yelvington.com

... And some thoughts about this week's release of the Project for Excellence in Journalism's "The Changing Newsroom" report.

The tale is of my son who lives in Arkansas (where I am as I write this).

When my wife and I visited in December for the birth of our grandson, our son and daughter-in-law had subscribed to the paper, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

This surprised me. After all, they had bought their house largely without looking at the paper. They had existed quite nicely, in fact, for almost five years in the area without the paper.

It also delighted me, as a 30-year-plus journalist. Every morning my son dutifully opened the paper and read it, especially the sports section.

But when we returned this time, the pile of papers, many not even unwrapped, was growing. What happened, I asked. No time, Dad, with the baby and all, he said (cue Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle"). Of course, he said this as he was watching the Tour de France on TV and getting ready to fire up the computer to watch the Mets game online (at least I had some good influence). He gets the other news he wants or needs (like that his softball team will have a playoff after all) from friends and co-workers or from specific online sites.

So I've been reading the paper this week, and I'm understanding why he might not have time. Today, for instance, I struggled through a front-page story on termite protection contracts that was so dense and lacking in a nut graf that I doubt many people would follow it much past the jump (and I was actually interested in it, coming as I do from a termite-infested state). And then I turned to this lede:

LITTLE ROCK — Secretary of State Charlie Daniels on Monday certified for the Nov. 4 ballot Lt. Gov. Bill Halter’s proposal to amend the state constitution to allow state lotteries.

Halter said he’s “absolutely delighted” with the news that the secretary of state had validated 91,149 signatures from registered Arkansas voters, eclipsing the necessary 77,468 needed to get on the ballot.
Let's think about that through the eyes of my time-starved son. He has some interest in the lottery; we've mentioned it. But what do the first 18 words of this 27-word lede tell him? Absolutely nothing useful: Secretary of State Charlie Daniels on Monday certified for the Nov. 4 ballot Lt. Gov. Bill Halter’s proposal ....

We've taken up two-thirds of this lede and have not yet mentioned a lottery. Oh, the headline helps. But it doesn't substitute for a lede that gets to the point:

A state constitutional amendment to allow an Arkansas lottery is headed for the Nov. 4 ballot, as Secretary of state Charlie Daniels certified the proposal on Monday.

Lt. Gov Bill Halter, who has pushed for the lottery vote, said he’s “absolutely delighted” Daniels validated 91,149 signatures from registered Arkansas voters, eclipsing the 77,468 needed to get on the ballot.This idea of bringing it on ourselves leads me to the PEJ changing newsrooms report. That's certainly a core theme, that newsrooms are cutting into their meat and bone, leaving them with tech-savvy but journalistically immature staff and less ability to adequately edit stories or tailor coverage to their local communities. But I'm conflicted about the report because that's too simple a reading. Clearly there is an online audience like my son -- even the report says so -- but many editors still fear it. It remains a race to find an online model (not just business but readership) on one hand while managing the decline of traditional print newsrooms that has for the moment at least been hastened by the abysmal advertising environment.

And as the report notes, readers aid and abet the confusion by complaining long and loud about what, essentially, are secondary things, like canceling a comic strip or the daily TV listings, but hardly whimper when the news hole is noticeably cut.

I'm still digesting it, trying to see if it really says much more than what already has been painfully obvious. Instead, I'm going to ask you to read two blog posts. The first, by Jeff Bercovici at the Seeking Alpha blog, finds "A Silver Lining in the Newspaper Crisis." He homes in on the findings that newspapers are focusing their limited resources on where they can distinguish themselves, a take on the report that seems far more sanguine than the report itself on those points.

Then I'd like you to read Mark Glaser's "The Newspaper Blurb That Complained to Me." Glaser takes a wry look that's devastatingly on target -- how the San Francisco Chronicle turned the story about the report lamenting the lack of resources into a blurb itself, and an unsatisfying one at that.

Taken together, I think they perfectly bookend the state of affairs.

Meanwhile, while we're all trying to sort it out, my son will go on raising his son and getting the information he needs, without the paper. I suspect my grandson will be no different.

OK, if the title of Chris Hedges' rant against newspapers' problems (The Internet Is No Substitute for the Dying Newspaper Industry) doesn't give you a huge hint where he's coming from, the lede of his story might:

The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print.
Uh, get a grip.

Hedges, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, pulls out all the usual shibboleths:

• Bloggers can't/don't do original reporting
• They also fail to admit errors
• They also easily interchange facts with opinions
  
• The Internet is a hotbed of partisanship in which a media organization with "traditional" values (my quote, not his) would have difficulty surviving because "those who rely on the Internet gravitate to sites that reinforce their beliefs." (his quote)
  
• Newspapers are a public trust (but have been strangled by the corporados)
• Sitting back and reading a paper for 45 minutes at a time makes you a better citizen of the world

When the traditional news organizations go belly up we will lose a vast well of expertise and information. Our democracy will suffer a body blow. Not that many will notice. The average time a reader of The New York Times spends with the printed paper is about 45 minutes. The average time a viewer spends on The New York Times Web site is about seven minutes. There is a difference between browsing and reading. And the Web is built for browsing rather than for reading. When there is a long piece on the Internet, most of us have to print it out to get through it.
Let's review, shall we:

• Yes, we can agree on the third point, that newspapers have been strangled by some corporate decisions, failure to adapt, cluelessness to the point of criminality that has led to upending thousands of people's lives. Yet I also seem to remember it was a corporate decision to create a site like Bluffton Today, revitalizing a paper that was dying and giving the community a voice. It's a corporation, the Times, that has pioneered some of the best journalism not just online or in print, but across both. It's corporations that are trying some of the most significant experiments in reorganizing their newsrooms to respond to the technology and trying to become relevant to wider segments of their audience. (Think Atlanta and, more recently Tampa. Gannett, too, but I've noted why I consider Tampa and Atlanta more significant.) Sure, they had to be kicked bloody and beaten to the curb to do it, but they are trying.
• And besides, if we accept Hedges' argument, then it seems to me it cuts toward supporting development of alternative media to augment and complement the papers that are being slowly eviscerated.
  
• Yep, at this stage of the game the opinion blog sites outweigh sites instilled with "trad" media values and reporting. I suppose this site would fall in the latter, though I do report on stories from time to time, and I usually try not to spout opinions on things I have not studied or have intimate knowledge about. But Hedges makes some crucial mistakes:
• He assumes no change. Yet if you look at the media landscape now compared with just three to five years ago, you've seen explosive growth in online community news sites (some actually run by journalists, imagine!) and the emergence of organizations devoted to filling some of the gaps. He even notes as much, pointing to Pro Publica, Slate and the site his article is on, Alternet, as small but promising ventures. Why does he assume others will not be created?
  
• He makes the bald assertion that bloggers don't want to admit their mistakes. Excuse me? I see more blogs with parts of items clearly crossed out and updated, or with explanatory footnotes that something has been changed, than I see corrections in all the newspapers I read. After 30 years in newsrooms, I can safely say the resistance to running corrections was high, aptly summed up by the observation that this would be a great business if it weren't for the readers (who pointed such things out). And comments on those blogs often provide a much fuller picture of the nuances that sometimes have resulted in impenetrable "clarifications" in places like the Times and the AP. (Online, the clarifications are often not needed; they're right there in the comments.)
• He assumes the public is dumb. Look, it's laughable alone to suggest it's a problem that somehow upstanding media will have to compete with all these slanted blogs and other opinion sites. I guess competition was fair when it was with the cross-town daily that basically shared the same values but it's not OK when you are going up against people who might actually want to beat the crap out of you (possibly literally). But to assume the public can't distinguish is just plain condescending. Did it ever occur to Hedges that maybe these other sites are attracting people who, for whatever reason, don't fully trust the Times or the local rag?
• He assumes people don't want opinions with their facts. Yet, I'd propose that people do want opinions -- the opinions of those experienced in such matters as to what facts are more important. That's called reporting, not stenography. And yes, it is an opinion.
• Most egregiously, however, Hedges equates reading a newspaper with being a better citizen of the world as opposed to browing many related sites.
• With due respect to his time overseas, I feel better informed because I can do more than sit back and read the Times (or the distilled version in my local paper). I can now get different views of the same subject from a variety of skilled sources. So instead of just getting Hedges' opinion of what's important (or more likely, his tempered by his editors'), I can get multiple opinions.
  
• Does this mean that Hedges' successors have to write clearer and tighter because I am giving them less time (though I may be spending that 45 minutes overall)? Sure does. Welcome to the real world.

In short, Hedges is guilty of many of the same things he accuses bloggers et al. of: Sloppy or nonexistent reporting, easily confounding fact and opinion, and creating a straw man to start with. No one is suggesting that in the short term the Internet will substitute for newspapers, but it will complement them in greater and greater fashion. If it eventually replaces them, there is no reason to believe alternate newsrooms won't be created that individually -- but more likely collectively -- will do the kind of journalism Hedges laments is dying.

For several years I have been telling news people and journalism educators who come to Newsplex that 2009 -- next February to be exact -- marks another tectonic shift in their business. When TV goes fully digital, it opens up potentially hundreds of high-speed digital channels that will turn us into a mobile-computing society.

The iPhone and its progeny are just the beginning, but any news organization without a developing mobile strategy is toast. Among other things, I expect this will flatten or otherwise significantly change the online usage curve we see at news sites where the peak happens during daytime office hours. (An example: You are driving home and suddenly get a craving for shrimp for dinner. You could flip open your mobile device and shop for the best prices and, once you got home, instead of firing up that desktop, flip open the mobile device and find a recipe. News/information organizations will find more pressure to be fast and continuous, even smaller local organizations.)

Now comes "Robert X. Cringley" of PBS's "I, Cringley" to rearrange my thinking even more by suggesting that about six years after the 2009 change, that big LCD screen you just bought will be the next epicenter of change -- and this one could put TV news types under the same kind of stress newspaper folks have been going through.

Simply put, Cringley argues that broadband capacity will grow at an exponential rate for the same basic price of $10 to $30 year: After staying for years at an average 1.5-megabit-per-second download speeds, broadband ISPs are moving to an average of 6 megabits per second in 2007-2008, 24 megabits per second in 2010-2012, and 100 megabits per second in 2014-2016.

At the same time, Cringley argues, U.S. broadcast TV technology has been pegged to the 1080p high-definition standard, and it will be difficult to change that for some time. Given the bandwidth needed to transmit a 1080p signal, combined with ever-lower costs for processors, and on the horizon is the potential for fully individualized TV:

Around 2015 is the time when the cost of sending a separate 1080p video signal to every Internet-connected viewer -- or POTENTIAL VIEWER -- will be the same as using a broadcast model and sending that signal through the air. After 2015 there will be no scaling limits, no processing limits, no decoding limits. And since individual video streams mean individual commercials with a requisite CPM (cost per thousand) bump of up to 10X, commercial television as we know it will die, replaced by consumers choosing from a menu or recommendation engine what they want to see when they want to see it. ...

Commercial stations will repurpose their bandwidth for alternate wireless services, eventually shutting down their digital transmitters completely. And PBS, which can't create a marketplace all by itself, will follow.A fascinating bit of analysis. Agree or not, it's worth pondering. And it adds another thing to think about as we train broadcast journalists -- such as whether "broadcast" is even worth considering anymore.

The American University Center for Social Media has put out a "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video."

I could do without the "Code of" wording -- I think anything online that smacks of a "code" is destined for a rocky time at the least; this isn't a code-fearin' bunch. But, having said that, it's a useful site for going over some of the ins and outs of fair use for video, which is a bit different than for text.

The nut graf:
More and more, video creation and sharing depend on the ability to use and circulate existing copyrighted work. Until now, that fact has been almost irrelevant in business and law, because broad distribution of nonprofessional video was relatively rare. ... As practices spread and financial stakes are raised, the legal status of inserting copyrighted work into new work will become important for everyone.

The site has six fairly plain-spoken but well-explained principles, all of which it says are rooted in "transformativeness."

1. Commenting on or critiquing copyrighted material
2. Using copyrighted material for illustration or example
3. Capturing copyrighted material incidentally or accidentally
4. Reproducing, reposting or quoting in order to memorialize, preserve, or rescue an experience, an event, or a cultural phenomenon (that one alone ought to clue you in that there are some heavyweight lawyers on the group that put this together)
5. Copying, reposting and recirculating a work or part of a work for purposes of launching a discussion
6. Quoting in order to recombine elements to make a new work that depends for its meaning on (often unlikely) relationships between the elements

And there is this good advice:
Inevitably, considerations of good faith come into play in fair use analysis. One way to show good faith is to provide credit or attribution, where possible, to the owners of the material being used.

A full PDF version is also available.

Andy Dickinson has a good follow-up on the state of the law on the UK side of the pond. And there are some differences, especially that "fair dealing" does not apply to photos ther. (Why should I care, you say? Because digital media have this nasty property of not respecting borders.) Definitely follow his link to the BBC editors' post on questions about using pictures from Facebook, etc.

OK, if you have the better part of a day to blow (cumulatively, of course), check out this post from the Online Education Database -- 25 search engines trying to harness advanced technology to dig deeper into searches or make them easier to understand. It's an oldie (February 2007) but a goodie that resurfaced on my radar thanks to Dave Dillard and his Net Gold site on Yahoo.

Bottom line: If you still are just using Google, you are soooo Web 1.0.

The World's latest technology podcast has a good piece from the BBC that delves into the reality of newspaper's woes. Lauren Rich Fine, Philip Meyer, Rupert Murdoch are among those interviewed or quoted from earlier remarks. ProPublica's editor contrasts how little of a typical newspaper's expenses go to getting the news to how much of his organization's do.

It's about halfway into the MP3 podcast (right after a piece on the increasing use of human waste for fertilizer -- really, the host claims no connection). This would be a good audio piece to have students listen to to get a good overview of things.

(Thanks to Bob Wyman for the pointer.)

A good site for journalists to bookmark, 10,0000 words has a post on 21 online photo editing tools.

Who knew there were so many out there?

The site also has two other good posts

-- 12 useful online tools for journalists: Among the most fun/useful are Mezzoman, which helps you find a meeting point; Jott, which lets you call in notes and creates a transcript; and Qipit, which takes a photo you have made of a note-filled sheet and turns it into an PDF that's easier to read. There's also the old favorites Time and Date, which lets you figure out what time it is anywhere (it also has a neat distance calculator), and Meebo, which lets you hook up with a number of instant messaging services at once.
-- 12 more useful online tools for journalists: Try Tablefly, which enables easy creation and online publication of comparison tables; Hey!Spread, a paid site (5 cents a credit) that enables you to spread your videos at once over many sites; FindSounds, for finding that sound you just need for that video or slideshow; and the Alphabetizer, which lets you alphabetize any list or capitalize the first letter of each item or cut and paste an online list and strip the HTML so that you can easily past it into a text editor.
-- And Mark Luckie, proprietor of 10,000 words, has yet another useful list, The Tools I Actually Use. Included is Zamzar, mentioned here earlier, a site that lets you convert numerous media types to numerous other media types. He also mentions MapBuilder and FMAtlas, two sites that make building online maps a lot easier. FMAtlas looks especially intriguing as it allows you to upload comma formatted data and produce a map (a list of examples from newspapers and blogs). Right now, it's in Alpha, which makes me wonder if down the road the free part of this tool turns paid. Luckie also includes a software section, and in that is FastStone Capture, a neat, trucked-up screen capture program for Windows at $19.95. But if you want a useful free Windows utility, I'd suggest Gadwin Print Screen (a paid version with more features, such as annotation, also is available for $24.95 -- half off if you are a student).

We've already talked on this blog about Weird Converter, the online site that allows you to convert numbers into very odd, but fun, comparisons, such as how many kegs of beer in an Airbus 380.

But there also is SensibleUnits.com, which has, as its name suggests, some sensible units (type in "10 feet" and you'll get "46 dollar bills end to end," but also some fun/weird ones like "13 chopsticks end to end" and "2.3 Alaskan moose antler spans." (There are some gross ones, too; we'll skip the reference to fetuses, thanks.) Click on and off the "objects" tab and you get some new ones each time. (For instance, the earlier fetus example was replaced by "25 CDs side by side." Much better.)

(Thanks to 10,000 words for the pointer.)

Once a month, some of us who blog regularly about journalism, get together to, well, write about journalism in what we call a blog carnival. That's right, step right up ladies and gents, all the latest tonics, laxatives, patent medicines and other helpful prescriptions in one place for your convenience!

And so I come to hosting the July Carnival of Journalism.

Actually, as long as we don't take ourselves too seriously, we do try to be about serious business in these monthly gatherings that bring together some really insightful thinkers (myself excluded) about what is happening in journalism and digital media in hopes we might figure out where this is going.

Lately, we've been trying to tackle one question a month, which adds some form to the mob, though bloggers may go off any which way they want if they find something more important.

For this month, I posed this question:
What changes will need to be made in national and international legal systems to help the digital age, and especially journalism in the digital age, flourish? We talk a lot about hyper-local journalism, innovation, the journalism entrepreneur, etc. But we don't often talk much about the legal issues still hanging in the background out there as highlighted a bit by the Drudge Retort/AP case.

Here is what I wrote to a correspondent recently and have touched on disjointedly in my blog from time to time:
1) I think we need establishment of a national digital small claims court of diverse jurisdiction. That way, if I'm in South Carolina and you're in California, and I find something you've done offensive to my legal rights, I can bring an action. However, unlike now, where you immediately would file to have it removed to California, and we'd both have to spend a lot of money prosecuting it there, the matter would be handled electronically so that we could remain where we were. Lord knows we have the technology to do that. And though some legal fees would be incurred, as with all small claims courts, the bias would be in favor of not needing to lawyer up.
2) I'd also like to see a realistic threshold on damages high enough so that many of these small copyright issues would fall under that court. Basically, I'd suggest the law be amended to presume damages of less than $5,000 or $10,000 unless the plaintiff could prove otherwise before the case could be removed to a higher jurisdiction.
3) Amendment to the DMCA or other applicable laws to recognize the unique aspect that visual journalism plays in today's society so to allow for fair comment not only on technique but on content in a way that does not propagate a usable copy of the photo. Something similar to the rule that you can show paper money only if it is so small, so large, or so distorted that it cannot be copied.

I'm hoping this topic will really highlight the international nature of these carnivals (and in the process highlight how digitized information's disrespect for national borders highlights some knotty legal problems, too).

But let's check in on what out other carnivalistas think. (And do check back. We'll be adding to this oh, through Tuesday, if necessary. After all, it's July, and it's the South, and we're wiling to take a longer view of deadlines under such circumstances.):

Jack Lail, in Done In by Reform, takes a different tack and aims at the Sarbane-Oxley Act that arose in the U.S. after a series of headline-grabbing corporate scandals. Lail's rail is against the busywork reports and corporate bureaucracies that have grown as a result. But where is the journalism issue in this six-year-old law? Guess what, companies are laying off in newsrooms, not in audit departments. And the IT knowledge and skills that ought to be focused on making media companies more technically adept and gazelle-like, are taking inventory and doing compliance reports.

David Cohn has some of the same frustrations, finding that bureaucracy sucks and stifles innovation. He sees a future in the Creative Commons license and says more journalism should be licensed that way. Just as the Creative Commons has built the legal framework through which people can be creative - we need a legal framework where groups of people can be creative together without being stifled.

In the "malleable, changing entity" of media ethics, Wendy Withers sees a future where laws will relax when it comes to posting other people’s work on the internet. ... The days when publications (now think blogs and websites) take the words of other people and dump them on their own pages are back, and we should accept this. But Bolm does have one caveat -- the "dump" would have to have our names and URLs attached.

Andy Dickinson takes on the subject of contempt of court, especially how it plays out in the UK, but more importantly bringing in that international factor I mentioned: On a global platform, how do you protect yourself when you report what is going on in another part of the world? ... Time was a journalist could find themselves in contempt because they where the only ones who could. They where the only ones who could publish. Now that anyone can publish everyone is, or should be, equally at risk.

In a physical world, news becomes a destination, an end point often tied to a time and place, like the morning newspaper. ... In an online world, news is part of a distributed and networked ecosystem of information - a journey, Alfred Hermida reminds us. He's wondering how a legal system grounded in products and places adapts to digital media that respect no borders, and he highlights conflicting rulings internationally on deep linking as an example.

All Ryan Sholin asks is that the law keeps its hands off the Internet.

But Charlie Beckett, with his perspective in the UK, says that seems unlikely. Regulators' appetites already are whetted, he says. There is no appetite here for an Internet First Amendment. Frankly, I am surprised at how much of a desire there is for control of the Web.

Adrian Monck observes: The real legal barrier to the digital age is international governance itself. There is no international legislature established under the representative terms that we understand to confer legitimacy.

And Bryan Murley worries about the concept of free expression embedded in the U.S. Constitution if we create global standards. As intellectual property law has been more or less standardized among developed nations, the result has been a benefit for those with monetary interests in tighter controls, not greater freedom for the average citizens. It would seem that a similar scenario would play out in the arena of free expression were we to attempt such a standardization of free expression across the globe.

(Interestingly enough, "On the Media" this week has another aspect of the Internet's legal Rubik's Cube -- the defense in an online pornography case that a community's standards should be determined by its online searches. There are some interesting comments at the end about reality vs. fantasy and the law's floundering on the concepts in the digital age.)

And though David Lee had to sit out this month's particular question because of other commitments, still, take a look at the student journalism project he's helped put together in New Zealand http://www.newswire.co.nz/ -- and his look behind the scenes of how it came together.

Random thoughts from a Tuesday morning:

• John McIntyre, who runs the desks at the Baltimore Sun and has taught us on his blog how to tie a tie, fold a pocket handkerchief and make a martini, finds himself the subject of a Christian Science Monitor article on copy editing.
• Bloglines Beta rocks. I especially like the quick view that shows all the feeds in a folder at once.
• Read Tom Grubisich's analysis of local news sites over on Robert Niles' Sensible Talk. Grubisich does a nice job of skewering sites like Topix and OnLocal, which I also don't find all that useful (disclosure, we do pick up the Hartsville Topix feed on HartsvilleToday just because Topix does grab news from the Florence area). Follow the links at the bottom to the other stories on the "Cracking the Local Market" topic. Tom Noonan's is especially noteworthy if for no other reason than he hits on cookie-cutter Web sites, which I think are just death in the local-local market. (The one is almost a month old. It's been sitting in my "to do" pile. Sorry for the delay.)
• Just finished reading the Quill's SPJ national awards issue, and I don't care what people say about "writing to awards." After I get done I always feel inspired, not only to go out and do better journalism but with the reassurance that lots of great journalism is being done. The unfortunate part, to me, is that in today's media cacaphony, too much of it doesn't get the respect it deserves.
  

Steve Outing has opened a can of worms with his open letter to the founder of Craigslist suggesting ways the free classified site and newspapers might cooperate -- the goal being to sustain newspapers until we can figure out what comes next. The responses are fairly predictable, with a big dose of "newspapers have brought it on themselves with their sloth, so let 'em stew." There's a kernel of truth there. The only thing I have to add to the conversation, though, is wondering whether the innovation the industry needed could have taken place simply because of the industry's structure.

Remember, newspapers were largely individual or family owned proprietorships well into the last century. Now, not minimizing the industry's absolute pitiful record of any kind of change, the reality also was that a publication's or small chain's idiosyncrasies were often prized, not just by the owners but, in a kind of tut-tut fashion, by the communities they served. Nowhere was this more evident than in the long, slow grind to establishing the Standard Advertising Unit (see 1981 NYT article abstract and obit of its designer, Frank Savino) and the complaints for decades by national advertisers about how difficult it was to buy across markets.

Fast forward to the digital age. Papers have consolidated into chains -- but don't let that fool you. The majority of papers are still owned by individuals or families. The chains, of course, have never heard of the letters R&D, and for that they should be suitably censured. But the idiosyncrasy factor is still at work; even inside chains, most papers are left to their own devices as long as they pump out the necessary profits. Under those conditions, how much innovation can we really expect? Sharing is a dirty word, and the myriad publishing systems, etc., make it unlikely an innovation could be scaled to the point where it would do the "industry" much good. (Case in point, the Lawrence Journal-World, one of the most innovative newsrooms, but generally not emulated elsewhere.)

None of this is meant as an apology for an industry that positively has sucked at innovation. It's just worth noting, I think, that from their birth, newspapers evolved into an industry almost doomed to failure, and industry structure may have been a significant contributing factor.

If you want abject numbers on the woe in the newspaper business, here they are from this morning's Gannett release:

2nd quarter 2008

• Profit down 36% to $233 million, $1.02/share from $366 million, $1.56/share
  
• Revenue down 10% to $1.72 billion
• Advertising overall down 14% -- 8% retail and a staggering 9% classified (staggering, but not surprising)
• Advertising down 17% at USA Today

For the year, earnings down 26% to $424.5 million, or $1.85 per share.

Those are astounding, though as noted, not surprising numbers.

More from Gannett Blog.

Ron Fournier had one of those catch-the-wave careers in the AP, rising from the Arkansas Statehouse on the Clinton wave into Washington and becoming one of AP's premier political reporters.

Now, Politico's Michael Calderone asks, Is Fournier saving -- or destroying -- the AP? (Fournier is the new acting Washington bureau chief after the unceremonial dumping of Sandy Johnson who, apparently, was suggesting not that the AP not change, but that it do so in a decidedly more measured way.

The article, I think, really gets to the heart (and soul) of AP's struggle. The commodity he said/she said stuff basically isn't going to cut it anymore, or at least isn't going to be enough to stay in business. But how do you put that slight edge on it without going too far? (Example. You make the call.) It's a delicate call. And not every story -- in fact, most, really -- has that "truth-calling" (as opposed to truth-telling) opportunity. In many cases the best journalism is to get the six different nuanced opinions out there without a lot of commentary -- then go do more reporting and do a real explainer. I prefer that term to "analysis"; I think it better captures what you're trying to accomplish.

This will dramatically change AP's role and access, however. And I'm not sure the powers that be in D.C. (and the capitols) hold AP in as high a stead as AP thinks they might. Given the choice, they'll go with the NYT or WaPo, maybe the LAT. That has the benefit of giving it the imprimatur of a real brand. AP just is not a real brand yet to much of the news-consuming world, not that kind of brand, at least, although the comments on Politco and elsewhere indicate it is quickly taking on the baggage of one. But as that giant straight-news organization in the background, AP often was the one that could get in the door when others couldn't.

So it really does pose a little challenge, doesn't it.

My prediction: AP will be a private stock company, or it will undergo a significant ownership reorganization, within a decade and as early as five years. It's going to have trouble sustaining this model as a cooperative.

In addition to this blog, I write a monthly column for press association newsletters and newspaper groups. July's get into language issues I touch on in the blog occasionally, so I thought I'd post this column in hopes of getting your feedback:

The new AP stylebook is out, which always gets me thinking about language changes and whether it's time to jettison some of the usages and spellings we cling to.

But I need your help. This month, let's look at some disputed usages – or ones I think might be ripe for questioning. Then, you tell me whether you observe the distinctions anymore. Please e-mail me at fisherdj@mailbox.sc.edu (that's a new address), and in an upcoming column we'll revisit the issue with your thoughts.

Over/more than: It's getting harder to find a desk that really labors over this AP distinction – use more than with numerals – anymore. John McIntyre, assistant managing editor in charge of copy editing at The Baltimore Sun, says there are too many more important things. Plus, most authorities now consider it a distinction without difference. Do you still change "over" to "more than?"

Lend/loan: The AP has just weighed in with a new stylebook entry elevating "lend" as the preferred verb. Classic usage manuals counsel similarly. But we see "loaned" all the time in newspapers and other writing. Is this an issue for anyone? Will you enforce AP style?

Another/an additional: AP has long held that "another" requires like things or amounts (you can't have 3 million and get "another" 4 million). I can't remember the last time I saw this distinction in an AP story, let alone a newspaper. Is it time to ditch it?

If/whether: "Working With Words," a widely used grammar and usage guide for journalists, says that when "whether" works in a sentence, use it. In classic usage, "if" is reserved for conditional (if … then) situations. But even the "Working With Words" authors acknowledge widespread substitution. I'm wondering whether – or if – it's time to let this fade.

Since/because: The AP allows "since" in a casual use where one thing follows logically, but is not the direct cause, of the other. And there are the persistent arguments about ambiguity (Since you won the lottery, we've been envious.) But McIntyre, again, says there's really no longer any practical distinction, and Arnold Zwicky at "Language Log" says the ambiguity argument is suspect because context almost always clarifies. Your thoughts?

Because/due to: While we are at it, what about this old shibboleth that these are not substitutes. If a writer writes: "He was overthrown due to the widespread poverty," would you change it. Would you insist only "His overthrow was due to the widespread poverty" is correct. It is time to acknowledge widespread popular ignorance of this distinction.

While: Do you recoil at its use as a conjunction in the sense of "whereas," especially beginning a sentence. Many of the arguments are the same as since/because, and many of the "it's a useless distinction" retorts are likewise.

Gantlet/gauntlet: Merriam-Webster's and American Heritage both now show gauntlet as the preferred term for running an obstacle course. Only Webster's New World, the dictionary favored by AP, sticks with "gantlet." So let me issue a challenge – do you care about that distinction?

Drunk/drunken: Notwithstanding Mothers Against Drunk Driving, this has been a stalwart of AP and newspapers' style in general. But both the Chicago Manual of Style and Bryan Garner, in his widely read usage manuals, suggest "drunk" may be more correct for temporary inebriation and "drunken" for a chronic condition. Maybe MADD has it right after all?

"Beg the question" for "pose the question": Yes, beg the question means a tautological argument. But as has been noted in several corners of the language world, if everyone is misusing it, are we being priggish in insisting otherwise?

Following/after: The AP prefers "after" as the preposition and "following" as the verb (in other words, he died "after" the wreck, not "following" it). But this is another case where the dictionary acknowledges much of the world uses "following" as a preposition. Do you spend any time changing it anymore?

Stanch/staunch: Even Webster's, conservative as it is, lists staunch as the preferred form of the verb. AP sticks with stanch. Where do you stand?

Include: Do you insist that "include" can cover only part of the whole? The dictionaries and usage guides say it might be worth rethinking that. Is it a distinction you think we need to keep?

Proved/proven: "Proved" is listed as the preferred verb in many references and "proven" the noun adjective*. But "proven" is very common usage ("He has proven his point."). Do you worry about changing this?

Stamp/stomp: Notwithstanding places like Stamping Ground, Ky., using "stomp" for "stamp" is so widespread, would you think to change it?

We easily could find a dozen others. As one copy editor wrote to me recently: "I will change 'males' to 'men,' and 'females" to 'women' (we are not lab rats), and I will change 'gender' to 'sex' every time I see these used improperly, which is almost all the time in medical writing."

I hope to hear from you.

*Yet another example of why we all need editors. Thanks to Craig Lancaster for the catch.

As I was doing some research tonight, I came across this from an article:
Yet many copy editors sense that managers overlook their contributions when promotions open up.

And that's just one of their frustrations. After years of adapting to pagination and surviving staff restructuring, downsizing, redesigns and tacked-on new-media responsibilities, many copy editors in St. Petersburg concluded that the critical copy-editing function demands reappraisal by, and renewed appreciation from, editors and publishers alike. ...

Yet copy editors suffer an "abysmal lack of respect. ... Now to this perennial problem have been added two huge new ones, newsroom downsizing and pagination, a technological revolution that ironically increased the workload on the copy desk while reducing the newspaper's overall payroll."And then there was this:
The case for elimination of the copy desk is being argued in newsrooms and in trade journals, and the following are some of the sometimes contradictory points that have been made:

Eliminating the copy desk will not eliminate copyediting. Newspapers might as well eliminate copyeditors because copyeditors no longer have time to edit.

Pagination has spelled the end of copyediting as we know it. Newspapers don't need copyeditors because reporters should be able to provide clean copy.

Copyeditors should be shifted to (take your pick) design desks, originating desks or topic teams, because that's where they belong. OK, so where did I find those?

The first is from the NAA's Presstime of November 1997. (The quote is from Gene Forman, then deputy editor and vice president of the Philadelphia Inquirer.)

The second? John Russial's important academic study and argument "Goodbye copy desks, hello trouble?" from Newspaper Research Journal in spring 1998.

And now we'd probably look back on those as the halcyon days!

The "circles" are dead. Long live the "circles."

We know about the "circles" here in Columbia. We went through them in the 1990s. At The State. With Gil Thelen.

It's not that we didn't like them. Something was needed to break the newsroom out of the old, hidebound model. But the circles with their beats divorced from bricks and mortar and concentrating on the "big picture look," connecting the dots, whatever, produced unintended side effects, like the newspaper's discovering major lawsuits days after they were filed but treating them as today's news, etc. (You could do that in the "good old days" before an army of bloggers could call you on it.)

(I was at AP at the time, so I had a dog in the hunt, being as this was the biggest paper in the state and it relied on us, "uncircled " as we were, to cover a lot of the daily beat stuff -- at least judging from the almost daily calls I got from the paper's "governing" desk.)

Thelen went to Tampa."Goodbye circles," we said as they headed for Media General's News Center, that crucible of "convergence." (Except things never really converged between the newspaper, TV station and online - I know this because I have contacts in that building. I have gotten the cook's tour. I have talked with the rank and file.)

So I'm reading the rather lengthy memo from Tampa Exec. Ed. Janet Coats (Thelen is now retired) about the upheaval there, and there they are again, the "circles."

News Circles – the units where news is produced. Each group is composed of reporters, editors, television and online producers and visual journalists who are working to create the stories we’ll use across all platforms. Reporters receive their story assignments from within these groups, and the front-line editing occurs here. Photographers work within these groups, and the first cut at photo and video selection occurs here. The managers in this unit get performance feedback from the audience editors and the news leadership, as well as their direct reports.

Finishing Circles – the units where content is made ready for publication, broadcast and posting. These groups are responsible for melding the knowledge of audience with an understanding of what the audience expects from print, television and the Website. The finishing circles act as advocates for the individual platforms. The managers in this group get performance feedback from the audience editors and the news leadership."Finishing circles"? What next, quilting bees? (Or as the mysterious and sexy woman I was with last night said over dinner when I mentioned this: "I'm thinking, what, are they Amish?")

AAaaaaaaggggggggghhhhhhhh. Run for your lives!

All right, enough funsies. No, I'm not going to knock Coats' plan into a cocked hat. Parts of her plan actually make some sense. When you finally get the circles image out of your brain and give it a hard look, it has a lot of the same aspects of the Atlanta Journal Constitution's reorganization plan of a little over a year ago.

(It's just that Coats, already with a rather checkered history for some of her moves in Wichita -- when she was Janet Weaver, in case you're keeping score -- had the unfortunate timing of making the announcement as she was laying off people. That included a sports writer who, at the paper's urging, had moved to Tallahassee to cover Florida State sports and then was told the paper was cutting that slot (see his story - scroll down).)

And it followed what had to be one of the worst two-week periods for employment in the newspaper industry. And then there was the perky intern who blogged about it somewhat intemperately before a holiday weekend, setting off three-day flame war among the traditionals and the digiterati* that perfectly encapsulates the mood afoot in many newsrooms these days. (Note to Janet: Check your horoscope next time. Timing, as they say, is everything.)

Coats, and Julia Wallace at the AJC earlier, are splitting off production of the paper (and in Tampa's case, the newscast) from the production of news. (Gannett's "information centers" don't seem to have done that quite so much, but someone fill us in in the comments section, if I'm wrong.) This is the model we've been promoting in one way or another for five years at Newsplex, the experimental news center at USC.

Newsgathering/journalism is a service business. Putting out a newspaper or a broadcast is an industrial undertaking. It was pretty much just an accident of oligopoly and an artifact of the Industrial Revolution that allowed them to be happily married for about 120 years. David Sullivan hit it perfectly on on his blog:
[N]ewspapers are essentially a logistics business that happens to employ journalists. ... That's why, in the end, you can lay off reporters easier than you can lay off truck drivers. You have less in the paper, but you get it to the dropoff site on time, because the core financial contract (for 80 percent of your money) was always -- we distribute the ads to the right place on time.

Now, this may not be the core competence of journalists -- who may be collecting, evaluating and presenting news and information to people in whatever form they wish and at whatever time they wish, doing it for themselves or in the pay of all types of companies. And in today's environment, perhaps journalists and their work would be better served by an employer who had different competencies. But of all their employers, the newspaper company also knows best how to run a factory, and the bigger ones know how to run a trucking company.

Sullivan argues, essentially, that newspapers and journalists remain joined at the hip for now (his argument could be extended to broadcasters and the traditional TV model too). But this just serves to shackle newsrooms' core competency of getting valuable and valued information in front of the consumer on time. Too many remain tied to "big iron," both physically and psychologically.

And that's where the Trib and AJC come in.

If Coats' plan, and the AJC's work out**, the production part of the operation -- the copy desks, designers, etc. -- go to their own pod, circle or whatever. Online should also be separate as a production unit. Tampa's case also gives us the first real look at how a broadcast unit also hooks into this mix. In the ideal model, the newsroom itself remains platform agnostic.

And before you get all lathered up, I am not proposing to move online back to the "digital ghetto" to which it was too long relegated. In fact, this gives it equal status, or should, with the two other production units (and any future ones we might dream up) as supplicants to the newsgathering part of the operation.

At least that's how it should be. The devil, of course, is in the details -- or in Tampa's case, the circles.

First, the very nature of a medium dictates that it will have some influence on newsgathering. It does no good to have the newsgathering apparatus separate if it cannot produce the assets needed by all production units, but all are not created equal. Depending on the story, one medium is more likely to dominate. And while it's neither likely nor efficient that every "circle" will produce all types of elements on every story, each circle will have to produce more than one type (otherwise, you're just back to the old division of labor model, or more as it is practiced today, division of labor and, oh, can you throw an Internet piece together on that for me, too, model).

Thus, it will take a Herculean effort to ensure a proper mix and balance, a job made doubly difficult by the documented difficulties of mixing sometimes antagonistic cultures. (Another summary here.) And between those circles are going to be some shark-infested waters as the news circles compete for resources (not to mention the tendency toward turf wars).

We're suddenly, finally supposed to become one big, happy family? Fat chance, wrote one of my contacts who has deep channels into the building.

And where the thing will go awry... they hate and do not trust each other. There is NO compromise in that crowd. When they sing a scale... none can get past the third note.... which invariably gets repeated like a stutter, wrote the other.

No exactly ringing endorsements from people who I will assure you do not belong to the curmudgeon class. Human nature can be that way, of course. And maybe they'll pull it off. I hope they do. But in any case, silly circles or not, worth watching closely because if they can pull it off, it should produce structures where the news gathering is not tied to the platform. That means more flexibility and, we'd hope, more ability to adapt with alacrity to new technologies not already seen.***

So far, short of blowing it up and starting over, these are the most hopeful models I've seen.

* Look, there are no terms out there that aren't going to p-o somebody, so get over it, OK?
** I'd love to have someone check in from the AJC and tell us how it's going.
*** It also, I would hope, sever the still-too-prevalent idea that online is an adjunct of the newspaper. For instance, how many newsrooms have a "social media expert" on their online staffs tasked with 1) thinking about existing and new social media apps and 2) figuring out how to use those to grow online audience? Doesn't have to be "an" expert -- anyone on the staff can pitch in with new ideas and try to implement them. If online is set up as its own area and charged to grow revenue and readership, good things might happen. Meanwhile, on the other side of the equation, the news gatherers, freed from having to be media specific, can be thinking about how to get ALL the relevant assets on a story or point people to those it can't get.

Steve Yelvington, who is paid by Morris Communications to, among other things, peer deeply into the future and figure it out, looks back a bit to his desk days as he throws a nod to the copy editors and subs of the world who, especially after the past two weeks, are in deep disarray.

Yelvington's paean cuts both ways, however. One of his first lines will get shouts of "huzzah" and "hallelujah" inside the cathedral of the rim:

The dirty little secret of newspaper journalists is that a lot of them can't write very well.But don't go crowing yet, dear subs, because Yelvington's message isn't that you need to be there to save the world. His message is that newspapers -- heck, newsrooms in general -- no longer can afford the specialization that copy editors (and a lot of other newsroom jobs) represent. Specialization is an artifact of the Industrial Age, a time when we were manufacturing newspapers, not serving people by trying to get them the most relevant news where, when and how they want it (something I dubbed a long time ago as "rapid relevance"). Or as he puts it:

If you're studying journalism, you'd better learn to rub your belly and pat your head at the same time, without making any mistakes, because there's not going to be anyone there to save you from your own shortcomings. ...

Some copy editors are going to lose their jobs. But so will some reporters.

Because without copy editors, the reporters who are weakest at writing, at attention to detail, at stepping out of their own heads and critically examining their work, are going to be subjected to the harshest editors of all: a readership that today is empowered to talk back.

Once you've chewed on that, pop over to Jeff Jarvis' little exercise in creating your own newsroom budget. (Thanks to Yelvington for the pointer.) He's got a Google doc spreadsheet up that you can edit if you want to try your hand at it. He's not overly kind to copy editors either. (Here's the link directly to the Google doc.)

I'm not sure I'd cut the desk quite as deeply as he does, but the copy editors I'd have left would have to be multitaskers -- just as Yelvington's reporters will have to be. Yeah, you might spend 70 to 75% of your time editing copy, but the rest you've got to pitch in with another skill: moderating online communities, some design, seeking out the best blogs/sites/etc. to bolster our opinion offerings, etc.

Interesting in all this is the renewed emphasis on beat reporting. Cool.

I seem to recall in a dim memory somewhere when I was just a cub that's what we did. I remember coming in and hitting the phones and working City Hall incessantly for the first few hours to find out what was going on that day -- and then reporting on it. What a concept -- we found out what was news that day and reported it (as well as throwing a feature or enterprise piece or two in the can for the weekend).

Of course, in the '80s and '90s we got into "planned news," because its easier and cheaper (you keep your costs down if you can plan it). And little by little reversal crept in, so it was suspect if you were out of the office, instead of if you were in it. I take the latest developments as welcoming back the old admonition from the city editor: If you don't want me in your hair, get the hell out of the office (subtext: but don't you dare come back without a story).

Yes, it can be abused, but it's generally a good thing.

(Update: BusinessWeek profile of Mindworks, one of the big outsourcing shops in India.)

Was rummaging through some things the other day and came across a quote I'd copied and attributed to Reuven Frank, former NBC News president and one of the pioneers in broadcast news (and, were he around today, likely online too).

I'm not sure where I got it; probably saw it some trade mag many years ago, and it just hit a chord. In light of all the recent upheaval in the news biz, I thought it worth sharing:

Journalism is a job, not a calling.
Journalists are employed, not ordained.
Now, I'm not sure I totally agree with the "calling" bit; I think the best journalists have a little bit of that in them. But still, it's something to chew on.

I hadn't seen this about the Readius before, but this is why I keep telling newsrooms that, combined with the massive shift in TV spectrum (opening up new mobile bands), they have got to have a mobile strategy and assume that in 10 years most of their audiences' computing devices will be mobile.

I assume companies, PR shops and advertisers will be taking notice, too. (Notice that the bottom video was taken with the Nokia N95, itself a pretty nifty little mobile device.)

http://blogs.zdnet.com/mobile-gadgeteer/?p=871

(Thanks to Rick Koza on the Newspaper Video group for the pointer.)

Well, South Carolina's educational radio network has pretty much gutted any of the few hours of jazz programming it had left, except for "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz" (since SCETV produces that, it would be rather unseemly to cut it).

In addition to doing away with the all-jazz format on WNSC so that it can largely duplicate programming already offered by the Charlotte area's other public stations, it's also done away with late-night jazz blocks on its other stations. (Not, by the way, that you'd find that information in The State, the state capital newspaper where ETV is headquartered -- an area covered by two and, in some places, three of ETV's stations. And that story I just linked to? Good luck if it's there in a week, as the Observer, like The State, is a McClatchy paper and things tend to disappear.)

It's a shame, really, in a state that produced the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and has a long jazz tradition (beach music notwithstanding) and active jazz education program.

For now, ETV is providing a helpful link of jazz streams on its Web site. Phhhhhht.

Yet another reason not to donate to a public broadcasting system repeatedly hobbled by the legislature and whose news programming already sucks. I'll take ETV head Moss Bresnahan at his word when he tells the Charlotte paper, “Local content is going to be one of our competitive advantages going forward.” And when he says he hopes to create a regional news network next year (about a decade after pressure from the legislature gutted what used to be a pretty good news department that got a little too feisty about reporting on state government).

Yeah, I'll take him at his word, but I'll wait till I see it. As Reagan said, trust, but verify. In the meantime, I'll be listening elsewhere -- on the computer.

John McIntyre, head of desks at the Baltimore Sun, continues to prove that copy editors, indeed, are multitaskers.

First it was the video on tying a tie, then on the proper gentleman's way to display a pocket handkerchief.

His latest video on his blog is the proper way to make a martini -- stirred, not shaken!

OMG, I can see the words "local icon" already slipping into the profiles and obituaries.

Funny, he never says how many takes it took to shoot that little film ... cin cin.

(My only quibble is that the dang video, once it runs its course, automatically slops over into some other one that has nothing to do with this. I wish papers would disable auto-start and auto-rollover.) Fixed. But I still think they should remove the auto-start option from any newspaper video software.