The Reconstruction of American Journalism’s basic gist is that government and non-profits should fund journalism, rather than having news orgs be expected to be both effective and profitable.

Because, you know, there’s no way for corporate or political agendas to hide behind non-profits, right? And government funding won’t include any government interference, right?

(Wiley cartoon via With A Balloon)

Doesn’t anybody around here understand writing or usage?  I know I sound like grammarian schoolmarm, but ABC’s story on ‘alleged’ mass murderer Major Nidal Malik Hasan was even more poorly written than usual.  The first sentence reads:

“Days after a mass shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Killeen, Texas, details of the gunman’s life have captivated millions looking for motives behind Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s murderous rampage.”

Yes, captivating.  Not.

To captivate means to capture attention in a positive way, as in ‘Miley Cyrus captivated her tween audience.’ 

Captivating=delightful.

What’s next for ABC’s incompetent news writers?  Why not ’the antics of the terrorist murderer captivated the public’s attention’?

THIS IS FANTASTIC

http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-can-we-please-shut-up-about-the-death-of-journalism-already-2009-10

Finally I find an article where it’s not all doom and gloom ‘the industry is up in flames’. I like the issues raised in this article, very interesting. A nice way to look at the downturn.

I love magazines. The Economist, Foreign Policy, National Geographic, Time, Lucky, Wired, Forbes…the list goes on and on.  I currently don’t have a subscription to one, but I’d get a subscription to a magazine before I got one to a newspaper. Actually, it’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a while and I will today. Plus, one of my lovely roomates is a magazine journalism major (Hi Sherri!). It’s easy these days to feel depressed about our job prospects and the state of our chosen professions, which is why this video I found was a refreshing and very welcome different take.

I really agreed with all the facts they stated. I am a young adult and I like magazines. I turn to them for their awesome photography, cool design and in-depth articles. More importantly for a profitable business, I pay attention to the ads in magazines more so that any type of advertisements in print media. How could you not? Most of them are beautiful.

Now I’m off to decide which of my favorites I shall order a subscription to.

The Philistine phase of the digital age is almost over. The aggregators and the plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph.

Rupert Murdoch, Beijing, October 2009

The writing is on the wall…but actually the content creators were not in Beijing with Rupert Murdoch; they’re scattered across the globe and Murdoch wants their content, he just doesn’t want to pay for it.

Can you imagine a future without journalism: a time in which journalists are replaced by “content directors” and amateurs?

As journalist and commentator Peter Kirwan put it in Wired magazine:

If traditional journalism is too expensive, and if user-generated content really is “good enough”, the way forward seems obvious.

For some news industry managers, this is a happy prospect: they can legitimately get rid of the expensive journalists, take your amateur copy for free and rake in the profits.

I have written about this new political economy of journalism and the news industry in News 2.0, which is with the publisher and should be on the shelves in the first half of next year. My argument is that the MSM has clearly learned from the open-source movement and also from social media and citizen journalism experiments such as Indymedia, Slashdot, etc and that – as capitalism does – the news industry is colonising these spaces that were once counter-cultural and oppositional in order to harvest the surplus value that’s lurking there.

We’re all familiar with “monetizing” the clickstream, well what we’re seeing here is the application of these principles to the news production process; CNN’s iReport is the clearest example: the “unedited,unfiltered” tagline on the site is plagiarised – I’m sure – deliberately from Indymedia.

And now Rupert Murdoch – often in the vanguard of media capital – is certainly aware of the need to “monetize” citizen and amateur journalism, as well as to throw up a paywall around the cheap and nasty copy his news organisations generate. In a speech at the World Media Summit in Beijing, Murdoch once again returned to his theme:

Media companies know that if you do not respond intelligently and creatively to the digital challenge, your future will be bleak indeed.

But don’t worry, he adds in coded language – we know how to capture the value and keep ourselves alive, bugger the quality, feel the width. Another Murdoch, heir-apparent James has also chimed in, attacking the BBC for having a monopoly and a subsidised advantage over Murdoch’s own British media interests. I have no doubt that the war for territory, eyeballs, advertising and profits in the media industry is hotting up.

Of course, we all know that journalists are the meat in the sandwich here, but I was intrigued by this tweet from NYU’s Jeff Jarvis this morning:

My advice to these unemployed J-grads: Start a blog, build a brand & business.

Jarvis was referring to this piece in the New York Times about twins who had completed journalism training, but couldn’t find work in New York. I’m sure Jeff thinks this snappy one-liner is good advice, but IMHO, it’s trite and worthless. The idea that somehow individual journalists can turn themselves into mini-Ruperts by becoming entrepreneurs in a crowded media world flies in the face of the trending political economy of journalism and the news industry. It is working, almost, for some big names who have managed to make a brand out of their personal space. But we’re talking about a handful of former senior correspondents, not two 20-somethings fresh out of J-school.

There’s a link here between Jarvis,  Murdoch’s speech and Kirwan’s piece in Wired: all three are signaling that the profound change in media and journalism is far from over and that it’s going to be a rocky ride. In a sense too, what unites Murdoch and Jarvis is a belief in a future where those troublesome journalists are no longer in the way of the money-flow.

Peter Kirwan’s piece in Wired, Imagining a future without journalism,  was published the same day that Murdoch senior’s Beijing speech was reported and it is depressing reading for anyone who thinks that quality journalism is still important:

David Montgomery is a former News Corporation editor who now runs Mecom, a quoted UK-based company that publishes 200 local newspapers in Scandinavia, Holland and Poland. Rather like Colo, with whom he has little else in common, Montgomery envisages a world in which perhaps 10 per cent of newspaper content – the “tip of the iceberg” – is written by journalists.

The rest will be contributed, for low or no fee, by citizen journalists. Legions of sub-editors – the introverted types who prepare journalists’ copy for publication – will be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Montgomery isn’t very keen on editors, either. Soon, his newspapers will be managed by content directors, rather than editors. Mecom’s content directors will have a brief to “commercialise” journalism. “Our culture is a million miles away from what’s required for the coming years.” … “But when you start to think about commercialising content,” he added, “then you get to see what newspapers might look like in the future.”

The concern here has to be for the quality of information, particularly for news that informs and frames public debate. Perhaps it doesn’t matter too much if trade-style publications become PR repositories, but it matters more if business news is reduced to scads of quantitative data with no interpretive framework.

If this is the future of general news then we’re stuffed. As Kirwan suggests, the business model of cheap and cheerful content that has been pioneered in trade magazines, might spread like a swine flu virus:

In recent years, business publishers have pioneered a whole range of new platforms and techniques that that were subsequently adopted by mainstream media. Podcasting? Blogging? Webcasting? Online video? Centralised editorial production? Social media? Business publishing has had more than its fair share of early adopters.

The vision of a journalist-free future that’s taking shape within the sector may soon prove relevant in the wider world, too.

We have been warned.

We should also remember an earlier speech by Murdoch that garnered much attention at the time, but which has now been shown to have been false prophecy. Do you remember this?

“Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry – the editors, the chief executives and, let’s face it, the proprietors,” said Mr Murdoch, having flown into London from New York after celebrating his 75th birthday on Saturday.

Rupert Murdoch, Internet means end for media barons,  March 2006

Yeah right Rupert.

Murdoch made this speech at a time when media capital was still unsure about how to respond to social media and the shifting demographics of news consumption. Three years later, and they’ve got a handle on it: disestablish the journalism profession by stealth; copyright the free stuff they get from amateurs and start charging hard for online content.

There’s life in these dinosaurs yet.

Contrary to popular belief, most journalists do not have an agenda, unless you consider skepticism of what they’re told an agenda.  Many, however, like myself, have a real aversion to hypocrisy. 

Obviously, politicians who legislate public morality while–ahem–falling short personally are high on this list, like South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, Nevada Senator John Ensign, and former Senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig.

But we are equal opportunity scourges of hypocrisy.  Some examples I find distasteful:

Non-profit journalism groups with hidden agendas or built in conflicts of interests, like ProPublica, which can never really independently investigate one of the biggest stories of our time, the financial collapse of 2008, because its founders made their money in option-ARM mortgages

‘Progressive’ publishers who don’t pay contributors  (although since you handed me my LA Press Club Award, I do have a soft spot for you, Arianna Huffington)

Right wing pundits who blast Obama for huge deficits and government takeovers of business–and ignore GW Bush’s drunken spending

Left wing pundits and Hollywood types who call for the release of Roman Polanski so he won’t miss his Swiss lifetime achievement award–without doing his time for the sex charge against a child he pleaded guilty to.

Unfortunately, there are many more examples of ‘do as I say, not as I do.’  This is just a taste.

At a recent CORO seminar, journalist Joe Mathews (author of a definitive Arnold Schwarzenegger political biography)  noted that though he now works for the New America Foundation, he didn’t trust non-profit journalism sponsored by foundations–”They have more of an agenda than advertising supported newspapers ever did.”

I pounced on his point and asked him about one of my pet peeves: ProPublica.  ProPublica is one of those nonprofits.  It funds investigative journalism to the tune of many millions of dollars–but where the money comes from is always worth knowing. Maybe the newspaper ‘ad goons’ the LA Times James Rainey remembers weren’t so bad after all.

ProPublica was founded by Herb and Marion Sandler, a husband and wife team Time Magazine listed in their exclusive round-up, “25 people to Blame for the Financial Crisis” due to their ‘pioneering’ use of option ARM loans at World Savings.  They sold World Savings to Wachovia for $2.3 billion dollars, walked away and watched as Wachovia imploded from the weight of all the bad loans.

Will the journalists of ProPublica rake this very prominient muck?  No, and certainly not when Paul Steiger, ex editor of the Wall Street Journal,  made $570,000 in 2008 at ProPublica.   Worse, with the desperate straits of journalism, other journalists (with the exception of Slate’s Jack Shafer) seem very unwilling to question what they see as a liferaft to the drowning.

I wrote a letter to the editor at the LA Times after this glowing pro ProPublica story and another to Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) which devoted four (four!) articles in a recent issue about the exciting future of non-profit journalism.   Neither was published; perhaps CJR was miffed when I told them to go sell some ads (they had a page and a half paid in the issue I looked at.)  As for the LA Times, they use ProPublica stories, (provided free to participating publishers) so apparently they’ll brook no criticism.

Meanwhile, these high-minded philanthropists follow the lead of the dynamic Ariana Huffington, a pioneer of progressive unpaid journalism.  A non-profit startup will use 120 unpaid Berkeley journalism students as “slave labor” to cover the area.

I could use some (paid) work but I’ve probably blown my chance at a ProPublica job.  So here’s the letter I wrote to the LA Times:

Before I began working on documentaries full-time, I was a daily newspaper reporter. I fell into the job as somewhat of a deliberate accident. Two years out of college and working in marketing, I decided I wanted to go to grad school so that I could do something writing-related. My first instinct was to go into publishing. I’d always loved books and reading; it made perfect sense. I applied for a graduate degree in publishing, where I’d learn marketing skills. And then, for some reason unbeknownst to me, I applied for a masters in journalism at another school.

Both acceptances rolled in and I knew immediately: I wanted to go for journalism. It was harder and more of a challenge for me, and I knew that a career in the field would be a tough climb. This was 2006, so the writing was very much on the wall for newspapers. I started the program, loved every minute, and freelanced my way into a job writing for a small daily newspaper at graduation.

Within six months, I realized that I’d never be able to make ends meet as a journalist. I wanted to buy a condo and have some sort of life that included a vacation once a year and new clothes every now and then. I wasn’t even allowed to take a day off for six months. I became completely unreliable to my friends, because I was constantly canceling plans to work on stories. These weren’t the cool kinds of stories that you stay late with pleasure for, either (though there were a few of those!). In some cases, they were space fillers. I just needed to get as many stories out of my typing fingers as fast as I could so our understaffed paper could put something out the next day. We were in a pay and hiring freeze. I never realized how hostile the general public was towards the “slant” that they saw newspaper reporters having. I burnt out, and fast. I had been willing to put in long hours at slave wages to get to my dream job writing features that would “change the world,” but the day I realized that those jobs probably wouldn’t exist by the time I qualified for them, I was done.

I was one of the lucky ones. I did PR for a couple of months before an acquaintance offered me an unbelievable opportunity. One of the stories I’d started on at the newspaper had blown up nationally, and he was doing a documentary about it. I was hired on to the project, and that has led to another one that I’m working on today. It’s a great opportunity for a journalist, to be able to delve deep into a story and conduct all kinds of interesting interviews and to work in a different medium and to keep doing journalism but make a living wage.

But I miss writing. Pen to paper, on deadline, churning out those stories, writing.

So I’ve started to poke my nose back into freelance opportunities and I ramped up this blog. Because I have some freedom in that freelancing is not my full-time job and that I have an established portfolio of clips, I have been looking at the opportunities that are most interesting to me: the ones that allow me to write about things I find fascinating or that promise to be a new and interesting opportunity. One of the areas I’m looking in is online news aggregator sites like the one I posted about yesterday, Boston24.

Boston24 is unique in that it is actually offering to pay writers something as base pay for their stories, and not requiring them to get page views or advertiser dollars or whatever else, though they are coming up with an algorithm for paying contributors a percentage of advertisement revenue as earned by their work. But the question I have is: can it work?

As a writer, I see a couple of roadblocks that, I believe, are going to make it hard for online news outlets to attract the kind of quality journalism they need to compete with newspapers.

• Credibility: While I have considered working for little or no pay on a story that really interests me, and I would write for free for some publications just for the thrill of seeing my byline there, it’s hard to do that for a little-known online news site. Even harder, when it comes to reported stories, is getting sources to make time for you when they’ve never heard of the publication/website for which you’re writing.
• Money: Most professional writers won’t work for free, and freelance journalists have a set dollar amount that they’re worth per hour. In most cases, if they can’t make the numbers work, they’ll turn down the job. The result is more amateur writers or students writing for the news organization while the professional writers take on corporate jobs while they try breaking into higher paying markets.
• Philosophy: I’ve read it over and over again on the blogs of freelance writers, especially those with full-time jobs: they have to come up with creative ways to conduct interviews. And so they do them at off-hours, by email, from their cars, etc. Very rarely are those writers going to spend a day with a subject, following him or her around everywhere and really getting the kind of insight that a full-time staff reporter who is paid for that kind of activity is going to get. And, to be honest, online news outlets usually don’t pay enough to warrant that kind of time being put into a story. But how can they ever catch up to traditional papers if they can’t get the same kind of quality reporting?

Don’t get me wrong. I love traditional newspapers. It makes me sad every time I see a layoff or paper closing or other depressing news from the newspaper front. But I also know that their revenue model doesn’t work, and the people who are suffering inside the organization are the reporters. They’re running away as fast as they can, taking jobs in other fields because they can’t support families on their incomes. If you don’t have good reporters, you won’t have a good newspaper.

So I truly hope that online news outlets succeed, for a number of reasons. I’d love to see them giving journalists the pay they deserve, which will only happen if they can make some money. And I’d love to see them provide some real competition to traditional newspapers, which still cling to an outdated revenue model. (Everyone seems to know a new one is needed, but no one has an answer, so someone needs to give them a kick in the pants.) I’m a capitalist at heart, and I believe that the most successful news industry will be one in which many different forms of news are competing at the same level.

What do you think?

Photo courtesy of mfophotos via Flickr.

Last week, a Boston Globe story about a Massachusetts prep school that was getting rid of the books in its library and replacing them with electronic resources, got a lot of attention. Being a longtime bookworm and someone who, despite my youth, thinks that libraries have an absolute place in research and that everyone should learn to use them, I was outraged–so much so that I wrote an Opinion piece for it on a new local news website, Boston24.com.

Check out the piece, called The Bookless Library: the Trouble with Progress. While you’re there, take a look around Boston24. They’re creating an aggregate news site and proposing a recruitment strategy that pays writers outright while giving them a percentage of the ad revenue their article earns. It’s an interesting take, and I’m always interested in new journalism models since the old one is clearly flailing.

Spotted this at the Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe over the weekend. It was one of many that made me smile.

The gallery’s current showcase is “A Thousand Words: Masters of Photojournalism.”

In today’s ocean of bad news for the press–picture editors being laid off, agency, newspapers and magazines closures,–an island of hope, history, and artistic recognition is thriving in the photographs featured in the exhibition.

I’d like to see more photojournalism like this in the future, please, so world, save the photogs!

I’m posting the photos that fascinated me the most since not everybody is lucky enough to live in New Mexico and see these gems in real life. Check out the Monroe Gallery online to see the rest of the exhibit. I apologize in advance if any of these depress you or anything.

AP’s payment plan, explained

Boing Boing shows what the venerated wire service is really doing with their “container” for news content.  A NYT story tries to explain AP’s side of things, while Scott Rosenberg takes a different view (and Ars Technica remains skeptical). What remains to be seen is how AP will enforce such a plan when something like the Associated RePress can be built using AP’s own RSS feed. (Salon’s King Kaufman offers another view on how journalists can make money on stuff people are using for free.)

Not that I pay much attention to mainstream media – I only occasionally turn CNN on, and I sometimes watch MSNBC – but it’s pretty hard to avoid the Michael Jackson postmortem drama unfolding before our very eyes.  Everywhere I go, he’s on a newspaper, a magazine, a tabloid, a TV screen in a restaurant, the radio, and IT NEVER STOPS.  And I can’t help but wonder what in the hell else I’m missing.  Isn’t there something going on somewhere in the world that I should know about?  Or have all of the activities on Planet Earth literally come to a standstill as a result of MJ’s passing?

Not to parrot Sean Hannity (GOD, no), but it appears as though journalism has truly died.  Like I said, I don’t watch much news;  I get my news from sources independent of the mainstream media orgy of ignorance.  But, from what I’ve seen over the past few days, a typical broadcast goes something like this:

MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON, BILLY MAYS, MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON’S DEAD, MICHAEL JACKSON’S DOCTOR, MICHAEL JACKSON, BILLY MAYS, MICHAEL JACKSON, BILLY MAYS HAD HEART DISEASE, MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON, Sarah Palin resigned, MICHAEL JACKSON, BILLY MAYS WAS INSPIRING, MICHAEL JACKSON, Mark Sanford’s affairs, MICHAEL JACKSON’S WILL, MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON’S WILL RAISES QUESTIONS, MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON, CUSTODY BATTLE, MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON’S DOCTOR, Sarah Palin resigned, MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON, Mark Sanford, BILLY MAYS HAD HEART DISEASE, MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON…

AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!  MAKE IT STOP!!!

But does anyone care?  Of course not.  Because the average American doesn’t give a shit about actual news;  they’d rather be entertained by bizarre stories of celebrity death, political scandal, and Sarah Palin.  And this is what our for-profit media is all about – what Americans want to see.  So that’s what they pump out.  And they get $$$ in return.  Get it?  Of course you do.  If the corporate media has to keep its audience ignorant to make a buck, by God, that’s what the corporate media will do.  They’ll pump hours and hours and hours and hours of Michael Jackson death coverage, specials on Michael Jackson’s life, interviews with Michael Jackson’s family, tours of Neverland, and any other putrid BS they can pass off as breaking news.

In the meantime, what has the average American missed (unless the average American has the urge – fat chance – to read the news ticker at the bottom of the screen while empty rooms at Neverland are being uncovered by dumbass corporate media whores)?  Well…the new government of Honduras is refusing to let the country’s democratically-elected, ousted president back into the country.  Israel hijacked a boat carrying aid to Gaza and held its passengers – including a Nobel laureate and former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney – hostage.  It has been reported that Israel slaughtered hundreds of civilians in Gaza.  Iran is going to prosecute those who cooperate with satellite TV providers.  You know, nothing major.  A former Congresswoman has been practically kidnapped by Israel, masses of people have died and nobody cares, Iran is going batshit crazy, and Honduras is about to fucking explode.  But the TOP STORY…Michael Jackson died.  Did you know that?  Jesus Christ.

I really hate the mainstream media.  And we wonder why Americans are so uninformed.

I know we’ve already had Michael Jackson stories from Christina and Alex, and my own modest effort, but as my able colleagues pointed out, this is the model of restraint when compared to other media outlets.  Like CNN.

Even so, I was happy to close the book on MJ, until I got a glimpse of this farcical clip from the folks who put the FAIL in #CNNFAIL.  Thanks to uber-Tweep TenGrain for this:

Really? You “tracked Bubbles down?”  He’s in a cage in Florida.  It ain’t exactly “Hungry Like the Wolf.”  (On a side note, how much must it suck to be a chimp who doesn’t quite rate inclusion in the “Great Ape” category?  You get stashed in the “Mediocre Primate Hovel and Bait Shop?”)

Earlier this week, CNN also tracked down a rabbi who was Jackson’s friend.  Not Jackson’s Rabbi, for that might have actually been a story.

I touched on this in yesterday’s WaPo story, but after seeing this video, I had to go back and find the John Ziegler interview that I referenced.
John Ziegler is a guy with whom I agree very little.  You’ve probably all seen him on TV frying the brains of various interviewers, and maybe you’ve seen his movie, “Media Malpractice.“  For conservatives, it’s like Citizen Kane meets Jaws, as entertaining a film as they’re likely to see.

However, even as a liberal, I enjoyed it immensely.  For me, most of it was like watching some alternate universe sci-fi movie, where everything that’s good about Barack Obama doesn’t exist,  but he also makes some great points about the media.  It’s also a great collection of seminal news clips from campaign 2008, tied together with Ziegler’s funny, high-energy narration.

We became friends at this year’s CPAC, and I appeared at a screening of his in May to introduce his film.  Afterward, we were interviewed by some journalism students.  During the interview, John completely floored me by nailing cold the problem with modern journalism (try to ignore the super-trippy painting on the wall behind him):

Interesting article on TheHill.com site titled “Senators held stock in bailed-out banks.”

Guess who’s name is on this list?  Connecticut Senator Chris “Countrywide” Dodd. Guess who is wanting an extension on his deadline to file these disclosure reports? Yeah, Senator Chris Dodd and two other Democrat Senators (Mark Warner D-VA, and Jeff Merkley D-OR).

This is interesting:

“Like Corker and Bennett, three Democrats sitting on the panel asked for extensions in filing their financial disclosure reports. Freshmen Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) along with the committee’s chairman, Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), are expected to file their reports in August.”

And this part:

“Senators who oversee the $700 billion Wall Street rescue package held stocks in many of the banks bailed out towards the end of last year, according to financial disclosure reports released Friday.

According to the reports detailing senators’ finances in 2008, nearly half of the members of the Senate Banking Committee had holdings in financial institutions that have taken funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The panel has jurisdiction over the bailout fund and other relief efforts directed by federal regulators to save the nation’s financial system.”

Now in fairness to them all, I have mixed feelings on whether or not such folks should be allowed to invest in such companies. Preexisting investments versus those bought after they were on the committee?Did they sell them and when?

Let’s face reality, this stuff clearly gets real dicey when we’re talking about politicians that sit in positions of great power on Congressional panel with far reaching banking oversight. It gets even more dicey when it appears a good chunk of the responsibility for this economic mess tends to wind it’s way back to some of these folks…Senator Dodd is an excellent example.

I also find it interesting (disturbing is a better word) when the administration and the US Congress seem very willing to spend money like it grows on trees, scare us all to death about our futures (aka distraction), and then propose massively expensive fixes to a problem they have yet to fully detail what went wrong and where. Guess you’re not too eager to do that when you know the trails will often wind up at your own doorstep eh?

How about we find out what went wrong before we try fixing a problem? Or has all common sense just went bye bye in Washington…sort of like real journalism has in that town?

More government bureaucracy and regulations are some of the proposed fixes. There were tons of regulations in place, this mess still happened. I’d bet the problem is not a lack of regulation, but the lack of enforcement of existing regulations. The question to ask is more likely “why were these existing regulations NOT ENFORCED?”

The news media I remember from growing up would be all over Congress and their role in this mess. They would be asking this OBVIOUS QUESTIONS every day till some answers were obtained.  Today they’re mostly a fan club for their favorite politicians and attack dogs for their opponents. Some, like ABC,  are even doing full broadcasts (essentially a free infomercial) from the White House.

This stuff should deeply concern every American. Real journalism is dead anymore and we’re going to pay a huge price for it.

Or, at least, the amount of take I’m willing to express publicly. Take it for what it’s worth.

Kinda knew this would happen.

I’ve never been a Globe staff writer. I’ve contributed regularly to the paper for a few years, mostly for the sadly now-defunct City Weekly section. Obviously the union members were in an impossible position, rock v. hard place; I have no interest in judging their decision.

What I do wonder is this: How many people in the union came of age during the death-of-journalism career era?

Take my experience. I started covering music in 2002, a few years out of college. After a year, I decided to stick with journalism. The unanimous response from editors and reporters: Dude, it’s hard. The industry was already in the ICU.

My experiences proved them right. Friends, even very experienced reporters, permalanced for news outlets; some got hired, some didn’t. (And they were the lucky ones, with 40 hours/week of paid non-benefited work.) Some got hired then laid off when the program, section, or paper closed. Freelancers abounded. Lotta people in this boat. Hard work often didn’t lead far. I called it the sweatshopping of the media world.

So I took an optimistic view of freelancing: I could write about anything. (Mostly not music anymore.) This, along with my fantastic part-time university writing job, worked quite well until the March Globe crisis.

How many Guild members understand the modern-day career trajectory? Do they know what it’s like outside the masthead? This is a genuine question, not a sneer. When I’m around print-journalism-lifers, even young ones, there’s a disconnect. Many don’t seem to realize that the rungs of the career ladder have broken, how many journalists don’t have staff positions. Some say they’ve never had to cold-pitch a story.

Has the freelancer perspective been represented in the Globe/NYT dealings and decisions? Should it be? (Another genuine question.) I love the paper. And obviously it hits our finances too.

Immediately, for me, the vote probably means yet more uncertainty of the sort that leads editors not to return emails. They don’t know what space they have to assign, only that it continues to shrink.

For the profession, so-ci-ety, the human condition, etc., I don’t think anyone expects objectivity from me on this front, so: dear death of journalism: fuck you.

xx
djd

This Wired article about new Spreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor is interesting, as it runs through her experience with cyberlaw.

Looks like she knows more than this judge.

Our website, MelbinNoir, is coming along. I figured out how to utilise the Headline and Feature section, and the category browsing, so that’s good. I’m a bit nervous about the pitch this afternoon, but it should be ok I suppose.

Looking at the other groups’ sites, Chocrocks and UpUrAlley, and I’m pretty impressed. Its looking really good. I like the Chocrock graphic, and how the site seems to be all things chocolate, not just a directory. And I like how UpUrAlley have the ‘new to the site’ thing, which we’ve not figured out yet. I’m looking at some ‘login-log out’ plugins at the moment for Noir.

I was talking to my friend who is a jazz muso, and he didn’t like the name of our site, he didn’t get the MelbIN thing. I’m worried this might be a problem. Still getting the hang of the categories too, at this stage the front page menu is not discrete enough yet, there needs to be a better way of filtering the categories.

Why I don’t usually listen to KPFK or Pacifica radio: Roseanne Barr at 5:08PM PST 4/22 applauded the suicide of Peter Kellermann, CFO of Freddie Mac.