Understatements

Bob Woodward's title on this WaPo preview of his new book is merely "Staff Writer." Shouldn't it be something like "Fucking legend, God of all journalism, Conquer of Nixon, and Chronicle and Oracle of Truth"?

Are scoops still important?

Many of the things Sarah Palin has done are probably no worse than some of the things Mitt Romney/Joe Lieberman/Joe Biden/any other VP candidate have done, but the reason the press is focusing on them is because the press had never heard of any of them. That's Jack Shafer's diagnosis, and I think it's 100% correct.

But this leads me to a second point - how important are scoops anyway? If the Washington Post scoops the Baltimore Sun on a story about Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, do Sun subscribers leave en masse and sign up for the Post? I don't think so. That's an odd example, because the papers aren't direct competitors, but there are very few direct competitors left in the newspaper industry.

For example, The Boston Globe isn't really competing with the Boston Herald. They're going after two different sets of geographical, political, cultural, etc. demographics. Generally, both papers are competing against everything else people could do with their time: play Scrabulous, watch a movie, etc.

But I don't think many journalists or newspaper execs realize this yet. People like to know about the news, but very few have to read the newspaper. Or, to put it another way, it's not the Huffington Post that's killing newspapers, but the internet in general. The 30 minutes someone once spent reading the paper isn't automatically going to reading online news (although it oftentimes probably is), it could be going to watching an episode of Arrested Development on Hulu.

Fossil Fuels Beer

Occasionally science just makes you stand up and clap.

Sometimes a story writes itself

A professional wrestler, a mayor, and local cable access television.

Newspapers vs. TV

Matt Yglesias reminds me of a point I want to make when he says this:

But that assumes that the cable networks are making some kind of good-faith attempt to inform their viewers and falling short, an assumption that I don’t think holds much water.

This is in contrast to newspapers, which (with the exception of tabloids like the New York Post, etc.) do make good-faith attempts to inform their readers and occasionally fall short. But too often, both liberals and conservatives group all TV networks and all newspapers together, when, really, each media organization should be considered separately.

Furthermore, it's important to remember that, at this point, TV networks drive news. The New York Times probably would have mentioned the Jeremiah Wright tapes twice (once in a story, once in a news analysis) if MSNBC/CNN/Fox hadn't been replaying the videos again and again and again. This is in contrast to the pre-CNN days, where newspapers (and the NYT and WaPo more specifically) drove news. Basically, a story would appear in the NYT in the morning and the nightly newscasts would follow up on it that night. However, today, this dynamic only exists locally, where newspapers break most of the news and then TV stations simply echo their reporting.

UPDATE: See Ezra Klein make this mistake. See TV. See newspaper. Also, see nifty internet.

Too bad the questions weren't new

From the NYT (emphasis mine):

Several outside experts on contracting said the report’s numbers seemed to provide the first official price tag on contracting in Iraq and raised troubling questions about the degree to which the war had been privatized.

Why Newspapers Aren't Going to Die (Yet)

This has obviously been a horrible year for the newspaper industry, but there's reason to believe that the main cause of the current cutbacks has been the economy, not the overall death of the medium. For example, look at this NYT piece on cutbacks in auto advertising:

According to the newspaper association’s own data, the share of newspaper advertising from automakers is shrinking rapidly: in the first quarter, auto advertising represented just 2.8 percent of all national advertising in newspapers. As recently as 2005, the figure was more than 10 percent each quarter.

Advertising is generally one of the first things a company cuts back on when times get rough. Right now, times are rough everywhere, so a lot of companies are cutting back. But when the economy picks back up (eventually), newspapers should start doing a little better than they are right now.

Too Much Information

Tom Friedman:

Our toilet even had two different flushing powers depending on — how do I say this delicately — what exactly you’re flushing. A two-gear toilet! I’ve never found any of this at an American hotel. Oh, if only we could be as energy efficient as Greenland!

Not quite as bad as the infamous Peter King colonoscopy episode, but still.

Why I Love the Wall Street Journal

At least once a week, they tell me about something I had no idea existed. This week? Hungarian communist children's railroads.

Things people shouldn't write about

Metro columnists shouldn't write about baseball. Adrian Walker:

Right-thinking people in this town have finally had enough of Manny Ramírez.

What was once charming and eccentric is now self-centered and selfish. Ramírez suggested last weekend that he's had enough. Everyone, it seems, has had enough.

Honestly, I think most Red Sox fans would rather give up their right nut than Manny.

Mark Penn shouldn't write about, well, anything, really. Active grannies? Mark, can you share whatever is you're smoking?

"The Reporter's Worldview"

Ezra Klein nails one of the problems of contemporary journalism (emphasis mine):

Oddly enough, it's not really considered reporting to read Anthony Cordesman's latest report on Iraq. It is considered reporting to call Anthony Cordesman on the phone and ask him what he thinks. It's not considered reporting to read through Barack Obama's speeches on nuclear proliferation and emerge with a coherent understanding of his stated policies. It is considered reporting to land an interview with Barack Obama and ask him what he thinks, and it would be considered ace reporting -- A1 level reporting -- to unearth a copy of Obama's college thesis on nuclear non-proliferation and publish his conclusions....

In part, this is due to the competitive pressures of journalism. The journalist's job, in theory, is to learn things that other people can't learn, so work conducted largely by analyzing documents and information in the public domain isn't journalism...

An underlying worldview in journalism (is): That politicians are all bullshit artists, that politics is all artifice, and the reporter's job is to cynically expose it as such and then peer behind the curtain to uncover the moments of spontaneity and honesty. Within this rubric for journalism, there's no reason to read speeches or policy plans or interview transcripts, no reason to stick in the public domain because it's all crap anyway. Better to try and trigger moments of surprise -- when truth might slip through the cracks created by shock -- then take seriously a politician's stated plans for the country.

This is partially because editors consider it "lazy" to just rely on information in the public domain. Adam Nagourney could easily just rewrite Obama's policy papers, stripping them of glittering generalities and bureaucratic BS, call one or two outside experts, then go take a long lunch. I have no doubt he would prefer to do this. But he also feels the need to show editors he is working. So he has to call Obama's press office and ask them to put him in touch with Obama's policy advisers and because most press officers are fucking useless (the most underreportered story ever, because reporters can't afford to piss them off), he has to sit around and wait 3 hours for them to get back to him, while repeatedly telling his editors he has "calls in" and doing nothing.

Basically, aggressively pursuing stuff like Obama's college thesis also makes it look like a reporter is working hard. Note: if an editor thinks a reporter is not working hard, he will undoubtedly assign the reporter a story idea the editor has. The idea will be either a. dumb or b. impossible to report. There is nothing reporters hate more than story ideas editors come up with.

An open letter to Lee Abrams

Mr. Abrams,

Look, I may only be 20, but I still have more experience than you in the newspaper field, so I'm going to give you a little bit of advice. A quick way to ensure that journalists won't listen to you is to make spelling or grammar errors or TO YELL. In your widely circulated memos, you do all three frequently.

So, just have a copy editor (The Tribune papers still have those, right?) go over them before you send it out. Otherwise, the first time you YELL, every journalist will immediately think you're a moron. If you don't make the spelling and grammar mistakes, instead of viewing you as a buffoon, journalists might be willing to listen to you as a guy with the perspective of an outsider who wants to shake things up. But with the grammar mistakes, you have all the legitimacy of the crazy old man who writes letters to the editors every week.

So, in summary, copy edit.

Sincerely,
K.

Everyone hates the Associated Press

I had never read Matt Yglesias' takedown of Associated Press reporter Nedra Pickler until now, when he points out another absurdity in her reporting.

However, in the defense of newspapers, I feel I should also point out that quite a few of them have their own problems with the Associated Press.

Secondly, I should also point out that despite declining budgets and disappearing Washington bureaus, newspapers have options besides the AP. The LA Times, NYT, McClatchy and Reuters all run wires and a lot of papers prefer NYT and McClatchy's product to the Associated Press'.

This isn't to excuse the poor coverage or deny that declining quality has led people to turn away from newspapers. But I do think Matt overstates the amount poor quality has to do with declining circulation, at least at the level of the NYT, WaPo, etc. At the same time, I think most "real" journalists underestimate the amount declining quality has to do with declining circulation.

Why Publish on Saturdays?

The newspaper as we know it is dying. Revenue and profits are down and the cost of newsprint is up. But for the most part, the newspaper industry is stubbornly refusing to make any substantial changes. They're just assuming that eventually someone will figure out the new model - whether it be foundation-backed, purely web-based, or user-generated - and then everything will be fine.

But what if the new model isn't discovered for 20 years? What will newspapers do then? Alternatives to mass buyouts need to appear. A simple solution would be to adopt the model used by the The Capital Times in Madison, WI. Publish less frequently and post most stories exclusively on the web.

More expensive than writing a newspaper (the cost of reporters, editors, etc.) is the cost of distributing a newspaper. But the writing is what actually gives the paper its value. So why not distribute less?

The most obvious thing to do, for many papers, is to cease Saturday publication. No one reads the paper on Saturdays, and most in the news industry will acknowledge saving most of their good stories for Sunday anyway. So why even publish on Saturday?

Other papers could cut down to publishing twice (like The Capital Times) or three times a week instead of just cutting the Saturday paper. The one downfall to this is that news would get to readers later - but I think for most news, if people really, really, really need to know, they're finding out from television before they even pick up the paper. (I also think the whole issue of timeliness in journalism is overrated, but that's a separate post.)

The sad thing is, although this makes sense, it seems that no one in the newspaper industry would dare suggest it.