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News & ArtsTuesday, February 24, 2009
Media No News Is Bad News
Posted by Erica C. Barnett on Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 1:35 PM
No News is Bad News, a group dedicated to "discussing the value of local news, especially in Seattle, especially in these uncertain times," is holding a panel discussion about the possibility of "Seattle as a No-[Daily] Newspaper Town" in the Bertha Knight Landes Room, on the ground floor of City Hall (600 4th Ave.), this Thursday, February 26 starting at 7:00 pm. On the panel: NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen; Seattle P-I sports columnist Art Thiel; UW digital media professor Kathy Gill; and Seattle Times online content director Cory Haik. KIRO personality Dave Ross moderate. Although Seattle Metroblogs contributor Dylan Wilbanks has been instrumental in setting up the forum, this panel will be the third "what will we do without the P-I" forum in the last two weeks (including one I participated in last week and another recent one at CityClub) that includes no representatives from strictly online media.
2
Erica,
Curious if you have the balls to call any of them "Stuping Fucking Credulous Hacks" to their face or are you only tough on the internet?
How about it sweetie? Care to put your money where your mouth is?
I won't hold my breath.
Curious if you have the balls to call any of them "Stuping Fucking Credulous Hacks" to their face or are you only tough on the internet?
How about it sweetie? Care to put your money where your mouth is?
I won't hold my breath.
3
I thought the murderer was Al Gore, when he invented the Internet, along with the other founders like Cerf?
Silly me ...
Silly me ...
4
It kinda seems the panel is made up of academic types with secure jobs and a P-I guy who'll land a new gig just fine.
And I'm kinda thinking that I couldn't care less what they have to say.
And I'm kinda thinking that I couldn't care less what they have to say.
5
The Thursday night thing will be more fun *not* having 'strictly online' folks involved. More scoffing this way.
'Hood blogger publishing magnate Cory Bergman is on the docket for this one, though:
http://futureofjournalism.eventbrite.com…
Wednesday night at Kane Hall.
'Hood blogger publishing magnate Cory Bergman is on the docket for this one, though:
http://futureofjournalism.eventbrite.com…
Wednesday night at Kane Hall.
8
Who cares. The papers here just publish politically correct propaganda and hide the facts about who commits the vast majority of violent crimes around Seattle - because if they didn't there would be a lot less "progressives" here, and that doesn't suit their agenda at all.
Why are they going out of business again? Perhaps some of the many at large violent "criminals of color" the P-I loves to protect can tell us..
Why are they going out of business again? Perhaps some of the many at large violent "criminals of color" the P-I loves to protect can tell us..
9
no representatives from strictly online media.
It's a fair criticism. The problem we ran into was the only way to do the topic justice was to do two panels -- one mostly of print media, one mostly of online media. And packing two panels into two hours was a nightmare.
So, we're solving it in two ways: We're having a second event in the near future that going to be people doing online-only in Seattle and beyond, and we're packing the front row of this event with bloggers and other non-daily media folks to act as groundlings. They'll be looped in at various points and counter-balance the print folk up front.
And most of all, this isn't a requiem. I'm really getting tired of the woe-is-us crap at this panel. This is about trying to figure out what we'll miss and how people are trying to make sure we're not missing it. This is about the present, with the future mixed in.
It's a fair criticism. The problem we ran into was the only way to do the topic justice was to do two panels -- one mostly of print media, one mostly of online media. And packing two panels into two hours was a nightmare.
So, we're solving it in two ways: We're having a second event in the near future that going to be people doing online-only in Seattle and beyond, and we're packing the front row of this event with bloggers and other non-daily media folks to act as groundlings. They'll be looped in at various points and counter-balance the print folk up front.
And most of all, this isn't a requiem. I'm really getting tired of the woe-is-us crap at this panel. This is about trying to figure out what we'll miss and how people are trying to make sure we're not missing it. This is about the present, with the future mixed in.
10
I'm not sure that it's fair to categorize this panel as print-heavy. My take on the panel is that there is only one pure print person on stage. Kathy Gill writes for About.com, Jay Rosen writes for Huffington Post and runs NewAssignment.Net, and Cory Haik is online-focused.
As Dylan said, this is intended to be a forward looking take on what a print-free media landscape might look like; the discussion could actually turn out to be pretty optimistic.
As Dylan said, this is intended to be a forward looking take on what a print-free media landscape might look like; the discussion could actually turn out to be pretty optimistic.
11
DW and others: Who cares? None of these panelists is qualified to make a business case for running a publication, in print or online. Until someone can throw out an answer for how to do so in any economic environment, folks like these will continue to lose their jobs -- no matter how much of this shortsighted grandstanding on the "future of journalism" they produce.
12
@2, only online. I will eat Erica's sweaty jockstrap if she shows up there and uses the phrase "Stupid Fucking Credulous Hack" directed at any panelist or journalist there.
13
None of these panelists is qualified to make a business case for running a publication, in print or online.
Then what do you want up there, anyway? Murdoch? Bezos? Are those the only people you think are qualified?
Anyone can make the business case. Whether the bank or the venture capitalists would accept it is another story.
The only way out of this is to keep searching for the solution. The one who does will be insanely rich, just like the person who cracks $1/KWh on a solar panel or solves the physics problems with shrinking batteries.
Then what do you want up there, anyway? Murdoch? Bezos? Are those the only people you think are qualified?
Anyone can make the business case. Whether the bank or the venture capitalists would accept it is another story.
The only way out of this is to keep searching for the solution. The one who does will be insanely rich, just like the person who cracks $1/KWh on a solar panel or solves the physics problems with shrinking batteries.
14
JSeattle @5: What does it say about the qualifications and expertise of the panelists at that UW Kane Hall forum on Wednesday when one of the panelist's links in the Event announcement takes you to her blog page that hasn't been updated since 2007?! (copied below)
"Monica Guzman, online reporter at Seattle P-I who has pioneered the effective use (http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/netna… ) of social media tools to share her work"
Yes, maybe digital media will save print journalism, but not the P-I's kind...
"Monica Guzman, online reporter at Seattle P-I who has pioneered the effective use (http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/netna… ) of social media tools to share her work"
Yes, maybe digital media will save print journalism, but not the P-I's kind...
16
DW @13: Uh, I guess you didn't read my comment all the way through. Please allow me to rephrase:
By and large, journalists are not losing their positions because they're doing a rotten job. (And yes, people complain about journalists. They did the same thing 100 years ago.) They're losing them because their companies' owners can't find a way to pay them while turning around enough of a margin for shareholders.
What bugs me most about this forum is that we're hearing the same "OMG -- we have to change the game! It's online now!" strategizing from reporter, editor and academic types as we did five or six years ago -- heck, even 10 years ago when I dropped out of Medill's master's program to start making actual money. Check out the podcast of a similar forum on Chicago's WBEZ this past Sunday for an example.
So folks can wring their hands all they want. But until someone can find a way to fund the ideas mentioned at this event, it's just masturbation to me.
Off-topic @15: And if Monica Guzman can't even get that simple task right, what good is she? Good lord.
By and large, journalists are not losing their positions because they're doing a rotten job. (And yes, people complain about journalists. They did the same thing 100 years ago.) They're losing them because their companies' owners can't find a way to pay them while turning around enough of a margin for shareholders.
What bugs me most about this forum is that we're hearing the same "OMG -- we have to change the game! It's online now!" strategizing from reporter, editor and academic types as we did five or six years ago -- heck, even 10 years ago when I dropped out of Medill's master's program to start making actual money. Check out the podcast of a similar forum on Chicago's WBEZ this past Sunday for an example.
So folks can wring their hands all they want. But until someone can find a way to fund the ideas mentioned at this event, it's just masturbation to me.
Off-topic @15: And if Monica Guzman can't even get that simple task right, what good is she? Good lord.
17
And Dylan: Fuck yeah, I want to see Bezos up there if that's what it takes to keep these ideas alive, funded and supported by advertisers. Make it happen, hoss.
I'll pass on Rupert Murdoch, though. Stuart Murdoch, maybe.
I'll pass on Rupert Murdoch, though. Stuart Murdoch, maybe.
18
By and large, journalists are not losing their positions because they're doing a rotten job. (And yes, people complain about journalists. They did the same thing 100 years ago.) They're losing them because their companies' owners can't find a way to pay them while turning around enough of a margin for shareholders.
That's a little simple. The problem here is that a handful of newspaper companies, thanks to JOAs and attrition, gained a monopoly on print media in American cities. As a result, they gained huge profits, used those profits to buy more newspapers, and leveraged themselves to the hilt to do the buying. Yes, this isn't the journalists' fault, but that's mainly because newspapers stopped being about journalism. Journalism was an afterthought to the gobs of cash they could charge for a one-page ad.
And yet, they were doing this leveraging in a 30 year span when circulation has been falling. TV used to be the bogeyman; now it's Craig Newmark. But they knew better. They should have seen the crash coming.
What bugs me most about this forum is that we're hearing the same "OMG -- we have to change the game! It's online now!" strategizing from reporter, editor and academic types as we did five or six years ago -- heck, even 10 years ago when I dropped out of Medill's master's program to start making actual money.
Yeah, well, that's not the conversation we're trying to have. The conversation we're trying to have is about the value of newspapers vis-a-vis the value of journalism, and how we save journalism, not newspapers. Papers are dead. We've had a number of groups coming to us thinking we're out to save the P-I, but we all know we can't.
And anyway, only a handful of us running this thing are journalists. The last time I did "journalism" was for the high school paper way back when Bush I was president. We are bloggers, technologists, community activist sorts, and yes, some journalists thrown in there, though mostly the young and brash kind. We don't have a business plan. We're out to listen, and then see what we can do, as a group, to help the community close the gaps. Maybe we help people learn how to blog. Maybe we champion startups. Maybe we just do nothing and go back to what we're doing. Whatever. But this isn't about "Oh! Let's start an iTunes for news!" crap. This is about asking what's important in a newspaper, where we are right now, where the gaps are, and how the gaps are being filled right now.
But this is NOT another discussion about saving the bloated, tired old print media that hung itself by its own stupidity. This is about saving journalism itself, and helping the community find those solutions. We're out to catalyze. We're not out for another tired Walter Issacson pipe dream of bringing back the glory days. If you care, you can see the evolution of all this on the public wiki.
Hell, I don't want to be in journalism. I already have a job that pays me more. I'd rather just blog because that's where my passion is.
More...
That's a little simple. The problem here is that a handful of newspaper companies, thanks to JOAs and attrition, gained a monopoly on print media in American cities. As a result, they gained huge profits, used those profits to buy more newspapers, and leveraged themselves to the hilt to do the buying. Yes, this isn't the journalists' fault, but that's mainly because newspapers stopped being about journalism. Journalism was an afterthought to the gobs of cash they could charge for a one-page ad.
And yet, they were doing this leveraging in a 30 year span when circulation has been falling. TV used to be the bogeyman; now it's Craig Newmark. But they knew better. They should have seen the crash coming.
What bugs me most about this forum is that we're hearing the same "OMG -- we have to change the game! It's online now!" strategizing from reporter, editor and academic types as we did five or six years ago -- heck, even 10 years ago when I dropped out of Medill's master's program to start making actual money.
Yeah, well, that's not the conversation we're trying to have. The conversation we're trying to have is about the value of newspapers vis-a-vis the value of journalism, and how we save journalism, not newspapers. Papers are dead. We've had a number of groups coming to us thinking we're out to save the P-I, but we all know we can't.
And anyway, only a handful of us running this thing are journalists. The last time I did "journalism" was for the high school paper way back when Bush I was president. We are bloggers, technologists, community activist sorts, and yes, some journalists thrown in there, though mostly the young and brash kind. We don't have a business plan. We're out to listen, and then see what we can do, as a group, to help the community close the gaps. Maybe we help people learn how to blog. Maybe we champion startups. Maybe we just do nothing and go back to what we're doing. Whatever. But this isn't about "Oh! Let's start an iTunes for news!" crap. This is about asking what's important in a newspaper, where we are right now, where the gaps are, and how the gaps are being filled right now.
But this is NOT another discussion about saving the bloated, tired old print media that hung itself by its own stupidity. This is about saving journalism itself, and helping the community find those solutions. We're out to catalyze. We're not out for another tired Walter Issacson pipe dream of bringing back the glory days. If you care, you can see the evolution of all this on the public wiki.
Hell, I don't want to be in journalism. I already have a job that pays me more. I'd rather just blog because that's where my passion is.
19
14, 15 and 16: Told them to take my bio from my blog. Sounds like they may have landed on Net Native, the first blog I wrote for the P-I. Thanks for pointing this out; I've emailed the organizers and asked that they re-link to the Big Blog.
As for the event, as josh and dw have already mentioned, we want it to look at journalism's present so the next one -- Event 2 -- can be free to look exclusively at its future. That's the idea, anyway, and we want to stay positive throughout, remembering that this is about celebrating and preserving not one medium or another, but the craft and service of journalism.
Hope to see some of you there.
As for the event, as josh and dw have already mentioned, we want it to look at journalism's present so the next one -- Event 2 -- can be free to look exclusively at its future. That's the idea, anyway, and we want to stay positive throughout, remembering that this is about celebrating and preserving not one medium or another, but the craft and service of journalism.
Hope to see some of you there.
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