As newspapers cut 1,000 jobs last week, Americans are getting their sense of the world less and less through human eyes and ears than from TV cameras abetted by well-groomed mannequins gushing over an endless flow of images.
Talking heads on cable and bloggers online parse and pick away at what the cameras see but there are fewer and fewer reporters to find out what's hidden by using such old-fashioned skills as observation, questioning and legwork.
Where is the tipping point at which "news" becomes all opinion all the time about "facts" supplied by self-interested sources?
Newspapers are drowning in red ink even as Americans depend more heavily on what they do but don't pay for the information they get from them digitally and advertisers don't cover the costs of allowing them to continue providing it.
The challenge, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, is to "reinvent their profession and their business model at the same time they are cutting back on their reporting and resources." A top news executive is quoted as saying, "It’s like changing the oil in your car while you’re driving down the freeway."
Meanwhile, Timothy Egan argues on his New York Times blog, "there’s plenty of gossip, political spin and original insight on sites like the Drudge Report or The Huffington Post--even though they are built on the backs of the wire services and other factories of honest fact-gathering. One day soon these Web info-slingers will find that you can’t produce journalism without journalists, and a search engine is no replacement for a curious reporter."
Meanwhile Rush Limbaugh gets a new $400 million contract for spouting off on one medium, while Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann (bless his splenetic soul) dominate another with their points of view.
The pay and job security are nowhere near as good in the mills that provide their raw material.
Showing posts with label reporters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reporters. Show all posts
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
McCain's Cockiness
Forget the poll numbers. The surest sign of a winner is making ballsy jokes, and John McCain is back doing that.
When Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post asks why, unlike most other candidates, he is so accessible to reporters, McCain responds, "I enjoy it a lot. It keeps me intellectually stimulated, it keeps me thinking about issues, and it keeps me associated with a lower level of human being than I otherwise would be."
Kurtz notes, "How candidates treat reporters shouldn't matter in the coverage, but it does. Journalists tend to reward those who engage them and get testy when they are stiffed, concluding that such candidates are overly calculating and wary of unscripted exchanges."
When McCain made an unusual trip without his press contingent, a reporter asked, "What did you do without us this morning? Were you hanging out with other reporters?"
McCain acted horrified. "I was not unfaithful," he insisted.
Lest all this seem lovable, it pays to remember that Nancy Pelosi's daughter, of all people, made a documentary in 2000 about how charming and lovable George Bush was on his campaign plane, and we know how that turned out.
When Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post asks why, unlike most other candidates, he is so accessible to reporters, McCain responds, "I enjoy it a lot. It keeps me intellectually stimulated, it keeps me thinking about issues, and it keeps me associated with a lower level of human being than I otherwise would be."
Kurtz notes, "How candidates treat reporters shouldn't matter in the coverage, but it does. Journalists tend to reward those who engage them and get testy when they are stiffed, concluding that such candidates are overly calculating and wary of unscripted exchanges."
When McCain made an unusual trip without his press contingent, a reporter asked, "What did you do without us this morning? Were you hanging out with other reporters?"
McCain acted horrified. "I was not unfaithful," he insisted.
Lest all this seem lovable, it pays to remember that Nancy Pelosi's daughter, of all people, made a documentary in 2000 about how charming and lovable George Bush was on his campaign plane, and we know how that turned out.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Iraq: Too Dangerous to Cover
The Surge may be making Iraq safer, but not for those reporting it. Eight out of ten journalists say the war is now harder to cover than it was when they started working there.
From an October survey of 111 journalists in 29 news organizations, the Project for Excellence in Journalism concludes: "They believe they have done a better job of covering the American military and the insurgency than they have the lives of ordinary Iraqis. And they do not believe the coverage of Iraq over time has been too negative. If anything, many believe the situation over the course of the war has been worse than the American public has perceived."
Outside of the heavily-fortified Green Zone, local staff do the face-to-face reporting, and they can't carry any equipment, not even notebooks, that might identify them as working for American media out of fear of being killed. Some don't even tell their families.
According to one print journalist, "The dangers can’t be overstated. It’s been an ambush--two staff killed, one wounded--various firefights, and our ‘home’ has been rocked and mortared (by accident, I’m pretty sure).”
A broadcast editor reported: "It's dangerous and frustrating. You want to go out and cover stories, but you can't because of the threat of kidnapping or worse. It's hard to hear commentators back home say, 'The media isn't covering the full story.' Well, there's a reason for that, and it's not bias. When journalists cannot cover a playground being rebuilt because it's too dangerous to travel around the city, then that playground is not the primary story."
Politicians, media critics and journalism students, take note.
From an October survey of 111 journalists in 29 news organizations, the Project for Excellence in Journalism concludes: "They believe they have done a better job of covering the American military and the insurgency than they have the lives of ordinary Iraqis. And they do not believe the coverage of Iraq over time has been too negative. If anything, many believe the situation over the course of the war has been worse than the American public has perceived."
Outside of the heavily-fortified Green Zone, local staff do the face-to-face reporting, and they can't carry any equipment, not even notebooks, that might identify them as working for American media out of fear of being killed. Some don't even tell their families.
According to one print journalist, "The dangers can’t be overstated. It’s been an ambush--two staff killed, one wounded--various firefights, and our ‘home’ has been rocked and mortared (by accident, I’m pretty sure).”
A broadcast editor reported: "It's dangerous and frustrating. You want to go out and cover stories, but you can't because of the threat of kidnapping or worse. It's hard to hear commentators back home say, 'The media isn't covering the full story.' Well, there's a reason for that, and it's not bias. When journalists cannot cover a playground being rebuilt because it's too dangerous to travel around the city, then that playground is not the primary story."
Politicians, media critics and journalism students, take note.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Dow Jones Goes Down Under
The media melodrama is over. Apparently enough of the Bancroft family will accept Rupert Murdoch’s $5 billion Faustian bargain for the Wall Street Journal.
But give them credit for a struggle to save their souls. At a family meeting Monday night, the Journal reported, one of the matriarchs, 77-year-old Jane Cox MacElree, argued against making the deal with the Devil by invoking the martyrdom of Daniel Pearl.
"He put his life on the line for the paper," Ms. MacElree said, citing the reporter who was kidnapped and killed by Al Qaeda in Pakistan.
Ms. MacElree was supported by daughter, Leslie Hill, a Dow Jones director and former airline pilot, who waved a quarter-inch-thick manila envelope filled with letters from Journal reporters and editors who protested a deal with News Corp.
“She said it was their voices that mattered.” the Journal reported. “In a halting speech, she was on the verge of tears as she talked about the reporters' dedication to their jobs, and told family members they owed it to the Journal's rank and file not to sell the paper, according to participants.”
What’s remarkable about this prolonged struggle is not that the various branches of the Bancroft family finally succumbed to Murdoch’s offer that doubled the market value of their holdings but that so many resisted for so long.
In the era of corporate journalism, it’s sad to witness the loss of another leading family-owned company with the principles expressed by Ms. MacElree and her daughter, but there is a kind of cold comfort in seeing that such sentiments still exist.
Their time may have passed, but Murdoch’s won’t last forever, either.
But give them credit for a struggle to save their souls. At a family meeting Monday night, the Journal reported, one of the matriarchs, 77-year-old Jane Cox MacElree, argued against making the deal with the Devil by invoking the martyrdom of Daniel Pearl.
"He put his life on the line for the paper," Ms. MacElree said, citing the reporter who was kidnapped and killed by Al Qaeda in Pakistan.
Ms. MacElree was supported by daughter, Leslie Hill, a Dow Jones director and former airline pilot, who waved a quarter-inch-thick manila envelope filled with letters from Journal reporters and editors who protested a deal with News Corp.
“She said it was their voices that mattered.” the Journal reported. “In a halting speech, she was on the verge of tears as she talked about the reporters' dedication to their jobs, and told family members they owed it to the Journal's rank and file not to sell the paper, according to participants.”
What’s remarkable about this prolonged struggle is not that the various branches of the Bancroft family finally succumbed to Murdoch’s offer that doubled the market value of their holdings but that so many resisted for so long.
In the era of corporate journalism, it’s sad to witness the loss of another leading family-owned company with the principles expressed by Ms. MacElree and her daughter, but there is a kind of cold comfort in seeing that such sentiments still exist.
Their time may have passed, but Murdoch’s won’t last forever, either.
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