Nieman Journalism Lab |
- “Redefining the Quote: Using the Social Web to Gauge Grassroots Sentiment in China”
- News Challenge winner Abayima takes a low-tech approach to communicating in a crisis
- The newsonomics of Tribune’s metro agony
- A court case against those skeezy mugshot websites raises First Amendment issues
| “Redefining the Quote: Using the Social Web to Gauge Grassroots Sentiment in China” Posted: 24 Jan 2013 12:30 PM PST We wrote about Tea Leaf Nation a year ago. It’s a site that monitors Chinese social media as a lens into what ordinary Chinese — or at least the ordinary Chinese using social media — might be thinking. David Wertime, the site’s editor, came to Harvard’s Berkman Center to speak earlier this week about the site and how it’s evolved. The official talk summary:
Enjoy the video. |
| News Challenge winner Abayima takes a low-tech approach to communicating in a crisis Posted: 24 Jan 2013 10:51 AM PST
Using its $150,000 award from Knight Foundation, Abayima will develop an open-source tool kit that will create a standard for writing and reading off SIM cards. Jon Gosier, founder of Appfrica, the company behind Abayima, said the project creates a secondary method of communication for areas of crisis. Abayima is currently finishing an alpha of its tool kit and preparing for a pilot project in Kenya, Gosier told me. He began creating the software while working in Uganda. Specifically, he saw a need for activists to communicate during the country’s presidential and parliamentary elections; the government was reportedly monitoring text messages from citizens before to the election. Tampering with the flow of information is not an unusual tactic in some corners of the world, whether in the form of widespread Internet censorship or slowing (or crashing) data networks. The reason these methods keep popping up, Gosier said, is because there is a familar choke point: service providers. “The problem is that all these forms of communications have a single point of failure,” he told me. And beyond the whims of governments, natural disasters and other emergencies can also help bring down data networks. For the technically savvy, there are ways around network tampering: trying to use mesh networks when the Internet goes down, or encrypting messages when communications are being watched. But those methods may be too advanced or technically out of reach for some, he said. “If all these citizens and activists are relying on SMS as their main means of communications, and they don’t know those messages are being intercepted, or not hitting their intended target, that’s a problem,” he said. Instead, Abayima offers a low-tech alternative communication that puts the emphasis on physical delivery systems. Think Sneakernet. It’s a problem that disproportionately affects developing countries, particularly those where mobile phones can be the main access point for communication and local information. If you lose cell service after a hurricane in the U.S., you likely have other ways to get in touch with people. If you lose cell service or SMS in Uganda, it’s a different scenario, he said. “When those two means of communications go down, those two channels, you’re essentially voiceless, at least when it comes to digital communication,” he said. At the heart of Abayima’s project is what Gosier calls the Open SIM Kit, open-source software that makes it possible to write information directly on a SIM card and make those files readable across various types of feature phones. If you can remember back to your old feature phone, Nieman Lab reader, its address book often had a field to enter additional information. While you could use that to leave notes like “does not like asparagus” or “works early mornings,” you could also use that to share other information. What the Open SIM Kit does is make it possible for any type of feature phone to write or read these files. Or, to put it another way: “Essentially the SIM becomes like sticking a thumb drive into your laptop,” Gosier said. |
| The newsonomics of Tribune’s metro agony Posted: 24 Jan 2013 09:53 AM PST
Soon, the next act of the Tribune newspaper agonies will play out. That’s agonies, as in a Biblical passion play. The Tribune papers have endured a special kind of agony, the Hell of Zell, but really their story is the story of metro newspapers throughout the U.S. and now largely across the developed world. It’s a moment that will mark another major passage in American newspapering, and one that reopens big questions about the fate of metro dailies in American life. The Tribune Company owns eight newspapers, six of them metros. Two — the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune — are in top 10 of U.S. dailies; five — adding in the Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and Baltimore Sun — are in the top 40, while the Hartford Courant ranks 60th. Their likely sale will be the single largest sale of metro newspapers in the U.S. since McClatchy bought Knight-Ridder in 2006. (That sale included the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, San Jose Mercury News, Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Charlotte Observer and Akron Beacon Journal.) Knight-Ridder was the second-biggest newspaper company in the country, after Gannett. Tribune was the third-biggest and remains that today, behind the New York Times Company. Would-be Tribune newspaper buyers are doing their due diligence. (Once again, bring out the usual prospects, like Ron Burkle, the grocery magnate who found himself on the losing end of several newspaper auctions a few years ago and is often mentioned in lots of would-be deals.) Given the fortunes of the metro newspaper business over the span of Zell’s tenure (2007-12), they’ll find only one bright spot in the financials. That spot is price. If you can find a buyer for a beleagured metro, prices are ridiculously cheap. Take the sale of the Tampa Tribune — the orphan paper left over after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Media bought all the rest of Media General’s newspapers. The paper sold for $9.5 million in October, the price of a top-end mansion in the area. By way of comparison, Philadelphia’s papers have built a calamitous price history over the past decade, with their fifth owner taking over last summer. Interstate General Media, like many others before them, thought they were buying the papers at the bottom, at an incredible bargain price of $55 million. Here’s the quick roll of prices the combined Inquirer/Philly Daily News has sold for in recent years:
That’s the marketplace showing an 89% loss in value in six years. Now those 2012 buyers have issued an ultimatum to the paper’s 11 unions: Renegotiate contracts now or we’ll liquidate. There are plenty of reasons to take seriously the term liquidation in Philly, and the unions have agreed to talks. What seemed like a gem of a deal is now a millstone. Talk about buyer’s remorse. So let’s take a look at the newsonomics of these metro agonies. First, revenue. Tribune’s publishing revenues dropped 51 percent between 2005 and 2011. (Newsday, sold off in the interim, would have been included in the 2005 data.) Tribune lost 5.5 percent of its publishing revenues in 2011, compared to 2010. Over 2005 to 2011, Tribune — because of its metros — underperformed the industry by seven percentage points. Over 2010 to 2012, it tracked the industry average. Next, staffing. It’s Tribune Company policy not to release staff numbers, two top editors reiterated this week, “because headcount doesn’t tell the whole story about news priorities, organizational design, and other innovations.” True, but also nonsense; business reporters are seldom refused that basic information on employee count by the companies they cover. Clearly, the Tribune is trying to contain the public perception damage done by its cutting. Informed sources put the kinds of cuts at three of the Tribune metro papers at these levels:
The American Society of News Editors annual census shows a 27 percent decline in newsroom workforce since 1989. The Tribune newsroom cuts clearly seem to exceed that number. Collectively, those numbers tell you why Advance has decided on its radical three-day-a-week printing schedule. They also put numbers to the unending troubles of the Tribune, and its fellow metros. In every way, metros under-perform smaller, community-sized papers — as many community publishers point out to me when they complain (justifiably) about media coverage that uses metro papers’ woes as a proxy for the entire daily industry. Why do metros underperform? They are caught between the national/global players and community dailies. Community dailies — think those with 75,000 or less circulation — cover smaller geographic areas. More of their coverage is expressly local, meaning the stories may touch neighborhoods and issues known to readers. They also typically face less competition for readers and for advertising. In the U.S., we have three national dailies. Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times struggle for profit, but have huge upside in terms of global scale, and we see those worldwide strategies now playing out strongly (“The newsonomics of the New York Times’ expanding global strategy”). USA Today’s options are more limited. At their best, both national/global and community news organizations excel at uniqueness. If readers can get a critical mass of news from the NYT or the WSJ, or the Santa Cruz Sentinel or Lewiston Sun-Journal, those news companies can better hold on to both reader and ad revenue. Since digital disruption began, metro papers have been slow to give up their traditional roles of delivering the whole world to readers. Much of the national and global news they offered, and which many still offer, can be found easily elsewhere by digital readers. Why read a narrow selection of truncated national stories when you can get the whole world (AP, BBC, Times, Journal, Guardian, among many) delivered to you without opening the front door? Still, against all that data, there may be buyers for the Tribune papes. How might they place the right price on a Tribune newspaper? They could start with the court-accepted value of the Tribune papers: $623 million. That’s the value bankruptcy-court–appointed financial advisor Lazard put on all eight newspapers last year. I evaluated Lazard’s own valuation (so you didn’t have to) and believe it’s a bit high — unless there is truly competitive bidding for the properties. Tribune appears to have thrown off about $160 million in earnings in 2011, the last year available. Those earnings probably didn’t grow much last year, though they may have stayed constant, given the cost cuts. Metro newspapers typically trade at about 3-4x of their annual earnings. At the high end of that, we get a number in the mid-$600 million range. It’s now 2013, though, and the downturn in advertising only deepens, and with it, the struggle to both maintain profits and a sufficiently funded operation to produce that profit. Tribune’s two community papers — Allentown, Pa.’s Morning Call and The Daily Press in Newport News, Va. — may go for 4-5x, given somewhat more stable markets. There are more Main Street buyers for such papers, and, indeed, Warren Buffett has already expressed interest in Allentown. But it’s the likelihood of future earnings, of course, that drives these deals, and by that standard, all these metros are suspect. How much longer, would-be buyers must ask, will cost-cutting maintain profits? With revenues down across the board for years, profit has only been maintained through continued cost-cutting. If you’re down five percent or so in revenue, the math by now is fairly simple: You cut your way to the profit number that reasonably satisfies CEOs, boards, lenders, and the market. Poynter’s Rick Edmonds well summed up the five-year trajectory of public newspaper share prices recently. These stocks mostly beat the S&P 500 in 2012. Their rise, along with Buffett getting into the market last year, has buoyed hopes of a new stability — one that unfortunately isn’t matched by most of the revenue numbers we see. We’ve seen reports of numerous would-be Tribune newspaper buyers, mainly in L.A. and in Chicago. In Chicago, Wrapports, the new owner of the Sun-Times, has hired an investment banker to assess the Tribune properties for purchase. In L.A., we’ve heard about interest from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (“The newsonomics of Rupert Murdoch’s long game”), new Orange County Register owner (and former Boston Globe seeker) Aaron Kushner, U-T San Diego owner Doug Manchester, a nonprofit civic group, and wealthy individuals, including Eli Broad. In one of his first interviews, with his own L.A. Times, new Tribune CEO Peter Liguori was crystal-clear about the papers being on the block. Here’s how he answered the question:
That’s not a signal for a fire sale, but we all expect the Tribune newspapers to have different owners by year’s end. In part, that’s a recognition of the complexion of its new board. There’s not a newspaper guy among them, save ex-Tribune-CEO-and-still-remaining as L.A. Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein, who is really a TV guy who came to the Times. The board is made up of TV and entertainment guys; two of the seven, including Liguori, have News Corp. connections. It’s a company where a winter tan beats Lake Effect protection: Amazingly, there are no Chicagoans on the Tribune board. It’s tough to think about the Tribune, with its iconic Tower, without thinking “Chicago.” Now, the future of Colonel McCormick’s company, founded in 1847, is probably based more on superstation WGN than a newspaper. Further, the market for newspapers is the best it’s been in five years. In 2012, 84 daily newspapers were sold in 25 transactions worth $642.83 million, according to data compiled by Dirks, Van Essen & Murray, a leading newspaper M&A firm. The big mover, of course, was the Media General sale, in which Berkshire Hathaway Media picked up 63 dailies and weeklies. Think of the newspaper market as parallel to the country’s real estate market: There’s more of a balance between buyers and sellers than there used to be, but prices haven’t recovered much from their lows. So would-be metro buyers may buy at a bottom — or at a false bottom. As they assess these properties, these questions emerge:
Photo of Tribune Tower by Bernt Rostad used under a Creative Commons license. |
| A court case against those skeezy mugshot websites raises First Amendment issues Posted: 24 Jan 2013 06:30 AM PST
Editor’s note: The mugshot exploitation industry — sites who obtain arrest mugshots through public records, post them online, and then seek money from the arrested in exchange for taking them offline — is about as morally dubious a line of business as the Internet’s yet produced. But a court case in Toledo that seeks to take down these sites is advancing a legal claim that — if courts were to agree — could also have a significant impact on legitimate journalistic endeavors by reframing the so-called right of publicity to include public records. (A number of legit news sites run mugshots — a worthy subject of debate and probably disdain — but they don’t add the extortion-esque element of taking payment to take the photos down.)
Before the holidays, Wired reported the filing of a putative class action in Ohio against a group of privately owned websites that allegedly collect and publish mugshot photos, and then charge those whose photos appear exorbitant amounts to have the photos removed. The lawsuit is premised on the right of publicity — that is, a person’s right to control the commercial exploitation of their name or likeness. I have little sympathy for the so-called “mugshot racket,” but using the right of publicity as a method of attack has some issues. Ordinarily, the right of publicity is invoked to prevent the exploitation of an individual’s persona without permission through use of a name or photograph for promotional purposes. For example, the right prevents the unauthorized use of a celebrity’s likeness in advertising to falsely suggest the endorsement of a product. In that sense, the right of publicity reflects the positive value that can accrue to an individual’s identity through the individual’s efforts, and gives the individual the ability to control how that value is used. According to the Ohio Second District Court of Appeals (James v. Bob Ross Buick):
It is not enough to state a violation of the right of publicity that someone’s photograph was made the subject of a commercial transaction. Rather, a violation occurs when the name or likeness is used to suggest an endorsement or other association between a person and a product or service. This concept of endorsement is built into Ohio’s right of publicity statute, Chapter 2741 of the Ohio Revised Code, which states that it does not apply to the
For that reason, I am concerned by the invocation of the right of publicity in this case. The claim does not relate to the value of individuals’ likenesses for the purpose of promotion or publicity, but the value to the individual of keeping the public from learning about negative events in the past. To be sure, case law on this point is not without its anomalies. For example, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio once allowed a right of publicity claim to survive a motion to dismiss filed by an expert witness who modified photographs of children to demonstrate to a jury how child pornography could be manufactured. The defendant’s motion to dismiss argued that the images he generated were commercially worthless; the court’s two-sentence analysis of the claim suggested that the photographs had commercial value by the fact that the expert was paid to create them. However, the brevity of the analysis and the fact that it appears in an unpublished federal decision make this case weak support for extending Ohio’s right of publicity. On a more general level, the reliance upon rights of publicity as a basis for a claim against these websites represents an attempt to shift the focus from the content of the sites (which would generally be protected under the First Amendment, because they reveal truthful and public information) to the coercive monetary transaction proposed by these sites. This is an entirely reasonable effort, as it is the commercial aspect of these sites that is truly offensive. However, this lawsuit apparently misconceives the right of publicity as relating to the transaction — the fixation of a dollar amount to the name or likeness — when the right more properly relates to whether the underlying content takes advantage of a person to convey a particular message of endorsement. For that reason, reliance on rights of publicity in this context appears to be misplaced. But again, the underlying concept of focusing on the coercive nature of the transaction at issue seems sound. There are laws intended to address unfair behavior, including blackmail/extortion statutes and so-called “Little FTC Acts” that prohibit unfair and deceptive trade practices. Whether such theories are available under Ohio law is a question for another day, but one well worth exploring. Jeff Hermes is director of the Digital Media Law Project at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. |
Knight News Challenge winner 
You’ll hear a lot more about in the unlikely event that the case would ever head down that road, but it’s still worth knowing about now. Our friend Jeff Hermes, who runs the | You are subscribed to email updates from Nieman Journalism Lab To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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