My Baby's a Racist and I Should Kill Granny

....that's what Newsweek tells me, anyway. In consecutive weeks, the increasingly opinionated weekly magazine has gone to press with headlines reading: "Is Your Baby Racist?" and "The Case For Killing Granny." This from the same publication that informed me earlier in the summer that I'm a socialist.

The interesting thing is that the articles corresponding to these in-your-face headlines are fairly sober, straightforward stories -- not sourceless opinion pieces, as you might expect by the bold words out front. The 'racist baby' piece is a look at the roots of racism; the 'granny' piece about the need to rethink end-of-life care for the elderly.

What's clear is that Newsweek has made a calculation about headlines -- tabloid sells (not a new idea for newspapers with the initials NYP.) Or at the least it sets the tone for a new magazine strategy to be more bold, have more columnists and rely more on big names like Fareed Zakaria and editor Jon Meacham.

Newsweek has up front about its changes. "We'll aim to be provocative, but not partisan," a note introducing the new-look magazine stated, adding that there will be more opinionated pieces.

"If we succeed, these well-argued essays will make you feel vindicated—or maybe outraged. But they'll draw you in."

Draw me in those headlines did. But my household gets Newsweek in the mail each week, so we don't seem to be the intended audience. Newsweek said it was dropping its guaranteed circ from 2.6 million to 1.5 million.

What will be telling is how the new headline strategy plays out on the traditional newsstand and the new newsstand -- web news feeds that give readers even more choices from which to select. Bold headlines could equal more clicks. But is there a risk in selling a piece as opinion and delivering something different?

A TV Argument That Packs No Punch

The punch heard 'round the sports world took place after midnight Friday morning where I live. It involved an ungracious football player from Boise State University and an unhinged sore loser from the University of Oregon. The rest of the facts are as follows: The Oregon player socked the Boise State player in the chops just after the final whistle, in front of the Boise State coach and, yes, on national television.

Now, punching an opposing player in front of his own coach is not the smartest idea. That had me talking the next morning. But what most commentators seemed to dwell on was that all this happened live on national TV. The implication: How could this bozo not think about how bad this looks with all the people watching? To that argument I say phooey. Let me explain.

First, do people realize just how many football games are on TV these days? Let's just say the Tulane-Tulsa national TV matchup the next night didn't have me on the edge of my recliner. Whether a sporting event is being shown across the country isn't much of a litmus test.

If this were 1979 or even 1999, the "it looks bad because it's on national TV" argument might hold some weight. Let me explain further. If it's 1979, ESPN isn't big enough yet to show highlights of the incident three times on the half-hour, analyze it, put it online and then moralize over and over. The channel does that now, so why does it matter whether people are watching it live? They'll see the highlight plenty the morning after whenever they tune in. I go back to my opening point about how late this event actually happened. Who was really watching live?

If it's 1999, ESPN gives this play plenty of play on the airwaves. Maybe the clip isn't on an endless loop. Some people surely don't have cable or just don't watch ESPN. And there's no YouTube, most importantly. In 2009, even people who didn't watch the game or even care about the result are looking at the video, talking about it on Twitter, and repurposing it in who knows how many platforms.

So, does it really matter anymore whether something like a football punch happens on live TV? If it's during the national championship game, maybe. But otherwise, the echo effect is so great now that I argue that it doesn't.

Multimedia Mania

We're past the time when people sitting around conference tables at major news media companies have to argue about the merits of including multimedia on their web sites. The verdict has long been rendered: Readers like video and audio to go along with their words.

So it is that these print (or Web-only) publications invest in cameras and recorders, and anyone on staff who has any type of broadcast experience becomes the in-house instructor to the legions of the lost.

But the question that should often be asked is what quality of work audiences expect of reporters who are dabbling in new journalistic endeavors. Or, framed another way, how professional should publications expect their podcasts or videocasts to sound or look?

For smaller companies that can't afford to hire broadcast experts or invest in top-quality equipment, standards are of particular importance. On the one hand, audiences are so used to grainy or slightly shaky YouTube-esque video that a little of either on a video posted on a news site probably won't send them heading for the hills. There's something to be said for visual pieces that don't seem overly produced, as well as those that are stylistically unique and fit the feel of the publication.

Then again, if you're requiring articles to be edited, fact-checked and edited more, what kind of message are you sending to readers if your audio interviews sound like they are happening on an airport runway?

Seems to me that the litmus test doesn't need to be whether or not a piece would be fit to air on NPR or the nightly news, but rather whether the content helps add value to the site (not just doing video for video's sake) and whether any problems with sound quality and visual clarity distract readers from that content.

It's certainly smart to train reporters how to frame their interview shots and get sound bites that come with little background noise. It's also fair to expect improvement over time. Still, technical perfection isn't needed. A perfected sense of news judgment is.

Free or With a Fee, That is the Media Question

How to explain this contradiction:

I, like others, see the writing on the wall for newspapers and other media companies that once gladly put their content online for free with the thinking that online ad revenue would largely pay the bills.

I see the stories about Rupe Murdoch promising to charge for this online content and seeking to create an online news consortium. I see the headlines about the growth of Journalism Online, which aims to smooth the transition to a paid online model for publishers and readers. And I can't help but see what likely will be the future of online news -- micropayments and such.

In conversations about paying for content, I strongly argue that people should be willing to underwrite the work of reporters and editors.

But then I click on a story from the Washington Post. It asks me for my name and e-mail address, information that takes about 10 seconds to provide. It's not asking for money. Yet I turn away, look for another free article or route to the same information. Not because of a philosophical objection but typically because I'm in a hurry to acquire information. The same thing happens when I see one of those ads that covers and text and prevents you from quickly scanning the info. Run the other way.

And that's just what happens when I encounter any non-monetary barrier to the content. I haven't even tested myself on how I'd react to a pay wall.

And so, on a personal level, I understand what's at play here: A battle between the business needs of media companies and the basic instincts of online grazers who are used to free.

It doesn't mean that I won't continue to support whatever moves are necessary to keep the news business in business, but it does mean that I will continue to recognize how hard it is to change reader behavior.

The Need for Media Lit in High Schools

A smart essay published recently in Utne Reader reminded me of a topic that I've long wanted to cover in this space. Writer Danielle Maestretti argues that in an age of information overload, we're shockingly lacking information literacy. In her own words:

The debate over how we read, perpetuated largely by media insiders, is starting
to seem like little more than a distraction from the real problem: We have
access to more information than ever, yet we do not know what to do with it. We
are desperately information-illiterate.

Maestretti also does a good job of describing what information literacy means nowadays:

In 2009 literacy isn’t about finishing a book or slogging through 12 web pages
to get to the end of an article. It is about knowing what to do with
information, how to find the good stuff, how to assess sources. What matters is
not that we are readers, but that we are critical readers.

So, yes, we need literacy training of this sort. Where should we find it? No better place than high schools, for starters. What should be taught? How about this, just as a basic day-one curriculum for students launching into research projects:

- How search engines work and how to get the most out of your searches
- The benefits and drawbacks of Wikipedia -- "a great place to start a search and a terrible place to end it."
- The ethics of taking short passages from blogs, articles or other information sources, regardless of whether you're linking to them or not
- How to find the source of information that you're quoting

And that's just on the topic of research. Because the media landscape is changing so rapidly -- with newspapers faltering, audiences splintering and opinion-mongering becoming the norm -- the time has come to work media literacy into the high school curriculum. There is overlap between info and media literacy, for sure, with the latter simply being more focused on the news media industry.

Many students will never take a journalism class in high school, let alone in college, so in a way this type of instruction is akin to chemistry for liberal arts majors (one of my personal favorites.) In other words, this introduction to the 24-hour news cycle and the business side of journalism might be some students' only exposure to a topic that can easily be introduced in social studies classes that cover American institutions.

If we're looking to reach the next generation of (mostly online) readers and news consumers, what better way to start than to introduce them to the changing media landscape, and to do so early on in their education.

More on this topic soon...

Sign of the Times

A new generation of web-only publications has discovered the benefits of using foundation support to help pay for a portion of reporting costs. But, one can argue, that's just a niche.

But now, according to Poynter Online, the gray lady herself is considering foundation funding to help defray some of the newsgathering expenses. The New York Times was careful to tell writer Bill Mitchell that it is still in the discussion phase on this one. Still, the mere revelation that the Times is considering this move is a sign of the changing times for newspapers.


There are, of course, always concerns about foundations looking to have a say in the tone of coverage. But that's an issue that can easily addressed by editors and foundation leaders -- NPR has long handled their arrangement gracefully.

Given what seems to be a widespread reluctance among industry leaders to move immediately toward a pay-for-content model online, and given the importance of publications like the Times continuing to pay for reporters who are stationed in far-flung locations, there's no reason that the "old media" shouldn't be having these conversations about new funding options.

In Defense of the MJ Obit Writers

In the week-plus after Michael Jackson's death, there's been quite heavy criticism of the press coverage. I've never been a cable news apologist, and won't start now. The oversaturation is comical.

But the complaint that seems off base goes something like this: Journalists spent so much time talking about Jackson's faults while he was alive, yet they all the sudden write glowing obituaries that portray him as a barrier-breaking musical genius. What gives?

The simple answer is scope of coverage. For the past 15 years, the news on Jackson has been grim and the press focus has been narrow -- dispatches from trials, a publicity stunt here and there. There'd been little reason to remind readers of Jackson's musical talents beyond the obligatory paragraph or two.

An obituary, be it for an international icon or a little-known artist, is an appraisal of someone's entire body of work. Naturally, in the case of Jackson, the obit writer would focus on what made Jackson famous in the first place -- the music.

This isn't to say that some of the pre-death Jackson coverage wasn't in bad taste or that the volume of ink spilled (I know, dated reference) after those first obits wasn't excessive. But the fact that there initially was such a jarring change of tone in the Jackson coverage seems to say less about choices made by news outlets and more about the tragic turn Jackson took.