News-Record.com

The third annual Romenesko parody came out on April Fool's Day. If you visit Jim Romenesko's journalism blog regularly (and a disturbingly high number of nonjournalists do -- don't you people have lives and stuff?), you'll enjoy this.

On Tuesday, I spoke to a seminar at the American Press Institute on citizen journalism, giving them an overview of "lessons learned" during the 15 months (and counting) of our Town Square project. (Personal aside: I attended an investigative-reporting seminar at API in 1990 that was both a powerful motivator and an extremely practical and useful course; I rely to this day on things I learned during it. I've felt grateful to API ever since, so when associate director Mary Glick asked me to come speak, I jumped at the chance.)

I designed my presentation to be a quick summary of the most important lessons in several key areas, with a ton of time built in for Q&A. At the end I planned to say a little something off the top of my head about why I think what we're doing is so important and what I think is at stake, a fact to which I had alerted API ahead of time.

Q&A ran so long, however -- and they were good questions all -- that I ran out of time before I got to do my little extemporaenous history lesson/explanation/pep talk, or whatever you want to call it. But several participants said afterward they wanted to know what I would have said. So I wrote it down and e-mailed it to them, and I'm posting it here (with some very slight changes in language) below the fold.

JR already has addressed the self-serving unsigned editorial splashed on the front page of State Rep. Earl Jones' Greensboro Times. But inasmuch as I contributed some of our Project Homestead coverage and edited much of the rest, I'm taking the additional step of inviting Rep. Jones to point out, in all our Homestead coverage, a single example of "false allegations," "deception," "publishing false and misleading information" or "sloppy, questionable and racially charged bias [sic] journalism."

I issue this invitation because the Times' lengthy, unsigned, front-page diatribe, and Jones' bylined "Publisher's View," fail to identify a single one and are, themselves, riddled with factual errors. Those errors begin, as JR noted, with the headline claim that Homestead has been "cleared" and continue right through to the end, where the article claims that JR was "hired" in 1999. (He was already here when I was hired here 19 years ago.)

I could be wrong. It's certainly possible that we've made mistakes in our coverage. If we have, we'll correct them. So I await his getting in touch.

But as I wait, I'm confident that if we'd made any mistakes of the type Jones alleges, someone, somewhere, would have brought them to our attention before now.

Apparently one of the top anthems of my misspent youth is now an open invitation to be arrested:

British anti-terrorism detectives escorted a man from a plane after a taxi driver had earlier become suspicious when he started singing along to a track by punk band The Clash, police said Wednesday.

Detectives halted the London-bound flight at Durham Tees Valley Airport in northern England and Harraj Mann, 24, was taken off.

The taxi driver had become worried on the way to the airport because Mann had been singing along to The Clash's 1979 anthem "London Calling," which features the lyrics "Now war is declared -- and battle come down" while other lines warn of a "meltdown expected."

Mann told British newspapers the taxi had been fitted with a music system which allowed him to plug in his MP3 player and he had been playing The Clash, Procol Harum, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles to the driver.

"He didn't like Led Zeppelin or The Clash but I don't think there was any need to tell the police," Mann told the Daily Mirror.

For the very young and very old, The Clash were, for a time during which the Rolling Stones weren't using the title, The World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band. The 1979 double album "London Calling" is widely considered the greatest punk album of all time and one of the four or five greatest rock 'n' roll albums of all time. This is not, in other words, obscure stuff.

That said, if I were driving a cab and a fare insisted on playing Procol Harum at me, I'd dump him on the side of the road.

But I don't think I'd have to get Homeland Security involved.

And just in case anyone's still wondering whether the so-called mainstream media hold a monopoly on ethics, I bring to your attention two items.

The first I would consider a journalistic misdemeanor, I guess:

Over at the Cincinnati Enquirer's online site, Cincinnati.com, there's a blog about Iraq written by military staffer whose job is to generate positive news about U.S. efforts to rebuild Iraq.

Grandma in Iraq is the title of the blog, written by Suzanne M. Fournier, a Public Affairs Officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The posts are largely upbeat. "Everytime [sic] an Iraqi contractor bids on a reconstruction project. . . it is a sign that democracy is winning here," reads one. "I am confident we'll have another banner year of success for the benefit of the people of Iraq and democracy in the Middle East," another says.

Cincinnati.com identifies "Grandma" as "Suzanne Fournier of Alexandria, grandmother of 15, [who] posts from Iraq, where she is stationed with the U.S. Army Corp. [sic] of Engineers." It makes no mention she's a flack.

In her posts Fournier doesn't conceal her day job, but she doesn't trumpet it, either. In reading her 50 or so posts currently online, we could find only one where she explicitly states, "I do public affairs[.]" In a handful of other posts, she makes passing references such as, "I just put out a press release."

In general, I think it's fine for a newspaper or Web site to have anyone blogging for it that it wants, as long as that person isn't lying, fabricating and/or plagiarizing. (For obvious reasons, each individual site also should consider how well or poorly any particular blogger might help the site achieve whatever its goals are for its content.) However, in fairness to readers, any possible conflicts of interest the blogger might have must be fully disclosed. That didn't happen here, although the evidence that there was any deliberate attempt to deceive readers is thin at best.

Our second example is much more serious -- not only a journalistic felony, but possibly a real-life felony as well.

A New York Post Page Six staffer solicited $220,000 from a high-profile billionaire in return for a year's "protection" against inaccurate and unflattering items about him in the gossip page, the Daily News has learned.

In two 90-minute meetings, characterized by a shocking breach of ethics, Jared Paul Stern, a fixture on the city's gossip scene who also edited Page Six The Magazine, asked for a series of payments from Ron Burkle, the managing partner of Yucaipa Cos., a conglomerate with interests in supermarkets, celebrity clothing lines, and media.

It was all a setup, a sting monitored by law enforcement, including the U.S. attorney's office and the FBI, who are now investigating the extortion attempt. The meetings, on March 22 and March 31, were videotaped.

The shakedown began with a series of e-mails sent last month by Stern to Burkle.

It reached a boiling point more than an hour into the first meeting after Stern outlined various ways Burkle could buy protection on the gossip page.

An exasperated Burkle finally said, "How much do you want?" after Stern said he could control coverage by Richard Johnson, the column's chief writer, and his staff. "Um, $100,000 to get going and then you could get it to me on a month-to-month, maybe like $10,000," replied Stern.

"Okay, that's a great deal," said Burkle, the subject of numerous Page Six items including a "date" with supermodel Gisele Bundchen, meetings with other women and a nasty breakup with a longtime lover.

Aside from blackmail being a felony and all, the only thing I can find wrong with this scenario is that, as Will Bunch observes, we in the newspaper bidness have unconscionably neglected it as a possible revenue stream.

Charles Warner, the self-styled Media Curmudgeon, hypothesizes that music-playing radio stations that took bribes are dragging the entire radio industry down with them from a business standpoint.

Shorter version: Ad revenue is down. Because audiences of music stations (which, in the aggregate, outnumber audiences for news, sports and talk stations in many, if not most, markets) are down. Because the stations took money from record companies (via "independent" promoters) to play crummy music. The industry's solution? Not "play better music," but "negotiate with the Federal Communications Commission to get its fines reduced."

Yeah. Good luck with that. Hard to believe, I know, but since I left the industry 21 years ago, it has only gotten dumber.

If you're one of those people who was upset about the fact that Russia's biggest spammer was beaten to death in his own apartment because you thought he should've suffered more, you're going to love blogger Driftglass's investigation into spamming, American style. (Part 1: Spam and Punishment; Part 2: Fear and Loathing on the Spam-Pain Trail) (Some language NSFW.)

Makes you wonder why, if some quasi-foul-mouthed blogger can track this stuff down, some enterprising federal prosecutor didn't do it a long time ago.

Buck wild: When nature fights back.

(Edited to remove link to video, because the link kept changing.)

Grrr. My apologies, but I only today learned that an incorrect setting on this blog has rendered comments all but inoperable. I'm not sure how long this problem has existed. But the last comment was logged on March 21, and even given that I was out of town for almost a week between then and now, the commenting dry spell should have tipped me off before now.

Again, I apologize, and for anyone who has been trying to comment, you are now free to do so. I think. (If you run into problems, please e-mail me and let me know. Thanks!)

So there's now a Honda Accord hybrid car.

Which starts at $30,990 retail.

And gets 34 mpg highway/25 mpg city.

For many years I owned a 1987 Volkswagen Golf. It also got 34 mpg on the highway, but more like 28 in the city. And it wasn't a hybrid. It burned straight unleaded, no chaser.

And I bought it new for $18,858 in today's dollars.

So what, exactly, is Honda's point here?

Shameless plug for my employer follows:

If you're going to be in the South Elm Street area of downtown on Friday -- or if you can be -- don't miss the launch party for free wifi.

The free wifi -- "wireless fidelity,"* or wireless high-speed Internet access -- is being provided along South Elm between February One Place and McGee Street. You might be able to use it inside South Elm businesses with your laptop or PDA, but it's primarily an outdoor network.

The launch party will be from noon to 1 p.m., with a brief program beginning at 12:30 p.m. at Elm and Washington streets.

Obligatory sponsor note: The free wifi is being made possible by GoTriad.com, Time Warner Cable Business Class, IT Training & Solutions, the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, the Weaver Foundation, Phoenix Networks and synerG, the initiative by the community group Action Greensboro aimed at attracting young professionals to Greensboro and keeping them once they come here.

*UPDATE, from Wikipedia:

Thanks to commenter darkmoon for the heads-up.

When I was at Davidson (1978-82), I didn't work regularly for the school paper. Oh, I contributed an op-ed or two, and because my radio shift on Wednesday nights ended while the paper was being laid out in a room adjacent to the studio, I occasionally did a little layout and pasteup. But for almost my entire undergraduate career, I worked full-time in radio, first at the campus radio station and then at a Charlotte commercial station. If I'd wanted to work for the paper as well, I'd've had to sacrifice a few things. Like sleep. And classes.

If Davidson had any kind of class on journalism or the media while I was there, I don't recall it. This isn't surprising; Davidson was and remains a rigorous liberal-arts college that aims to prepare people for varied careers and productive citizenship far more than for any particular kind of job. (The joke among us English majors who were trying to find jobs during the '81-'82 recession was that "I'm a real people person!" was code for, "I'm graduating from a very good school but I'm not going to have a single marketable skill!")

Still, I was pleased to learn (via Romenesko) that the school now has a seminar, "Critical Issues in Mass Media," being taught by Jennie Buckner, a former editor of The Charlotte Observer. And, not surprisingly, the seminar has a blog, Pressing Matters, to which students contribute.

A quick glance at the blog posts, which mainly take the form of short essays, shows that the students are looking at some of the biggest issues we're wrestling with, such as bottom-line pressure. At first glance, I don't see anything about more engagement with our audience in a news-reporting partnership (i.e., for lack of a better term, "citizen journalism"). But the class is still in progress and so, I presume, is the blog.

I'm glad the school is bringing its liberal-arts approach to bear on the news media and the challenges they face. I applaud the school for offering the course and Buckner for being willing to lead it.

Morgan Stanley Investment Management to New York Times Co.: "Little pig, little pig, let me in!"

(Whether the Times Co. has replied, either by saying "Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!" or by saying something else entirely, TheStreet.com sayeth not.)

Friday fun, Tuesday edition:

Seems Coloradans for Marriage, a group that supports a constitutional ban on gay marriage in that state, has assembled a list of Great Things About Marriage:

Geez. I work in the liberal media, and even *I* don't think marriage is THIS bad.

Just sayin'.

Jason Calcanis, founder of Weblogs Inc. (acquired last year by AOL) says yes. Alan Meckler, CEO of Jupitermedia, says no. I have no idea who's right, and of course I just grossly oversimplified both men's positions, but you can read what they had to say at The Wall Street Journal's Web site.

TO: Bill Bennett*, Sandy Carmany, and everyone in between who's concerned about government leaks.
FROM: Lex
DATE: 4/19/2006
RE: Government leaks

If y'all spent half the time cracking down on government that you do trying to crack down on government leaks, this would be a better country. Specifically, when a leaker is leaking about actual or potential violations of law by the government, were I you I'd be a lot more concerned about the violations of law by the government than any possible violation of law by the leaker.

I'm not saying every leaker should get a free pass -- even those whose intentions appear on the surface to be most honorable often are acting out of a complex mix of motives, not all of them admirable. But, folks, leaks do not occur in a vacuum. Most commonly, they occur because the public good is being harmed, a political advantage is being sought, or both. And it behooves public officials to worry first and foremost about possible harm to the public good, and in particular, about violations of law by our government, which acts with our consent and on our behalf.

Certainly, the media have obligations, too: to weigh, fully and fairly, the harm done by publication of leaked information against the harm done by withholding it; to consider what legal obligations they might have; and so forth. Not every leak clearly merits publication. For that matter, not every leak pertains to something that's arguably newsworthy. And anytime anything is leaked for purely political reasons, that fact should be treated as news in itself.

But government officials, elected or appointed, need to keep the public good uppermost in their minds. That means keeping their priorities in order and their eyes on the ball.

*And don't even get me started on the unintentional humor that abounds when our so-called betters presume to give us moral instruction, especially when they want to back it up with calls straight from the V.I. Lenin playbook.

I've touched on this before, but Mindy McAdams discusses the issue again in the context of what bloggers can contribute to the public good.

Zombie fish from hell!

You know how JR and I have been talking so much about better journalism here at the N&R? Turns out we've been wasting our time:

Analyst Ed Atorino of Benchmark Capital called high-quality journalism "almost irrelevant" to a newspaper's overall financial health. He said a paper should provide timely, interesting information without errors. "But does it have to be Pulitzer Prize-winning?" he asked. "No."

Atorino cited his former hometown's weekly newspaper, the Chatham (N.J.) Courier (circulation 3,000), which "covers local stuff: the Kiwanis, the football game, pictures of the 80-year-old lady that retired. You don't need 'quality' journalism. It's information. It's value.

"I think the whole idea of quality journalism is overrated," he said. "Pulitzer prizes haven't saved Knight Ridder, case in point. I'm sure from some perspective quality journalism is better than lousy journalism, but perfectly average journalism is fine."

Note to self: Move investments from Benchmark Capital BEFORE LUNCH.

Beyond that, where to start?

Well, let's start by scattering this implicit straw man to the four winds. As I've pointed out previously way too many times to bother linking to an example, news content very seldom drives circulation -- at least, it doesn't drive it very far or for very long on a day-to-day basis. (Note to the so-called newspaper-bidness analyst: That's why even small newspapers have circulation departments.) I don't know if I ever heard what our single-copy numbers were on 9/11/01 or the next day, but prior to that, our highest-ever sales of extra single copies was on the first day of the 1991 Gulf War, when we sold about 1,000 papers more than we normally would have expected to sell. At the time, the paper retailed for a quarter, so that's a whopping $2,500 in windfall revenue, less than we were getting even then for a full-page ad running for a single day.

(If you've ever accused the N&R of publishing a story "just to sell papers," go back and read that paragraph again.)

No, quality journalism doesn't sell papers on a day-to-day basis. What it does do is build up the paper's standing in the community as an independent, trustworthy source of news and information and as, by extension, a good place to advertise. That standing isn't just a warm feeling in my tummy. Accountants call it "good will," and although it certainly is intangible, it constitutes a large majority of the market value of a newspaper in most cases. (Which is another fact of which this "analyst" shouldn't have to be reminded.)

So just remember that if somebody in the financial industry tells you that average journalism is just fine, he probably has a stock he's trying to sell you.

I've turned off comment moderation for now ... let's see if the spam floods return. Hope not.

Today is National High Five Day.

(To my son, every day is High Five Day, but whatever.)

John Weldes of the Pioneer-Press in St. Paul lists some things that prospective buyers of the newspaper should know.

LASIK surgery you can perform at home!*

*This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA.

And, yes, this is a joke ... and what a note-perfect joke it is!

Sue has few details, but it's definitely on.

It has come to my attention that some people think this is funny:

(There's a real company out there making these, but I'm not going to link to it.)

Memo to anyone who takes this the least bit seriously: This is North Carolina, son. Even the journalists are armed.

Y'all have a nice day.

... the shipping container! Born in Newark, midwifed by a North Carolina trucker named Malcolm McLean, containerization revolutionized shipping.

America's the land of opportunity, right? The rags-to-riches story is a characteristically, perhaps even uniquely, American success story, right?

Uh, not so much:

The likelihood that a child born into a poor family will make it into the top five percent is just one percent, according to "Understanding Mobility in America", a study by economist Tom Hertz from American University.

By contrast, a child born rich had a 22 percent chance of being rich as an adult, he said.

"In other words, the chances of getting rich are about 20 times higher if you are born rich than if you are born in a low-income family," he told an audience at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank sponsoring the work.

He also found the United States had one of the lowest levels of inter-generational mobility in the wealthy world, on a par with Britain but way behind most of Europe.

That's particularly interesting in that Britain, at least in American eyes, always has been seen as far more class-bound, with far less social mobility, than America.

If the research is true, it not only destroys a cherished American myth ("myth" not in the sense of "lie" or "false story," but in the sense of "stories we tell ourselves about ourselves to create and/or maintain national identity"), it also raises some interesting questions for us as a country.

Has this always been the case, or is it a relatively recent development? If recent, what caused it? And whether or not it's a recent development, should we have more social mobility? Why? And if we think we should, what do we need to do to create and maintain it?

I'm no expert. I don't know the answers to any of these questions. (I could make some guesses off the top of my head, but I won't.)

Do you know the answers?

Widespread rumor to the contrary, I am not a candidate for the opening. My brothers, both alums, wept with joy when I told them.