Archive for the &;Journalism&; Category

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Enquirer LosesPulitzer

April 12, 2010

Stop the presses! Despite scooping the mainstream media on John Edwards and his (I always want to say &;space alien&;) lovechild, the National Enquirer loses in Pulitzer race. I&;m sure the winners were worthy, but it&;s clear the fix was in&;

Tags:John-Edwards, National-Enquirer, Pulitzer, shrinking-mainstream-media Posted in Journalism, National-Enquirer | Leave a Comment &;

White Woman Rides LABus!

February 27, 2010

Shocker!  Only in the LA Times.

Tags:death-of-newspapers, LA-Times, public-transit Posted in Journalism | Leave a Comment &;

EnquirerEligible!

February 23, 2010

A great injustice has been addressed!  The National Enquirer is now eligible for a Pulitzer for its John Edwards coverage! I highly doubt they&;ll win.  Old battleships like the Pulitzer Committee (itself named after one of the greatest &;yellow journalists&; of all time) don&;t turn around so fast.  But hey, even the LA Times links to the Enquirer now. Quite a change from when I was ostracized at dinner parties for writing for &;that rag.&;

Tags:John-Edwards, National-Enquirer, Pulitzer-Prize, The-National-Enquirer Posted in Journalism, Los-Angeles-Times, National-Enquirer, tabloid-journalism | Leave a Comment &;

Another PublicationDown

December 10, 2009

Actually two; Editor and Publisher and Kirkus Reviews, one of the few publications today still wholly devoted to reviewing those quaint things called books. But Editor & Publisher is probably even a greater loss, not just for the job advertising it offered but for its justifiable boast, after 125 years, &;America&;s Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry.&; Pageviews or paper, journalism&;and journalists&;are in trouble. No newspaper industry=no Editor & Publisher.

Tags:book-reviews, death-of-books, death-of-journalism, death-of-newspapers Posted in death-of-newspapers, Journalism | Leave a Comment &;

Will Page Views Pay forJournalism?

December 8, 2009

Not likely, according to Brett Arends in Marketwatch today.  His math is worthy of the &;dismal science&; of economics, saying that at 2 cents per page view (apparently the advertising value) a reporter would need 11,000 page views per day in order to be paid $40,000 a year, hardly a princely sum.  To earn $100K a year, you&;d need 27,000 page views. &;So long as news tries to live off online advertising alone, the future for journalists is not bright. Journalism may become like acting or being a musician: There will be fewer full-time jobs, and they will pay poorly. A lot of news writing will end up being done by amateurs, those with day jobs or by kids just out of college, sharing rooms in Brooklyn, N.Y., before they go on to &;real&; careers. &;What that may portend for the quality of reporting is another matter. If we end up living on a content diet of propaganda, celebrity gossip and free blogs, too bad.&;

Tags:death-of-journalism, Marketwatch, page-view-journalism Posted in death-of-newspapers, Journalism | 1 Comment &;

Columbia Cuts Environmental JournalismProgram

October 21, 2009

Is the force of gravity finally hitting journalism schools?  Unbelievably, as newspapers and magazines make cut after cut (incidentally also hurting freelancers like me) journalism school enrollment keeps going up. I understand the romance of journalism, but what are these people thinking?

Now one of these pricey programs has bitten the dust.   The Columbia School of Journalism announced the &;suspension&; of the two-year, $89,000 environmental journalism program.  The program directors &;cited falling employment in the field, the rising costs of education, and a lack of financial aid for students.&; The program actually sounds quite valuable, offering graduates two master&;s degrees, one in environmental science, the other in journalism. These would be ideal tools to investigate critical issues of our time, like global warming, carbon emissions, rainforest deforestation, the decline of the fisheries and the persistence of radiation from the Cold War, just to name some &;top of the head&; topics.  Graduates could also take on the appalling anti-science movement of groups like the anti-vaccination crowd. Unfortunately,  in the Darwinian struggle for news outlets to survive,  only two of 9 recent program graduates have gotten journalism jobs.  Meanwhile,  &;many newspapers with reputations for strong coverage&;from the Sacramento Bee to the Columbus Dispatch, have let go of talented specialists.&;  Of course, if Rush Limbaugh had his way, there might be an opening at the New York Times.

Tags:anti-vaxers, environmental-journalism, journalism-schools, New-York-Times, Rush-Limbaugh Posted in death-of-magazines, death-of-newspapers, investigative-journalism, Journalism | Leave a Comment &;

LA Times Flunks CopyeditingTest

October 15, 2009

A September 25 story in the  LA Times noted that DNA evidence  showed that a suspect who spent five months in jail was not guilty.  In the print edition, the Times wrote:

The victim told police that her attacker licked her naval area&;But the state&;s crime lab found that the only DNA consistent with saliva in the woman&;s naval area belonged to her. All together now&;naval means having to do with the navy.   Innie or outie, navel refers to your bellybutton. I know&;it passed the spell check.  But not the intelligence test&;or the copyediting one. Update: the Times fixed it in the online version.  So never mind&;

Tags:death-of-copyediting, death-of-newspapers, wrong-word-usage Posted in Journalism | Leave a Comment &;

Time Capsule of a More ProsperousEra

October 15, 2009

Cleaning out my office I found some &;sacred artifacts of the past&;,  as Leonard Cohen sang in another context (about the loss of the  &;naked man and woman&;).

What did I find?  I found a Family Computing Magazine from 1999, talking about the best computer and printer to buy, how to set up your home office, fight viruses, etc.  At the time, people would pay $2.99 for a magazine that would impart such wisdom.  And writers and editors would actually get paid for their expertise in technology.

I used to say, &;If you can write about tech, you&;ll always eat.  You may not want to live, but you&;ll always eat.&;

No more.

In a related development, I found a NY Times classified ad page that had no less than ten (10) columns offering editorial jobs, from managing editor, puzzle editor, editorial/idea shaper, reporter, development editor, producer editor at Times Mirror  for hunting and fishing websites, music editors, editorial assistants, and even a copyeditor!

Rather than save these depressing time capsules, I tossed them.

The paperless era appears to be the payless era as well.  As Everybody knows&;

Tags:copyediting, death-of-journalism, death-of-print, Leonard-Cohen Posted in Journalism, technology-and-its-discontents, technology-journalism | Leave a Comment &;

Hypocrisy Detector Set toHigh

October 2, 2009

Contrary to popular belief, most journalists do not have an agenda, unless you consider skepticism of what they&;re told an agenda.  Many, however, like myself, have a real aversion to hypocrisy.  Obviously, politicians who legislate public morality while&;ahem&;falling short personally are high on this list, like South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, Nevada Senator John Ensign, and former Senator Larry &;Wide Stance&; Craig. But we are equal opportunity scourges of hypocrisy.  Some examples I find distasteful: Non-profit journalism groups with hidden agendas or built in conflicts of interests, like ProPublica, which can never really independently investigate one of the biggest stories of our time, the financial collapse of 2008, because its founders made their money in option-ARM mortgages &;Progressive&; publishers who don&;t pay contributors  (although since you handed me my LA Press Club Award, I do have a soft spot for you, Arianna Huffington) Right wing pundits who blast Obama for huge deficits and government takeovers of business&;and ignore GW Bush&;s drunken spending Left wing pundits and Hollywood types who call for the release of Roman Polanski so he won&;t miss his Swiss lifetime achievement award&;without doing his time for the sex charge against a child he pleaded guilty to. Unfortunately, there are many more examples of &;do as I say, not as I do.&;  This is just a taste.

Tags:death-of-journalism, hypocrisy, shrinking-mainstream-media Posted in Journalism | 1 Comment &;

ProPublica: The Scandal Journalists Won&;tTouch

October 1, 2009

At a recent CORO seminar, journalist Joe Mathews (author of a definitive Arnold Schwarzenegger political biography)  noted that though he now works for the New America Foundation, he didn&;t trust non-profit journalism sponsored by foundations&;&;They have more of an agenda than advertising supported newspapers ever did.&; I pounced on his point and asked him about one of my pet peeves: ProPublica.  ProPublica is one of those nonprofits.  It funds investigative journalism to the tune of many millions of dollars&;but where the money comes from is always worth knowing. Maybe the newspaper &;ad goons&; the LA Times James Rainey remembers weren&;t so bad after all. ProPublica was founded by Herb and Marion Sandler, a husband and wife team Time Magazine listed in their exclusive round-up, &;25 people to Blame for the Financial Crisis&; due to their &;pioneering&; use of option ARM loans at World Savings.  They sold World Savings to Wachovia for $2.3 billion dollars, walked away and watched as Wachovia imploded from the weight of all the bad loans.

Will the journalists of ProPublica rake this very prominient muck?  No, and certainly not when Paul Steiger, ex editor of the Wall Street Journal,  made $570,000 in 2008 at ProPublica.   Worse, with the desperate straits of journalism, other journalists (with the exception of Slate&;s Jack Shafer) seem very unwilling to question what they see as a liferaft to the drowning. I wrote a letter to the editor at the LA Times after this glowing pro ProPublica story and another to Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) which devoted four (four!) articles in a recent issue about the exciting future of non-profit journalism.   Neither was published; perhaps CJR was miffed when I told them to go sell some ads (they had a page and a half paid in the issue I looked at.)  As for the LA Times, they use ProPublica stories, (provided free to participating publishers) so apparently they&;ll brook no criticism. Meanwhile, these high-minded philanthropists follow the lead of the dynamic Ariana Huffington, a pioneer of progressive unpaid journalism.  A non-profit startup will use 120 unpaid Berkeley journalism students as &;slave labor&; to cover the area. I could use some (paid) work but I&;ve probably blown my chance at a ProPublica job.  So here&;s the letter I wrote to the LA Times:

To the Editors:   As a long-time journalist struggling with the economy and the &;secular decline&; of print (read &;paying&;) media, I&;m glad nonprofit newsrooms like ProPublica exist.  However, this &;new phenomenon of philanthropically supported newsrooms&; bares some uncomfortable similarities to the often self-censoring journalism practiced by what Stephen Engelberg calls &;the big corporations.&;   The &;California philanthropists&; he works for, Herb and Marion Sandler, were founders of World Savings.  They were named to Time Magazine&;s exclusive list, &;25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis&; in 2008, due to what Time calls their &;misleading&; promotion of the option arm loan, which led to the implosion of Wachovia after the Sandlers pocketed $2.3 billion in the sale of their bank. If ProPublica practices investigative journalism to &;hold powerful people accountable&;, Engelberg doesn&;t have far to look for his next story.   Michael Goldstein

Tags:cowardly-journalists, death-of-journalism Posted in Journalism, ProPublica | 1 Comment &;

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