Kill Objectivity?

Michael Kinsley, writing in Slate, says it's time to kill the notion of objectivity. Kinsley calls objectivity "less an ideal than a conceit." The former (and short-lived) editor of the editorial pages of the L.A. Times makes an interesting argument worth debating. One hopes he is dead wrong! (Thanks to Romanesko for the post.)

Future of Journalism panel discussion

Here's the link to an interesting panel discussion recently in San Jose. With the Mercury News' future up in the air, it's a good place for those who care about the paper, and about digital "journalism," to provide us with some insights. Happy reading.

A strength like no other

In a post today on the Poynter Institute website, Northeastern University prof Bill Kirtz interviews winners of Harvard's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. The gist of his interviews is that award winners are all dedicated to the proposition that newspapers are best situated to succeed in the niche arena of investigative reporting. "If papers are going to survive, we must provide readers with these services," says Jack Leonard of the Los Angeles Times.

At papers where this year's winners work, reporters are encouraged and supported as they undertake the time-consuming (and therefore expensive) grunt work necessary to ferret out information we need to function as a civil and free society. As Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post remarks: We can do it. Bloggers can't. That's our franchise." Her colleague, Jeffrey Smith adds, "If we concentrate on investigative reporting, we can make a difference and distinguish ourselves from everything available on the Web. We're very slow as an institution to realize that we can't just write what happened. We have to tell them what they can't get in any other media."

A Voice of Hope

According to McClatchy Company CEO Gary Pruitt, “newspapers are still among the best media businesses—and the most important.” In his op-ed piece on the Wall Street Journal today (students can access it through FACTIVA), Pruitt lays out the counter-argument to the wail of voices predicting the demise of newspapers. He notes most newspaper companies are still profitable, even though circulation and advertising has slipped. Still, he asserts, newspapers are holding onto their audiences well in the face of a proliferation of TV outlets, new magazines, and certainly more web sites. He also cites surveys showing readership of newspapers hovering around 50 percent of the adult population. Pruitt’s main contribution to our understanding of the future of journalism, and the main reason his company paid $6.5 billion for Knight Ridder, is the belief that the traditional newspaper is at the top of a pyramid of media sites disseminating information. “Replacing the notion of ‘readers’ with ‘audiences,’ we’re fast becoming multi-platform, 24/7 news companies—and it’s working,” he says. Most important to this journalism professor’s ear, Pruitt reinforces his belief that a strong journalistic enterprise is necessary for the survival of self-government and democracy. That’s an important role, he notes, as democracy undergoes attack from “spinmeisters, partisans and ideologues.”

A victory for newspapers?

Today there are lots of people talking about McClatchy’s $4.5 billion offer to purchase Knight Ridder. The buzz concerns McClatchy’s intention to sell Knight Ridder’s higher profile papers such as the San Jose Mercury News and the Philadelphia Inquirer. These papers, according to McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt, aren’t in communities where the growth rate of the population, and hence the circulation and advertising base, is sufficient enough to justify keeping the papers. There’s a fair bit of agreement that McClatchy is a newspaper-focused company committed to the future of journalism, not a company that dances to the tune of short-term Wall Street analysts. Still, the man who some say forced Knight Ridder’s sale, hedge fund guru Bruce S. Sherman, also owns a stake of McClatchy, and the sale of some of the papers troubles journalistic purists. Potential buyers for the Knight Ridder castoffs include William Dean Singleton, whose Media News company owns a string of papers in California, Colorado and elsewhere. Stay tuned.

2006 State of American Journalism report

The 2006 annual report on the State of the News Media is out, and available on the web. The massive effort of the Project for Excellence in Journalism summarizes a variety of data about the future of journalism, a timely subject given today’s announcement of McClatchy’s approximately $4.5 billion offer to purchase Knight Ridder.

The report concludes that the end of journalism is not here. “But we do see a seismic transformation in what and how people learn about the world around them.” Blogging and other citizen information efforts are on the rise. “Power is moving away from journalists as gatekeepers over what the public knows,” and audiences are still leaving newspapers and television for online media. Thus journalists are going to need to redefine how they do what they do, and how their skill set can best serve society, while still making a profit for their owners.

The major trends, according to the report, are:

1. Journalism has more outlets but is covering fewer stories. One stop sources for all news is a thing of the past.

2. Big city newspapers are the most threatened species of newspaper.

3. Idealists who believe in journalism as part of the public trust are toast—the accountants rule.

4. Traditional media are moving toward technological innovation, but it is a slow process.

5. The media upstarts, Yahoo and Google, may also be facing economic change as news gatherers may demand payment from outlets like Google News.

6. While online journalism is growing, its economic viability is still a long ways off.

The good news is that the American public still think the press is professional and moral, “and the vast majority of Americans continue to support the idea that the press should be a neutral judge.”

Double standards?

Gene Maddaus, a staff writer for the Pasadena Star-News, makes a simple, yet profound suggestion to KTLA television in Los Angeles. It's this: Admit that your claim to be a morning news show is a fraud and simply call yourself the "KTLA Morning Show."

Maddaus' suggestion comes as the station and journalism ethicists discuss the fact that the morning show's hosts received comp rooms and other amenities at the newly remodeled Ritz-Carlton, Huntington Hotel in Pasadena. After enjoying the amenities, the morning show broadcast from the Pasadena area, extolling the virtues of the hotel and what it offered potential guests. As the issue heated up on the pages of the Star-News and the Los Angeles Times, it was also revealed that one of the anchors received a $10,000 dining room makeover free from a furniture company owner seeking positive coverage. The story never ran, and Allen Smith, the furniture company owner, wants to be paid.

Most of us don't get too upset these days to hear about these conflicts of interest among celebrity-seeking television personalities. Sadly, we expect it. But the real issue here is the double standard: at this point KTLA's owner, the Chicago-based Tribune Company, has been silent on this faux pas, even though it presents a clear violation of the company's journalistic code of ethics. Certainly if reporters from the Tribune-owned L.A. Times attempted to mislead the public, there would be you-know-what to pay. In fact the last time, L.A. Times employees tried to pull the wool over readers' eyes--the sad Staples advertising affair--people lost their jobs and the Chandler family lost its courage and sold the paper to the out-of-towners. Certainly there has been some discussion between Chicago and KTLA, one hopes at least!

Meanwhile, let's see if KTLA gets ethics and changes the name of its morning show. Don't hold your breath!

Here's more on the story from L.A. Observed.