Category Archives: Media

In a Vacuum

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As I mentioned in my previous post we lost power on Sunday night and we’ve been without power and/or cable for about two days.  A consequence of our blackout is that we (Celeste and I) had no idea that something was going on at Virginia Tech until one of the people sitting at the table next to us at Panera started playing the video from CNN on his laptop.  After that the only update I got for hours was on the radio while I was driving my son to his orthodontist.  We stayed at a hotel last night so I was able to watch the news there, but really I felt like I was in a vacuum.

This reminded me of 9/11 when I was stuck on the streets of DC trying to get home and didn’t hear about the towers falling down until someone told me as we waited to get on the Metro.  After that I had no idea what was going on until I got home that evening and saw for the first time the video that the rest of the world had seen hours earlier. 

This also reminded me that my habits have changed considerably in the last few years. I used to get most of my information from broadcasts, radio or television, but now I get most of it via RSS feeds in my reader or by browsing any number of news sites.  I’m beginning to realize how limiting the broadcasts feel, because when I’m online and getting my usual news stream I’m seeing one story from literally dozens of viewpoints.  With TV I’m getting that one story from a limited number of sources who all feel compelled to package events like this as "The Massacre at Virginia Tech" and then in two days will package it as "The Massacre at Virginia Tech: The Aftermath", and then in two more days will package it as "The Massacre at Virginia Tech: The Recovery Begins", etc.

Of course I could have read my feeds on my PocketPC but I had the slight problem that I’d deleted my mobile feed reader (long story) and had neglected to restore it.  Once I get the chance that’s now a high priority, because I can’t take much more of the broadcasters.

Two Editors, Two Decisions on Naming Duke Accuser

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Once the former Duke lacrosse players were proclaimed innocent by Attorney General Roy Cooper the media covering the story had a choice to make: do they or do they not publish the name of the woman who accused the men of rape?  The Raleigh News & Observer decided to and The Winston-Salem Journal decided not to.  What’s interesting about this to me is that the editors explained their reasoning on their blogs.  First from Melanie Sill the N&O‘s executive editor:

During the year since Mangum told police she was assaulted at a
lacrosse team party, The N&O followed its longstanding policy of
not naming claimants in sexual assault cases. This policy is accepted
practice among most print and broadcast media in the United States.

The
N&O has upheld this approach, which the newspaper has followed for
at least 15 years, to avoid discouraging victims of rape and sexual
assault from reporting such crimes. The N&O’s policy regarding
sexual assault claimants has rarely been challenged and we saw no
reason to abandon the policy in the midst of a case.

In recent
weeks The N&O’s senior editors consulted a number of people with an
interest in these issues, among them advocates for sexual assault
victims, defense lawyers, current and former journalists, a district
judge, journalism educators and ethics experts, in considering whether
and under what circumstances to identify Mangum. No consensus emerged,
but the conversations helped us consider essential questions about
precedent and impact.

With the decision of the state attorney
general’s office to drop all charges against Reade Seligmann, Collin
Finnerty and David Evans, no charge of rape or sexual assault exists.
Mangum’s claim has been vehemently denied by the three men indicted in
the case and by their teammates, who believe they have been damaged by
a false accusation. Attorney General Roy Cooper said his office
concluded that the three are innocent.

Mangum also has been
widely identified on the Internet, including on mainstream sites such
as Wikipedia. Because of these circumstances, and in order to more
fully report on the case and its aftermath, we decided to publish her
name. Additionally, we will review our standing policy.

And this from Ken Otterbourg, the Journal’s managing editor:

Yesterday, we had an important decision
about whether to name the accuser in the Duke Lacrosse case. She is the
college student/dancer/mother who was hired to dance at the party and
then made accusations that led to charges that were dismissed by the
Attorney General.

Most news outlets don’t name the accusers in rape cases, although
there are exceptions to every rule. Several newspapers that I respect,
including the News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, both
decided to name the woman. Her name was widely available prior to this
decision. Here’s the explanation of the N&O’s exec editor, Melanie Sill.

We decided not to. Here’s what our rape policy says, in part:

In the event that an accused rapist is acquitted or released
after being charged [and that charge was reported by us], we will make
significant efforts to detail the story behind the defendant’s success.
In these narrow cases, we may choose to name the accuser if there is
competent evidence that the charges were deliberately bogus. Even in
this event, however, we will not use the names of any victim under 18
years old.

I think the key word here is “deliberately.” To my mind, what AG
Cooper said yesterday is key, that the accuser may actually believe her
stories. I’m not sure her charges were deliberate lies.

While reading about the papers’ internal deliberations is interesting in and of itself, it’s also interesting to read the comments in the posts.  Well at least at the N&O, since as of this writing there’s only one comment at Ken’s and it’s just a small quibble with verbiage.  Some people feel that publishing the name of the "victim" will deter future victims of rape and sexual assault from coming forward. Others argue that it is only fair that the woman’s name be revealed since the mens’ names had been dragged through the mud for a year based on false accusations.  And of course there’s the "liberal press" charges and other vitriol.  All in all, it’s far more interesting and educating than what you read in the papers themselves.

A Tale of Two (Allegedly) Drunk Local TV Guys

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Several weeks ago a local TV morning anchor, Tolly Carr, was arrested and charged with drunk driving and allegedly hitting and killing a pedestrian in Winston-Salem.  Carr is employed by Winston-Salem based WXII 12 and the day after the accident the station released a video statement from GM Hank Price and covered it as a straight news item.  This past weekend an entertainment reporter for WKRN in Nashville, TN was pulled over and arrested for drunk driving and WKRN’s GM, Mike Sechrist, announced it on his blog.

To me these two cases offer an interesting juxtaposition of two local news outlets that are using online media in fairly different ways.  The video statement from WXII is old school, one way information flow.  WKRN’s blog allows for comments which means that you have the new school "dialogue" happening.  If you read the comments on the WKRN post, and there are lots of them, you see a pretty strong debate break out about drunk driving in general, and even accusations that the station is giving their man special treatment by not putting his mugshot on the air.  Because that debate is happening on his site Sechrist can address those comments directly.  Even though WXII did put Carr’s mugshot on the air they (and the rest of the local media) were accused of favoritism in their handling of Carr’s story, but since it was on local blogs and not on their site and WXII was absent from the debate.

In a strange twist to the Carr story a rumor started floating around that he had commited suicide.  The managing editor of the Winston-Salem Journal wrote about it on his blog from the perspective of a newsroom that was inundated with calls asking if the rumors were true.  Again, nary a word from WXII to be found.  I have the feeling that if similar rumors were to crop up in Nashville you’d hear about it directly from the GM on his blog.

WXII is putting its toe in the water by hosting three or four blogs, but some of them don’t allow comments and with the exception of the sports blog they aren’t updated very often.  More importantly the blogs are merely an extension of their on-air personalities (anchor, weather, sports) and don’t give the audience a look behind the camera at the station.  I personally think that the power of blogs and of most new media lies in the ability to draw an audience in and make its members feel like part of the "family."  While GMs, managing editors, and publishers traditionally view themselves as behind the scenes bosses they are in fact the true representative of the organization.  They represent the entire organization and are in the best position to articulate the goals, concerns and direction of the station, paper, magazine, etc.  By communicating consistently with their audience they draw them into their world, make them feel like they have a stake in the station/newspaper/magazine’s future and ultimately keep them as a viewer/reader.  And when bad things happen they have a line of communication directly with the audience, which means they can deal with the fallout without having to go through intermediaries and they can nip rumors in the bud.

The bottom line is that all media organizations are businesses, and the GM is kind of like a CEO.  That’s why a recent article in Wired titled "The See Through CEO" is applicable to them.  In the article the author cites cases where companies have benefited from their leaders communicating directly with their customers, writing openly about all things related to the company including the good, the bad and the ugly.  In each of those cases the companies have grown and prospered and the CEOs attribute that growth to their openness. 

Because media companies are already so visible, and because local TV news folks are uniquely intimate to their audience (more than a few people think of local news anchors as a part of their extended family), then it stands to reason that more openness could be particularly effective for them.  They put food on the table by selling advertising.  Advertisers are interested in audience size and demographics, and if by embracing online tools that encourage dialogue they also increase loyalty, then GMs are doing what they’re paid to do: increasing their bottom line.

In defense of Mr. Price at WXII there aren’t many media types who are doing this yet. If he needs a first hand account of a blog’s utility he need only walk down the street to talk to Ken Otterbourg at the Winston-Salem Journal or pick of the phone and call John Robinson over at the Greensboro News & Record.  While I doubt they would be able to give him quantifiable numbers showing that their blogs have contributed directly to the bottom line, I’m fairly certain they would tell him that their guts tell them they’re doing the right thing and that their efforts will pay off in the near future.  And of course that’s the other thing GMs are paid for: their gut instincts. 

Local News, Bloggers and Media

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We’ve had two big local news stories over the last week and a half.  One was about a local TV news anchor who allegedly drove drunk, ran over a man and killed him and the other was about a Boy Scout who got lost in the woods for three days.  The latter became a national story and happily the Boy Scout was found alive today and reunited with his family.

An interesting thing happened with the first story.  A few days after Tolly Carr allegedly commited the crime of driving while intoxicated and running over a pedestrian rumors started floating around that Carr had commited suicide.  We heard it from our son, who’d heard it from his bus driver, who in turn heard it from a friend via a cell phone call.  We checked the news and saw nothing about it and quickly we forgot about it.  The next day I was reading the blog of Ken Otterbourg, the Winston-Salem Journal’s managing editor, and he posted a piece about the rumor, how many phone calls they received about it and the effort they made to run it down.  What made this so interesting is that the rumors never made the newspaper itself, but because he has a blog that discusses the inner workings of the newspaper Otterbourg was able to "cover" the rumor from the paper’s perspective.  It was fascinating to me that the rumor had become so widespread that the newspaper had to investigate, and it was also of interest to see how a professional news organization handles such a case.

The Boy Scout story generated some interesting developments as well.  I was in the barber shop when one of the news reports mentioned that the boy had been left behind with one of the counselors while the rest of the group went for a hike.  One of the men in the barber shop instantly said, "Why they leavin’ a young boy alone with a Scout leader like that? I think we have an idea why that boy might have run off."  The implication, of course, was that the scout leader had been doing something untoward with the boy and the boy fled the scene.  Later that evening I was catching up on my blog feeds and I noticed that one had a post about the Boy Scout case and made the same assertion that the barber shop patron had made.  The difference, of course, is that the blog was out there for the world to see and from my own experience I knew this post would be read by others and the writer would be taken to task for publishing such accusations without a shred of proof.  Since I consider the writer a friend I was going to write him and advise him that he might want to re-think the post, but when I clicked the link for the post it had already been taken down.  It turns out Ed Cone had beaten me to the punch, as he writes in his post Local Blogging and Responsibility.

I can’t help but notice the relationship between these two cases.  One features a mainstream newspaper editor using a newly found tool, his blog, to delve into the evolution of a rumor and how his organization deals with it.  The other features an "amateur" writer with a local readership and a newly found responsibility to think twice before tapping "publish" or risk becoming intimately familiar with the terms libel and slander.  Somewhere in there I think we’ve found the face of local news in the future.

See Ya Sports Machine

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When I was in high school WRC Channel 4 (NBC) in DC hired a guy named George Michael to be their sports anchor.  Up to that point I thought the only REAL sports guy in town was Glenn Brenner, and although Brenner was always my favorite until he died suddenly of a brain tumor in the early 90s, I did enjoy Michael’s schtick.

What I’ll always remember Michael for is his Sports Machine which he started in DC and then syndicated nationally in ’84.  That coincided nicely with my freshman year of college when I was in Seward, Nebraska.  I was very homesick and watching the Sports Machine in the student lounge was a nice dose of home cooking for me.

Michael’s run is coming to an end at WRC and although I haven’t watched him in over two years I’m going to kind of miss the guy.

Silver Tunas

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Recently I offered the Winston-Salem Journal some free advice (remember, it’s worth what you paid for it) and while I hope it was constructive, much of it was criticism.  So I’d like to take this opportunity to highlight what I think is a good blog post for a newspaper.

Managing Editor Ken Otterbourg has been hosting a blog for the Journal for a while now and I think it’s beginning to show.  His post today, How to bag an auto plant, is a great example of bringing a personal voice to his blog while staying on topic in regards to his blog’s mission and informing his readers beyond the pages of the "paper."  Here’s an excerpt to help me explain what I mean:

When it comes to car factories, North Carolina appears to be a
perennial bridesmaid. As we noted today, Toyota chose Tupelo, Miss.
(yes, it’s the whole Elvis thing) over a bunch of other places,
including a site in Davidson County.

Despite Detroit’s problems, car factories are still silver tunas, especially Toyota plants. One of my favorite sites, the Rural Blog,
which is run out of the University of Kentucky journalism school has an
interesting piece on the role the newspaper in Northeast Mississippi
played in the recruitment effort. The paper is called the Northeast
Mississippi Daily Journal, and it’s goal for the past 50 years has been
to tie that corner of the state together into a viable region for
growth…

The news pages of newspapers (as opposed to the opinion pages) have
always done a balancing act when it comes to being a part of economic
recruitment. I look at the Journal’s coverage of Dell’s move here, or
more recently, The Charlotte Observer’s reporting on the Google
incentives. We certainly understand that growth means—or has the
potential to mean—more readers and the like, but being a cheerleader is
a difficult role for many of us.

What I really like about this post is that Ken isn’t afraid to share his opinion, he shares a little background re. his favorite blog, he writes about something he’s obviously very interested in (the role of newspapers in the community and the future of newspapers), and he ties it to events that are of interest to his audience (economic development in the region).  On top of all that he gives me a great title to this post, although when I think of "silver tunas" I get this disturbing image of a silver plated statue of Bill "The Big Tuna" Parcells in "The Thinker" pose.  WAY too much coffee today.

Run a Print Media Operation? You Should Read This

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Colin Crawford of b-to-b media company IDG has an interesting post on his blog that is really a must-read for anyone in print media.  Here’s a taste:

In the US, our online revenue now accounts for over 35% of our total
US publishing revenues. Next year, for many brands online revenues will
be greater than print revenues, if fact they already are at some of our
key brands and by 2009 – approximately 50% of IDG’s US revenues will
come from online.

To drive this change and to focus on online revenue we’ve changed
the business mission of our organization away from print. Going forward
IDG Communications will define itself as a web centric information
company complemented by expos, events and print publications.

The brutal reality that we’re facing today is the costly process of
dismantling and replacing legacy operations and cultures and business
models with ones with new and yet to be fully proven business models.
However, we face greater risks if we don’t transform our organization
and take some chances…

Figuring out the transformation from print to online is only the start.
The information we produce, facilitate and aggregate increasingly will
be viewed on a number of screens – the Computer, the TV, the smart
mobile phone, the iPod and other portable entertainment devices. Many
of these screens are more suited to video and audio than text. Even
more new skills for our organization to master! (Emphasis mine).

If I had to point to one traditional print company that has really taken off in terms of their online efforts it would be The Washington Post.  Blogs out the wazoo, tons of video and reporters that shoot and edit their own video (my cousin found that out first hand) show the Post’s willingness to throw effort and resources into the online realm.  And why not?  If you could take the millions you spend on ink, paper and presses and spend it instead on resources that actually create more content for consumers and further your advantage over other information providers wouldn’t it make more sense than cutting down more trees?  And as information consumption patterns continue to trend towards digital (PDAs, smart phones, etc.) wouldn’t it be crazy to not follow the eyeballs?  Just one more reason I think the print operations that don’t experiment while they still hold a monopolistic status are killing their future business.

More Tivo to Love

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Anyone that’s talked to me in the last year or two probably knows that I love-with-a-capital-L my Tivo.  It looks like I’m going to have even more reason to love it in the near future.  Amazon is teaming with Tivo to offer video dowloads from Amazon’s Unbox service straight to Tivo, and it looks like you’ll be able to rent or buy.  They’re doing a limited test but they expect to roll it out to all Tivo subscribers in the near future.  One limitation is that the Tivo has to be hooked up to a broadband network (luckily ours is hooked into our network) so Tivo users that still have their systems updated via dial-up will either have to hook their systems into their home network or go without. Here are details from the announcement:

    To activate the service, subscribers will simply log on to
Amazon.com and follow a few simple steps to establish a link between
their broadband connected TiVo Series2(TM) or Series3(TM) box and
their Amazon account. Once the initial set up is complete, eligible
movies or television shows from Amazon Unbox can be downloaded
directly to the customer’s TiVo box. After the movie has been
downloaded, the title will automatically appear in the subscriber’s
TiVo "Now Playing" list with all of their other recorded shows, easily
viewed with just a click of the TiVo remote.

    Customers can purchase television episodes for $1.99, purchase
most movies for between $9.99 and $14.99, or rent movies starting at
$1.99. As an added bonus, all purchased videos are automatically
stored in each customer’s "Your Media Library" at Amazon.com for
future access and download.

Su-weet!

I truly hope this gets going, but I’m waiting to see it actually launched before I get too excited. I was stoked when Tivo said they were doing a deal with Netflix but that deal seems to have died on the vine.  If the Tivo/Unbox service does indeed go off as planned and does work as advertised then our Netflix subscription might be going the way of all flesh.

Traffic in the Triad

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What passes for traffic here in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina would be considered a great traffic day back in DC (or in NYC, LA, Chicago, etc.).  Yet we do have traffic reporters and since they usually have one accident a morning to talk about they have to fill the time somehow.  WXII’s traffic reporter, Jenny, has had some memorable moments.  Here’s her most famous, the Traffic Rap:

Well I’d rather have a traffic reporter with time on her hands than to have actual traffic. I think.