30 August 2009
Linkpost (08/30/09) -- The old/new media edition
I keep falling behind on the linkposts. Here are three media-centric links that I hope you follow. This is some of the best reading on media (new and old) I've run across lately. I'll try to resume more political linkblogging soon. Maybe (football season is looming, after all). :)
Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing, Pt. 1 (Bill Wyman, Splice Today)
The commentators most caught up in the romanticized notion of newspaper cite the potential loss of the newspapers’ “watchdog” function. Let’s be honest. Most newspapers in the U.S. aren’t watchdogs, and most of the rest don’t spend an inordinate amount of time being watchdogs. Most papers are instead lapdogs, and the metaphorical lap they sit in isn’t even that of powerful interests like their advertisers. (Though they definitely have their moments.)
Perhaps some of us are misguided in wondering what an ever-shrinking Chronicle means for watchdog journalism. Perhaps the newspaper has always been more about cheerleading (or not offending anyone) than watchdog journalism.
Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing, Pt. 2 (Bill Wyman, Splice Today)
If I were running a chain of papers, here’s what I’d do:
1) Go hyper local; devote all resources, from reporting to front-page space, to local news....
[snip]
4) Get out of the mindset of “nice” coverage. Tell the reporters to find the “talker” stories in town—development battles, corrupt pols, anything with a consumer bent....If a particular issue jumps, flood the zone. Make each paper the center of every local debate, no matter how trivial, and make finding and creating those debates the operation’s prime job.
[snip]
7) Devote as much manpower as possible to creating must-read local news blogs. Tell the bloggers to work the phones and IMs, finding out about every personnel change, every office move, any tidbit. Support and cite local bloggers in the same areas....
Yeah yeah, I'm verging on not following the blockquoting advice I've posted below because there's so much good stuff there (please click and read it).
Unfortunately, it would be hard for the local newspaper to pull off the hyperlocal emphasis (with real journalists, not with amateurs, even though Dean Betz likes to pretend they're the same thing sometimes), since poor Bradley Olson is already covering City Hall, city elections, county, courts, and even a boat rescue this weekend. But if the Chron isn't careful, some nonprofit MIGHT find a way to flood the local zone like Wyman suggests, and THEN it's going to get even tougher for the Chron to sell their ads.
How Journalism School Taught Me To Be a Better Blogger (Socialized)
Most bloggers who don't have a background in journalism or academia (and probably a good number who do!) should read and absorb this post. Every bit of advice here is good, especially the bit about attribution. Two things he might also have cautioned against are excessive blockquoting (8-12 grafs are just too much, especially if your attribution is basically nonexistent) and the practice of referring to fellow bloggers by first name only (a cute, whimsical thing to do in the early days of blogs, but kind of odd now, when a much larger community might stumble onto the random post). When we have little to add substantively to someone's reporting, sometimes a link and proper attribution is "more."
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 08/30/09 20:38 | Media Matters | Technorati |
14 March 2009
My kind of writer*
Stem cell policy shift brings a sinking feeling (John Kass, Chicago Tribune)
In signing the order last week, the president said that the Bush administration, which strictly limited such research, had offered a false choice between science and morality. He said his new order "is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda—and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology."
There it was. Ideology, a pejorative applied to faith, offered up during Lent by our president.
As a Greek Orthodox Christian, I'm troubled by all of this, as are many Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and others who are taught by the faiths of our fathers that life is sacred. And I know there are many who belong to these faiths and see nothing wrong with stem cell research.
But many of us watch in quiet horror as America rationalizes the conversion of life into a medical product to further other lives, as our culture ignores the cost to our humanity.
There are many reasons why this guy is my favorite columnist, but sometimes it's best just to let the prose make the case. Go read the whole thing. Gawd, it must be nice to live in a town that has metro columnists who crank out this kind of fare.
[Read More]Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/14/09 23:02 | Media Matters | Technorati |
08 September 2008
Watching the (MeMo) train wreck
It's been kind of fun to watch the meltdown among the elitist left over Gov. Sarah Palin.
Locally, Cory Crow has been tracking the reaction of the Chron's erratic features editor, Kyrie "MeMo" O'Connor, whose blogging has been known occasionally to sound feminist-victim/sisterhood themes.
Here's one additional entertaining comment from MeMo that a commenter on Crow's site pointed out:
Honest to Pete, I'd lay odds my day-to-day job is harder than being governor of Alaska.
Posted by: Kyrie at September 4, 2008 03:56 PM
(Unintentional) comedy gold.
Oh, and the Chron announced its latest downsizing last week, for what it's worth.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/08/08 21:23 | Media Matters | Technorati |
29 October 2006
Department of bad headlines
KTRK-13 posts a story from AP, with the following headline:
My first thought (before reading the story) was, does that mean they don't plan on driving down into flooded underpasses?
I'm not sure if the headline came from AP or from KTRK.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/29/06 23:58 | Media Matters | Technorati |
10 October 2006
A professional writer AND editors produced this lede
Campaign contributions: O'Quinn gives Bell a boost (Kelley Shannon, AP)
Buoyed by a big-dollar donor and a favorable debate performance, Democrat Chris Bell began airing more television ads today as he tried to surge through a new momentum in the Texas governor's race.
I really shouldn't be surprised any more by some of the truly bad copy turned out by professional writers AND editors in the field of journalism, but I am nonetheless.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/10/06 23:00 | Media Matters | Technorati |
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