One more about Accuracy…for now

Okay, I don’t want to beat a dead horse or overstay my time on this particular soapbox, but here’s one more article (this one from the AP) that raises serious concerns about recent misfires in major media coverage. The following quote, from the end of the linked article, captures the essence of the change that is sweeping the news business…pushed largely by the 24-hour news cycle of cable TV and the minute-by-minute updating possible on the web.

Nowhere was the new landscape more vividly illustrated than this month when Nick Denton, chief of the irreverent Web site Gawker.com, issued a memo scolding his staff for a few cases “where we’ve thought WAY too much before publishing” a story.

Get something out fast with what we know, Denton wrote. We can always update.

“At some media organizations, you might get rapped for running a premature story,” he wrote. “At Gawker Media, you’ll lose way more points for being scooped on a story you had in your hands.”

Balloon Boy Makes My Point

When I posted my blog entry about accuracy in the media last week, it was the day before the Balloon Boy story broke. Since then we’ve been served a non-stop drama that started with a young child at risk, progressed to a possible media hoax, and reached a crescendo with apparent criminal charges filed against parents Richard and  Mayumi Heene. The media circus that gave birth to the spectacle is now feeding off of the dead carcass and will continue to do so until all that remains are bleached bones. Would-be actors who craved instant fame got infamy, which they will now try to peddle to unscrupulous reality show producers and tabloid publishers. There’s even an online video game based on the whole sordid affair. The one bright spot in all of this, if there is one, is that Colorado law prevents criminals from profiting from their criminal actions. Forgive me if I come across as harsh and skeptical…but perhaps a healthy dose of skepticism was what was needed last Friday.

Accuracy of News Media

One of the most sacred tenets of journalism is under fire. Recent surveys point to disturbing trends with regard to perceived accuracy and demand for accuracy from our news media.

According to recent findings by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, the public’s assessment of the accuracy of news is at its lowest level in more than two decades. Less than 30% of Americans surveyed believe that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. That is a dramatic reversal from 1985 when 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate.

What may be more disturbing is the view, held by some, that consumers of web news prefer speed over accuracy.  According to consultants to The Columbus Dispatch, readers prefer getting the information sooner rather than later, even if it means that there is a greater chance that the information is inaccurate. These ideas–that readers want to be “part of the reporting process” and “over time, the truth will come out”–are at odd with one of the sacred cows of journalism.  The mantra has been repeated over and over…you’ve got to get it fast, but you’ve got to get it right. Does that mean that you wait to publish until you’re 99.9% sure of the accuracy of your story? That may depend on whether you want to be known for scoops or for consistently reliable information. If you’re an old-school journalist it may be that your commitment to accuracy is what sets you apart from the bloggers, citizen journalists, and advocates who are willing to take more risks.

Sabbatical

If you’ve been following my blog for any time you have realized that I have not returned from the summer break this year. The reason is that I’m on sabbatical for the fall 2009 semester. I may still make an occasional post this fall, but my normal posting schedule will not resume until January of 2010. In the mean time I’m working on a couple of TV documentary projects and research for a book chapter. The idea of a sabbatical is to give faculty extended time outside of the classroom for travel, research, and applied scholarship. The word comes from the notion of a sabbath, or day of rest, and has been a tradition in higher ed from the earliest times. As the word suggests, faculty become eligible to apply for a sabbatical after teaching for seven years. Faculty on sabbatical are not simply given time off. They must apply with a plan for the semester or year away, and the outcome must be presented to a review committee after they return. The goal is to give the faculty member new experiences and expertise from which to draw when they return to the classroom. So far, my field work has given me plenty of new experiences and I look forward to sharing them with students when I return in January.

Modern Day Pirates Run Into Trouble

Pirates have been  making a lot of headlines lately. Jack Sparrow has become a bankable asset in Hollywood. Somalian pirates have been on the prowl off the eastern coast of Africa stirring up trouble. If you’ve been watching the news you know that several Somalian pirates were dispatched last week by Navy Seal snipers. But it is the third photo of modern day pirates that is most applicable to discussions of media and society because of the issue of intellectual property (IP) rights. The pirates in the third picture are the founders of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracking website that connects file sharing parties. Recently they were convicted by a Swedish court of assisting in copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison and fined $3.6 million.

Media piracy is an ongoing problem for media companies. Music was the first media format to experience widespread piracy but movies, videogames and other media are also “shared” by both friends and strangers. People who wouldn’t think of shoplifting don’t bat an eye at the thought of downloading media without paying. Somehow the idea that media companies and content producers make plenty of money becomes justification for behavior that, despite its illegality, does not seem to be slowing.

Whether or not you view IP infringement as theft may depend on your place in the content food chain. If you’re a content producer (or hope to be one in the future) you may be more inclined to view piracy as theft. Here’s what Sir Paul McCartney had to say about the Pirate Bay verdict. Link to Sir Paul McCartney

Lessons from Columbine

Ten years ago the nation was shocked to hear that two disgruntled students had gone on a rampage at Columbine High School in Denver, Colorado. I remember turning on the TV in my classroom and watching, along with my students, as live coverage of the event played out on screen. We were transfixed by the images coming from the TV and left with questions about how this kind of tragedy could have happened in what felt like our own back yard. It was not long before TV pundits tried to answer those questions. Tales of the shooters’ affinity for Marilyn Manson’s music and Doom, the first-person shooter videogame, were first to surface. Others made comparisons to the movie Basketball Diaries starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Critics of media violence see Columbine as the inevitable outcome of a broken social system where film, television, music and videogame industries mass-produce violence-filled content that is consumed by impressionable children. Today’s children are more impressionable, they say, because they are frequently alienated by their peers and abandoned by the social institutions, e.g., family and church, that, in earlier times, provided alternative perspectives on life. They also point to the few cases of perpetrators who themselves said that they were influenced by media or by the desire to copy the behavior that they saw acted out on the news. Just last month two UK teens were arrested for plotting to bomb a school on the 10th anniversary of Columbine.

Critics of the critics counter that media exposure is an insignificant contributing factor when attempting to explain real-world violence. As evidence they like to point to all of the children that have grown up on violent cartoons, movies, videogames and music yet have never acted out in a violent manner. Some even believe that mediated violence serves as a sort of pressure valve that allows young people to blow off steam in a virtual environment. Killing a few computer-generated monsters or villains is certainly better than kicking the dog or punching a little brother.

This debate has been going on for centuries and will likely continue for years to come. But don’t let that stop you from having opinions of your own!

The State of the News Media

According to The State of the News Media, a report by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, audiences for news are shrinking and advertising revenue is falling. News magazines and newspapers have lost the most readers, followed by local and network news. On a positive note, internet and cable TV news are attracting new viewers. The down side is that internet news users are still difficult to sell to advertisers.

The other problem with internet news is that many online news outlets don’t do much if any news reporting…they simply aggregate news from various sources, e.g. Associated Press and Reuters, and bundle them for visitors to their websites. This model is unsustainable if the ones actually doing the reporting are not sharing in the revenue generated by the online advertising. As newspapers fold and reporters are laid off, there will be fewer stories available to the online portals such as Yahoo! and Google news. In some ways it mimics the change that our country has seen over recent decades. We have moved from manufacturing to a service economy. No one wants to make things anymore, and it seems that no one wants to “produce” news content. Without reporters in the field making calls, conducting interviews, showing up at events, and keeping their ears to the ground, the future of journalism looks bleak…and news organizations are scared.

So if your business model is broken and your source of income is in jeapordy, what do you do? Just last week the Associated Press (AP) announced that they would take legal action against aggregators (such as Yahoo! and Google) who use their headlines and news excerpts without paying copyright premission. While Google pays AP for full articles that it carries on the Google website, the problem pertains to Google’s, and other aggregators’, use of headlines and excerpts. News aggregators have argued Fair Use and say that they drive traffic to the AP website in return for using a short bit of the news copy. In this difficult economic climate, the battle is about power, prestige, and, ultimately, survival.

Behavioral Targeting of Gen Y

Behavioral targeting (BT) is a strategy that attempts to deliver relevant ads to internet users based on their surfing behavior. The good news for advertisers is that they can target niche audiences with a level of precision only dreamed about in years past. The good news for consumers, if there is good news, is that you should be seeing ads that are relevant to your lifestyle and preferences…and not a lot of ads that are targeting someone else. The idea is brilliant, but the practice does not appear to be living up to expectations for members of Gen Y. New research shows that young consumers notice the ads, but few find them relevant. As a result, about 36% never click on ads, and the remaining 74% click infrequently. If you’re an advertiser running an interactive (read “online”) advertising campaign, those kinds of numbers are very discouraging. But it is also possible that the survey responses don’t capture the whole truth. I suspect that most survey respondents are reluctant to admit that they sometimes respond to online ads. And of course not all online advertising requires a click…some of it is simply designed to create and impression without a call to action.

This is a privacy issue, and it involves children, so naturally the government is getting involved. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is considering recommendation of voluntary industry guidelines that would limit data collection from those under 18 for the purpose of BT.

Some researchers have suggested that Gen Y actually prefers BT and may want to send explicit messages to marketers about what kinds of products and services they would welcome. That doesn’t sound like my idea of a good time…but then I’m just a wee bit older than this demographic. What do you think? Would you welcome advertising messages that were more focused and relevant to your personal interests, or do you just want them all to go away?

Late Night with Prez Obama

Last night President Obama made history when he became the first sitting president to appear on the Tonight Show. While Washington D.C. was embroiled in the AIG bonus scandal, our Chief Executive was discussing policy, and his bowling score, with Jay Leno in Hollywood, CA.  Something about it all seemed slightly unseemly and a little bit strange… as though the leader of the free world was seeking the kind of exposure that late-night TV hosts typically provide to comedians and film stars. Usually “the press” travels to DC and the White House to interview the president. There’s a certain seriousness demanded by the office and the oval office that bestows a sense of gravity to the whole affair…a gravity that is sorely lacking on late-night TV.

Some have argued that this is just the sort of relief that the American public needs when the economic hardship and the resulting rancorous debate in Washington has us all feeling slightly under the weather.  According to this line of thinking,  a little levity from the chief executive might provide some relief from our misery. But I suspect that Neil Postman might see it differently. Postman was a media theorist, and author of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. According to Postman, television is wholly unsuited for serious discourse and trivializes the most important of issues. Postman would not have been surprised that an American president would appear on a late-night comedy show. In fact, he would probably conclude that this was the inevitable outcome of a society preoccupied with entertainment and enraptured with celebrity. In his book Postman provides a short history of politicians intentionally presenting themselves as sources of amusement. JFK allowing the camera crew of Ed Murrow into his home, former President Richard Nixon appearing on Laugh In, former President Gerald Ford and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger taking brief roles on Dynasty, Tip O’Neill showing up on the sitcom Cheers, and Mayor Ed Koch hosting Saturday Night Live…these and other examples demonstrate that political celebrity is nothing new. President Obama’s actions simply take it to a new level.

And what is the result?  Postman concluded that, “Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.” I wish he were wrong.

How to turn pro

This post continues the theme of a previous post which explored career planning in tough economic times. In this post I want to address an aspect of career planning that should start as soon as you’ve declared your major.

Have you ever heard someone say that s/he wants to turn pro? What does it take to be a professional at something…be it basketball player or TV news reporter or web designer? Besides the obvious requirements–talent, skill, and determination–professionals are different from amateurs on several levels. First, a pro is typically paid to perform his/her talent. Second, a pro is someone who performs at a higher level than amateurs.

One way to learn to perform at a higher level is what Goeff Colvin calls “deliberate practice” in his book, Talent is Overrated. According to Colvin, research shows that those who reach the top of their game get there by systematic and consistent practice of their craft, over an extended period of time.

So how does this apply to someone who wants to excel in the media industries? For starters, someone who aspires to be a  pro studies professionals and their work. You can’t learn to write powerful feature stories without reading a lot of well-written feature stories. You can’t learn to direct TV programs or movies without watching quality TV programs and films, studying the techniques used by the best in the industry. You can’t write effective advertisements without reading/watching/listening to a lot of ads created by the best advertising minds in the business. In other words, succeeding in the business of media requires exposing oneself to the very best of the best, over and over again, with a critical eye/ear to learn what works and what doesn’t. On the other hand, you need to be discriminating, in the best sense of the word…selecting the best examples and minimizing your exposure to uninspired or poorly-executed work.

I’m always amazed when I ask students who have expressed an interest in working in one of the mass media industries what they’ve been reading, watching, listening to…only to find that they don’t really spend much time with the media that they want to work in some day. But remember…if you’re going to spend time with your medium of choice, make it worth your while. Search out the masters (their work may be decades old…but that’s okay) and read, watch and listen with a critical eye. I’m sure you’ll learn a few things. Oh, and if your friends invite you over to watch a movie or TV show, remember to check your critical eye at the door…they may not appreciate all of your acquired knowledge on an evening when they just want to relax and have fun!