Content Bridges

Lessons in Multimedia: Subbing on "Fitz & Jen"

In the mid-'90s, we called it "eating your own dogfood." In other words, using and participating directly in the medium in which you worked. Use your own website, actually read your own paper. Trying to enter an online classified. Submitting a community event online.

So, as I've come to become an industry analyst, I've learned a lot about our emerging digital world by actually blogging. As an analyst, I can write abstractly about the difference between stories and blogs, but being a blogger has taught me a lot about (self) editing, sourcing, web customs and ethics -- all things best learned by doing.

In that spirit, I've done a little multimedia here and there, learning what's different and what's the same, as compared to being a scribe. Here's the most recent example, subbing for Mark Fitzgerald and teaming with Jen Saba on the "Fitz & Jen Give You The Business" Editor and Publisher podcast this week. Be kind, if you listen; I'm a newbie.

When News Turns Comedic, Comedy Turns Into News

You've had the sensation. You DVR up last night's The Daily Show or Colbert Report, expecting some laughs and relaxation, and you get them. But you get more: You get news reporting, stealthy news reporting that pretends to be comedy, but is actual news.

Last week, I loved Jon Stewart's disarming grilling of toady-turned-confessor Scott McClellan. He wouldn't let McClellan get away with his week-long shtick that nobody was lying, just "misleading." Even the best of the card-carrying journalists doing interviews usually let go of the tough questions when interviewees give them non-answers, and that was characteristic of their McClellan interviews as well. Stewart didn't, and he made his point about the very nature of White House information management and duplicity.

Cool, I thought -- and entertaining. Then Colbert came on, with an interview of George Will,
whose body temp has apparently never exceeded 95 degrees. Still, through the brilliantly exchanged repartee (tennis for intellectuals), he got Will to talk about his agnosticism. Colbert's got one of the best poker faces in the biz, but you could see the combination of triumph and surprise on his face, when he elicited that one. It was an amazing moment in an otherwise curious discussion of basic American values.

That's stuff you don't see in many places.

The emergence of comedy as real news is now getting certified as the Pew people compared, in May, its impact on traditional news and made this recent conclusion:

“In its choice of topics, its use of news footage to deconstruct the manipulations by public figures, and its tendency toward pointed satire over playing just for laughs, “The Daily Show” performs a function that is close to journalistic in nature—getting people to think critically about the public square....In that sense, it is a variation of the tradition of Russell Baker, Art Hoppe, Art Buchwald, H.L. Mencken and other satirists who once graced the pages of American newspapers." David Weir's take on the stats and meaning behind that statement is worth reading here.

In April, David made a similar point in comparing Jon Stewart's take with that of the New York Times on the cozy embedding of military experts into media. David lambasted the Times' report as "so boring as to make sleeping pills outmoded". He then gave the BNET Media Industry Award for the Best Political Report on Television — in the Context of the Best Business Plan ( or BMIAFTBPROT-ITCOTBBP) goes to The Daily Show, concluding "...of course the award for the best business plan goes to everybody who’s thinking outside of the old media box, which in due time will be recognized as the coffin it is."

But it's not just comedy that's changing the nature of what we consider news, or journalism, or sometimes, more fundamentally, what we consider to be journalistic operations.

Bringing Google Checkout to News Archives?

Google Checkout has been one of those stealthy projects, seemingly in permanent beta. But we've always known it could be a potential force -- and competitor to Paypal -- as it gets connected with more of the matching and mating that Google Search does.

Lately, I've been noticed the Google Checkout logo popping up in the right-hand column paid search results. It says to the consumer: here's not only an ad, but you can easily buy here, through your new friend Google Checkout. Potentially, a huge competitive advantage to advertisers (who may be fourth or eighth in the rankings -- Google is really selling prominence here) and of course to Google, which will take a share of each and every transaction.

Now, on Google, the content world is separate. Search on Archives, left hand nav of any News page. You'll still the first-gen look there. Some archival stories are free. Others run anywhere from $2.95 to $7.95, as publishers and their representatives try to recoup a little of their investment in producing those stories. You can see prices from the New York Times, Lexis Nexis, Proquest, NewsBank, Access My Library and many others. But the action now is this: click through to the publisher or aggregator and use its e-commerce system. Not only does the consumer pay; he or she has to master a new interface, add a credit card, etc., etc., etc. Wouldn't it be easier if Google just offered a Google Checkout option?

Of course, and you know it will. We just don't when. And many content sellers will of course say yes. After hemming and hawing, the volume of traffic and the prominence offered will be irresistible. That's why Google is becoming Syndication Squared. Matchining all content to all advertising and taking a Ma Bell-like cut of it all.

Why All Public Radio Will Be Streamed in the Future

KQED pledge drive, day 143, I believe. Like a lot of public radio listeners, I depend on the lifeline of in-depth news and witty features, and I hate the four weeks of the year or so that when that flow is interrupted by The Pledge Drive. I know it's not public radio's fault. Its "business model" demands the lowly pleading and rote readings of need, a town cryer crying for support. Why do I get the plea, I wonder? I've been paying into the kitty for a decade. Yet with broadcast media, I have to get the same appeal as the freeloader down the block. But what about customization? What about a customized stream, or least two streams? Say one stream for the members -- no hectoring, maybe just a single daily ask to increase giving -- and another for the freeloaders. Then, the freeloaders can end their pain, able to listen to the entirety of programs once they pony up. It's a method websites use -- pay for ad-free pages on Salon for instance -- and one that might work to everyone's advantage. And it's one stream that can't start flowing too soon.

Bulbs Light Up NPR's "User-Gen" Journalism

Okay, forget all the pontification, the bloviation, the hand-wringing and the business modeling of "user-generated content" for a few moments.

Consider one case of great user-gen and its connection to journalism, and, dare we say it, democracy.

Last week, All Things Considered's Robert Siegel did a good, little piece about compact fluorescent light bulbs. They are now starting to sell, as fickle Americans turn a bit green. They save lots of energy and last a while, even if they are more costly than the familiar incandescent. Yesterday, Siegel recounted some listener reaction to the story. One writer bemoaned the fact that Americans take to such new phenomena -- smaller cars, compact fluorescent lights -- decades after people in other countries and then are self-satisfied at their innovation.

The writer though that was really interesting was one Karen Ellis of Mapleton, Georgia. She wrote to say [you can hear her letter here, at 3:00 minute mark] that she wanted to be as green as her neighbor, but was troubled by the fine print on the flourescent bulb packaging. The fine print said: mercury. You know, the stuff that limits our fish intake and plays havoc with that resource called the human nervous system.

She wondered what she was supposed to do with these mercury-laden bulbs when they inevitably burnt out; could she recycle them?

That's user-gen. Sure, you can call it an old-fashioned, letter-to-the-editor, but in web talk it's user-gen. A "comment" maybe.

Here's where it gets interesting -- and promising.

After reading the note, Siegel said that it was indeed a great question and one that NPR had referred it to its environmental reporter, Elizabeth Shogren. She came on air and described how she'd missed the mercury angle in her initial reporting, but how she had then taken Ms. Ellis' observation and done additional reporting.

NPR's Newfound Spunk Better Survive the Marimow Era

Bill Marimow is one Gene Roberts' Boys.  It's an important fraternity in the newspaper business, an analog of Ed Murrow's Boys at the awakening of CBS News.  Over a 18-year career there, Roberts built the Inquirer into one of the most respected and decorated papers in the country. Before he left in 1990, the Inquirer had collected 17 Pulitzers and pushed Knight Ridder newspapers into the top tier of American journalism. And Marimow was one of the prime movers there, before moving on to edit the Baltimore Sun, and then, in 2004, to National Public Radio.

Marimow left the top new exec job at NPR on Friday, apparently forced out due to internal strife. Whatever the cause, his tenure -- and his departure -- are well worth watching because of the increasing importance of NPR as a vital source of news, investigation and commentary.

Consider NPR's audience reach. It's an estimated 20 million a week.

Consider its global reach. It has 16 bureaus outside the U.S.; yes, they are still quaintly called "foreign bureaus."  In places we need to know about:

• London
• Rome
• Berlin
• Moscow
• Istanbul
• Jerusalem
• Cairo
• Baghdad
• New Delhi
• Hanoi
• Beijing
• Shanghai
• Cape Town
• Dakar
• Mexico City
• Rio dei Janeiro

Marimow was known to be irascible and that apparently contributed to his stepping aside into a role as NPR's Ombudsman. Workplaces are never easy, but as one of those 20 million listeners, I could hear the sharper edge Marimow -- first as managing editor, then as v.p. for news -- brought to the network. The avuncular Robert Siegel's interviews often had more of an edge, challenging apologist interviewees. Special projects tackled many topics including pharmaceutical corruption -- at great length during All Things Considered. The reporting from Baghdad and Iraq has excelled, letting us hear and almost see the carnage there.

Good reporting and good interviewing is always to be prized. But never more than now. Just this week's newspaper earnings reports are enough to send a major shiver down shriveling newsroom's necks. Staffs are being cut, newshole sliced and "foreign bureaus" are on the top of almost every newspaper's company CEO's "must go" list.

Sure, we have the AP, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the bureaus of the embattled L.A. Times and a few others. Sure we have newfound access to the BBC. But the sources of international reporting and of incisive national reporting are fewer than they've been.

So NPR matters more.

Marimow rode the wave of hamburger money to sharpen NPR's knife. That's Joan Kroc's $235 million bequest to NPR for reporting, given upon her death in 2003.  She was the wife of Ray Kroc, the entrepreneur behind McDonald's. Such is the way of money in the U.S.: Death-dealing hamburgers build great journalistic enterprises. Rather than decrying the irony, we ought to celebrate it and expand it.

Joan Kroc's bequest is audible to many of us every day. What would happen if newspaper properties -- and more important news-producing organizations --  were bolstered by big-time, private money? What if our models are funding high-quality, professional, experienced reporting relied somewhat more on people like Joan Kroc, public-minded citizens who happened into great wealth. There's many of them out there. It's time to see that money flowing before we lose hundreds more experienced journalists we all need to keep us informed.