Anyone Else Sick of Lame Commentary on Why Stocks Are Down?

Okay, here’s the headline of the number one story on Bloomberg’s front page:

U.S. Stocks Decline on Buffett’s Remarks, World Bank Warnings About Economy

I’m not sure why they even posted the reporter’s story, they said it all right there in the headline.  Today after the stem cell press conference by President Obama, I took a gander at Google Finance’s front page.  Although the Dow showed down, you could tell there had been a spike up around 1 p.m. or so.  One of the stories in the feed was headed: “Shares Rocket on Stem Cell Announcement.”

This is getting stupid.  Or, how about the partisans who like to point out that the market is down since Obama took office.  Bubba Please!

I’m not an economist, I lost $8k one summer trying to “roll stocks,” and I suck at math.  But, I do get up every morning and pay attention to what’s going on in the world.  I read a lot.  I can tell you this – stocks are down because we’re in a helluva recession and they’re going down some more.  I said 7K for the Dow last fall and we’ve blown that.  At the time I based it on one thing and one thing only: Big Bad News.  I knew there would be more — and there’s more to come.

All of the official economic indicators seem to be still in freefall.  The latest interesting thing I’ve heard about large institutional investors and hedge funds is that they’re buying gold – not a lot, but some.  It doesn’t matter what Warren Buffett or Rush Limbaugh or Dalai Llama says on any given day.  We’re in this for awhile.

Final thought: One thing we don’t need is the media going all drama on us.  I personally would like to hear the Warren Buffetts and Timothy Geithners of the world talk us through this thing.  I also know these guys are going to clam up if every move they make is laid out over a chart of the DJIA.  We’re not hearing enough from financial wizards in or out of government.  I hope the media doesn’t turn them completely reticent.

Columbus Dispatch Newsroom to Shrink This April

Sometimes you love the local paper, other times (like when they endorse GW Bush TWICE) you hate them.  But, folks, we need them.  The Columbus Dispatch’s announcement today that it will layoff 45 members of the editorial staff on April 3 is bad news indeed.

When I left Ohio in 1993 and returned in 2007, the newspaper landscape had completely changed.  The Akron Beacon Journal and Dayton Daily News, once prestige papers were shadows of their former incarnations.  The Cleveland Plain Dealer, once covering the Statehouse like a rug, was down to two folks in the bureau.  There’s more snark from Round the Rotunda than actual coverage of state government.

Then there was a pleasant surprise.  The Columbus Dispatch was now the de facto newspaper of Ohio’s record.  There are no less than seven reporters or editors covering politics and state government full time.  I have a problem with the Dispatch’s fixation on state employee pay and stories about porn surfing ODOT employees, but there are as many stories for those trying to follow policy as there are those about state employees behaving badly.

Cuts in an editorial staff could mean a lot of things.  Perhaps there will be fewer photographers, columnists or editors of various stripes.  But, we’ll probably lose some good reporters and that means fewer people devoted to paying attention to what it is our government is up to every day while we’re at work.

Let’s hope that sometime soon, for the sake of society as we know it, someone will figure out what the next step is for daily journalism.

Plain Dealer, Dispatch Get A Couple Things Wrong on Editorial Pages This Week

There are the kinds of opinions that are like – you know what – (everyone has one).  Then there is what should be the considered, discerned opinion of major daily newspapers.  The newspaper editorials which serve the public best are those based in fact and not shallowly rooted in knee-jerk ideology.

Facts may be analyzed in different ways leading to reasonable people disagreeing on public policy, political motivations, etc.  But when an opinion is based on a careless understanding of the facts – or worse – a purposeful twisting – it’s merely stupidity.  When a newspaper does this, it’s recklessness on a much larger scale.

Read more

The Daily Graphic: Media Source by Generation

Newspapers have an uphill battle according to the latest News Media Consumption Survey recently released by the Pew Research Center.  The graphs below show the percentage of answers, by generation, of questions regarding what sorts of media did the respondent consume “yesterday.”

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Rocky Mountain News To Close with Friday’s Edition

This isn’t good America:

The News was founded in 1859 before Colorado was a state and before the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times first published.

It covered the mining rush, which first brought settlers to Colorado, the Indian Wars and the settling of the American West. Scripps bought the paper in 1926.

Obama Administration Will Allow News Media to Cover Return of the Dead from Iraq/Afghanistan

Being reported by POTUS on Sirrius/XM.  Look for Def Secy Gates briefing later today.  With this move and honestly funding the entire cost of Iraq in the next budget, we’re seeing the veil of lies and secrecy being lifted from the Iraq War.

‘Imminent Arrest’ in Chandra Levy Case Would Be Partially Result of Great Investigative Journalism

It’s hard to remember what the biggest news story was just prior to 9/11 — it was the Chandra Levy disappearance case.  Levy a Washington, D.C. federal intern was having an affair with then-Congressman Gary Condit and she disappeared off the face of the map.  Her body was eventually discovered and the case has been an usolved murder.

Last year, two Washington Post reporters produced this 13-part investigative series on the case.  It made for compelling reading, but more importantly it showed the power of the Fourth Estate to ferret out truth and force government’s hand in fixing its mistakes.  The series pointed out a multitude of mistakes on the part of police investigators, most notably getting fixated on Condit and not pursuing whether or not a Salvadoran immigrant’s attacks on female joggers in the D.C. park where Levy was last seen was tied to Chandra’s disappearance.

We may find out in the next couple of days that it was – eight years later.

World Press Photo Award Winner Is A Picture of Unraveling Economy in Cleveland

U.S. photographer Anthony Suau, shooting for Time magazine, took this photo of Cuyahoga County Sheriff Deputy Robert Kole moving about a foreclosed home in Cleveland, Ohio.  Suau’s photo is the winner of the 2009 World Press Photo Award.  There is a good article about Suau and his work in The Plain Dealer.

I’ve Got a Job for Bill Gates

Another major city daily newspaper is dying, but this one may have a chance because of its city’s most famous citizen.

The demise of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wouldn’t be good for Washington state – or the whole Northwestern U.S. for that matter.  Redmond, the headquarters of Gates’ Microsoft Corp. is part of the Seattle metro area.  One of the largest corporations in the world, and arguably the most important tech company in the world needs to be located in a healthy, vibrant city.  Part of that mix is a genuine arm of the Fourth Estate, a healthy daily newspaper.

Gates has an opportunity here.  He has the personal wealth to swoop in and be the angel investor that keeps journalism in Seattle.  Today, we may say that a “healthy daily newspaper” is integral to a world-class city, but Gates has the opportunity to turn that notion on its ear.  Gates is a visionary, a strategist.  A man like Bill Gates – with an imagination and understanding of technology and the power of the World Wide Web – matched with an equal sized pocketbook has the opportunity to incubate the future of daily journalism in his own back yard.

Most rich guys would swoop in and try to remake the P-I in some sort of image of themselves, hence perhaps sacrificing objectivity and information for opinion and fluff.  After hearing this interview with Charlie Rose, where Gates talked about his commitment to information and education – and affordable access to both, Gates may be the man to view the P-I opportunity not only as a way to be civic-minded, but as a way to make a bigger impact on society and create the business model that in the least saves the utility of the daily newspaper.

What I would hope Gates wouldn’t do is turn the P-I into an arm of Microsoft.  Sure, MSNBC could be involved in some way, but in creating this new business model for daily journalism, the entire world of technology and ideas about communication needs to be considered.  Gates, “semi-retired” from Microsoft is in a better place in his life to do this.  Several years ago, I fear the P-I would have become part of the Microsoft franchise or brand and the journalistic integrity would have suffered, even if only in perception.  No, this should be a Bill Gates project, not a Microsoft project.

I might suggest that as a bridge, perhaps the first place to look to save a few dollars and a few trees would be to begin with a scaled-back model regarding print circulation.  It’s probably not a public service to go completely electronic at this stage.  What about all the oldsters who do not have internet access?  What about the people who can’t afford internet access?  A lot of these folks can still afford 50 cents to a dollar a day to get a good quality newspaper.  I might also suggest that the last place to look for savings should be the newsroom.  It might be the first place to look for performance management, but content is King and content comes from people reporting, thinking and presenting.

Mr. Gates: To borrow some language from another venerable northwestern firm, “Just Do It.”

New Year Wish: Print Journalism Does Not Die

Newspapers – or at least print journalism – cannot be allowed to die.

I’ve always had a soft spot for good print news reporters.  Many of them become deep experts in the subject matter of their beats and find enlightening ways to bring this background to their often limited space in the newspaper.  Many also have an uncanny ability to quickly take in information, retain it and apply it to the bigger picture of our world.  Learning about sometimes complex issues and being able to write about them in a way that is accessible to the masses is a huge talent.  Finally, the best journalists are endlessly curious.  Intellectual curiosity is a gift and journalists share this gift with the world every day.

A Reuters story caught my eye the other day.  Frank Nicastro, a Connecticut lawmaker, wants to extend the economic bailout ethic to the newspaper industry.  He’s asking other legislators to support his proposal for the state to prop up some of Connecticut’s local papers.

Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. “The media is a vitally important part of America,” he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.

2008 was a year with lots of bad news for newspapers big and small all over the country.  Many dailies cut staff, including newsroom personnel.  Others announced plans to cease publishing newsprint editions on certain days of the week.  The Christian Science Monitor, one of the best sources for international news for decades has ceased to publish a print edition, period.

Since this country’s founding, a free and active press has been crucial to our democratic institutions and a necessary adjunct to good causes such as the abolitionists, worker health and safety and civil rights.  The free press has been described as the “Watchdog” over government.  It’s even been described as the “Fourth Estate” – or the de facto fourth branch of the federal government.

What lengths would Nixon et al have gone to without the investigating of the Washington Post?  More recently, the Post exposed major problems with the medical care being given to veterans and service members at the Walter Reed Amy Hospital.  The Toledo Blade’s news coverage of “Coingate” expedited the state government response to corruption in public office.

Put simply, we need the Fourth Estate.  Television news is often rushed, vapid infotainment.  Radio news, outside of NPR, CBC or the BBC is practically non-existent.  Radio talk, while sometimes entertaining, is an abysmal source for information because it’s mostly cloaked in a partisan fog.

The news pages of newspapers are the last bastion of daily, objective, dispassionate dose of information one can use to be better informed citizen.  Newspapers cover the things like city council, zoning boards and civic events that TV and radio only cover when there’s death or dismemberment involved.  Newspapers are the only purveyors of news where a sense of journalistic, civic duty seems to be still alive.

Is Nicastro’s government bailout of newspapers a good idea?  Loans, maybe.  The Reuters story also said:

Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them. Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.

Providing government support can muddy that mission, said Paul Janensch, a journalism professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, and a former reporter and editor.

“You can’t expect a watchdog to bite the hand that feeds it,” he said.

The newspaper industry needs to do one thing.  The best minds in journalism, the business of advertising-supported media and the internet need to work together to build the next business model for delivering the news the public needs.  We can’t lose the sense of objectivity or the ideals of journalistic ethics just because we may quit soaking newsprint with ink.  Shame on publishers for not recognizing this and coming up with the business model that will support their noble business through the next decades.  Because they’ve lagged behind technology, unfortunately many more of the nation’s newspapers will die than was probably necessary.

Publishers across this country need to ask themselves everyday: “How do I translate the daily newspaper into a business and medium that serves society as well in the 21st century as it did for the last 300 years.

Cool Interactive Map on Ohio Politics

The Plain Dealer, in fits and starts, continues to leverage their internet site to provide public domain data in interesting and useful ways.

You can find the Ohio Politics Demographic Data Interactive Map here.

For instance, I found that in my zip code, 43209, 29% of active voters are Democrats and only 13% are Republicans.  I live in a sane, rational part of town.

Fox News’ Chris Wallace Gets Long Interview with Cheney and The Word “Torture” Is Not Uttered Once

Chris Wallace may come from the same gene pool of his dad, 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace, but he couldn’t carry his dad’s reporter’s notebook.

As I watched Wallace interview DICK Cheney today on Fox News Sunday, I was given more reason to lament the hard times our U.S. newspaper industry is experiencing.  The only pure journalists left are at the nation’s dailies, where journalism is a craft and the pursuit of truth and both sides of the story is relentless.

TV just doesn’t have the time, or the journalistic talent for the most part to act as the Fourth Estate, the Watchdog.  Wallace failed his country miserably today when he did not press Cheney on the U.S. torture policy in the wake of 9/11.  Part of the problem must me be that he’s an airhead — does he lack basic information or the ability to synthesize it?  The other part of the problem is that Fox is going to run out the Bush Administration string and remain the “Republican Network” until January 19.

Here’s another thing Wallace did today that will hopefully have the elder Wallace on the phone bawling him out.  He gave in to doublespeak, the euphemism.  In a word search of the interview with Cheney, not once does the word “torture” cross either one of these guys’ lips.  Here’s the closest either one ever comes to calling torture, torture:

I think you can have a robust interrogation program with respect to high-value detainees. -  Dick Cheney

There is a legitimate argument to be made that much of what the U.S. did under the Bush Administration in the so-called War on Terror actually exacerbated the problem in many parts of the world.  By setting up Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, black-site dententions and torture, they did more to dishonor the Constitution and rile up a generation of Third World extremists than they ever did to keep us safe.

The butcher’s bill for the arrogance and paranoia of Dick Cheney will likely be paid well into the future.  Chris Wallace didn’t even scratch the surface.

The Plain Dealer No Better at the Math Than Ohio Legislature

A really crummy piece of legislation known as the ‘Joe the Plumber’ Bill was made worse on Monday by the the Cleveland Plain Dealer letting its snarkiness get ahead of the facts in an editorial. Read more

Video: Announcement – David Gregory to Become Host of NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’

What’s Wrong with the Associated Press?

I was pretty surprised to read this column from Ben Marrison, editor of the Columbus Dispatch. After talking to a friend who works at the Dispatch I found out that Ohio’s newspaper of record isn’t the only big city daily which is currently more than a little fed up with the Associated Press.

The Tribune Company, owner of such dailies as the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times have joined the Dispatch in informing the AP that the newspapers intend to cancel or not renew agreements to participate in AP’s “news cooperative.”

Media coverage focuses on a new rate schedule from the AP to its member papers. What the AP does is provide regional and national coverage which can be pulled from the “wire” and used as content in our daily papers. When you read a story from New York and you’re in Columbus or Chicago, chances are there is an “AP” in the byline of the story.

In the last year, AP has increased its rates to member papers drawing some flak from editors and publishers. But there is more afoot here, at least in the Columbus Dispatch’s decision. From part of a letter from the Dispatch sent to the AP’s Ohio office:

We also ask AP to immediately cease transmitting any content generated by The Dispatch that is enterprise in nature. The contract requires us to make our “spontaneous news” available to AP. However, enterprise, investigative and feature content is not part of the contract. If you would like to discuss options for moving our enterprise, investigative and feature content, we would be happy to discuss it.

You see, my friend pointed out to me, the AP has always provided a “spot” news service. Their own reporters – who are usually quite good – were tasked with covering immediate events and providing the breaking news coverage. As daily newspaper newsrooms have shrunk over the years, many dailies have pushed their own reporters to dig deeper and provide “enterprise” stories that often take days to research and put together. The reporters at dailies ostensibly have the time to do this in-depth coverage because the AP has their back – or rather had their back on the spot news front.

A reporter at the AP made a comment to me several months ago that hits home today. “We’ve been told to work more on enterprise stories.”

My guess is that if the AP had raised its rates, and the AP was providing its member papers a product they want, the dailies would pony up. But the AP has apparently made a business decision to focus more on investigative and enterprise journalism. That’s not what the big dailies are paying for. From the paragraph above taken from the Dispatch’s letter the AP, it also appears that its members’ enterprise work is appearing on the AP wire without the proper credit due newspapers like the Dispatch.

The AP doesn’t just get a check each month from its members. The AP also has access to their spot news work, which it can edit and put out on national or regional news wires. The Dispatch obviously feels that not only are they paying more for less, but that the AP is using the Dispatch’s reporters stories to fulfill its own enterprise and investigative holes.

As someone who has worked in communications in both the public and private sector, it appears the AP may have a vision problem – which is going to turn into a revenue problem.

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