Greensboro and the national media

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To me, it’s unseemly when journalists complain to the public about how they’re being mistreated. The public — many of whom have much tougher jobs – has little sympathy for reporters. And, of course, people have even less sympathy for reporters who think they should get more special treatment that members of the public.

Case in point from Politico at the John Edwards trial: If reporters were expecting Greensboro’s federal court to roll out the welcome mat and perhaps even offer a little Southern hospitality, they came away disappointed Monday. Save for some safety measures taken outside around the TV trucks and the entrance, there appeared to have been no arrangements at all made for the media covering the high-profile case.

They had no assurance they’d get a seat in the courtroom. They couldn’t trade places with someone in line. They couldn’t have people “hold” their place in line so they could go to the bathroom. And the jurors got better treatment than they did!

At the end of his story in the News & Record, Robert Lopez tells of two national reporters who had trouble with the rules in the Greensboro courtroom.

During the morning session (Judge Catherine) Eagles said a reporter had tried to come in wearing “a wire” (cameras and transmitting devices are prohibited). ABC’s Bob Woodruff  stood and said it was him but that he didn’t know it was there.

OK. At least, I hope the visiting journalists are enjoying Elm Streets bars and restaurants.

Newspapers need more columnists

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These days, whenever veteran journalists at the top of their games leave the newspaper business, it’s bad. Out goes the institutional memory, experience and writing/reporting chops that readers have come to trust. Whenever a columnist leaves the paper, it’s doubly bad. Out goes the personality, wit and style that readers have come to love…or hate.

North Carolina newspapers have lost some great ones in the past few years, too. The News & Record’s Lorraine Ahearn returned to school to earn a doctorate. The same month — August 2010 — the News & Observer announced that one of its longtime columnists, Ruth Sheehan, was headed to law school.

Now, Tommy Tomlinson, columnist with the Charlotte Observer, is leaving the paper to write for a sports website. And with his typical grace, he describes what everyone who leaves a job they love feels:

Sometimes, when you’re going down the highway, you can look over and see another road running beside the one you’re on. I’ve spent a lot of time on the highway, and I’ve often wondered about those people on the other road, how the world might look from over there, how our journeys might be different even though the direction is the same.

The thing is, you can’t know unless you take the other road.

I hope the Observer replaces him. Good columnists are expensive and hard to keep in the corral and feisty. And worth every penny. As people are finding fewer and fewer reasons to pick up a newspaper, newspapers should hire more columnists. The news is everywhere; a compelling writer with a strong personality and deep insight isn’t.

 

The marriage amendment: Breaking political stereotypes

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We all tend to paint people and positions with a broad brush. It helps us categorize and connect the dots when we label. It also creates false assumptions. For instance, if you need reminders that not all protestant churches believe the same things, not all African-Americans think the same and not all Democrats march in lock step, two stories today provide them.

Both the Charlotte and Greensboro newspapers write about how ministers think about the marriage amendment that is on the May 8 ballot. For people who think the word of God is clear, they must be confused by the different positions the clergy take on the marriage amendment. (Personally, that didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was the timidity with which some ministers approach preaching about the issue.)

The Charlotte story also illustrates the different positions that some black churches and the NAACP take on the marriage amendment. And that black Democrats — which some people believe vote as one – may not be following the party line on the amendment.

Stereotypes, consider yourselves busted.

Sunday sampler

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Some great journalism on the front pages of the state’s newspapers this morning.

The News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer begins what promises to be a compelling — and shocking — five-part series on how much money hospitals are making. Here are just two of the bullet points:

* They’ve made their money largely from employer-sponsored health insurance, often inflating prices on drugs and procedures – sometimes to three, four or 10 times over costs. North Carolina hospital costs are more than 10 percent higher than the national average for Aetna, said Jarvis Leigh, a network vice president.

* They’ve hiked their fees each year, leaving many patients with crippling debt. Some hospitals have sued thousands of patients, while others have turned to collection agencies to pursue debtors.

Fayetteville Observer — The paper always pays close attention to the No. 1 industry in town — the military. Right now, it is paying close attention to complaints that the Army isn’t taking care of its own. Good stuff.

Burlington Times-News and the Hickory Daily Record - Stories focusing on the pros and cons of the marriage amendment — plus a FAQs – dominate the front pages. It’s the hottest issue on the primary ballot and deserving of such coverage.

 

Press conferences suck

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My friend Mark Sutter, editor of the Triad Business Journal, speaks truth about “press conferences.” 

Without fail, these announcements are ill-timed, ill-planned, ill-conceived and don’t serve the intended purpose, which one would suppose is to spread the word as widely as possible via the media. Instead, they have become part-political opportunity, part-ego stroke for the company expanding. In short, a dog-and-pony show on the taxpayer’s dime. “Press” conference? Hardly. Trust me when I say that few in the press ever feel it is done for their benefit.

Specifically, Mark is talking about economic development announcements, but I will extend it to include 90% of all press conferences in his comment. (The other 10% are those in which the press doesn’t already know the announcement. Think: the police chief announcing an arrest in a triple ax murder, John Edwards talking about his trial or me winning the $640 million lottery.)

As Mark noted, the news is often old news by the time the press conference is held.  When the news is good, government officials are like gossips trying not to tell a secret. And they’re not very good at it. Meanwhile, reporters are pretty good at what they do.

In most cases, the news conference does two things. It strokes the company and the local elected officials. It allows television news to get video to go with their news reports. But reporters for TV and newspapers don’t need it. And the public officials don’t really want to answer questions anyway.

What would happen if no journalist attended the governor’s news conference tomorrow? Nothing. The N&R has already broken the news of the announcement and the local TV stations have reported it. Won’t happen, though. Reporters will be there to dutifully record what happens, even though their readers and viewers already know it.

They didn’t know Titanic was a real event? So what?

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OK, I’ll rise to the bait.

I can’t decide if the people mocking those on Twitter who didn’t know the sinking of Titanic was a real event are exercising their right to shout the equivalent of “Get off my lawn” or they simply enjoy lording their smarts over someone.

But it’s unseemly either way.

These folks tweeting about the movie are young. Let’s examine where they might learn the history of the sinking. Because they learned it in school? I doubt it’s taught there and if it is, it shouldn’t be, given everything else that missing from the curriculum. Because they read about it in the paper? As young people don’t read papers, there’s not much chance of that. Because they read it on their Facebook or Twitter feed? Those links may be about Titanic, but they’re about the movie, not about what happened 100 years ago. Because they saw it on TV? Reality television has taught us that you can’t believe “reality” just because it’s on TV.

I teach college students. There is a lot of history they don’t know. Not knowing everything is one reason they’re in school. They also know a lot about things I don’t know about. It’s OK. They’re teaching me.

Besides, Twitter is hardly “Foreign Affairs” or ”The Economist.” Just venture over to the Trending Topics and you’ll see what I mean.

P.S. (This is different from the racist tweets about characters in the Hunger Games because, well, racism is different from not knowing.)

Five things to do when looking for a newspaper job

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After reading Malcolm Gladwell’s paean to newspapers, a student asked me advice on picking the right newspaper at which to work. I didn’t go Gladwell’s route. I like newspapers and think that they are an excellent place for rookie journalists to get the training and discipline they need.

Here’s a smarter version of what I said.

1. Find out what papers laid off people in the past three years. Then read up on what the chief executives, publishers and editors said about the layoffs. If their message was along the lines of “News coverage won’t be hurt,” cross those papers off your list. The leaders are either out of touch with the news department or they are blowing smoke to their readers. They can’t be trusted.

2. Find out which chief executives got big bonuses, severances and/or retirement packages while their properties had laid off people. That tells you a lot about the character of the leadership. Avoid them. (I would make an exception of the New York Times because, despite its issues, it’s still the best paper in the country.)

3. Check out the website. Is it easy to navigate? Does it seem to be community-based, rather than newspaper-based? Does it have a good mobile app? Does it have more content than what was in the morning paper? Are there community voices? If the paper lags here, then you have to doubt its commitment to the future. While a newspaper company’s main revenue source is the paper itself, digital is the future. The smart papers are preparing for the future and investing profit into exploring and developing its digital future.

4. Does the paper have a presence on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest? Is it active and engaging or does it just shovel content? Is there a staff presence that’s easy to find? Is the paper’s leadership there? If the answers are no — or the answers aren’t easy to determine – beware. The paper is either timid about social media, doesn’t understand how it works or isn’t committed to being where people are gathering.

5. Last — not first — look at the printed edition. Are the stories interesting? Are the photos and design well-done? Are they well-edited? Is there a sense of enterprise and risk-taking? Good ideas, good reporting and good editing will give you an excellent sense of what you can learn at the paper.

Not all newspapers are “dreary, depressed places.” The ones that are looking forward and taking care of their people are as lively and interesting as newspapers ever are. (Bear in mind that I was in the business for nearly 40 years – and never did I hear someone say, “Man, morale is so good in the newsroom!” I did hear a lot of people say, “This is one helluva good story.”)

Winning the readers with news and losing them with advertising

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Two surveys:

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, we rely on local newspapers for information about our community. Nearly three quarters (72%) of adults are quite attached to following local news and information, and local newspapers are by far the source they rely on for much of the local information they need.

Excellent. I love it.

Here’s the but: According to Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising Survey, we don’t have a lot of trust in the advertising that supports the news. …While 92% of consumers say they trust word-of-mouth recommendations, less than half trust paid ads in traditional media outlets. The trust in these ads has declined by more than 20% since 2009.

Where does that leave us? Same place we’ve been for a while. Except worse. Even as the public’s confidence in newspapers (and TV) is in the 20% to 30% range, advertisers, by and large, have stayed with them through the past five years of unpleasantness. That’s even though the amount of time people spend with print has plunged. So, if people’s trust in paid ads are now declining? Gulp.

There are possibilities. Alan Mutter recently outlined four. The first step to getting serious about digital publishing is to develop a strategic commitment to building relevant and remunerative products. Because most profit-pinched newspapers lack the time, money and in-house talent to develop such products, it makes sense for the industry to pool its resources to create a Digital Widget Works to build products to compete with the upstarts.

The time to act is now. The contest will only get more intense, with Groupon, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and a host of wannabes feasting on fresh capital faster than you can spell IPO.

Ken Doctor also has a bunch of ideas: What kinds of skills, knowledge and abilities do you have in your company, assets that can be used newly and differently? What kind of job needs to be one by someone who has the budget and has no go-to supplier…yet?

And there is the Nieman Lab.

Here’s the present and the future: Ask the students in my mass communication class where they get their news and they say Facebook, Twitter and “people I know.”

Not a student; a learner

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A week or so ago, I was trying to describe to a friend the kind of student I was in college. I said, “I wasn’t a student; I was a learner.” I meant that I liked to learn stuff — to read, to listen, to watch and experience – but I didn’t care to recite it back or answer a bunch of true/false questions. I was a B-/C+ student in a family of straight-A brilliance. I was a learner; my siblings just called me dumb. (That’s what brothers and sisters do.)
I think that “learning chip” is partly why I became a journalist. I got paid to observe, to ask questions about things I didn’t understand, and then write what I found out. Yes, I ended up “reciting” what I learned, but I wasn’t overtly given an A or a B. People either read me or they didn’t. If I found an interesting story and I didn’t get in its way in the telling, I passed. If I put a dull finish on a story, I failed.
And then I got to go out the next day and try to do a better job on something else. I got to keep learning something new every day, and it was my job! For a learner, how awesome is that? So what that it didn’t pay much.
When I became an editor, I had to adjust my reward and recognition system. I found stories, but I wasn’t writing them. (Except, of course, when I had to rewrite someone’s  sloppy reporting/writing job.) I needed to find another outlet and I discovered the online world. It was new and exciting. It seemed as if it changed every day, with new processes (blogs?) and practices (linking out?) and terms (viral?) and ethics (transparency, how?). It morphed into digital and social and networks and mobile. The learning curve looked sharp, but once I started, I found it was smooth and gradual and easy. It fit my mode of education: observe, read, ask questions, experiment.
The grading system is the same, except it’s faster and, honestly, more fun. If you have something to say, people read you. It might be a story, a blog, a Facebook post, a Tweet, an Instagram, a video. I could go on for awhile on that track. And people would do more than read you. In real time, they would tell you that they enjoyed it or that you sucked or that you got this or that wrong.
You learned something, you told people and they reacted. Not bad for a journalist.
I thought of this when I read Steve Buttry’s excellent “Dear Newsroom Curmudgeon” post. I don’t know that I ever feared being a curmudgeon. I think I just feared getting bored and being left behind. Maybe that’s what happens to B & C students whose siblings are straight A students.