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Pew report: Change, technology and facileness define the news business

Here are highlights from the State of the News Media report by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism:

Sure, we still need journalism.  | News organizations still produce most of the content that people read, see and hear.

We just don’t need so many newspaper reporters. | Newspaper newsrooms are about a third smaller than they were a decade ago.  For the first time, more people are getting their news from the web than from newspapers.

Still back to you, Walter. |  Television remains the primary source of news among grown-ups.

The new mainstream media was born with a dot com.  |  Newspaper shrinkage has been offset by new hires at online news organizations like Yahoo, AOL and the iPad “The Daily.”

The machine is the message.  |  With consumers deciding where and how they want to get news, the real power has shifted to the geeks who develop the devices and software.

Which is why I will be adding a thermometer doo-hickey to my blog. |  Almost half of all Americans use a mobile device to get local news, mostly about the weather.

A mile wide and an inch deep.  |  Why does the journalism world miss so many important stories?  Fewer reporters with not enough training and too much to do, obsession with speed, lower pay and hoards of people creating compelling content for free.  That’s not even including the singing kitten videos.
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How breaking news becomes grist for the pop culture mill in only three days

The Balloon Boy hubbub proves a rule that companies in crisis should keep in mind: News is entertainment at the  speed of the Internet.

Here’s how it happens:

The incident goes live. In this case, Balloon Boy’s parents called the TV stations.

The incident becomes breaking news. A herd mentality takes over competing media outlets. Nobody wants to miss the shot that everybody else has. Time elapsed: About half an hour.

Breaking news becomes a national story. Local coverage feeds into national outlets, and everything feeds into the Internet. Live event coverage goes viral. News links and commentary fly around email, Facebook and Twitter. People at work see headlines on the little TVs in the elevators. Time elapsed: About an hour.

The story becomes a controversy. News reports contradict earlier reports, creating scandal. Questions, rumors and speculation become a constant din interspersed with breaking news updates of even the most minuscule facts. Talking heads on cable and radio blame liberals or conservatives for allowing things like this to happen. Internet coverage and chatter multiplies a thousand-fold. Time elapsed: Three to four hours.

The controversy becomes pop culture. The people who started it get interviewed on Larry King. Leno and Letterman make jokes that night. Saturday Night Live refers to it in a promo for this week’s show. Three times the number of media outlets show up the next day, and so do dozens of other people from all over. Some bring alcohol, others bring hand-made posters. Internet coverage and chatter multiplies several thousand-fold. Supermarket tabloids do cover stories. Time elapsed: One to two days.

Pop culture becomes the story. Media coverage and Internet chatter is the same as follows a popular reality TV show. People take sides with and against victims, villains and heroes. Everyone becomes a celebrity. Journalists – many of them ticked off for being played -- investigate school transcripts, arrest records and anonymous tips. Web sites pop up.  Talk shows devote whole hours. Authorities launch formal investigations. Politicians express concern. Somebody announces a book.

Media critics blame the news media. News media blame consumers. Consumers find Balloon Boy Halloween costumes on the Internet.

Total time elapsed: About 72 hours, give or take.

(Photo: The New York Post reported that an online gaming company in San Francisco put “Balloon Boy Game” on the Internet in only about six hours after the news story went national.)
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• The Harvard Crimson:  Sailing away with Balloon Boy
• American Chronicle  |  The "Balloon Boy" and the White House:  Good lessons for not mixing "news" and entertainment
• Philadelphia Inquirer  |  Mr. and Mrs. Balloon Boy did it because we will watch
• Washington Post  |  Balloon Boy, media stunts, dream up your own
  

Former Rocky finance editor to leave the country

Former Rocky Mountain News finance editor, reporter and columnist David Milstead will be leaving Denver to join the Globe and Mail, Canada’s Toronto-based national newspaper. 

The Rocky Mountain News was shut down in February, just shy of its 150th birthday, leaving the Denver Post as the city’s only remaining major daily.

Good luck, David.
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The most media-driven White House in history

“The Obama administration has started with 14 professionals working in the office of the press secretary—and an astounding 47 more devoted to other aspects of media and message—which is significantly more than the communications staffs of many Fortune 500 corporations. But the media operation goes deeper than that. It’s more central than in any previous administration, and run more knowledgeably.”

-- Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff in The Power and the Story, on the administration’s seemingly total control of the press.

No, social media doesn't actually sell anything. And no, you can't afford to ignore it.

For all we know, social media services like Facebook and Twitter could change the course of marketing history just like the telephone, the Web and the commemorative plastic drink cup.

For now, however, social media isn't actually selling anything but itself.

A study from research firm Knowledge Networks shows that while 85 percent of people online use social media, less than five percent visit those networks for help making purchase decisions.

Word-of-mouth is still the greatest influence on what people decide to buy. That's followed by TV, a medium of influence that keeps hanging around despite its alleged obsolescence.

"Obviously, a lot of people are using social media, but they are not explicitly turning to it for marketing purposes, or for finding out what products to buy. It's really about connecting with friends, or connecting with other people," Knowledge Networks executive Dave Tice told Marketing VOX. "The influence of social media isn't at the bottom of the list, but it is somewhere in the long tail of marketing - about the same as print ads, or online [display] ads."

Lack of tangible results, however, aren't keeping companies from getting into social media as fast as mass media can hype it.

In a story headlined "Jumping on the Twitter bandwagon," USA Today reports that major banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America are "establishing presences on social-networking sites to tap into a growing demographic and to control the conversation about their brands. Yet the economic turmoil, some say, makes it even more important to reach out to customers any way they can."

It's overstatement to suggest that collecting Facebook friends and Tweeting free 140-character online messages will give a company the power to control what consumers want to say about them. That's the hype part.

But as one banking company's spokeswoman told USA Today, "Social media is a whole new world, and you cannot afford to not be a part of it."

That's the truth part.
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Also read:  CEOs won't say Twitter and other contraditions about the hottest social media thing since the one before it.

Fear and Loathing in Lost Media

Bulldog Reporter notes how news companies hate that Google doesn't share the money it makes by selling ads tied to news blurbs it "scrapes" to create Google News.  Experts say it would take only a few lines of code to prevent Google from indexing content from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and hundreds of the other sources it gleans from.

So why don't they?
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Internet scammers run like pigs to the Swine Flu trough

Washington Post blogger Brian Krebs reports that spammers and scammers are working overtime to profit from public fears of a Swine Flu epidemic.

Just days after the first headlines, more than two percent of all Internet spam tried to get people to click on hundreds of new Swine Flu-labeled sites selling everything from "survival guides" to fake prescription drugs.
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Why InDenverTimes failed

Investors have pulled out of InDenverTimes, the online news site started by former reporters and staffers of the defunct Rocky Mountain News.

I would have yanked out my money also. 

One, there are too many people hanging around hoping to get paychecks.   Start-ups have skeleton staffs, not departments. 

Second -- and most of all -- InDenverTimes is simply a bad product.  Today's home page is dominated by a story about how the Rocky Mountain News would have been 150 years old today, and how InDenverTimes is made up of people who used to work for the Rocky Mountain News, and how it wants to pick up on the rich history of the Rocky Mountain News.  

Most of the rest of the home page consists of appeals for subscribers, promising that they'll get better content and the chance to talk to editors and reporters.

There are many accomplished journalists at InDenverTimes.   But good intentions and a dead newspaper are not a business model. 
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• Westword  | Only 3,000 subscribers signed up for InDenverTimes
• Scatterbox  |  Rocky road for online news site
  

Ten years later, the face of Columbine looks in a mass media mirror

National media played up Oprah Winfrey's decision to pull a previously-taped show that was to commemorate the Columbine High School massacre ten years ago.  Winfrey decided that the show "focused too much on the killers."

One of the people on the canceled show was Columbine High School principal Frank DeAngelis, who's had a constant presence in media coverage leading up to and during the ten-year anniversary.

Some critics argue that media is focusing far too much on Columbine's principal as well.

Westword media columnist Michael Roberts finds something "unsettling" about how eagerly DeAngelis seems to be engaging with the press, considering the criticism and lawsuits that alleged he had not done enough to prevent two teenage boys from murdering 12 students and a teacher. Roberts writes:

Perhaps he's simply trying to be responsive to press inquiries, of which he's no doubt swamped on a regular basis -- although saying "yes" to every request tends to reinforce the equating of Columbine and school shootings, as opposed to emphasizing that the school has moved on...

Or maybe he's interested in establishing himself as the person most responsible for bringing Columbine back from an unimaginable nightmare, as opposed to helping to fuel problems that may have contributed to the event.

Sure, DeAnglelis wants credit.  He deserves it.  But to suggest there's no more to it echos an unfortunately typical black-or-white, sincere-or-insincere interpretation of people who put themselves in the media limelight after such tragedies.

People are more complicated than that.  And that includes people like DeAngelis, who looked a killer in the eyes and missed being killed himself by a few inches before kids slaughtered kids in his school.

"You start reading about yourself, and people are saying you have blood on your hands," DeAngelis told the Denver Post. " You receive threats on your life. And it gets to the point where you ask, 'Are they right?  Am I a bad person?'

Being public through mass media seems one way that the face of Columbine is helping to answer to those questions.
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(Photo courtesy of the Denver Post)

News from the Front

Death-defying popularity.
The deceased mayor of a Missouri town won his fourth reelection with 90 percent of the vote.

Eat out tonight? Forkin' A, man.
The Colorado Restaurant Association hopes to stimulate dining out with its "Fork the Recession" advertising campaign.

A good time will be had by all.
North Korea's official news service announced that "Pyongyang, the venue of the 26th April Spring Friendship Art Festival, is seething in a festival mood now."

There wasn't much going on today, anyway.
The Los Angles Times placed a pretend news story on its front page to promote a new NBC police drama

Except they don't use the word solutions in every other sentence.
A New York Times editor in Washington says many of his anonymous sources are like "human press releases."
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