Northeastern's student newspaper has the story on how the Boston Herald has intentionally refused coverage of Northeastern's sports events as a result of their reporter believing that he was not...
Archives for December 2009
How to avoid paying for an interview: Pay for something else
posted by Ralph Ranalli on December 31, 2009
Checkbook journalism seemed alive and well at the end of 2009, as witnessed by two of the bigger television "gets" of December.
First there was the terrifying story of the Nigerian man who tried to blow up a Northwest airlines flight as it headed for a landing in Detroit. A Dutch man, Jasper Schuringa, was hailed as a hero for rushing to fellow passenger Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and burning his hands trying to put out the fire Abdulmutallab was trying to set. Authorities later discovered high explosives concealed in Adbulmutallab's underwear.
CNN landed both the first interview and exclusive first use of the a grainy cell phone photo of Abdulmutallab being taken away by authorities, reportedly by paying for the photo. The fact that Schuringa took photo eased the ethical dilemma - though paying for interviews is a no-no, it's common practice for news organizations to pay for photos (CNN didn't disclose how much, but said the reported figures of $10,000-$18,000 were too high). Thanks to Schuringa's cell phone, CNN got a package deal and got out front of the story without taking too much heat.
The Today show? Not so much. NBC was flat-out criticized for putting David Goldman, the father who successfully fought his deceased wife's Brazilian family for custody of his son, on a chartered jet back to the US. NBC conducted the first interview with Goldman after he recovered his son during the flight.
NBC said it had already chartered the jet for its own employees anyway, but the Society of Professional Journalists' ethics committee pronounced itself "appalled" - calling the offer of the flight a clear end-run around the ethical prohibition on paying for interviews.
Beat the Press Year in Review 2009
posted on December 25, 2009
Our Beat the Press Year in Review show for 2009.
Coming tomorrow: Our Beat the Press Year-in-Review show
posted by Ralph Ranalli on December 24, 2009
After you rub the sleep out of your eyes tomorrow, you'll find your annual gift from Beat the Press posted here: Our annual BTP Year-in-Review show!
Our YIR panel this year is Emily, Callie, Joe, Dan and Adam Reilly and they'll tackle the big news in the news business for 2009 in three categories: newsers who were Making the News themselves, Media Meltdowns, and Hype & Hysteria.
If you just can't wait until tomorrow for a recap, check out Adam's terrific 2009 compendium of Fourth-estate follies he compiled for his employer, the Boston Phoenix.
Turning seed corn into junk food
posted by Dan Kennedy on December 24, 2009
This will probably be my last post until after Christmas. But I wanted to note that the Standard-Times of New Bedford will erect a pay wall around its Web site starting Jan. 12.
As Jon Chesto of the Patriot Ledger notes, it’s not entirely unanticipated, since the Standard-Times’ owner is Rupert Murdoch, who has launched a crusade against free content. Murdoch’s man in New Bedford is Boston Herald owner Pat Purcell, who says he’ll unveil his own paid-content system sometime next year as well.
Though I think pay walls are a bad idea, the Standard-Times’ system is better than some: you’ll be able to read up to 10 stories a month without paying, which means the paper won’t be completely closing itself off to the outside blogosphere.
Still, it’s hard to imagine that the Standard-Times’ fine Web site, South Coast Today, won’t deteriorate under the new system. It’s a shame, because the paper’s original Web site, www.s-t.com, was a pioneering effort that garnered national attention back in the mid-1990s.
The print edition may well realize some short-term gains — no longer will local readers be able to catch up on news in Southeastern Massachusett for free. But Murdoch and Purcell are turning their seed corn into Fritos.
Photo (cc) by Daniel R. Blume and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
Not quite the apocalypse after all
posted by Dan Kennedy on December 22, 2009
If you'd paid attention to the horrifying forecasts of the last year, you might have predicted we'd head into 2010 with no newspapers at all, either in print or online. Among the papers threatened with closure were the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and even — in the fevered imagination of former Wall Street bad boy Henry Blodget — the mighty New York Times.
But though 2009 was indeed a very bad year for the newspaper industry, it didn't live up to the hype — a development for which we should all be grateful. In my latest commentary for the Guardian, I try to figure out what went right. And I identify three possible reasons:
- Corporate debt at chains like Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, made newspapers look sicker than they really were. In fact, most papers are still taking in more money than they spend — just not enough to pay for all the borrowing incurred by their empire-building overlords.
- Much as it pains me to say it, newspapers are still well-positioned to keep cutting their newsrooms, given the unprecedented growth many of them experienced during the golden years of 1960 to 2005. For instance: Did you know that the Washington Post employed fewer than half as many journalists during the glory days of Watergate than it does today?
- Publishers are finally getting smart about innovative ways to extract money from readers and advertisers. Electronic distribution through non-Web outlets such as the Kindle and GlobeReader, and talk of an alliance between newspaper companies and Microsoft's Bing, could make for a better 2010.
Another reason why 'Climategate' doesn't matter
posted by Ralph Ranalli on December 21, 2009
Throughout this month, our friend Dan Kennedy has produced an interesting series of posts on his Media Nation blog around the topic "Why Climategate doesn't matter."
In his half-dozen posts on the subject, he cites a variety of environmental examples of warming, including: cross-Arctic ship travel, disappearing Alaskan permafrost, shrinking Antarctic ice, dying coral reefs, stressed maple trees, and, most recently, a species of penguin that appears headed toward extinction.
Good examples all, but I also think there's a larger point to be made about why - despite the exhortations of climate skeptics, warming deniers, Fox News anchors, and Wall Street Journal editorial writers - the media shouldn't get drawn into covering climate science as if it were simply a debate between opposing sides.
I'm not saying there isn't a scientific debate. In fact, let's assume for the moment that there is a legitimate two-sided argument rather than an emerging global scientific consensus that man-made emissions are warming the planet. The point is that it doesn't matter.
The fundamental issue surrounding climate change - and the one the media should be using to frame the discussion - is logic, not science.
Imagine you're the captain of a supertanker. The sonar and radar are on the fritz, but your lookout reports a dark mass in the water about a mile dead ahead. It could very well be a harmless algae bloom, your navigator says, but it could also be an uncharted reef. Since it takes a mile to turn the ship out of the way, do you: A) Wait until you've confirmed whether its algae or a reef before taking action? Or B) Turn the ship as a precaution, even though your new course may make the trip less convenient and more expensive?
The logical answer, of course, is B. But the climate deniers and the media outlets covering the issue as a he-said, she-said seem to have tuned out their inner Mr. Spock. I've seen a hundred purported reasons why man-made climate change may not be happening, but not a single offer of definitive proof that it actually isn't - which would be the only conceivable argument for non-action.
In other words, the media should be putting the burden of proof on the skeptics, who are asking the human race to stake its future on the fact that their side is right, not on a handful of scientists from an obscure university northwest of London.
Anything else would not only be disingenuous, but also a monumental failure of the media's mission to the public and the planet.
Promoting ennui
posted by Jon Keller on December 21, 2009
Eric Moskowitz of the Globe is a good reporter, but his talents were misused in today's piece repeating a tired, damaging, and - in my view - false bit of conventional wisdom: that no one will be paying attention to the US Senate race between now and the first working day of the new year, January 4.
Yes, public interest in the Senate primaries was appallingly low. Yes, the unusual timing of them aggravated the problem. But does it occur to those insisting these last two weeks of the year are a black hole for this very important race that they may be perpetuating a self-fulfilling prophecy?
This abbreviated campaign features articulate major-party nominees whose positions on most issues couldn't be more different (and evenincludes a libertarian Kennedy - no relation to the famous family - who may well help spice things up). I fully expect that when they meet in their first joint appearance tonight at 8pm on Dan Rea's WBZ Radio show and tomorrow night at 7pm in their first TV debate in the WBZ-TV studios with yours trule moderating (a program streaming live on www.wbztv.com and airing Sun. Dec. 27 at 8am on Channel 4 and Mon. Dec. 28 at 7pm on TV38), their differences will make for lively, informative listening and viewing.
There is no reason to think that holiday shoppers on their way home from the malls won't tune in to at least part of Rea's show, or that interested citizens won't bother to catch some of the debate's two TV airings or log on to watch it online at their convenience over the next two weeks. I was in Iowa over the New Year's holiday last winter and found caucus-goers fully capable of focusing their attention on the presidential race, as were New Hampshire primary voters who went to the polls a week later. There is no evidence - especially here in Massachusetts where we've never had this "problem" before - to prove that voters won't pay any heed during this period...unless they are so barraged with careless news coverage of the alleged phenomenon of their mass indifference, that they come to believe it is expected of them.
A teacher's lament
posted by Jon Keller on December 21, 2009
Make time to read my fellow BTP panelist Kara Miller's provocative op-ed in today's Globe. And check out the avalanche of comments -- Kara, you really hit a nerve!
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8 comments
Panel Peeves
posted on December 18, 2009
Our panelists sound off on media issues that annoyed them this week.
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3 comments
The NY Post hires Ashley Dupre as a columnist
posted on December 18, 2009
The NY Post hires Ashley Dupre, the call girl who derailed Eliot Spitzer's political career, to write a sex and relationship column. Was this a smart business decision, or is it over the line?
