Nieman Journalism Lab |
- Amazon automates visual storyboards of scripts
- Magazines see growth in iPad advertising
- On, Wisconsin! What happens when you try to kick a nonprofit journalism center off campus?
- The newsonomics of the Kochs: The impact on the L.A. news landscape
- This Week in Review: Bradley Manning and leak ethics, and the future of photojournalism
| Amazon automates visual storyboards of scripts Posted: 07 Jun 2013 10:33 AM PDT John Koetsier at VentureBeat has played with the new tool that ingests scripts and turns out visual storytelling:
|
| Magazines see growth in iPad advertising Posted: 07 Jun 2013 10:30 AM PDT A Publishers Information Bureau survey finds strength in iPad advertising (h/t Lauren Indvik):
That said, it’s odd to equate a print page of advertising and an iPad unit of advertising and treat them as if they can be logically summed; that print ad still generates a lot more money. |
| On, Wisconsin! What happens when you try to kick a nonprofit journalism center off campus? Posted: 07 Jun 2013 08:06 AM PDT
And once again there is a nation full of journalists wondering what’s going on in Wisconsin’s state legislature. This week, a legislative committee approved a measure that would not only evict the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism from its offices on the University of Wisconsin campus, but also bar any university staff from working with the center. The center is like many nonprofit news outlets that have sprung up in recent years to help fill the vacuum left by downsizing at local newspapers. Created in 2009, it is staffed by four full-time journalists and a collection of student interns and focuses on investigative reporting, with a particular interest in the workings of state government. The nonprofit isn’t in immediate danger of being kicked out of their offices at Wisconsin’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The motion to extract the group from campus is part of a larger budget bill that will be voted on by the full legislature. It’s unclear what may have motivated the proposal, but State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “he didn’t want taxpayer support going to the investigative center, since he believed it had a bias.” The center has had no shortage of scoops or analysis originating from the halls of government. In 2011, they were the first organization to report on a physical altercation between members of the state’s supreme court. The sudden spotlight, and potential eviction, came as a shock, said Andy Hall, the center’s director. “We really don’t know why this happened,” Hall told me Thursday. The why-it-happened is as much a mystery as the who, Hall said: “It does seem a little odd that no one is willing to put their name behind this measure. You would think they would be proud of the idea.” Though the center operates on campus, it receives no funding from the school or the state. In exchange for using two offices, the center takes on a number of students as staff members. The center also reimburses the university for its utilities bills, Hall said. The organization’s $400,000 annual budget is supplied by foundation funding and donations from individuals.
“If a professor invites the center in to work with students during class hours, that would become illegal under state law,” Hall said. That would also mean that students who are employed as teaching assistants would also be prohibited from working with the organization. The University of Wisconsin has came out in support of the center. Gary Sandefur, dean of the university’s College of Letters & Science, which is home to the journalism school, said in a statement: “Arbitrarily prohibiting UW-Madison employees from doing any work related to the Center for Investigative Journalism is a direct assault on our academic freedom; simply, it is legislative micromanagement and overreach at its worst.” At the moment, Hall and his staff are in limbo as the measure heads before the full legislature. Even if the budget bill is passed, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker could use his line-item veto to strike the section regarding the nonprofit. Though the center has not received its walking papers yet, at the moment it’s hard to see a scenario where they stay on campus, Hall said. “We have heard from some sources that there’s a possibility the legislature will remove this measure from the budget,” he said. “Our sense right now is that it’s not likely to happen. Yes, it’s possible, but it’s not likely.” Nonprofit news organizations around the country have joined the university and journalists within the state in supporting the investigative center. Many tax-exempt journalism groups are also paying close attention because they, similar to the Wisconsin center, are based on college campuses. The reason for that collaboration is simple, said Kevin Davis, executive director of the Investigative News Network: “Students get real hands-on work on news that actually makes a difference, and these centers get volunteers and interns.” Most nonprofit news organizations operate on lean budgets, which means looking for beneficial partnerships that can help with their mission. Colleges and universities have long been the home to public radio stations, and newer nonprofit news sites are following in that tradition, Davis said. But along with that connection comes benefits and drawbacks. While nonprofit organizations receive a home and eager talent in the form of students, operating under a university can bring additional layers of scrutiny. Philantropic groups are sometimes wary of funding news nonprofits attached to universities for fear that their dollars will be swallowed up by the institution. And as the case with the Wisconsin center shows, being attached to a public university can bring extra attention from lawmakers. Davis points to a law proposed earlier this year in the the Texas state legislature that sought to define who is a journalist and whether they could be covered by shield laws. Under the proposal individuals working for nonprofits would fall outside the laws protecting the work of journalists. “This is not the first time we’ve seen attempts to stop nonprofit newsrooms from doing their job of educating the public,” Davis said. While the ranks of nonprofit news organizations have grown, most still face a high level of uncertainty, with small staffs and smaller budgets. Funding from philanthropic groups remains competitive, and it’s unclear how sustainable a funding source they can be. And the process for achieving tax-exempt status from the IRS largely remains a problematic mystery. “The concern is that other legislatures or other government officials don’t take this as inspiration to try to stifle free speech or limit centers ability to work with educators,” said Brant Houston, the Knight Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois. Houston, who sits on the boards of both INN and the Wisconsin center, said nonprofit outlets are filling two important needs in journalism at the moment by filling gaps in reporting as well as training for future journalists. Students at Wisconsin’s journalism school would stand to lose the most in a potential breakup between the center and the university, Houston said. While the nonprofit could easily relocate, it would prove more difficult to replicate the working experience the center provided students, Houston said. “We’ve had a tremendous loss of jobs and internships in the industry,” he said. “These nonprofit centers are providing a lot of opportunities for practical experience.” Despite all the challenges nonprofit news organizations face, Houston said the number of organizations continues to grow. While some are playing the waiting game with the IRS, others are using groups like the INN as fiscal sponsors to begin operations and start reporting, Houston said. Even though nonprofit journalism has been around for decades, each new test today’s organizations face provides useful lessons for others, Houston said. “The state of play right now is extraordinarily vibrant, it continues to evolve,” said Houston. Photo by Adam Fagen used under a Creative Commons license. |
| The newsonomics of the Kochs: The impact on the L.A. news landscape Posted: 07 Jun 2013 06:51 AM PDT
For more background on a potential Koch purchase of Tribune Company newspapers, see Part 1 of this piece. Let’s say that Charles and David Koch are successful in their now-announced quest (“The newsonomics of the Kochs rising — and uprising”) to take ownership of the L.A. Times and other Tribune papers. What would a Koch-owned Times look like? How would the competition respond? What difference would it make on the U.S. press landscape? Expect that the Kochs would borrow a couple of pages from Rupert Murdoch’s playbook. The Murdoch style: Promise the world to the sellers, in terms of editorial standards and independence. Then, post-closing, install your own people at the top of the newsroom — and the opinion pages as necessary, though The Wall Street Journal’s came tailor-made for Rupert. As long as those new top editors have respectable resumes, their abilities to change, in broad and subtle fashion, coverage priorities will go largely uncontested. That’s the experience of The Wall Street Journal. Rupert Murdoch’s 2007 acquisition of the Journal unleashed many fears and theories as to what he would do with it. Most of them were wrong. He invested in the newsroom and in the product, and if the Kochs are smart, expect to hear promises of such funding. (One fact not to be overlooked in the sales process: the L.A. Times and all the Tribune papers require deep pockets both for re-investment and just to stay the course as advertising slips further south. Left, right, or center, readers and staff better hope owners both have the resources and are willing to spend them over the next several years.) Yet the Journal is a different beast than what it was a decade ago. Look at the Journal and the Times in any given week, and you can see the differences — some subtle, some less so — in what gets covered, how it gets covered and how it gets played and headlined. The Journal bears little relation to Fox News, despite the fears of Foxification. Foxification, though, is a real phenomenon, and we can see its print effects at UT San Diego, formerly known as the San Diego Union-Tribune. That’s the nightmare scenario for the L.A. Times and other newspapers under the Kochs: the naked use of a paper as a political and business weapon. As climate change deniers, the Kochs’ editorial control may have far wider consequences. Editorials pooh-poohing climate change science would be one thing; shifts in global warming coverage and tone there would be expected. But it’s hard to imagine the Kochs reading their own paper’s coverage without wincing and, as people used to running their businesses in ways that make sense to them, making changes. The global warming question isn’t an abstract one. If San Diego offers one cautionary lesson about Koch ownership, look Down Under to another. There the global warming debate has been one in which the press itself is a key player. The controversy: the denier slant brought to climate change coverage in the major press. News Corp.’s News Limited, which owns 70 percent of the Australian press, has been a particular cause of that controversy, as illustrated on this well done Australian “Watching the Deniers” site. Let’s say it’s not the Kochs, but the Broad-Burkle-Beutner team. With their Democratic leanings and funding, their ownership would further roil the credibility waters, even if they bring Republicans into the ownership group and operate the paper in an above-board fashion. Even The Huffington Post, sharing much of B-B-B’s political leanings, points out how problematic such ownership could be, given the coverage devoted to those principals’ many business and political activities. Credibility is the surest loser in a Koch win — even if the Kochs should invest in the product and operate it within generally accepted news principles of fairness. Why? The suspicion of unfairness, based on their political history. That may fair or unfair, but it’s a reality, and one that is spreading to the press as a whole. A survey of Pew Research studies on newspaper credibility shows a downward slope parallel to newspaper’s financial movement. As the press has grown weakened financially, and weakened itself further through staff and staff experience cuts, the public has lowered its own confidence in the press. As an example. Take these three measures: 1) “stories are often inaccurate”; 2) “tend to favor one side”; 3) “often influenced by powerful people and organizations.” On each of these, the percentage of Americans who believed they are true has increased at least 24 percentage points since 1985. Credibility is in free fall; perceived greater politicization of the press will only make it worse. Despite that declining credibility, reader and staff loss and perhaps a loss in civic clout, the interest of powerful people in the L.A. Times offers a quite timely lesson. Critics can say what they want about the diminishment about the L.A. Times. Its news presence and ability to set agendas, through its reporting and opinion pages, is certainly reduced, but it’s still got the only megaphone of its kind in town. As Gabriel Kahn, a University of Southern California journalism professor and WSJ alum pointed out to me this week, even newsletters that aggregate local news — from such sources as the L.A. Business Journal and KPCC’s Maven’s Morning Coffee, rely heavily on the Times for their citations. Consider that an indication that the next generation of rip ‘n read — dailies’ long-standing complain against local radio news stations — uses the same raw resource as the first one, the daily newspaper’s vast newsroom. What lesson we’re seeing reinforced: No matter how much anyone may pre-bury the legacy daily, some people understand the huge and remaining value of media today. So maybe a different question needs to be asked. Not the almost trite one — “When will dailies disappear?” — but a new one: “Who will own and steer these old titles into the heart of the 21st Century?” In L.A., there’s a diversity of voices, but none comes close to the Times’ impact. What would indeed happen if the Koch brothers take title to the Times? Certainly, we’d see a boycott organized, and that would have some (probably minor) impact on the Times circulation, which, of course, has declined with that of the rest of its peers. We could see attempts to replace the Times as a habit in readers’ lives, a reach that the Times says is still in the millions. Among the traditional press, MediaNews properties, now managed by Digital First Media, really only compete on the margins, both geographically and in terms of coverage; major owner Alden Global Capital is unlikely to double-down on its investment to get into a newspaper war. If you were the Kochs and wanted to solidify your print presence, in fact, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to buy out the Los Angeles Newspaper Group‘s nine dailies. To the south, the re-born Orange County Register has its hands full re-building its home market after the destructive impacts of cost-cutting and bankruptcy. If Aaron Kushner doesn’t win the L.A. Times in the auction, he’s unlikely to move into the L.A. market, as The Advocate in Baton Rouge is now doing in its battle with the slim-sized Times-Picayune in New Orleans. Then there’s KPCC, which is still staffing up its news resources (“The newsonomics of the death and life of California news”). Those will total 100 people by year’s end, pushing more strongly into arts and entertainment, health care, and the environment, fueled by local funding that has already picked up. While a Koch ownership will provide adrenaline to KPCC’s foundation- and individual-giving campaigns and to its news growth, KPCC itself knows it’s no L.A. Times — in reach, in voice, in coverage, or in impact. With the right kind of additional partnerships, it could position itself, though, as the Pepsi to the Times’ Koch. Add it up. When the boycotts spend their themselves, there won’t be any big, single alternative to the Times for civic-minded readers. How about the journalists, in L.A. — or around the country? For the staff of the Times, don’t expect an aux-barricades-mes-freres (-et-soeurs) moment. Yes, dozens of newsroom staffers raised their hands when columnist Steve Lopez asked them if they would quit the paper should the Kochs buy it? With a dearth of full-time journalism jobs in L.A. and elsewhere, a hand raise is far easier than a signature on a letter of resignation. Even in Europe — including France — where labor solidarity among journalists is more the norm than in the U.S., staff revolts have have largely failed to stop rich conservatives from taking over news properties. Sensing their real choices, journalists have stayed in place, aiming to ride out whatever new pains dumb, or smart, new ownership may bring. Photo of May 29, 2013 protest by the “Save Our News” coalition in Los Angeles by AP/Damian Dovarganes. |
| This Week in Review: Bradley Manning and leak ethics, and the future of photojournalism Posted: 07 Jun 2013 06:27 AM PDT Aiding a publisher as aiding the enemy?: There were quite a few developments on the leaks/government surveillance front this week, led by the revelation that the U.S. National Security Agency is collecting phone records and Internet data from millions of Americans on a daily basis. There are tons of places to read up on the implications of the former story (I’d encourage you to start at Memeorandum), and we’ll probably find out more about the latter one today. I’ll focus here on two other stories with more direct connections to journalism — the Bradley Manning trial and the Department of Justice’s seizure of journalists’ records in leak investigations — but first, a few notes on yesterday’s news about the PRISM Internet data collection program. According to The Washington Post, which broke the story, the program was launched in 2007 and is designed with a focus on foreign data. The Post reported a who’s-who of tech giants involved — Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple (though, notably, not Twitter). Several of those companies issued denials of their involvement last night, though The New Republic’s Lydia Depillis noted that tech companies seem to be better at protecting privacy than phone companies. Christopher Mims of Quartz wondered whether foreign users will drop their U.S. tech services as a result of this disclosure. Now for the other two stories: First, Manning, the U.S. Army private who was the source behind WikiLeaks’ biggest publications in 2010, went on trial this week. As The New York Times explained in its coverage of the trial’s first day, Manning has already acknowledged that he gave the classified information in question to WikiLeaks; the question is whether that constituted espionage and aiding the enemy. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington also has some helpful primers on the issues at play and the key people involved. Adrian Lamo, the hacker who initially alerted authorities to Manning’s identity, testified that Manning did not express any desire to aid the enemy, while The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson explored the prosecution’s troubling definition of aiding the enemy — essentially, helping WikiLeaks publish information that might be viewed by enemies. At Reuters, Ari Melber made a similar point, stating that “history shows we should be wary any time our government announces that working with a news publisher, to criticize the government, is equivalent to working with an operational enemy.” At The Nation, Chase Madar argued against some misconceptions about Manning, and Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi ridiculed the “hero or traitor?” framing of coverage of Manning’s trial. The Associated Press addressed the unusually secretive nature of the trial, parts of which will be closed to the public, with many of its documents redacted as well. Some of that secrecy is common to military court-martials, while some of it can be attributed to a judge who may want to keep the intense civilian interest in the case in check. The Freedom of the Press Foundation raised $57,000 to hire two stenographers to create daily transcripts of the trial, but their press credentials were rejected, prompting a letter of protest signed by numerous news organizations. The Columbia Journalism Review’s Susan Armitage gave some more background on that situation.
DOJ pledges changes to seizures: The other big media-centric leaking story had its biggest development late last week, when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder met with representatives from news organizations about his department’s seizure of journalists’ phone and email records. The New York Times reported that Holder is looking at tightening rules on when and how prosecutors can seek such records, and Reuters had a more media-focused account of the meetings. Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon had a good roundup of perspectives on the meetings, and Reuters’ Jack Shafer analyzed the power dynamics at play between Holder and the press. Holder also told Congress this week he won’t prosecute journalists and is directing his leak investigations at leakers, not journalists. The New York Times reported on what this all means for Holder’s future as attorney general, and The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple looked at the implications of Holder surviving this episode, noting that “the critical ingredient in the respect of press freedoms is precisely what it has long been: the self-restraint of the U.S. Department of Justice.” Wemple also dove into the background behind the question of the legality of the government’s seizures, as some journalists continued to decry the DOJ’s actions, with The New York Times’ Jill Abramson saying that journalism is being criminalized and Bill Keller calling for a stronger shield law. But Politico’s Dylan Byers summarized the case against the media regarding these leaks, while Wemple also questioned whether Fox News gave the government advance notice on James Rosen’s stories (the investigation into which involved the seizure of Rosen’s phone and email records), and whether it should have.
Can photojournalists be replaced?: We’ve seen a lot of movement toward freelancers and away from full-time staff at traditional news organizations, but the Chicago Sun-Times took one of the most drastic steps yet in that direction late last week when it laid off its entire photo staff in favor of freelance photographers and reporters’ photos, which for the latter entails mandatory training in iPhone photography basics. The Chicago News Guild picketed the Sun-Times building, and legendary Sun-Times photojournalist John White lamented the culture that was lost in interviews with Poynter and CNN, telling the former that “Humanity is being robbed by people with money on their minds.” Another Sun-Times photographer, Rob Hart, who created a Tumblr about being laid off, talked to The Daily Dot about it, saying that what makes photojournalists valuable isn’t their tools: “Reporters use a different part of the brain. They show up and ask, ‘What happened?’ Photojournalists show up before something happens.” ReadWrite’s Dan Rowinski did say the tools matter, though, and argued that smartphones aren’t enough to equip reporters to take consistently good photos. Chicago Tribune photojournalist Alex Garcia ripped the Sun-Times’ plan, arguing that not only is the equipment insufficient, using freelancers is a logistical nightmare and an untenable situation long-term, and reporters’ photo quality will suffer. Mathew Ingram of paidContent countered that outsourcing to freelancers is a logical approach to the hard reality that professional journalists no longer have a monopoly on journalistic skills, and the cost structure that supports them isn’t sustainable. CUNY’s Jeff Jarvis struck a middle ground, mourning what’s given up with the loss of professional photographers, but suggesting that their jobs be retooled into a combination of crowd coordination and expert photojournalism. Allen Murabayashi of PetaPixel looked at some big-picture factors in the decline of professional photojournalism, pinning it on the web’s glut of images on the supply side and shrunken attention spans on the demand side. The New York Times’ Lawrence Downes made a similar argument about cheap content online, though a bit more sarcastically. The Post’s metered model plans: A few bigger stories floated by this week on the never-ending stream of paywall news. The Washington Post announced the details of its paywall, which will go into effect next week. The Post’s metered model will look a lot like many of others put in at American newspapers over the past few years, with 20 free stories a month available before users have to pay $9.99 per month for unlimited web access or $14.99 for web and app access. (Visits from search or social links won’t cause people to bump up against the cap.) As the Lab’s Justin Ellis noted, two areas interestingly exempt from the paywall are video content (as at The New York Times) and any student, educator, government employees, and military employees signing in from school or work. Blogs like Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog will be behind the “pay meter,” too. Sarah Marshall of Journalism.co.uk summarized the advice of John Stackhouse, editor-in-chief of the Toronto daily The Globe and Mail, from his experience implementing a paywall — paying readers are more engaged and demanding, papers should promoted both metered and free content, and other nuggets. The Lab’s Joshua Benton noted the unusual complexity of The Globe and Mail’s paywall. Finally, NYU’s Jay Rosen took New York Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson to task for mischaracterizing the conventional wisdom around The Times’ paywall launch in 2011, arguing that there was no consensus warning against it, as Thompson claimed. Reading roundup: A few other interesting stories floating around this week: — A Wisconsin Legislature finance committee voted this week to kick the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism off the University of Wisconsin campus. They wouldn’t say who proposed it or precisely why, but vague complaints about “bias,” stories looking into legislators’ bills and donors, and some funding from George Soros’ Open Society Institute (the center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan entity that has received funding from a variety of foundations) have been suggested as possible reasons. The center vowed an “aggressive response,” and the decision was bashed by commentators, legislators, and journalists. — Billionaire conservative Charles Koch confirmed that he’s interested in buying newspapers, though he wouldn’t specify anything regarding any papers from the Tribune Co., which they are rumored to be pursuing. He also said he sees a need for “real news,” as opposed to news with an agenda. Here at the Lab, Ken Doctor gauged the Kochs’ political and financial interest in the papers. — News Corp. announced its Wall Street Journal will be launching a new business-oriented social network, and Bloomberg is retooling one of its own as well. Mathew Ingram of paidContent was skeptical of their ability to add any real value for users. — Two interesting pieces published here at the Lab: Jan Schaffer of J-Lab laid out the course for a new kind of solution-oriented activist journalism, and Northeastern University professor Dan Kennedy wrote some reflections on his new book on changes in local journalism. — Finally, a few great pieces from around the web: A thought-provoking Twitter conversation on newsroom innovation Storified by the University of Florida’s Mindy McAdams, some ideas from The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf on why the American media screws up big stories, and an analysis of social media-fueled protest by sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, inspired by the current protests in Turkey. Photo of Bradley Manning being escorted out of a Fort Meade courthouse June 4 by AP/Patrick Semansky. Photo of Eric Holder at Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing June 6 by AP/J. Scott Applewhite. Photo of June 6 pro-photog protest outside the Chicago Sun-Times by AP/M. Spencer Green. |
“Could the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism survive if it wasn’t occupying two small offices in Vilas Hall? Yes. We would survive and thrive,” Hall said. But Hall said that would come at the expense of the student journalists who receive training and experience through working at the center. In the event the center relocated, the law would still make it difficult to work with the journalism school. 
| You are subscribed to email updates from Nieman Journalism Lab To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |