The owner of the company that publishes the two papers, Troy Gustavson, wrote a column yesterday speculating that the buy-up might have been the work of “someone involved in a truly monumental school project; someone really proud of their grandchild on the honor roll; someone with a great deal of precious glassware to pack; or, as I suspect, someone intent on suppressing the dissemination of a particular news story.” Could it have been football players, particularly proud of their latest win? Politicians weary of attack ads? The local doctor who was arrested for medicare fraud in an antiquated attempt to clear his name?

The doctor claims that such is not so, and his lawyer assured the New York Times that, “He didn’t do it, and he didn’t tell someone to do it.” And anyways, his story remains easily accessible online.

The mystery continues to excite the papers, and yesterday the Suffolk Times launched their own mini-investigation, obtaining surveillance footage from one of the hit 7-11′s in hopes of identifying the buyers. The woman they report, was “wearing a blue sweatshirt, jeans, white sneakers and glasses,” and told the clerk that she needed the papers — but specifically the Times and the News-Review and not Newsday or The Southampton Press — for moving. It took her three trips to get the full stack out of the store and into her trunk. Whatever the project may be, it sounds neither cheap (the papers go for a $1.50 per pop) nor like light lifting.

h/t Pats Papers

So: It’s not terribly surprising that the former Governor of Alaska would publicly mock Couric for leaving her post as anchor of CBS Evening News.

On Tuesday, Palin told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that she wishes Couric well in her quest to move beyond reading a teleprompter. Well, then:

Yeah, and I hear that she wants to now engage in more “multi-dimensional story telling” versus I guess just the “straight on, read into the, that teleprompter screen story telling.” More power to her. I wish her well in her – “multi-dimensional story telling.”

Palin noted that she had read about Couric’s decision “in a newspaper, one of many newspapers that I read online.”

Take a look at the clip, via Fox News:

Leave it to Malcolm Gladwell to come up with a reason why journalism – particularly magazine writing – will survive. Gladwell believes that even if a tiny percentage of people in the world value and subscribe to publications like the New Yorker then that actually translates into a large enough number to sustain the industry. But Gladwell also warned in his chat with his friend, colleague, and debating partner Adam Gopnik that it’s not often that his theories get substantiated by subsequent events.

The truth behind that reality may not lie in the fact that Gladwell’s frequently wrong but in the fact that his opinions often change. For instance, when the two sat down a decade ago for their first of these series of public conversations, Gladwell took a libertarian approach to handling American health care. Over time, however, he’s warmed up to a more nationalist view, thanks in part to Gopnik’s convincing. It also doesn’t hurt that the pair both hail from Canada.

In fact, Canada took on a central role to the debate as the two reminisced about Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and outlined reasons why Canadian culture excels above its American counterpart. President Obama, they said, could learn a thing or two from Trudeau about how to curry favor from his people by expressing contempt for political office. Gladwell also noted that if Americans don’t want Obama, Canada would be happy to take him.

Gopnik led the discussion brilliantly, tying together disparate subjects under larger rubrics like “autonomy.” He connected their conversations about health care and the NFL in Gladwellian ways. But it was Gopnik’s comments on the iPad that were particularly noteworthy. The telegraph should have logically been followed by something like the iPad. Technological innovation, Gopnik said, tends to make handheld versions of existing devices before moving on to new products. So the iPad should have been invented before the telephone.

They asked the audience to imagine how revolutionary the phone would have seemed had it been announced last month instead of the iPad. These types of thought exercises govern how Gladwell views the world.

What They Said
“Our shared motto’s ‘Have check, will argue.’”
- Adam Gopnik says he’s willing to sit down with Malcolm Gladwell any time, any place.

“Maybe what America is is just the idealized male world and the rest of the world if the idealized female world.”
– Malcolm Gladwell explains health care – and why we screw some other areas of the world

“He has the courage to stand up to those who say ‘No way’ and to say ‘Way.’”
- Malcolm Gladwell describes what he wants his tombstone to say, and he wants it written by “Wayne’s World”

“It’s a writing culture and a quick-take culture, but not a reading culture.”
– Adam Gopnik wonders if his teenage son can appreciate the longform magazine reading that his father does for a living

What We Thought

• Despite leaving Canada, both Gopnik and Gladwell hold their home country in high regard. Gladwell says that part of evaluating a nation’s worth is recognizing who has also left the country. We liked this thinking, though we do question why someone would leave if it’s such a great place to live.
• We were fascinated by the pair’s views on New York as a city that succeeds thanks to its hospitality to outsiders. If people worldwide were more accepting, New York wouldn’t welcome as many immigrants. The spread of global democracy, they say, will take its toll on New York. We wonder if New York is the model for what is possible or if it’s just a form of an orphanage.

PANEL RULES!
Some audience behavior seems to repeat itself panel after panel. We’ll be updating a running list of “PANEL RULES!” that will help ensure that you are not the dweeb of the Panel Nerds.

Panel Nerds don’t like…Generalizers
Most of the questions, as you would imagine, were directed at Gladwell and his take on things. Some of the questions dealt directly with topics he’s discussed in his works, while others addressed new ideas. But one stood out as particularly outlandish. Someone asked Gladwell how he felt about values and “what can be done.” What values? Whose values? What circumstances involved? It wasn’t clear. Gladwell and Gopnik laughed off the question, saying they are in favor of values. Then they moved onto the next question. If you’re going to go broad with a question, you must eventually come in closer. Staying at a far distance won’t bring you the answers you seek.

For John Nichols and Robert McChesney, this was a book promotional event and an opportunity to outline their recommendations to save traditional journalism. It was a setup for a predictable night full of previews of what’s contained inside yet another “save journalism” solution book. Yet, thankfully, David Carr took a topic that has been spoken about to death and breathed new life into the discussion.

That’s not to say the writers didn’t have a great deal to suggest and share – their $30 billion recommended government subsidy has generated much attention. In fact, both Carr and Pamela Newkirk had read and digested the pair’s book in anticipation of the panel and referenced specifics in their insights and responses. It was Carr, however, who stirred the pot by taking issue with the pair’s controversial plan to get government heavily involved with journalism’s resurrection. While Carr believes that government can play a role, he questions whether a government-run press will actually lead to watchdog journalism that capably patrols the institutions that feed it.

And so the debate began and never really ceased. Both Nichols and McChesney were civil in their defenses. McChesney argued that their book is not intended to be the end-all and be-all of journalism solutions, but was written to get the discussion going. (That “just getting the ball rolling” position reminded us of the Freakonomics duo.) He said that before 1875 – when advertising began to fund and fuel the media – the U.S. government paid for the press, and there’s no reason we can’t return to a similar model in order to bail newspapers out during their toughest times.

Newkirk didn’t offer any solutions, but did say enrollment numbers at journalism schools are on the rise. She added that while the internet is ushering in a new era of media, it isn’t designed as a substitute for newspaper reporting. A true replacement with a major overhaul might not come any time soon either. Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that there are some opportunities available for those seeking them.

What They Said
“It’s an acute crisis, not something that can wait five years or ten years to shake out.”
- Pamela Newkirk is growing more concerned about fixing journalism

“This is a problem with a media system that treats people as nitwits and [therefore] doesn’t give them the information.”
- John Nichols thinks that improvements begin with attitude, not finances. He also uses the word “nitwits.” Nice.

“I plan to continue covering the media until I write about myself: ‘David Carr got laid off today.’”
- David Carr is going to create another Moses conundrum

“We will always have news, but it will be journalism-free news.”
- Bob McChesney believes that newspapers have already begun to loosen their ethical standards to cater to those with agendas to push. This is like soy “milk.” Can we really still call it newspapers?

What We Thought

• Before giving his first remarks, Carr thanked everyone in attendance for coming out and showing their concern for the future of the press. He seemed to appreciate that at least 100 people chose a journalism program over Avatar. Imagine how big a crowd they’d get if they did the panel in 3-D.
• McChesney gave a statistic that 86 percent of stories that came out of Baltimore newspapers last year originated from public relations companies and press releases. We at first balked at that number, before recognizing what a service these releases provide. It’s not a message about laziness or influence, but one about making the most of limited resources.
• We liked that McChesney and Nichols were so honest and up front about how difficult it is to make money online – only about 2,500 journalists do it. The internet is simultaneously giving journalists future paths and holding them back. The internet is to journalists what alcohol is to Homer Simpson: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.

PANEL RULES!
Some audience behavior seems to repeat itself panel after panel. We’ll be updating a running list of “PANEL RULES!” that will help ensure that you are not the dweeb of the Panel Nerds.

Panel Nerds don’t like… An Arm Around the Girlfriend
For the most part, we were thoroughly impressed with Laura Flanders’ managing of the panel. But midway through the Q&A section – during which she was handed business cards with prepared questions – Flanders read three questions in succession in order to speed up the process. She then asked the panel to chime in on any of their choice. This reminded us of our high school teacher’s admonishment that “if you drive with one arm on the steering wheel, and one arm around your girlfriend, you’re not paying enough attention to driving – or to your girlfriend.”  If questions are good enough to ask and entertain, they deserve time and investment. But to packages three questions together like that does a disservice to the panel. It’s better, in our opinion, to just get to fewer questions than you’d have liked.

When the Congressional debate of health care kicked into high gear Saturday afternoon, many news outlets had their coverage follow — from endless updates on the Huffington Post to CSPAN’s exhaustive video cataloging. Meanwhile, printed newspapers doubtlessly spent the day preparing their Sunday covers — unable to foresee exactly how the vote and bill would shake out, but fully aware of its inevitable headline grabbing appeal.

With the debate and vote pushing late into the night, it must have been a scramble — there are matters of placement, prominence, photo selection and of course, headlines.

In some papers the story receives top billing, while other relegate it to a smaller side column. The results vary across the nation, but provide an interesting look into the disparate layouts of the nation’s prominent printed papers.

Using the Today’s Front Pages feature of Newseum as a resource, we’ve collected some of the standout covers from this Sunday, November 8, 2009.

From South Carolina to California to New York City — here are today’s covers from around the United States!

]]> http://www.mediaite.com/print/the-nations-newspapers-react-to-health-care-bill-on-sunday-covers/feed/ 0 http://www.mediaite.com/print/obamas-newspaper-bailout-fact-or-fiction/ http://www.mediaite.com/print/obamas-newspaper-bailout-fact-or-fiction/#comments Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:01:15 +0000 Robert Quigley http://www.mediaite.com/?p=26228 President Barack Obama weighed in on the shambolic state of the newspaper industry yesterday, and said that he'd be "happy to look at" legislation that let newspapers get tax breaks if they restructured as nonprofits.]]>

Self-described “newspaper junkie” President Barack Obama weighed in on the shambolic state of the newspaper industry yesterday, and said that he’d be “happy to look at” legislation that let newspapers get tax breaks if they restructured as nonprofits.

Naturally, this is already being spun to oblivion as the door to another accursed bailout. But does that storyline check out?

Two notes:

1. Though this has already spawned headlines like “Obama open to newspaper bailout bill” and “Obama considers newspaper bailout,” in the context of his interview with the editors of the Toledo Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Obama’s was a vague and noncommittal statement; he was asked about specific legislation, said he’d be open to it in theory, and moved on.

2. Even if Obama put his weight behind the main bill under consideration — which he hasn’t at all — it’s not exactly a “bailout” in the sense of giving public money to papers; rather, it reduces their tax burden if they become nonprofits.

The Hill‘s Blog Briefing Room describes the current frontrunner in the Senate as “S. 673, the so-called “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations.” Here’s a fuller summary, from THOMAS:

[S. 673] Amends the Internal Revenue Code to exempt from income taxation a newspaper corporation or organization if: (1) it publishes on a regular basis a newspaper for general circulation; (2) its newspaper contains local, national, and international news stories of interest to the general public and the distribution of such newspaper is necessary or valuable in achieving an educational purpose; and (3) the preparation of the material contained in such newspaper follows a methodology generally accepted as educational.

Exempts the advertising income of a tax-exempt newspaper corporation or organization from taxation as unrelated business income and allows a charitable tax deduction for contributions to such newspaper corporation or organization.

There’s a lot to pick at in that language: “educational” is always a loaded word (do Lifestyle section articles on Megan Fox count?), and the rules on advertising at the end sound like a potentially exploitable loophole. But if the bill went forward, it would probably be tightened up, and anyway the bill has been sitting around in committee since March, not the best sign for its viability. So: huge leap to make this Obama’s baby.

Remember, kids: if Obama kind of sounds like he’s sort of saying something about something, it’s not always a fiery bailout proposal and/or socialism.

via The Daily Beast

Rather than expressing appreciation for this turn of the tables, Greenwald had some reservations about the piece:

What “basic journalist” ethic has been violated by the posting of those emails? Be specific.
Is that kind the of “journalism” you practice — you only publish things if the subject of what you’re publishing authorizes you to do so and gives you permission? What’s the source of my “ethical obligation’ to keep those documents confidential?

Speaking of “journalistic ethics,” you just wrote a piece accusing me of violating journalistic ethics. Have you ever heard of the ethical rule about including the side of the story of the person you’re accusing? I have a long, detailed post today responding to this accusation that you not only failed to link to, but even failed to summarize or acknowledge at all — to say nothing of your failure to seek my comment. That’s what is called a failure of journalistic ethics.

When I wrote that commentary, I was under the impression that Glenn had received the emails himself, as a member of Journolist. I got that impression from the website on which he posted them, which lists no other source for the emails.

Had I seen Greenwald’s followup on Salon, I would have noted this attribution:

I’m not a member (of Journolist) and never have been. Yesterday morning, one of the participants (whose identity I don’t know) emailed me to advise me that Joe Klein was sending out extremely insulting and derogatory emails to the entire group about me, and forwarded that email discus sion to me, telling me he thought it was wrong that I was being repeatedly attacked by Klein in front of hundreds of people — including many people who are my colleagues and peers — without my knowledge and without being able to defend myself.

Having now seen that, I no longer agree that Greenwald had a duty to keep these off the record (a conclusion with which Dan Abrams agrees), but that he did have a duty to include the attribution when he posted the emails.

On the other hand, I could have easily checked Salon for a response from Greenwald, but didn’t. Believing that he was the recipient of the email, it wasn’t necessary to the piece.

After a series of nasty emails, Greenwald and I spoke on the phone this morning, and are no longer mutually convinced that the other is a journalistic Satan.

Writing for Editor & Publisher Joe Strupp reports:

“The site will offer in-depth coverage of University of Alabama athletics, including specialized blogs, forums, user profiles and video,” an announcement stated.

Added Chris Rattey, the News’ director of new media: “TideSportsExtra provides University of Alabama fans with content they cannot get anywhere else. With photos, blogs, video and extensive coverage, the site will offer an unparalleled fan experience.”

Among the paid-only items on the site will be columnist Cecil Hurt’s new blog, along with his columns and Internet talk show. “In addition to experiencing richer content, Web site users will be able to engage and participate more easily with comments, photos and videos, creating a deeper online community,” the announcement added.

Klein wrote:

Twice in the past month, my private communications have been splashed about the internet. That such a thing would happen is unfortunate, and dishonorable, but sadly inevitable, I suppose. I ignored the first case, in which a rather pathetic woman acolyte of Greenwald’s published a hyperbolic account of a conversation I had with her at a beach picnic on Cape Cod. Now, Greenwald himself has published private emails of mine that were part of a conversation taking place on a list-serve.

Greenwald and his acolyte might have a legitimate axe to grind with Klein regarding his bona fides as a liberal pundit, and I’m not crazy about Klein’s sexist-y, contemptuous reference to a “woman acolyte.” Having read her account of the encounter, he doesn’t really have a leg to whine on about her publicizing of that conversation, but he’s dead-on about the handling of his emails. No matter the justness of your cause, you can’t say “boo” about someone’s journalism skills if you violate the most basic of its ethics.

That’s why I was a little bit surprised to learn that Joe Klein recently published an email from a reader, complete with the reader’s full name and email address. This is arguably a violation of a more sacred trust. Klein is in the public eye voluntarily. His readers, even the jerky ones, ought not to be thrust there by him, with none of the benefits he enjoys.

This kerfuffle comes on the heels of another high profile case of email privacy violation, the publication of Mike Hendricks’ ham-fisted job pitch to PR firm Ogden Publications. In both cases, the offenders published emails to satisfy some personal grudge, and took pains to protect the identities of the email recipients.
There may be situations in which the news value of an email might merit its publication, with as much protection of personal info as possible, but none of these examples rises to that level.

The bigger question here might be “Is this the end of Journolist?” An off-the-record email list ceases to be useful once its contents become fair game. I’m betting Journolisters will be a lot less candid from now on.

It’s a smart move and I wonder if it wasn’t inspired in part by Tumblr, which has a handy “reblog” button that makes it ridiculously easy to copy someone’s post, links and attribution in place, and join that conversation. I have no doubt that far less “reblogs” would take place on that platform were users required to copy and paste in the post (and those pesky links).

Over at Reuters, Felix Salmon is a fan, and points out that he’s been on this idea for a while — since his “Newspapers Should Allow Their Content To Be Embedded” post from, oh, October 2007, off the same suggestion made by Mark Thomas at Economist’s View. Salmon’s reasoning back then has been backed up by the experience of the past two years; we’d embed it if we could, but failing that, here’s the copy-paste:

Increasingly, on the internet, content wants to be distributed. That’s why RSS is successful, and it also helps to explain the success of the Huffington Post, which always includes inks to external news stories on its home page alongside links to internally-created blog entries. Sites like Sploid, which consisted of only external links, failed – but maybe if they could host those stories themselves, rather than linking to other websites, a whole new groundswell of “daily me” sites would be launched, with readers gravitating to their own personal favorites.

What would these past two years of escalating panic have been like had this model been adopted? Ian Shapira would have had no reason to complain about Gawker’s use of his article, since his name and WaPo branding would be literally embedded into its use. The Huffington Post, operating on an extremely efficient system, would no doubt have been thrilled to adopt that mode; they struck a deal with the AP early on to auto-republish their material, and this would be right in that vein. That would have eliminated many of the complaints against them regarding their aggregation. (Having worked there, I can say with certainty that they would have been delighted; it’s a small editorial staff and the news editors would have been thrilled to cut the posting time in half and get more news up.)

That’s what it would have meant: More distribution. As I said of the Tumblr “reblog” button above, it makes sharing content ridiculously easy (that’s why, dear reader, we have lovely little buttons at the bottom of this post inviting you to Twitter, Tumbl, Digg, Facebook etc. etc. etc. this post. Use all of them! All the time!). Sharing is enabled by efficiency, and this system, applied two years ago back when Thomas and Salmon were on it, would have allowed for newspaper content to have been distributed far more widely (rationale for this claim: aggregators and bloggers, especially the ones on a post-count basis, are often hugely pressed for time, and reading and digesting longer articles often falls by the wayside in favor of more quick and dirty items; this would have allowed for the quick “Read This!” post that YouTube and other embeddable vids have enabled). The issue of attribution would not have been an issue, so the “is aggregation stealing?” argument would have had a lot of the teeth taken out of it.

Would it have changed the economics of the situation? Who knows — the dying of newspapers is as much about the lower cost of online content delivery as much as anything else, just as the immediacy of content delivery has undercut the “appointment viewing” element of the nightly news. The niche-ification of news — and thus news sources — has contributed to all of it. So it’s hard to say that embeddable print content would have made a difference (and it’s not like YouTube has figured out how to monetize it all that effectively, either, although that’s their own uncreative fault). But — it would have been progress, and a proactive solution addressing this new technological reality.

Two years later, in the scary non-election-news-late-August dog days of 2009, it’s hard to know what will ultimately survive and why — but innovation and adapting to change is a pretty safe start. Newspapers and magazines would be wise to get on this, immediately. The fight for survival ain’t over yet.