Todd Morman is blogging up a storm, after being missing in action for almost two weeks: issues from Alan Keyes' lesbian daughter, to the chemical secrets of shrimp, to the E.L. Doctorow piece currently making the email rounds.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Second take on Amendment One
Even before this thread started jumping like crazy on OrangePolitics, I was having second thoughts about Amendment One. Amendment One is a proposed North Carolina constitutional amendment, on the ballot next month, to allow local governments to issue "self-financing bonds." The bonds are used for property redevelopment projects. They are financed through the (expected) net gain in property taxes of the redeveloped property.
The theme of the amendment initiative is "jobs and progress." There's even a so-called blog for it. But the messages are one-way, top-down, unsigned. Today's posting hearkens back to the Carolina "brain drain" of the 1950s that sparked the creation of RTP. Do we get it? "Amendment One is the tool our state needs. It can help local governments plan and provide jobs that will keep communities growing. Our state must have access to good, solid jobs. The stability of a community is important and having the option to use self-financing bonds can only make the state’s future brighter."
Because they don't obligate the "full faith and credit" of the government body, they don't have to be voted on. But if the project doesn't succeed, then the taxpayers could be left to pick up the slack. So it isn't a tax subsidy necessarily . . . but it easily could be that. The Common Sense Foundation objects to the name "self-financing bonds," calling it a euphemism. In most places, it's called "tax-increment funding." Call it what it is, says common sense:
The Chapel Hill Town Council endorsed a resolution in support of Amendment One. Only Mark Kleinschmidt voted against it. At the time, my thoughts ran to places like the Loray Mill in Gastonia, historic site of a deadly labor strike in 1929, which, through the efforts of Preservation North Carolina, is lively again, to the tune of a $50 million mixed-use development. The sad fact of life in North Carolina now is that there are dozens of old mills that could be put to new uses. But those projects can get done--with the help of historic preservation tax credits, for example. In Chapel Hill we've even established that our redevelopment of two downtown parcels of real estate can be accomplished without "self-financing bonds." I don't have a ready answer to the Common Sense Foundation's assertion that "There should be an honest debate about TIF without misleading monikers and outlandish claims from its proponents."
What sealed it for me was an item that came in this weekend's mail: Southern City, the publication of the North Carolina League of Municipalities: "Amidst all this political noise, we must not forget a 'green' issue that is on the ballot--Amendment One." Nice try.
The theme of the amendment initiative is "jobs and progress." There's even a so-called blog for it. But the messages are one-way, top-down, unsigned. Today's posting hearkens back to the Carolina "brain drain" of the 1950s that sparked the creation of RTP. Do we get it? "Amendment One is the tool our state needs. It can help local governments plan and provide jobs that will keep communities growing. Our state must have access to good, solid jobs. The stability of a community is important and having the option to use self-financing bonds can only make the state’s future brighter."
Because they don't obligate the "full faith and credit" of the government body, they don't have to be voted on. But if the project doesn't succeed, then the taxpayers could be left to pick up the slack. So it isn't a tax subsidy necessarily . . . but it easily could be that. The Common Sense Foundation objects to the name "self-financing bonds," calling it a euphemism. In most places, it's called "tax-increment funding." Call it what it is, says common sense:
"Tax-increment financing" (TIF) is what most states call the scheme that would be established if Amendment 1 passes on the N.C. ballot this fall. . . .
North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry (NCCBI), the state's premier business lobbying group, so abhors the word "tax" that it now refers to "tax-increment financing" by a new name: "Self-financing bonds."
"Self-financing bonds" would be a laughable euphemism if it weren't so dangerously misleading. Naming a public policy after its best possible outcome gives the impression that that outcome is a given; in fact with this type of scheme, the results are not always good and can be devastating.
The Chapel Hill Town Council endorsed a resolution in support of Amendment One. Only Mark Kleinschmidt voted against it. At the time, my thoughts ran to places like the Loray Mill in Gastonia, historic site of a deadly labor strike in 1929, which, through the efforts of Preservation North Carolina, is lively again, to the tune of a $50 million mixed-use development. The sad fact of life in North Carolina now is that there are dozens of old mills that could be put to new uses. But those projects can get done--with the help of historic preservation tax credits, for example. In Chapel Hill we've even established that our redevelopment of two downtown parcels of real estate can be accomplished without "self-financing bonds." I don't have a ready answer to the Common Sense Foundation's assertion that "There should be an honest debate about TIF without misleading monikers and outlandish claims from its proponents."
What sealed it for me was an item that came in this weekend's mail: Southern City, the publication of the North Carolina League of Municipalities: "Amidst all this political noise, we must not forget a 'green' issue that is on the ballot--Amendment One." Nice try.
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Mad as a law professor
I just added The Legal Reader to my blogroll. I note the Reader has a whole category on its blogroll for "Law Professors Gone Mad." But don't worry, Eric, you're among friends there.
". . . the mentality of a gated community"
Laconic blogger George Entenman posts an argument for Kerry by a frustrated environmentalist, Chuck Bowden.
Friday, September 24, 2004
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Motor City
What goes around comes around? For car ownership, Detroit is the most expensive city in the country.
If we really understood what our cars were costing us, we might be quicker to find a way out of them.
If we really understood what our cars were costing us, we might be quicker to find a way out of them.
Our cars, ourselves
Yesterday was "car-free day" in Chapel Hill and some 1,400 other cities, part of an international movement. As Elisabeth Benfey, a transplanted European, pointed out to me, European cities have had an "In town without my car!" initiative for a number of years. This whole week is "European Mobility Week," focusing on issues of the environment and sustainable ways of getting around.
I forgot to pledge--and would not have been able to do better than "car lite." I did carpool to Raleigh for an argument in the Court of Appeals. There was nothing "car-free" about I-40 at 8 a.m. These days, every time I have to go to Raleigh I'm reminded how nice it is that I no longer have that commute. Even as the construction goes on, we surely know that building more and wider roads is not the answer.
"A lot of public health issues have resulted from not using your legs," said Sen. Ellie Kinnaird at Carrboro's celebration for car-free troopers, where a Segway was demonstrated.
In Paris, where the first "car-free" day was held six years ago, a major international auto show is about to begin. Under President Chirac, "the car-free day . . . is in decline. In 2002, 98 French cities and towns participated. Last year, it was 72. This year, there [were only] 50." According to the Paris report, only Montreal in Canada was to participate, and "only a handful of Japanese cities." Rome and Berlin were not participants.
UPDATE: Three reports (scroll down).
I forgot to pledge--and would not have been able to do better than "car lite." I did carpool to Raleigh for an argument in the Court of Appeals. There was nothing "car-free" about I-40 at 8 a.m. These days, every time I have to go to Raleigh I'm reminded how nice it is that I no longer have that commute. Even as the construction goes on, we surely know that building more and wider roads is not the answer.
"A lot of public health issues have resulted from not using your legs," said Sen. Ellie Kinnaird at Carrboro's celebration for car-free troopers, where a Segway was demonstrated.
In Paris, where the first "car-free" day was held six years ago, a major international auto show is about to begin. Under President Chirac, "the car-free day . . . is in decline. In 2002, 98 French cities and towns participated. Last year, it was 72. This year, there [were only] 50." According to the Paris report, only Montreal in Canada was to participate, and "only a handful of Japanese cities." Rome and Berlin were not participants.
UPDATE: Three reports (scroll down).
A useful reminder
At TalkLeft they're talking about the negotiated release of Yaser Hamdi, who in June got the Supreme Court to declare that enemy combatants could not be detained indefinitely. One of the conditions of his release is that he renounce his U.S. citizenship (he was born in Louisiana).
One commenter says no big deal, "Hamdi is an American citizen only by accident of birth."
To which another responds, "From one's own point of view we are all American by an accident of birth?"
One commenter says no big deal, "Hamdi is an American citizen only by accident of birth."
To which another responds, "From one's own point of view we are all American by an accident of birth?"
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Wired's Creative Commons concert
Paul is up in NYC with Larry Lessig and many others for the Creative Commons Benefit Concert at Town Hall. Live webcast starts in six minutes!
Welcome the SouthNow blog
SouthNow is the publication arm of the Program on Politics, Media and Public Life within the Center for the Study of the American South at UNC-Chapel Hill. They've recently set up shop to blog the campaign season. According to their email announcement, "The primary mission of SouthNow Blog is to provide a look at the presidential, U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races in the South as seen through the lens of major news media in the region."
We can expect good analysis here, as demonstrated by Eric David's take on North Carolina women voters and their treatment in the media.
We can expect good analysis here, as demonstrated by Eric David's take on North Carolina women voters and their treatment in the media.
A frameable moment
Daily Kos is blogging this week about George Lakoff and his notions of "framing" (Ruby will be glad to know). Toward the bottom of a long set of comments is this small window into the editing process at the NYT:
In this A Closer Look at Kerry's Record on Taxes , the following appears (italics mine) "Some of these savings are rather vague, like money saved from reducing corporate welfare tax cuts, OK? `corporate welfare' sounds kinda tendentious closing tax loopholes and improving government efficiency."
The author of this post wonders if we are seeing an editor's comment. When you look at the story now (edited since this poster saw it), you see that the answer is yes:
Some of these savings are rather vague, like money saved from reducing corporate tax cuts, closing tax loopholes and improving government efficiency.
Is this an example of editing in favor of the more neutral or "objective" word, or are some frames (for example, "improving government efficiency") just more naturalized than others?
A comment that Jay Rosen makes in his recent interview of Dan Gillmor comes to mind. Speaking specifically of the "war on terror," he observes that reporters are often in an uncomfortably difficult role simply for being the messenger:
From bringing the message to framing the message is not a far distance, as this example shows.
In this A Closer Look at Kerry's Record on Taxes , the following appears (italics mine) "Some of these savings are rather vague, like money saved from reducing corporate welfare tax cuts, OK? `corporate welfare' sounds kinda tendentious closing tax loopholes and improving government efficiency."
The author of this post wonders if we are seeing an editor's comment. When you look at the story now (edited since this poster saw it), you see that the answer is yes:
Some of these savings are rather vague, like money saved from reducing corporate tax cuts, closing tax loopholes and improving government efficiency.
Is this an example of editing in favor of the more neutral or "objective" word, or are some frames (for example, "improving government efficiency") just more naturalized than others?
A comment that Jay Rosen makes in his recent interview of Dan Gillmor comes to mind. Speaking specifically of the "war on terror," he observes that reporters are often in an uncomfortably difficult role simply for being the messenger:
But after [Sept. 11], another kind of problem set in. And in my mind it has to do with the question of, are American journalists American, and what is their connection to the political community? What makes them citizens of the United States as well as journalists in the United States? And particularly in an age when we're in a permanent war against terror. Terrorism is not only a big issue to cover for the mass media, terrorism incorporates the news media. The bomb doesn't terrorize until news of it is reported. And the fear and panic and reactions spread in the United States after September 11th were a reaction to the news, to what we saw on the news.
My own sense is that deep within their professional conscience and personal awareness, journalists understand that they are actually part of the regime of terror—just by doing their jobs. And perhaps have to be part of the fight against it as well. But this doesn't conform to existing wisdom in the press about detachment, and being the watchdog, separate from the society we report on. I don't think the American press has really worked out or worked through its relationship to the country and how that might be different after 9/11. And that seems to me to be a critical question for journalists to examine. But I don't know if they have necessarily the resources to do that.
From bringing the message to framing the message is not a far distance, as this example shows.
Sunday, September 19, 2004
NNA winners
Of course, my mother was a big winner--more about her as soon as I can post a photo or two. I'm tremendously proud of her and her career as a community journalist. Other NNA winners included best newspaper web page for dailies
The Southeast Missourian, Cape Girardeau, Mo.
and best for non-dailies,
The News Register, McMinnville, Ore.
UPDATE: The Gilmer Mirror coverage of Sarah Greene's award.
The Southeast Missourian, Cape Girardeau, Mo.
and best for non-dailies,
The News Register, McMinnville, Ore.
UPDATE: The Gilmer Mirror coverage of Sarah Greene's award.
They should have had Ed Cone
If Dan Gillmore was tied up, the NNA should have at least extended an invitation to Ed Cone.
Now blogs are really coming of age as news generators and movers of the traditional media. They won't replace newspapers or television, on which they rely heavily, but they will change them for the better.
NNA conference report 5
More or less to wrap up: in more than one session I picked up on a sense that there is, indeed, something amiss with contemporary journalism, something that keeps it from being really connected to its readership in the way that it should (given its important function in a democracy). It has to do with a felt distance between reporters and their audience, which in turn seems to be implicated in the polarization of everything.
According to Arthur Sulzberger, the bloggers are at fault: "too many [bloggers] simply contribute to the sense that we're in the midst of an opinion-ridden free-for-all." But some journalists recognize that their own learned habits might have something to do with it.
In "Community-Building through Interactive Mass Communication," Jack Morris of Loyola hit on the subject. Unhappily, his paper was so full of communications theory jargon that I doubt it got through very well. He did cite the right sources, though--standard texts like Daniel Yankelovich's Coming to Public Judgment: Making Democracy work in a Complex World (Syracuse 1991)--to argue that objectivity might itself be part of the problem:
And further,
This analysis sounds a lot like what Brent Cunningham of the Columbia Journalism Review has to say about objectivity, which I cited in an earlier post on the subject. It is not enough for a journalist to quote on authority ("he said") and turn to a competing authority ("she said") and stop there. This is lazy; and yet it seems that journalists fear going any further, for fear of sounding biased. What's missing is real news analysis. Writes Cunningham, "[W]e need to free (and encourage) reporters to develop expertise and to use it to sort through competing claims, identify and explain the underlying assumptions of those claims, and make judgments about what readers and viewers need to know to understand what is happening."
That's exactly what the best bloggers I know are doing.
But in two and a half days of conferencing, I didn't get much of a sense that the member papers of the NNA were interested in this other world. What little attention there was to using the web was almost all from the top down. It was not reassuring that the man who seemed to get it the most, Dean Singleton, is a media mogul.
Dan Gillmor, whose book I finished on the plane home, should be a must-read for all newspaper folks. (The entire book is downloadable for free.) I wish he had been at the NNA conference rather than where he was, at the Journalism Professors Conference in Toronto. Isn't that preaching to the converted? Maybe not yet entirely, but surely there are fewer in need of conversion there. Gillmor writes,
The winners in the future of journalism will be the ones who understand that the old business model won't do.
According to Arthur Sulzberger, the bloggers are at fault: "too many [bloggers] simply contribute to the sense that we're in the midst of an opinion-ridden free-for-all." But some journalists recognize that their own learned habits might have something to do with it.
In "Community-Building through Interactive Mass Communication," Jack Morris of Loyola hit on the subject. Unhappily, his paper was so full of communications theory jargon that I doubt it got through very well. He did cite the right sources, though--standard texts like Daniel Yankelovich's Coming to Public Judgment: Making Democracy work in a Complex World (Syracuse 1991)--to argue that objectivity might itself be part of the problem:
In their professional competition to be the most objective, . . . many journalists apparently have objectified their readers, too, even though in most cases they are not observing their readers but trying to communicate with them. Journalists systematically overlook readers' values because they are systematically trained to be concerned only with objective facts.
And further,
to remain detached from sources and readers, journalists routinely rely on experts, who also tend to objectify the public. Every side of an issue has its own experts, and every side tends to overstate its point of view so that public issues often are presented in the media as polarized conflicts. . . . [Objective journalism's] preoccupation with conflict has led to reporting dominated by extremists.
This analysis sounds a lot like what Brent Cunningham of the Columbia Journalism Review has to say about objectivity, which I cited in an earlier post on the subject. It is not enough for a journalist to quote on authority ("he said") and turn to a competing authority ("she said") and stop there. This is lazy; and yet it seems that journalists fear going any further, for fear of sounding biased. What's missing is real news analysis. Writes Cunningham, "[W]e need to free (and encourage) reporters to develop expertise and to use it to sort through competing claims, identify and explain the underlying assumptions of those claims, and make judgments about what readers and viewers need to know to understand what is happening."
That's exactly what the best bloggers I know are doing.
But in two and a half days of conferencing, I didn't get much of a sense that the member papers of the NNA were interested in this other world. What little attention there was to using the web was almost all from the top down. It was not reassuring that the man who seemed to get it the most, Dean Singleton, is a media mogul.
Dan Gillmor, whose book I finished on the plane home, should be a must-read for all newspaper folks. (The entire book is downloadable for free.) I wish he had been at the NNA conference rather than where he was, at the Journalism Professors Conference in Toronto. Isn't that preaching to the converted? Maybe not yet entirely, but surely there are fewer in need of conversion there. Gillmor writes,
Technological advances always threaten established business models. And the people whose businesses are threatened always try to stop progress. Cory Doctorow is an online civil libertarian and science fiction author who published two novels and also made them freely downloadable online the day they were in bookstores. "The Vaudeville performers who sued Marconi for inventing the radio had to go from a regime where they had one hundred percent control over who could get into the theater and hear them perform to a regime where they had zero percent control over who could build or acquire a radio and tune into a recording of them performing," he told me. The performers, in other words, wanted to prevent new technology from disrupting a successful old business model.
The winners in the future of journalism will be the ones who understand that the old business model won't do.
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Moyers speaks of Gillmor
Bill Moyers praises We the Media:
More about NNA after a good night's sleep; for now, happy to be home.
The debate over who [is] and isn’t a journalist is worth having. . . . You can read a good account of the latest round in that debate in the September 26th Boston Globe, where Tom Rosenthiel reports on the Democratic Convention’s efforts to decide “which scribes, bloggers, on-air correspondents and on-air correspondents and off-air producers and camera crews” would have press credentials and access to the action. Bloggers were awarded credentials for the first time, and, I, for one, was glad to see it. I’ve just finished reading Dan Gillmor’s new book, We the Media , and recommend it heartily to you. Gilmore is a national columnist for the San Jose Mercury News and writes a daily weblog for SiliconValley.com. He argues persuasively that Big Media is losing its monopoly on the news, thanks to the Internet – that “citizen journalists” of all stripes, in their independent, unfiltered reports, are transforming the news from a lecture to a conversation. He’s on to something. In one sense we are discovering all over again the feisty spirit of our earliest days as a nation when the republic and a free press were growing up together. It took no great amount of capital and credit–just a few hundred dollars–to start a paper then. There were well over a thousand of them by 1840. They were passionate and pugnacious and often deeply prejudiced; some spoke for Indian-haters, immigrant-bashers, bigots, jingoes, and land-grabbers. But some called to the better angels of our nature--Tom Paine, for one, the penniless immigrant from England, who, in 1776–just before joining Washington’s army–published the hard-hitting pamphlet, Common Sense, with its uncompromising case for American independence. It became our first best seller because Paine was possessed of an unwavering determination to reach ordinary people–to “make those that can scarcely read understand” and “to put into language as plain as the alphabet” the idea that they mattered and could stand up for their rights.
More about NNA after a good night's sleep; for now, happy to be home.
Friday, September 17, 2004
Sulzberger speaks of blogs
I'm grateful to Wanda Cash of the Baytown [Tex.] Sun, president of the Texas Press Association--just about the only person I've talked to at the NNA with a positive, welcoming impression of bloggers--for tipping me off to Romenesko's citation of Arthur Sulzberger's recent address at (of all places) Kansas State (sponsor of many of the programs I've heard in the past two days). I think his take on blogs and bloggers would be mirrored by many people here at the conference:
This takes us to another important on-line phenomenon, the rise of bloggers. These individuals publish web logs that offer an ongoing narrative of their thoughts and observations. Some are professional journalists, but the vast majority of them are just folks with something on their minds.
While some of these individuals are making a serious and thoughtful contribution to our global dialogue, too many simply contribute to the sense that we're in the midst of an opinion-ridden free-for-all.
While this new medium requires innovative analysis and creative application, companies must still find a way to instill their core journalistic values into their on-line activities, especially given how important this medium is for the teenagers and young adults.
The newspaper industry is clearly on the cusp of a major, major transition--the rumblings are here though the direction is not well understood. I often think of one of my favorite journalism professors for imprinting on me, many years ago, this saying: "As Eve said to Adam, we live in an age of transition."
NNA conference report 4
This morning's plenary session led off with Dean Mills, dean of the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He introduced us to his school's new Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute.
Funded by a $31 million grant, the institute will aim, in Mills' words, "to bring together citizens and journalists and researchers aimed at tightening that link between citizens and journalists, a link that has been severely damaged over past couple of decades." Mills said he thinks the community newspapers represented in the audience "could give larger newspapers a lot of lessons in how to stay tightly connected to your community." Through the a fellowship program, "journalists and scholars from all over the world [will] tackle the problems connected with journalism, figuring out ways to help journalists serve citizens better," and to help citizens better interact with journalists.
Echoing Dean Singleton, he emphasized the importance of emerging technologies: "We will become a national testing center for new technolologies in gathering and delivering journalism." Plans include a "high-tech research and demonstration center" that will serve to "figure out ways to use those technologies in ways that make journalism more relevant and useful and acceptable to citizens."
Then, to breakout groups.
1. "Newpapers on the Web . . . It's the Franchise," moderated by Steve Haynes, Oberlin [Kan.] Herald.
Haynes is CEO of four northwest Kansas papers. He pointed out from the start that he is the corporate presence, not a hands-on newspaperman. What was fascinating is that his daughter was in the room, too. She is a 30-year-old woman who works in advertising and web design for Morris Communications, in Augusta, Ga., which has been described as a "small market-media empire." The generational divide here was fascinating and I think telling.
Father starts the session by saying: "I want us to talk about intergration of the internet and us and other media. We are looked at in our communities as prime source of information. That's our franchise. There are people out there who would like to move in on our franchise. We have to learn how to defend and protect and grow our franchise." (Didn't sound very blog-friendly; I tried mostly to listen in this session.)
But the conversation quickly shifted to the question of how to make money on the web. The issue is charging for page views or not. The underlying issue is whether there is value to an online presence apart from the direct financial return.
Mr. Haynes favors the teasing approach: put just enough on the web so that people will have to buy a subscription. This has a lot of support in the room. Some small papers do like the Wall Street Journal and give online access only to hard-copy subscribers. The object is not to undercut the paid subscription base.
An interesting topic is obits: whether to offer them in full online or not. One approach is not to, because people really buy the papers for obits. Another approach is to make them available for a fee. Yet another is to offer them in conjunction with ads from florist shops! This approach is much endorsed by Mr. Haynes' daughter.
The daughter is generally more in favor of putting content online for free and relying heavily on advertisers. That is what the internet users expect, and that's what it has to be about, in her view.
A newspaperman from a suburban market says that circulation in his market "stopped growing because certain demographic groups have found out you can get it for free, and so why pay for it?"
Seems to me that this supports both the father's and the daughter's points of view. It could be a great sales pitch for advertisers.
The father is in support of "broadcast integration," "to get our brand out in as many ways as we can."
We had to quit just as it was getting interesting--the daughter readily conceding that she and her father had major disagreements about all of this.
2. "Environmental issues and the newspaper's role," with Jan Laitos, professor, Univ. of Denver College of Law.
Sockless in Weejuns as he was, I liked this fellow immediately. The session was much about the environment, very little about journalism. Prof. Laitos regularly does TV commentary in Denver on environmental issues--which he said was hard to get the privilege to do, hard to sell the fact that the environment was as much of an issue as car wrecks and crime--so he has little exprience with print media.
If you're looking for stories, he said, there is no shortage of environmental topics. He then went through a depressing litany: (1) our dependence on nonrenewable fossil fuels in the face of common sense, with particular attention to the Asian market which is huge and heedless; (2) dependence on electricity as produced by coal and natural gas, both very problematic energy sources, with coal responsible for significant mercury poisoning of rivers that people, including pregnant women, drink out of; (3) particular to the western U.S., several disturbing trends, for which I'll turn to the professor's own words:
Finally, he mentioned adequate water supplies as another major environmental issue in the West. "And the legal dimension of all that," he said, "is that the current water law doctrine that has existed in this country for years is completely inconsistent with the idea of conservation.It is based on one thing only: use it or lose it. If you conserve it you have abandoned it. There is zero incentive to conserve."
Prof. Laitos taught Gale Norton and many of her employees in the current administration. I would venture to say he has not historically been a Democrat. He was working under Antonin Scalia in the President's Office of Legal Counsel when he was asked to research and draft a presidential pardon for Ford to use with Nixon. He considers now-Justice Scalia to have been about as fine a mentor as you can imagine. Yet he excoriates the Bush Administration for its environmental policies.
Where are the environmental journalists? This sesison was very poorly attended.
Funded by a $31 million grant, the institute will aim, in Mills' words, "to bring together citizens and journalists and researchers aimed at tightening that link between citizens and journalists, a link that has been severely damaged over past couple of decades." Mills said he thinks the community newspapers represented in the audience "could give larger newspapers a lot of lessons in how to stay tightly connected to your community." Through the a fellowship program, "journalists and scholars from all over the world [will] tackle the problems connected with journalism, figuring out ways to help journalists serve citizens better," and to help citizens better interact with journalists.
Echoing Dean Singleton, he emphasized the importance of emerging technologies: "We will become a national testing center for new technolologies in gathering and delivering journalism." Plans include a "high-tech research and demonstration center" that will serve to "figure out ways to use those technologies in ways that make journalism more relevant and useful and acceptable to citizens."
Then, to breakout groups.
1. "Newpapers on the Web . . . It's the Franchise," moderated by Steve Haynes, Oberlin [Kan.] Herald.
Haynes is CEO of four northwest Kansas papers. He pointed out from the start that he is the corporate presence, not a hands-on newspaperman. What was fascinating is that his daughter was in the room, too. She is a 30-year-old woman who works in advertising and web design for Morris Communications, in Augusta, Ga., which has been described as a "small market-media empire." The generational divide here was fascinating and I think telling.
Father starts the session by saying: "I want us to talk about intergration of the internet and us and other media. We are looked at in our communities as prime source of information. That's our franchise. There are people out there who would like to move in on our franchise. We have to learn how to defend and protect and grow our franchise." (Didn't sound very blog-friendly; I tried mostly to listen in this session.)
But the conversation quickly shifted to the question of how to make money on the web. The issue is charging for page views or not. The underlying issue is whether there is value to an online presence apart from the direct financial return.
Mr. Haynes favors the teasing approach: put just enough on the web so that people will have to buy a subscription. This has a lot of support in the room. Some small papers do like the Wall Street Journal and give online access only to hard-copy subscribers. The object is not to undercut the paid subscription base.
An interesting topic is obits: whether to offer them in full online or not. One approach is not to, because people really buy the papers for obits. Another approach is to make them available for a fee. Yet another is to offer them in conjunction with ads from florist shops! This approach is much endorsed by Mr. Haynes' daughter.
The daughter is generally more in favor of putting content online for free and relying heavily on advertisers. That is what the internet users expect, and that's what it has to be about, in her view.
A newspaperman from a suburban market says that circulation in his market "stopped growing because certain demographic groups have found out you can get it for free, and so why pay for it?"
Seems to me that this supports both the father's and the daughter's points of view. It could be a great sales pitch for advertisers.
The father is in support of "broadcast integration," "to get our brand out in as many ways as we can."
We had to quit just as it was getting interesting--the daughter readily conceding that she and her father had major disagreements about all of this.
2. "Environmental issues and the newspaper's role," with Jan Laitos, professor, Univ. of Denver College of Law.
Sockless in Weejuns as he was, I liked this fellow immediately. The session was much about the environment, very little about journalism. Prof. Laitos regularly does TV commentary in Denver on environmental issues--which he said was hard to get the privilege to do, hard to sell the fact that the environment was as much of an issue as car wrecks and crime--so he has little exprience with print media.
If you're looking for stories, he said, there is no shortage of environmental topics. He then went through a depressing litany: (1) our dependence on nonrenewable fossil fuels in the face of common sense, with particular attention to the Asian market which is huge and heedless; (2) dependence on electricity as produced by coal and natural gas, both very problematic energy sources, with coal responsible for significant mercury poisoning of rivers that people, including pregnant women, drink out of; (3) particular to the western U.S., several disturbing trends, for which I'll turn to the professor's own words:
What is happening in the West, in this country, is the end of commodities as the primary economic driver: minerals, timber, ranching, grazing, oil development, etc. Why people are moving to the west now is because of what is called landscape values, and landscape values are because you have this revulsion in places like Denver--to live in this concentrated seething city of a million people where you can't drive down the interstate without road rage. People are moving outward.
They're moving to the exurbs: that location that is beyond the suburbs. In Colorado the classic example is Dillon, Summit County, where the ski areas are, people are living there and commuting down I-70 to Denver because they want to get away from Denver and they'll do anything to do so. Now that interstate is like a parking lot 5 days a week--because of the landscape value. It's near forest service land, BLM land, beautiful vistas, clean air.
What are they doing with their time there? This is the second big development: they are not looking for gold mines, or oil wells, or to cut trees. What they are doing is, they are the biggest industry in Colorado: recreating. Multiple levels of recreation. That is the new driving force for the West. The recreation can consist of low impact, I just want my house with the wildernesst, or people that want to take their mountain bikes.
There's another real issue here, the motorized uses of our public lands, the west, ATVs, four wheel drives, jet skis, snowmobiles. What we're discovering in the law, the fastest growing area of litigation in federal courts is not between sierra and mining companys. Those days are gone. The commiodity users have lost. They are gone. What is happening is you have disputes between competing recreational users. Motorized recreational users going after forest service decisions to open up this land only for hiking. Check out the web sites of these motorized vehicle associations. Because America has leisure time, money, and the space now to do it. That's what the battles are.
Finally, he mentioned adequate water supplies as another major environmental issue in the West. "And the legal dimension of all that," he said, "is that the current water law doctrine that has existed in this country for years is completely inconsistent with the idea of conservation.It is based on one thing only: use it or lose it. If you conserve it you have abandoned it. There is zero incentive to conserve."
Prof. Laitos taught Gale Norton and many of her employees in the current administration. I would venture to say he has not historically been a Democrat. He was working under Antonin Scalia in the President's Office of Legal Counsel when he was asked to research and draft a presidential pardon for Ford to use with Nixon. He considers now-Justice Scalia to have been about as fine a mentor as you can imagine. Yet he excoriates the Bush Administration for its environmental policies.
Where are the environmental journalists? This sesison was very poorly attended.
NNA conference report 3
To clarify why Byers was interested in The Great Good Place: he was picking up on Oldenburg's observation that many people live in one place, work in another, socialize in another, and feel connected to none. This poses a dilemma for the community newspaper in the bedroom community where these people live. How to figure out how to serve them, to reach them? Byers understands social capital. He understands social networking. But his solution—for the news staff to be sure to circulate in the community—stops just short of actually engaging with these diverse communities through their online voices.
The next paper in the community-building symposium, by Maria Raicheva-Stover of Washburn University, struck off in a different direction from Putnam's work. Using his definitions of social capital as a starting point, she wrote a dissertation that tried to figure out whether mass media is contributing to the decline of social capital or to its improvement.
According to her research, consumption of hard news corresponds to increased levels of social capital, while consumption of soft news corresponds to decreasing levels. As an example of the latter, a survey respondent might say that she only reads the arts section to figure out which movie or art exhibit to go to (by herself). On the other hand, consumers of hard news are people more likely to be active in politics or other activities involving lots of people acting together. Most interesting, I think, is her finding about the watchers of sit-coms and reality TV. She found that viewers of those kinds of shows had a high level of social capital. I'm greatly oversimplifying her paper and not doing it justice.
Many of the papers I'm writing about, including hers and Byers', are part of a special "community building symposium" that is going on within this NNA program. It's the 10th annual symposium sponsored by the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media at Kansas State. If the past is prologue, this year's papers will be online eventually.
Later in the day, Raicheva-Stover noticed my copy of We, the Media and took down the name. I asked her why it seemed that the folks at this conference weren't too interested in blogs. She said it was a good question, and that she herself was going to be incorporating them into her teaching very soon.
Thursday p.m.
Because the subject of potential advertiser control over journalistic content came up at the Piedmont Blog Conference, I paid special attention to the presentation by Lori Bergen (co-authored by Soontae An) of Kansas State on "Advertiser Pressure on News Contents: The Dilemma between Business and Editorial in Community Newspapers." The most interesting finding of this research is not that such pressure exists—that is no surprise—but that small, independently owned papers are less likely to give in to such pressure than are large, corporate-owned papers.
Her concluding remark was sobering: "Media companies will not have trouble staying in business, but the challenge will be staying in journalism."
The next paper in the community-building symposium, by Maria Raicheva-Stover of Washburn University, struck off in a different direction from Putnam's work. Using his definitions of social capital as a starting point, she wrote a dissertation that tried to figure out whether mass media is contributing to the decline of social capital or to its improvement.
According to her research, consumption of hard news corresponds to increased levels of social capital, while consumption of soft news corresponds to decreasing levels. As an example of the latter, a survey respondent might say that she only reads the arts section to figure out which movie or art exhibit to go to (by herself). On the other hand, consumers of hard news are people more likely to be active in politics or other activities involving lots of people acting together. Most interesting, I think, is her finding about the watchers of sit-coms and reality TV. She found that viewers of those kinds of shows had a high level of social capital. I'm greatly oversimplifying her paper and not doing it justice.
Many of the papers I'm writing about, including hers and Byers', are part of a special "community building symposium" that is going on within this NNA program. It's the 10th annual symposium sponsored by the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media at Kansas State. If the past is prologue, this year's papers will be online eventually.
Later in the day, Raicheva-Stover noticed my copy of We, the Media and took down the name. I asked her why it seemed that the folks at this conference weren't too interested in blogs. She said it was a good question, and that she herself was going to be incorporating them into her teaching very soon.
Thursday p.m.
Because the subject of potential advertiser control over journalistic content came up at the Piedmont Blog Conference, I paid special attention to the presentation by Lori Bergen (co-authored by Soontae An) of Kansas State on "Advertiser Pressure on News Contents: The Dilemma between Business and Editorial in Community Newspapers." The most interesting finding of this research is not that such pressure exists—that is no surprise—but that small, independently owned papers are less likely to give in to such pressure than are large, corporate-owned papers.
Her concluding remark was sobering: "Media companies will not have trouble staying in business, but the challenge will be staying in journalism."
Thursday, September 16, 2004
NNA conference report 2
I did note that Singleton never exactly talked about blogs--everything but. In the next morning session, it was kind of the same way.
Stephen Byers, from the Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, spoke on "Beyond demographics: Understanding who your readers are and how they communicate." He tackled the very real issue of how to find the communities in a newspaper's audience when people are abandoning traditional communities--the "bowling alone" phenomenon. I was glad to hear that he's not so hot on everything Putnam has to say and that he likes Ray Oldenberg's The Great Good Place.
He talked a lot about finding ways to reach out to discover these invisible communities--for example by hanging out in coffee shops where moms with small children talk about what's important. But he didn't mention engaging with the blgosphere, and nobody else did either.
Stephen Byers, from the Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, spoke on "Beyond demographics: Understanding who your readers are and how they communicate." He tackled the very real issue of how to find the communities in a newspaper's audience when people are abandoning traditional communities--the "bowling alone" phenomenon. I was glad to hear that he's not so hot on everything Putnam has to say and that he likes Ray Oldenberg's The Great Good Place.
He talked a lot about finding ways to reach out to discover these invisible communities--for example by hanging out in coffee shops where moms with small children talk about what's important. But he didn't mention engaging with the blgosphere, and nobody else did either.
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