Good idea!

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about Washington Post staffers, John Harris and Jim VandeHei, leaving the bastion of political journalism for the world of the online, with a big budget and some (supposedly) serious talent behind them.
Jay Rosen interviewed Harris for PressThink and asked him, what's so revolutionary about this new Allbritton-financed adventure?

Jay Rosen: You guys said Allbritton was sold on your “non-traditional”
approach to news from political Washington. What traditions will you be breaking
with to produce it, and why would you depart from them?
John Harris: I have long puzzled over a phenomenon about many reporters, one that I am sure is true for me also. They tend to be more interesting in conversation than they are to read in the paper. I think one reason for that is that the typical newspaper story continues to be written with a kind of austere, voice-of-God detachment. This muffles personality, humor, accumulated insight—all the reasons reporters tend to be fun to talk to. When it’s appropriate—not in every story but in
many—we’ll try to loosen the style and in the process tell readers more about
what we know, what we think, and why we think it.

This is, excuse the language, fucking fantastic. In all the commentary and criticism and guessing about how to save the news in this new media world, so few people look at the actual journalism - the reporting, the writing, all of it. It's refreshing to see someone talking about changing the way we do things on a basic level.

As far as what Harris was talking about, I absolutely agree. The right calls the media out on its "liberal bias," so reporters and editors push even harder for objectivity (not to mention things like the Jayson Blair debacle, which some are still recovering from psychologically). As a result, most stories turn out so dry that even if they're about something really important - how contractors are wasting millions on unfinished projects in Iraq, for example - a reader doesn't get the sense of the importance. There's no outrage on behalf of the reporter, and for many that means there's no outrage for the reader. But being pissed about something like that is not, I think, bias. It's perfectly legitimate and, provided they have all the facts, there's no way someone could say it's biased.

Anyway, way to go Harris. I said it before: I hope this works.

When horses fly.

Pegasus (pegasusnews.com), another experiment in user-oriented content management on a news site, launched this week out of Dallas, Texas. The general idea is you sign up and Pegasus tracks which stories you click on. (Most of which are hyper-local.) Once it gets enough information (how much is enough, I'm not sure), it starts listing stories you might be interested in. If you read a lot of stories about a certain school, say, or lots of restaurant reviews, it'll list those stories first in their respective sections. Also, you can register in a certain neighborhood, and Pegasus can start directing you to those stories immediately, without gathering info about where you click the most.
It seems like a good idea, and the people down in Texas compare themselves to Amazon's book and music recommendations, except with news. Plus, the layout is inviting and simple. Layouts at other "cutting-edge" news sites, like Digg and the Fort-Myers News Press, are cluttered and look somewhat sketchy, as if viruses are lurking behind every link. Those turn me off immediately; I just want to get away from those sites as fast as possible. But Pegasus is lovely. The site uses bright colors and big buttons on the top for each section: Metro, Business, Living, etc. The top stories are listed along the left, by section (this is, I imagine, where "The Daily You" stories will be); on the right there's a calendar, a list of today's events, and the latest user comments - interspersed with ads, of course.
But the news content itself is a lot of fluff. Well, not fluff per se, but the stories are very short, often written in first person and often riding the coattails of reporting done by other Dallas sources. The news stories come off more like blog posts, and I'm not sure that's what Pegasus is going for.
Also of note: no news video on the site, but several of the ads come with YouTube spots. One, for a new "healthy" Dallas-brewed beer, is a local newscast about said beer. Another is a dramatic video of a "laptop deathmatch" party at a local bar for New Year's Eve. These aren't really short, either; the deathmatch one lasts a minute and a half.
Also, a banner ad on the site encourages people to register for The Daily You feature, because, "all the cool kids are doing it." The graphic is a cartoon of two teenagers; one is smoking, and offering a cigarette to the other.
Hilarious.
(On a sidenote, I can't seem to get links up correctly, so if you're interested, you'll have to poke around yourself.)

die Podcasten.

Earlier this year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel became perhaps the first head of state to begin addressing her country through video podcasts. The three-minute spots are available weekly, and according to the government's press office (according to Wired Magazine), are downloaded 200,000 times a week. That's decent, even if the spoofs on YouTube have an equal (or greater) following.
What I found interesting about Wired's story is this quote from a critic of the podcasts, democracy analyst Sascha Kneip:
"The real target group isn't people under 35 [the people who podcast] but journalists and professional observers ... It's a way to set the political agenda."
True. But isn't that the way political rhetoric works? When our own dear President G.W. Bush makes a speech at an Elks Lodge in Minnesota, or a farmers' convention in Kansas, his "real target group" is not the few hundred or thousand people in front of him. Sure, he wants their support, especially in an election age when every vote very literally counts, but he's speaking to a much bigger audience. Sound bytes will be picked up by broadcast stations; quotes will be scribbled in notepads by the print journalism set. Hell, Bush might even get a spot on YouTube. Those bytes and quotes might be aired on the evening news or appear in the next day's paper, and of course will be available all over the Web -- but if it's not a major speech or prime campaigning time (and if the president doesn't do anything extraordinarily dumb, like the door fiasco in China last year), those bits and pieces will probably only appear where political junkies and reporters will be looking. So whether Bush's speech to a bunch of Rotarians in Maine hits the mainstream media or, more likely, just the people with a vested interest, he's speaking to more than the Bangor Rotary Club and he's indeed setting a political agenda.
So Merkel may be pretending to talk directly to the German people, when really, she's just talking to the Berlin insiders. But so what? All politicians do it, and have way before video podcasts came around.
Speaking of which, when will we see the W. Podcast? I wouldn't hold my breath, not with the YouTube crowd waiting, poised, to mock him six ways to Sunday.

Another step into unknown territory...

Two top Washington Post staffers -- the national political editor, John Harris, and reporter Jim VandeHei -- are leaving the Post for a new, Web-based, multimedia venture into covering politics. The new project, still unnamed but part of Allbritton Communications, is about as multi as media gets, incorporating TV stations, a Congress-insider newspaper to be launched in January and a Web site tying it all together.
And these guys were top of the food chain at The Paper you go to for political news. Or maybe the paper you used to go to. VandeHei and Harris were apparently offered some good green to stay, as well as control of the Post's online political realm. But Allbritton is really backing their new thing, letting VandeHei hire six reporters at salaries that he says are better than anything at the Post or even the New York Times.
Plus, they'll be flying those reporters around the campaign trail. I almost want to add, "Just like real reporters!" It seems some are treating these guys like pariahs for leaving such an institution for the Internet -- and some are downright offended.
Will this nameless venture succeed? Revolutionize news media? Provide a path for others to follow? Beat the Times and the Post in political coverage? Maybe. It could be nothing more than an expensive, hare-brained scheme, but the move does at least show the momentum behind the New Media movement and the faith (some) journalists and businesspeople have in it.
I hope they do a good job.

Facebook takes over the world.

Reading the Boston Globe online this morning, I noticed the "Article Tools" list looked off, just slightly longer than usual. Printer friendly ... e-mail to a friend ... share on Facebook.
Whoa. What?
Clicking on the Facebook option, I was taken in a new window to the Facebook login screen, and then to a page where I could add comments or send the article to a specific friend. And then, with a click of the Share button, a link to the article appeared on my profile.
The link takes you first to a list of all your shared articles, and another click brings you to Boston.com. Interestingly enough, it brought me to Page 2 of the story, I guess because I was on the second page when I clicked Share on Facebook.
First the Globe, next, the world.

Is your name really Michael Bolton?

This little gem, thanks to Wired News:

According to internal documents provided to Wired News and interviews with key executives, Gannett, the publisher of USA Today as well as 90 other American daily newspapers, will begin crowdsourcing many of its newsgathering functions. Starting Friday, Gannett newsrooms were rechristened "information centers," and instead of being organized into separate metro, state or sports departments, staff will now work within one of seven desks with names like "data," "digital" and "community conversation."

Nothing like nonsensical corporate jargon to save newspapers. But the story does go on to say the company has four goals:

Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.

If anyone in a newsroom - ahem, information center - ever asks me if I have a case of the Mondays, I'm quitting journalism and going out for defensive linebacker for the Pats.

Oh, the endless possibilities of the Internet

This has nothing to do with journalism. Enjoy.

With your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!

Maybe I'm behind on this, but apparently The Onion and CNN.com have formed a partnership - one that strikes me as unnatural. On CNN's front page, about halfway down, just above World News, is a little box labeled "Breaking Onion Satire" and a link to this story. It's not even an external link - that story is within the cnn.com domain. It does, however, include this editor's note:

Editor's note: This may look like a real news story, but it's NOT. It is from
The Onion, a humor publication that calls itself "America's finest news source."
CNN may beg to differ, but we do enjoy a good laugh and hope you will enjoy a
weekly selection of their satire.

Oh, CNN, you crazy cats.
Likewise, when you read a story on The Onion's site, there's a box along the side with five or so headlines from CNN.com, as well as Slate (they're both under a "From Our News Partners" header). On Slate's web site, The Onion's headlines appear above those from both washingtonpost.com and Newsweek.
I keep forgetting that news satire - see The Daily Show - is so mainstream. Part of what I've always liked about it is that it seems subversive somehow, making fun of both the government and its supposed watchdogs. But I suppose that was a bit naive.
But bravo to CNN for having a sense of humor. Now if it would just keep Anna Nicole Smith out of the top headlines we'd be all set.

New tools for transparency

Two things that crossed my path today:
LegiStorm, a month-old web site that lists the salaries of congressional staffers. The database, searchable by the staffer's name, the rep. or senator's name, committee, or state, lists each staffer and what they made each quarter from July 1, 2005 to March 31, 2006. (Apparently it takes a while for the people on the Hill to compile the data, and then another couple weeks for the people at LegiStorm to get it into the database). It can be a little unclear, however. For example, on Rep. Bill Delahunt's page, one Steven Clark Schwadron is listed as a chief of staff/press secretary and apparently made $12,635 on Jan. 1, 2006 and another $13,071 on Feb. 1. Either something's fishy, or something was lost in translation. Maybe a little of both. Plus, some pay periods overlap - there were a few staffers whose pay was listed from July 1 through Sept. 30, and then again for Sept. 1 through Dec. 31. But all in all, it was really interesting to see what kind of (taxpayer) money the right-hand men and women are getting, and who's under- and way over-paid.
The other is Congress's Family Business. The Sunlight Foundation asked citizens to dig up financial records on their representative to find out how many have spouses on the payroll. The citizens stepped forward, apparently, because research on all 435 reps was completed in two days, over the holiday weekend no less. Sunlight is still calculating how many people contributed and verifying the findings. As Jay Rosen points out, there are problems with the program, especially when it comes to those legislators that find ways of paying their honeys without putting their name on the payroll. That aside, this was quite the adventure in collaborative reporting to get a story a reporter couldn't have gotten on her own -- or, at least, hadn't until now.
It all comes back to the very basic fact, that we as citizens can't cause an uproar about sketchy behavior on the Hill until we know about it. Not that many people try to stir things up when they do know about wrongdoing, but that's a whole 'nother post altogether.

Apparently Mama Bear's apples were too fermented...

Newsflash of the year: News travels fast.
Sometime yesterday afternoon a drunken bear was caught on tape as it stumbled around a small Colorado town, apparently after a binge on fermented apples. I heard about it first when I was doing the 10 p.m. cop calls. A dispatcher told me there was nothing going on in Carver or Canton or whereever, but he had just seen a drunk bear on TV. My roommate repeated the news as soon as I walked in my door an hour and a half later.
That's pretty cool. Some enterprising news crews must have been on their toes -- thank God for scanners.
But regarding the newer technology involved, I was a little disappointed. I had heard so much about the bear already last night, so I tried to find the video online. I assumed -- since we all talk about how advanced technology is and how quickly news travels -- that it would already be posted somewhere, whether on a news site or YouTube.
But to my great dismay it was nowhere to be found. I found it today through Google News, and watched it without the sound (these NU e-bars...). True, it's hilarious. And there's even a quick shot of a woman filming the bear with her Kodak EasyShare digital camera. So that makes up a little for the sloth with which the video was made available to me, in Boston without cable TV.
As I thought about it, I realized my disappointment came mostly from surprise. Sure, a drunk bear isn't exactly world-shattering, government-overthrowing news. But the fact that it wasn't in front of me immediately reminded me these things aren't instantaneous. There is a process; there are humans working behind the scenes.
A good thing to remember, in this world that's not as online as we think.

Technology, the devil.

I was talking to a recent J-school grad who just got her first Real Job at a public relations firm in Boston (owned by some conglomerate based out of California, naturally). She was telling me about her own office, her leather chair and her view overlooking City Hall. Then she said something that really shocked me: The people in the "newsroom," editors included, don't have access to the Internet. Apparently, it's a company-wide policy and an industry standard, something to increase productivity by keeping employees away from sites like this. Or this. But these flacks are writing press releases and "breaking news stories" according to the firm's web site. Don't they need to check facts, find sources and generally stay informed about the world like the rest of us? How can they be cut off from the Internet? As another friend pointed out, even aside from professional concerns, it boosts morale to have a break every so often, to check sports scores or read the news or The Onion. I can't imagine working without the Internet. I had no idea any corporation, much less a PR firm that issues press releases every day, would prohibit employees from using the it. That's like saying they can't use the phone. Or those horseless carriages.
And I thought newspapers were slow to change.

Craigslist Coup

Craig Newmark, it seems, is newspapers' public enemy no. 1. But if I was in any other profession (and even now), I'd concede that Craigslist was a spectacular idea. It made the buying and selling of crappy curry-scented furniture and the search for a relatively un-psycho roommate so easy -- but it swept the classified advertising rug out from under papers' feet.
But what if we took it back? Staged a coup against Newmark & Co.?
Newspapers' web sites, for example, the Herald, offer online classifieds. But you have to pay to post them, just like in the print edition. Why would anyone do such a thing, with Craigslist offering the same thing for free, with millions more hits?
What if newspapers offered free classifieds online? Now wait, before you click away in a fit of cynicism, hear me out: It would be free to post, search and respond to ads. Revenue would come from display ads (banners and such) on the pages, and perhaps one would have to be a newspaper subscriber to post, or pay a small one-time or annual fee for the privilege.
To make it work, to take back classifieds from Craigslist, these pages would have to offer something new -- a feature that would make them better or easier to use than Craigslist. Maybe a better search engine within the site, or email alerts when something you're looking for comes up, or an instant message system between users.
It'll probably take something much more innovative to beat Craigslist, which according to its own web site is the seventh-most trafficked English web site in the world and which garners publicity with every news story that mentions it. But it's worth trying to take what Newmark started and turn it on its head -- and to newspapers' advantage.

So what about the issues?

Having just registered as a Democrat in Massachusetts (and being excessively excited about it), I went to the Globe web site for info on the three candidates.
There's a lot of stuff in the Campaign 2006 section. In addition to biographies and compilations of recent (and old) stories about all the runners, there are blogs and opinion pieces, videos from NECN, and even a map showing which households (and in a larger sense, neighborhoods and towns) are contributing to which campaign.
I went first to the "Debates" tab, expecting a story about the most recent Democratic debate to be the most relevant as far as who stands for what. Instead, although the nut graf said the candidates "dramatically sharpened their differences " at the debate, the story was exclusively about the attacks they leveled against one another. I couldn't find anything about the supposedly sharpened differences, unless I chose to watch video of the debate (a great feature, to be sure, but what if you don't have time or a good connection?) or read the entire transcript, some 20 pages of print.
After clicking around some more, (and spending a little too much time on the addictive contributions map -- only about five grand came out of my neighborhood, Roxbury) I found a very inviting section entitled "The Candidates on the Issues," on the bottom of the issues tab. Each issue provided a few grafs on each candidates' ideas about taxes, education, etc., based on quotes and their official platforms. That was pretty helpful, and so were the extensive pages on each candidate -- complete with bio, profiles on them and their spouses, recent articles and interviews, and way at the bottom, the issues.
Although the Globe has done a good job using its web site for a much more extensive look at the candidates than any given day's paper has room for, I still feel unsettled about it. Shouldn't the issues be the most important, and therefore most prominent, thing on the web site? In the paper, space is used to explain candidates' politics and strategies - why they went to this event, which base they're trying to mobilize - there was even a feature in the Globe about how each candidate dresses. Which is all good (except for that fashion bit), but as the primary nears, readers should be reminded of the promises these candidates have made, and what they can expect from each as governor -- not their latest campaign strategy of visiting charter schools or tearing apart their opponents. The least they could do is direct readers to the web site with a box in all the campaign stories.
People look to the papers to help them choose their elected officials. But so often you have to dig for the information you really want. Why are newspapers helping candidates for elected office hide behind politics, rhetoric and photo ops?