to those of you calling about such an such...that news release was not supposed to go out till Monday. But again, we'll try to get back with you." )

I am NOT suggesting anyone actually try to pull off a hoax, which might violate the law, just pointing out it is easier now than ever.

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

MMMM # 155 Conventions Past & Future

     Way back in 2000, Alabama Public Television used a grant to go cover the two political conventions and use the then-nascent Internet to file reports. I wasn't on the trips, but I remember rather jerky video arriving back in Montgomery from The Democratic Convention in L.A. and the Republican gathering in Philadelphia. It was groundbreaking reportage back then and the teams were justifiably proud of their handiwork.*

     Over the years, the amount of time the networks spend covering the conventions has become smaller and smaller. Once there was virtually gavel-to-gavel coverage. Now only the 24-hour cable folks provide extended coverage.

    

 Now there's a brand new convention being called that will be entirely online, but it's for neither the Democrats nor the GOP  Americans Elect isn't a third party either, but an effort to go around the bogged- down nomination process, to skirt the two major parties and let Americans directly nominate a President/Vice President candidate team of their own choice. Talk about groundbreaking! And because if is all "New" Media, it may get more attention.

        My main concern would be that the process will be hijacked by some political entity, a political party or special interest group.

       The irony of this week's MMMM is that the doors to the APT facility in Montgomery will be locked and the employees will be on the street seeking work on Friday. The once groundbreaking state network is abandoning The State Capitol.

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

*Here's the recollection about the APT convention coverage of former APT employee Chis Roquemore, now with AIDT. He says it was one of the proudest moments of his then early career:

     8 boxes of equipment that could now fit in a backpack. In 1998 we decided we were going to use the Internet to crudely cover the gubernatorial election. We did and it was one of the first examples in the state of up to the minute election results being provided that way. This was back in the time of dial up and America Online. There really wasn't a lot of video online either. So we did so well with that that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting gave us a grant two years later to cover the political conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles and send our reports back packaged and ready to go on the air via the Internet.

     This was 11 years ago. It was my idea. I had no idea it would work. In theory it would but no real-world test was available. Philadelphia was an experiment that didn't work. Everything worked fine except for the Internet. We stayed in a rather crappy hotel (the official hotel for the state republicans by the way) and the Internet service was awful. If not for the fine staff at WHYY in Philadelphia we might not have made it on the air.

     LA was much better. We stayed at the Universal City Hilton and they couldn't have been more accommodating We had dedicated T1 access to our room which happened to be a 25000 square foot ball room that we had 3 folding tables in. The best part about LA was that everything worked and since Alabama was two hours behind us, we were done working for the day at 2pm. Of course we were up and moving around 5am. But we still had plenty of time to check out LA.

     One other thing we did during both of these trips was select 2 republicans and 2 democrats and give the, each a video camera to document the convention through their eyes. Our two republicans were Cam Ward and Beth Chapman. Our democrats were Janet May and David White.

     It was really cool to see these things with virtual unknowns. Now one (Chapman) is Alabama Secretary of State and the other (Ward) is a State Representative.

     There was always a sense of yes this is Alabama Public Television but we're storytellers regardless of what our position was in the newsroom. And everyone who wanted to was given a chance to tell their stories There was and still is for me such a sense of family there. My first day at APT was June 5th 1990. The day of the gubernatorial race between Paul Hubbard and Guy Hunt. I was 17, still in high school and a volunteer to soak up as much about this industry as possible. Now 21 years later I teach in this industry, I created and produce a show still airing on Alabama Public Television and I'm assistant manager of communications for Alabama's workforce development agency. I owe my career to APT and the people that worked their today and in the past that helped shape me into the person I am today.

     I'm very proud of the work that I did at Alabama Public Television. I'm also very proud of the work that we all did as a team in Montgomery To produce the quality work that we did. APT in Montgomery was a training ground for so many people because they were given opportunities to try things to experiment to do things outside the box And that ultimately is what made it special and truly educational television.

MMMM # 154 NON-Profit media bias

      The Pew Center is out this morning with an interesting study of news generated by non-profit news organizations (though almost all would seem to qualify for that status these days), and concluded that there can still be a bias, despite their non-profit status.

     Also of note,  a column in Sunday's Washington Post about the diminishing importance of the Washington Press Corps.



(The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.)

MMMM #152 HUGH Storms Detected!! By UPI!

BIG story this week...lightning storms on Saturn!

     Actually, the big story was the fact that I read about it on a UPI page. I didn't know UPI even existed anymore!

     During my early decades in Alabama, there was a rather fierce battle between UPI (United Press International) and AP (Associated Press), at least in Alabama. Not so much for subscribers, but to see who would break stories first. The radio stations that subscribed to UPI seemed out of the mainstream. Most of the broadcasters were AP

    UPI is still operating...with a HQ in D.C....but the company's web site has not a single reference to radio or TV on its front page, instead marketing the old "wire" service to corporations and boasting about how many hits its website gets.

     To be honest, my own memories of UPI are probably slanted because I was heavily involved in the AP Broadcaster's Association for a lot of those early years (twice as President)...and outstanding reporters like Bob Lowry (The Huntsville Times) and Alvin Benn (The Montgomery Advertiser)...who were both excellent UPI reporters...will no doubt point to the 1960's, when it appears UPI dominated Alabama Civil Rights coverage. Here's a page Lowry has online with UPI images. And Benn wrote about his UPI experiences in Reporter, a book published several years ago.

     And there's this classic photo of Bob sitting in Yellow Mama, Alabama's now second string electric chair. How many reporters managed to get that photo?

    Finally, writing this MMMM about wire services and not mentioning Hoyt Harwell, retired veteran AP bureau Chief, would be a sin of omission.

     I learned a lot from Hoyt in those days, including to always question anyone who tells me something is "the first"  of anything to happen. Really? First? Are you sure? Usually it isn't.



[Note: this was a tough week to decide the topic(s) on MMMM. There was the huge merger of three Montgomery TV stations (including the one I work for, WAKA!), the entire Casey Anthony murder verdict in Florida,  the 20th anniversary of the L'Express jet in Birmingham, which happened in the middle of the local station's 6:00pm news, the shutdown of the British tabloid, News of The World over the phone hacking scandal, and then from Dana Beyerle late in the week, the story that APT is closing the Montgomery Production Center at the same time it is keeping open a bureau in Washington D.C. that was opened in the middle of the Great Recession. In the end I blogged about two of those five during the week and went with the UPI piece today.] 

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

MMMM # 151* Media Elitism and The Constible On Patrol

     What Alabama TV station had a fully marked vehicle stopped and given a ticket for windows tinted too darkly?

     It IS against the law...in fact it was 15 years ago that the legislature passed the law, so perhaps the officer was giving a 15th anniversary ticket?

     I wonder how many tickets of that nature have been given out in those fifteen years? And how many to brightly marked NEWS VEHICLES?

    I believe reporters should be treated exactly the same as everyone else...which is why I don't like seeing news vehicles parked illegally at the scene of routine news stories like The Alabama Statehouse. They never are ticketed.

     But windows tinted too dark? It is close to the end of the month, so perhaps the good officer was low on his quota? Or maybe he just didn't like a story that station had reported.



[PLUS: a Washington Post column calls out the media on it's failure to report the "rigging" of the 2012 elections by states (including Alabama)  that have passed laws that benefit the GOP.

"...the rank partisanship of these measures is discouraging the media from reporting plainly on what’s going on. Voter suppression so clearly benefits the Republicans that the media typically report this through a partisan lens, knowing that accounts making clear whom these laws disenfranchise would be labeled as biased by the right. But the media should not fear telling the truth or standing up for the rights of the poor or the young.")

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

[*this would have been MMMM #150, but I used that number for a special MMMM about the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War....just in case anyone is keeping track. And by the way, my 2000th post on this blog was yesterday. ]

MMMM # 149 -- The NEW News on CBS.

     Of course I have some bias on this MMMM topic, working now for a CBS affiliate, and having worked for another in Birmingham. But I have to say CBS hit it out of the park with a solid but unsensational first week of news anchored by Scott Pelley.

     And I say unsensational in a complimentary way.

     After night number one, the Washington Post's critic wrote about an immediate and significant difference: how they all handled Weiner's admission of guilt and cover up.

     It's a distance race, of course, not a sprint, but I would say Pelley is off to a great start, treating the evening news with a seriousness and lack of smarmyness and fake sincerity that seems so common elsewhere.

    You go Scott! Back to the future!



[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

MMMM # 147 -- Media Futures

     A long-awaited FCC report on the future of the media concludes that TV news is more important than ever. According to a story in Broadcasting & Cable, the report will come out on Thursday during a regular public FCC meeting. The actual name of the report is "The Technology and Information Needs of Communities". Much clearer than the working title of "The Future of Media", no? 

-----------

  Speaking of broadcasting and cable, I read a Birmingham News column last month in which TV critic Dave Sharp was listing Summer Cable TV premiers. He commented that...

"...the cable networks who, more and more, are giving those big boy networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and The CW) a major run for their money in the storytelling department."

  Come on Dave...Breaking Bad manages to attract 3 Million viewers on its best night...CBS's Two and a Half Men (without Sheen)  attracts more than 10 Million viewers. Storytelling without an audience is, what? A non-profit venture?



     And besides, with NBC buying Comcast (or was it the other way around?), consolidation will likely mean cable and broadcasters become the same, competing on a market by market basis for subscribers.

     At some point, probably many years for now, the whole idea of maintaining expensive transmitters and towers will end. It will be all cable and all Internet distribution. The virtual end of free TV. Another victory for the "subscription economy".

     In the meantime, the cable shows fight for whatever time the audience will be willing to invest watching TV during the busy Summer days---DVD/downloads notwithstanding,



[UPDATE: Speaking of over-the-air TV....a new report out suggests MORE Americans are using it.



[ALSO: The Rep. Weiner-Tweet story has an interesting media angle...did The N.Y. Post get an interview by posing as a non-journalist? Read the story here in the Washington Post.



[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

MMMM #146 TiVo Radio

     Though I've worked in TV for fifteen years now, I still love Radio. And for years I've wondered about radio receivers with a kind of built-in "TiVo" recorder...giving listeners a way to pause the radio program while you do something else.

     The new DAR.FM  is not exactly that, but similar. It's a service that lets you record radio shows in a "cloud", and tap into those shows when and where you want. Their FAQ page may do a better job than I explaining what they do (for free, by the way).

     The reason it doesn't do what I want, I think, is access.

     The most common times I to want to pause life radio are a) When I'm in the bathroom getting ready for work, and b) when I'm in the car and running into a store or something. While you can access your DAR account from a phone, that doesn't seem very practical for those applications....or am I missing something here?



     The real answer will come with Internet access in cars and bathroom etc etc. Of course that will help kill local radio even more, though as long as the commercials are heard, what's the difference when you listen? Same as with TV: there's no way for the stations to prove to advertisers that people saw/heard the ad....and fast forwarding will be too great a temptation for many people.



[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

MMMM #145 -- News Manipulation

Women! Begone!!

      A Brooklyn Yiddish newspaper had Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a female terrorism official in the background removed from the iconic photo of President Obama and others watching the operation that left Osama Bin Laden dead.

     The new media folks would have you believe the traditional media does this all day long...sits around deciding how to manipulate news to sell their own agenda. This newspaper did it because their Ultra-Conservative Jewish beliefs don't allow them to publish pictures of women for fear of arousing men.

     Right.

     In my own experience, most of the media is way too busy just trying to get the job done to plot agendas.

     The newspaper, by the way, did violate the White House photo use agreement, which stipulates you can't change their pictures in any way. And according to one rabbi, the violated a Jewish Law that forbids deceit. 

     Now there's a good rule for new and old media to follow.

[Plus: Read CNN's story on the behind-the-scenes way the Arnold and The Baby story broke...including the former Governor's

 amazingly vicious method of dealing with reporters.]

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

MMMM # 140 -- One Person Bands

      The hot new trend of recent years in TV News is hiring people who can and will interview, videotape, write and edit stories all by themselves. "One Man Bands" was the old name for them, sexist of course, but descriptive. Picture the literal one-man band. The guy with the cymbal attached to his elbow...like Goofy over there.

      In this economy, companies have increased that kind of money-saving hiring. Why hire a reporter AND a photographer/editor when you can hire one person to do it all? Hard to argue with the bottom-line justification.

     One of the interesting situations I've come across is at news events where there is no podium. Multiple reporters are standing up interviewing the same person. Suddenly the one-size-fits-all employee needs an extra hand to hold the microphone!

     I've been asked to be that extra hand by a station with ONLY a one-woman-band, and I had to force myself to do it. I don't want to be a jerk, but why should I make it easier for that station to get away with hiring a single person? Eventually, they'll develop a kind of boom mike fastened to a  metal cap with a chin strap that the "reporter" will wear. It will look foolish, but so what?





     Then there's the question of the quality of the journalism being practiced. While an individual can crank out stories that way, he or she can simply not do an equally good job on all of the  balls they are trying to juggle. How can you focus on what the interviewee is saying to your questions when you are focusing on focusing?





[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

MMMM #140: The Double Edged Sword of YouMedia

     When the story of a U.N. compound in Afghanistan being attacked and at least twenty staff members killed last week because a "pastor" in Florida had burned a Koran broke, I wondered  how I had missed the initial burning story?

     I remembered last year's reports about his threats to do so, and the intervention of high-level U.S. government officials that resulted in him backing down. But how did I miss the latest chapter?

     Turns out it was reported in just a tiny handful of the media. Terry Jones performed his provocative act on March 20th. And then he became his own media and posted a video of it on his website.

    Two days later it was noticed by some Middle-Eastern sites.  But it was not till this past week that the story exploded online and enraged Muslims worldwide, peaking with the attack on the U.N. compound (The U.N. being the closed thing to Americans the mob could find.)

     I suspect those members of the mainstream media who came across a story about the March 20th burning on a barbecue grill, shrugged their collective shoulders and ignored it.

     Been there, done that.

     But the net allowed the good pastor to create his own media storm, with the expected results.

     The same Internet that allows a little girl to raise money for her mother's cancer treatment also allows a small-time religious nut in Florida to provoke Muslims in Afghanistan into killing innocent people.

ALSO: the mainstream media...at least the CNN part of it...has now officially become part of what used to be called the "tabloid press". CNN's online headline for a story about Sarah Palin saying she is no longer going to whine about the MSM? Palin Says She's Through!!.



Brings me back to the days of the National Enquirer headlines like or Three Headed Baby Born!! (a snake, of course) or  Obama's Friendship with Terrorist! (When it comes to President Obama, even the thinnest link to the truth is sufficient. And that's not just in the tabloids!)



[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog]

MMMM # 139 -- End (of free NY) Times... and Yemen PR (NOT).

     Overnight, as we slept, the long anticipated pay wall went up around The New York Times website.

     Readers of this blog know I have been a regular reader of the Times. I've linked to stories produced by The Times staff several tiems a week for years.

     Beginning today, we can read 20 articles a week for free. After that, there is a charge per article. Or you can pay a flat monthy fee for electronic access on multiple platforms...PC, tablets or smart (or maybe even just brighter-than-average) phones. $20.00.

     PC Magazine reports that readers of this and other blogs who click through to a Times story will not have that count against their 20 free stories a month. Of course that doesn't help me with my monthly limit!

     It can't be completely a coincidence that the last column by Bob Herbert appeared in yesterday's paper.

     And ditto for Frank Rich's departure two weeks ago.

    The first time The Times tried to require payment from readers, there was major revolt by the columnists, who were the main focus of the fees charged for N.Y. Times Select. And now, like then, there apparently was a major internal battle between proponents of charging and those who wanted to protect the biggest online news audience in the world...almost fifty million visitors a month.

     There is no doubt those numbers will plummet starting this week.

      I agree the Times and other providers of original online content deserve to be compensated for their work, but $240 a year is not an insignificant fee, especially during The Great Depression. Have they not been reading their own economic stories?

     I haven't decided about paying yet. There are many fine newspapers online not charging, and as columnists jump ship, the ability to visit the Times online becomes less valuable, not more.

     And there's this: when the content was free, I felt an obligation to watch the annimated ads for The Economist etc etc before I was allowed to view my story. Now I'll just click the "skip this ad" option immediately.

     Will that option remain with a pay wall?





                                                                       ###



     Yemen, where snipers fired into a crowd of demonstrators last week, killing a reporter and others, is also at the front of the line of Middle-Eastern Governments who are abusing the media during the unrest.

     The country's official news agency put out a warning to journalists:



Yemen urges foreign media maximum accuracy while covering Yemen





[22/March/2011]

     SANA'A, March 22 (Saba) – Yemen on Tuesday urged foreign media to exercise maximum accuracy as to what they report and to be professional while covering the situation in Yemen.

     A source at the Information Ministry also stressed the importance of reporting the facts as they are and to avoid distorting them.

     The source told Saba:" the ministry will regrettably withdraw the license of any correspondent for foreign outlets found abusing his profession".

     Yemen is a democratic country, which is open to different opinions and committed to freedom of the press providing media never harms the national security and stability, the source said, warning media of incitement to violence and chaos or distorting the facts. 

                                

     It's bad enough to threaten to take away a journalists' license, but when snipers start firing into crowds of demonstrators...killing the reporters too...

    And late last week the find security forces in Libya made a fool of themselves by destroying  journalists cameras and roughing them up after they tried to report on a woman who charged she had been raped by the security force. The country's handlers also tried to convince the media the woman was drunk or insane.

    By Sunday morning, the Libyan government had reversed course, admitting the incident had been mishandled, and announced the arrest of five people.



[ALSO: The Montgomery Advertiser has launched a much-needed redesign of their web site. Looks good!]

(The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

MMM(ovie)M # 133 -- Hollywood Incentives

     Businesses love to play one state against another when to comes to incentives.

     How hard is it to fake an interest in a half dozen site locations for a plant, only to select the one you really wanted in the end, having pumped up the tax cuts and outright cash prizes for opening your plant there.

     How much money did Alabama spend in the losing effort to win the Air Force Tanker contract? We tend to celebrate the big wins like Mercedes and Hyundai without takign into account the loses.

     Movie incentives are the same...if a film is being made outside California, you can bet somebody is demanding, and somebody is paying, incentives.

    Over the weekend AP reported that Georgia is considering scrapping it's own film incentives, the tax breaks etc that a state or municipality pays a company to make the film in their jurisdiction.

     While they do spend money and generate taxes during filming, so do superstar concerts and the little carnivals and conventions.

     Where are their incentives?

     But Hollywood may be waking up to the new economy: the states are broke. Alabama Governor Robert Bentley's proposed budget includes huge cuts in tourism spending...including, in theory, the state's film office, which is part of the Tourism office.

     The Decatur Daily's Trevor Stokes wrote a story last month about Alabama's two year old film incentives legislation, suggesting that it doesn't compare with what other states offer because of caps, and yet doesn't help small home-grown film efforts either.

     The Golden Era of paying Hollywood to come calling may be ending.

    

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

MMMM #132 -- about PBS

Last Week, Ken Burns wrote passionately in the Washington Post about the need for a Public Broadcasting system:

"...we have never needed them more..."

     Burns made both a name for himself and a good deal of money by producing documentaries broadcast on PBS, programs that he argues rightly would never have made it in the world of commercial TV.

     His comments come as the GOP Majority U.S. House votes to remove all federal funding for the publicasters.

     As mentioned earlier on this blog, the Alabama network that carries PBS programs is facing a double threat. If the spending cutters have their way, funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will dry up, and the state GOP, with super majorities in both the Alabama House and Senate, may have their eyes on that funding too.

     At least APT is under the Education Budget, not the General Fund, which is going to virtually kill some agencies because The Departments of Corrections and Medicaid are being protected from cuts, deepening the reductions for everyone else.

     When I first spotted the headline of the Burns column in the Post, I thought it read "Public broadcasting, a 'luxury' we can do without"...and I had virtually written this post in my mind before I blinked and saw it was "can't do without."

     He makes a good argument, but when the choice is between dinner or a new Television..and that's where Alabama's budgets are headed.

     I also have a great Ken Burns story to tell...but we'll save that for later.



[Photo: The last For The Record, two years ago this Month.]

MMMM #129 -- Piecework in the Sweatshop

     L.A. Times columnist Tim Rutten writing the Huffington Post/AOL merger last week, says it will result in very little journalism, but a lot of

"...content...which is what journalism becomes when it's adulterated into a mere commodity."

     He points our that employees will be required to produce five to ten stories a day.

    

    That's a statistic I can relate to.

    

     There are some days when I can offer up ten story ideas in a single day. Then again, there are days when the well is dry. And probably half of the ideas I generate won't go anywhere for any number of reasons.

     I say cut to the chase and pay those HuffPoAOL journalists by the word. Really. Just like a sock factory in China or South America or wherever it is all of those Northeast Alabama sock jobs are now being performed.

     Remember the shock in 2007 when a California website hired a writer in India to "cover" it's city council meetings and other city government events? The outrage the move generated seems positively quaint right now. These days it may be unemployed American reporters looking to cover news in India!

    That reporter for the Pasadena website was required to come up with two stories a day from six-thousand miles away.

    

  James Macpherson, Editor and Publisher of  Pasadena Now, tells me the system is still in place today, and, as a matter of fact, has expanded to the administrative and sales departments. He says various journalilsts in India have filled the reporter's position in the four years since it started.

     There are 1,445 words in this posting. If I pay myself a penny a word, I've paid for a nice breakfast. Now about that mortgage payment....



[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

MMMM # 125 Media Heroes (and NOT)

      Twice in recent days, a newspaper employee has turned hero to save lives endangered by fire.

      Last Tuesday, it was a Huntsville Times newspaper delivery guy with fire department experience who won praise because he woke up a family and called 911 to report a fire in the home.

    And on December 21st, a newspaper photographer for the Press-Register in Mobile spotted a motel on fire and alerted the desk clerk and knocked on doors to wake up guests.

     The incidents reminded me of what happened in Anniston in 1983, when a man set himself on fire as a TV crew filmed him. He later filed a lawsuit against the TV station for not stopping him, a suit that was thrown out of court.

     The ethics of the case are still discussed in journalism classes today. We had a short discussion about it in the Electronic News Gathering course I've been teaching at Trenholm State a few weeks ago. A new class begins next week.

     Flip sides of an Alabama media coin, almost thirty years apart.



[ALSO: There's been a settlement in a suit filed over reader comments on a newspaper's web site. The suit was filed a judge, who complained when the paper identified her as the writer of harsh after-story comments about a case she was hearing.]



[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

MMMM #124 -- Paying for News

   



      It's been almost a year since the New York Times announced they would start charging for content:

Starting in January 2011, a visitor to NYTimes.com will be allowed to view a certain number of articles free each month; to read more, the reader must pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the print newspaper, even those who subscribe only to the Sunday paper, will receive full access to the site without any additional charge.

     Yet here we are just days away from the start of 2011 and there's not a peep from the Times website. Have they changed their minds? Delayed their plan? Are they waiting to spring it on us on next Saturday's start of the New Year?

     And just what will the "certain number"of free articles be?

     Obviously the owners of just about every paper in the world will be watching what happens closely. So am I. What happens could determine the future.

MMMM # 123 -- Google's New Media Popularity Machine

     The omnipresent search company came out last week with a tool to search thousands of books over the past century for words or phrases. Boring? Hardly. Addicting, I'd say. Why, for example, was there such a dramatic peak in references to Alabama around 1921? And why no equally huge spike in the 1960's during the Civil Rights Era?

      Try the program yourself, Compare two words---or two names---, and watch their use rise and fall over the decades.

     The data must be taken for what it is...especially in the earlier decades when magazines and newspapers may have been more widely read than books. The Ngram viewer only looks at books. But I'll be amazed if a combination tool searching everything in the world for a phrase won't be far behind.

     Som interesting examples..why has The University of Alabama at Birmingham's star fallen in recent years after dramatic growth? Watch Barack Obama go from absolute zero to top of the charts. And note that a search of Georgia and Alabama sees the two states follow a similar up and down path..indicating that they are treated only in reference to their location in the South rather than as individual entities? Or am I reading too much into it? Also...compare New York and New Jersey. No wonder the Garden State gets no respect.

     Have fun!

[ALSO: The group called "Media Matters" has published another internal memo from FOX News, this one about the "notion" of climate change. It has the bosses upstairs telling FOX reporters to question that "notion" in their stories.

    Interference from above is hardly unheard of in the news business. But at the best operations, reporters and news department managers are given editorial freedom to report the facts. Period.]

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]



MMM # 122 : Mistakes

 "McCarthy was acting like this was Selma, Ala., in the '60s and he was Bull Connor."

     That geographic misplacement occurred in an AP story in today's Washington Post about a small upstate New York town where a Muslim mosque and cemetery caused a fuss. The story was not wrong...they accurately quoted the town official who was wrong.

     But mistakes make it into broadcast and print media every day.

     The PBS News Hour once identified Birmingham as the Capitol of Alabama.

      I've personally made some doozies on air over the years, and been called on them.

      People aren't shy about calling a newsroom and complaining, but a study a few years ago found that TV News errors aren't always a simple matter of a fact being incorrect. Sometimes the facts are correct but the story is wrong because it is out of of context, or because the station made the story bigger than it really was.

     I maintain that the very fact that a story is included in a TV newscast makes it bigger, and perhaps bigger than it deserves to be.

     How many times have you seen a fire or accident story on the evening news, only to see it reported as a paragraph in the morning newspaper website?

     And it's the constant need for "teases" and promos for stories that frequently get stations in trouble.

     The drama in a promo for a TV news story is intended to build it up..sometimes beyond what the story deserves. And the tease "Coming up! Dogs on the attack in East Alabama!" is frequently going to go too far as well.

     Newspapers have a corrections column, in which misspellings and other errors are acknowledged. But there's no such regular place on TV...the error has to be truly significant to merit an on-air correction. And even then, the audience watching when the correction is made is usually vastly different from the one that heard the error in the first place.



[PLUS: Words matter. FOX News reportedly insisted on specific language on-air to describe the "Public Option" in health care in a way that would convince the network's audience not to support it.]



[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

MMMM #121 -- "Real" News

     I have more than one friend who will suggest I read a story they've seen online on 'Yahoo News" or "Charter News".

     Yahoo as a news source? Charter? Comcast? Google?

     The "news" these sites assemble on the same page is a combination of AP material, Gossipy "entertainment news" and ads written to look like the rest of the pablum on the page.

     This process got underway way back when the "Entertainment Tonight" type shows came in vogue. They were more entertainment than news, and it wasn't long before consumers failed to see the difference. Meanwhile, the real news programs changed.

     The consultants took over and decided the best way to increase audience was to do only the stories viewers rated highly. Radio news is, of course, virtually nonexistent.

     And then came the National Enquirer and friends squeezing actual news in between the Aliens live in the White House basement! "features".

     When was the first time the MSM picked up a story from one of those rags and ran with it? Gary Condit? Clinton's cigar? Monica's black dress? Wilbur Mills and the stripper.

     I'll be teaching an Electronic News Gathering (ENG) course at Trenholm College here in Montgomery again in January, and one of the first pieces of business is to explain what news IS. That's becoming a harder and harder thing to do these days when a tweet alone becomes justification for a story.



[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]