Monday Morning Media Quarterback

Perhaps the saddest thing about the Bush administration is how little Americans have come to expect of it.  It has resulted in an orgy of incompetence that have seriously damaged first America’s image, and now our economy and very .

The current agony of more than 200,000 American Airlines passengers stranded on more than 2500 cancelled flights at America’s airports is just the latest example. 

A competent administration would have kept the FAA on the case in the first place.  A more foresighted administration would have recognized the cost to Americans and the economy of airlines like Aloha, ATA, Skybus and now Frontier failing.  And a stronger administration would have acted in the crisis, like Truman did nationalizing the steel industry or, yes, Reagan breaking the air traffic controllers union as a “peril to national safety”. 

“The buck stops here,” Truman said.  By contrast, the Bush Administration has done nothing.  Nothing.  There has been an absolute leadership vacuum. And sadly, that has come to be what we expect from it.  Consider:

• The incompetent prosecution of the war in Iraq, led by my fellow Princeton alumni Donald Rumsfeld.  I originally supported the war on the bill of goods sold us by the administration, but if you’re going to fight a war, win a war, smash the opposition and minimize casualties among U.S. troops.  In five years none of that has happened.
• Where’s Osama? How’s that war on terror going? We’re not losing in Afghanistan, are we?
• Abu Ghraib. 
• Katrina. One word.  More than 1100 people died in New Orleans (in America!)  after the hurricane.  How many have died since or had their lives shortened by stress, disease, alcoholism, and the rest?  How’s the rebuilding of New Orleans coming?
• The credit crisis, stock market crash and the foreclosure epidemic; where was government/adult supervision?  A $600 rebate to spend on Japanese electronics, vacations or, more likely, on alcohol, is supposed to help how?
• Four dollar a gallon gasoline.  If you make $8 an hour and commute 20 miles to work, it will take an hour (more after taxes) just to pay for your gas.  Very soon, the economy will grind to a halt.  Where’s that Iraqi oil when we need it?  Where’s the Manhattan Project or Apollo program to achieve energy independence? 
• Even ’small things’ like last summer’s passport crisis.  Everyone needs a passport to travel now, but no additional staffing of the passport office=long lines, cancelled trips and general chaos.  Now they’ve fully staffed the office with idiots who snoop in passport files.

And the media, distracted by its own evisceration, has done a piss-poor job of holding the administration accountable for its across-the-board failure of leadership.

Newspapers are now cutting off their proverbial noses to spite what remains of their face.   Although every day brings more cuts, perhaps the most egregious in recent weeks was that of Village Voice dance critic Deborah Jowitt, who was fired but asked to continue to contribute as a freelancer–after 41 years as the Voice dance critic. 

A paper like the Voice was built on its criticism (and support for) the arts, like dance, film, music, and theatre (the Voice will host its 53rd annual Obie awards for the best of off-Broadway this May.)  To cut back on arts coverage can only damage their reputation and hurt the arts community as well.

Certainly, in this bleak environment some cuts are necessary.  But others are foolish.  Last year, for example, the LA Times dropped its Sunday television section.  While one can get listings for the next few hours on TV or on line, its much harder to plan one’s viewing for the week, especially for those like my mother who don’t go online at all.

I’m feeling it personally as well.  Right after I won an LA Press Club Award for this story, last June, the LA Times Magazine was cut back from a weekly to a monthly.  It’s rare now to see a freelancer’s byline, as the Magazine has become a haven for LA Times staffers (also a fast-diminishing breed). 

To add insult to injury, the Times magazine is now primarily about fashion and skin, two topics I know nothing about.

On June 15, we published an item on the Motion Picture Academy of America (MPAA) leaving its long-time digs in Encino and moving to the Sherman Oaks Galleria.  On Saturday July 7, the LA Times finally caught up, “reporting” the move in a page two business section story.

I developed the MPAA story myself the old-fashioned journalistic way, moving around the city with my eyes open.  Seeing “For Rent” signs in the courtyard of the MPAA offices, I contacted a spokesperson (who told me I was the first reporter to call), confirmed the move and published the item.

The Times taking 22 days to run big news on one of Hollywood’s most important organizations is inexcusable.

I don’t hate the mainstream media, or the Times. In fact, I recently won another award writing for the LA Times’ now-slashed magazine, West. But it’s frustrated to see–and try to work in–what the Times’ own Tim Rutten calls “the generalized collapse of confidence by newspapers engendered by print journalism’s passage through an economically wrenching transformation.”

When MSG Communications media-trains executives, a key point we make is that just like their own industries, journalism, media and publishing is all about doing more with less.  If a newspaper had three reporters covering consumer electronics and gaming, for example, now there might be just one.

On a media tour with a client to Newsweek, we were having an engaged discussion with a key editor.  Suddenly, someone burst in.  “Time to blog!” they sang out brightly.  The editor’s look of incredulity, scorn and resignation was priceless.

The same pressure exists at Time.  Time Editor Rick Stengel wrote in a recent memo to staff:

Let me make this explicit: evaluations of every Time writer, correspondent, and reporter will be based on the quality and quantity of the contributions each of you makes to both the magazine and to TIME.com. TIME.com is a daily responsibility; Time magazine is a weekly responsibility.  

We are now both a 24/7 news organization online and the indispensable weekly magazine that we have always been, and always will be. We don’t own our readers or their time - we have to earn their attention and loyalty every week, every day and every hour in a media landscape that is only getting more competitive. Let’s go to work.

Like the editor at Newsweek, the Time staff doesn’t get paid extra for their new 24/7 workload.  If they’re lucky, they get to keep their jobs as long as there’s a Time in print–which Chairman Ann Moore claims will be as long as we live. 

Every journalist needs sources for his stories.  The three-source story is the model, although abandoned in this LA Times piece on Tom Cruise.

Let’s say you were doing a business story on the new Apple iPhone.  (A flood of these are coming.)  You’d interview someone from Apple (”the vendor”),  an industry analyst for third-party commentary, and an end user, a partner like AT&T or a competitor.  Story’s done, on to the next.

Because reporters can’t interview themselves, they cultivate sources they can get to say the stuff they want, or at least interesting stuff.   They usually have to have some standing as an ‘expert’, such as a professorship or authorship of a book. Some of these ‘quote whores’ are quite promiscuous in who they talk to, and often they’re promoting a book, their brokerage if they’re a stock analyst, etc.

Prof. Robert Thompson of Syracuse University is considered the king of media quotes: from 2000-2002, he was quoted 972 times in articles about popular culture.  One poster calls it “‘dropping the Thompson bomb’- something you did when you needed someone else to say the things you were thinking. “

At the Enquirer, we had a group we’d call “trained seals.”  Any kind of quote you wanted, they would give you; the standard ‘honorarium’ was $250 per story.  The best were psychologists, usually a clinical assistant professor or higher or a book author. They’d earn their fee spending an hour with you on the phone, as you pushed them to explain “how your favorite color reveals your personality.”

“Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford, Texas ? I will consider any reasonable offer. “  This CraigsList.org-like ad actually ran on the liberal Huffington Post.  The poster was war protestor Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq,  saying she was dumping her 5 acre ‘Camp Casey’ near George W. Bush’s ranch.  She ended up with $87,000.

Candy Crowley of CNN describes Sheehan as “the first recognizable face of the anti-war movement” but the left (and the media) eventually soured on her for saying George Bush is a bigger terrorist that Osama Bin Ladin, and that the U.S. is in danger of disintegrating into “a fascist corporate wasteland.” You can read her letter dropping out of the war protest here. 

Not only has no other popular spokesperson emerged for the anti-war movement, but Sheehan’s ‘garage sale’ shows that a broad peace movement has never really developed, even after more than four years of war. 

I was a child during Vietnam, and I remember watching rallies at the Capitol on television that were over 250,00 like this one on November 15, 1969.  Such demonstrations persuaded Lyndon Johnson not to run for re-election, and continued into the 1970’s until most U.S. soldiers were out of Vietnam.

By contrast, rallies against the war in Iraq peaked almost two years ago, when more than 100,000, including Sheehan, (organizers claimed 300,000) marched in Washington on September 24, 2005.   Back then, 1,911 U.S.  soldiers had been killed in the war.  By June 2007, over 3,500 had died in Iraq, and the number of troops in-country had actually risen with the surge.

Yet the protests have died down, and Cindy Sheehan gave up, ‘tired of being called an attention whore.’ 

Why are there so few other leaders and symbols of an anti-war movement? Why are demonstrations limited to fringe groups seemingly more interested in making a statement against the Republicans in September 2008 than trying to stop the war now? Are Americans selfish, apathetic, or do they actually support the war in Iraq, despite what the polls say?

The media may have helped in building Sheehan up and tearing her down, but the media is just a mirror to society.  Although I don’t agree with her on many issues, it’s hard not to sympathize with Sheehan’s pain and frustration, or to analyze the lack of protest without thinking of the selfishness of one generation or another. 

Were the Babyboomers selfishly demonstrating during the Vietnam War, out of fear of being drafted? Or are today’s young Americans the selfish ones, too inwardly directed on their iPods, cellphones and instant messaging to care?

It’s hard to motivate people to get out in the streets and away from their computers.  But it’s easy to understand why people (over) focus on Paris Hilton or American Idol, when the news from Iraq is this grim. 

Early in my journalistic career, I spent five years writing for the National Enquirer.  People asked how I could live with myself, instead of writing for a ‘real’ newspaper.  I tried to tell them that standards of verification at the Enquirer were just as high as the New York Times.  Indeed, it was not the Enquirer, but the NY Times, that named the alleged victim in the 1991 Patrick Kennedy Smith rape case.

So I like to say that the rest of the media has jumped right down into the gutter with the Enquirer.   It started with Presidential candidate Gary Hart being ‘outed’ for his extra-marital affair, picked up steam with the orgiastic OJ Simpson coverage, and snowballed to the bottom of the hill with the airtime and precious ink devoted to Paris.

Some outlets pretend their Paris coverage is about ‘issues’, such as this LA Times Paris Hilton story (one of three they run each day) how rich and poor are treated in jail, but most just go for the breathless pandering.

The NY Times had a front-page story on Paris.  And yes, it was an ‘issue’ piece about  ‘celebrity justice’–a figleaf for their naked ambition covering the woman they so primly call Ms. Hilton.

Donna Rice and Gary Hart on the yacht Monkey Business. 

In a recent column, Howard Kurtz raised the suggestion that the face-to-face interview is essentially dead.

 ”In the digital age, some executives and commentators are saying they will respond only by e-mail, which allows them to post the entire exchange if they feel they have been misrepresented, truncated or otherwise disrespected. And some go further, saying, You want to know what I think? Read my blog.

Jason Calcanis, chief executive of Weblogs Inc., says on his blog that “journalists have been burning subjects for so long with paraphrased quotes, half quotes, and misquotes that I think a lot of folks (especially ones who don’t need the press) are taking an email only interview policy.”

Veteran magazine editor Jeff Jarvis adds at his BuzzMachine blog: “Are interviews about information or gotcha moments? . . . Isn’t it better to get considered, complete answers?”

There’s a lot of food for thought here from both a journalistic and a media training perspective.  How do you verify who you’re actually ‘talking’ to?  If physical description is important, how do you know the 53 year-old woman you’re talking to isn’t a spoofing 15-year old boy?

Creative spellers, the less educated and non-native English writers may look dumb in an email exchange, unless reporters “clean up” their quotes, a long and dishonorable journalistic tradition.  And far from any control advantage, the spokesperson may be actually be at a disadvantage by putting thoughts in writing he could more easily back away from in a verbal interview.

For public relations pros, often acutely aware of how little control they actually have over their message, email interviews pose another control challenge.  If you’re aware of an email interview, will you hover over someone’s shoulder or watch/jump in on another screen?  More importantly, anyone in a corporation or government structure with an email address can now be subject to an email query from the press which becomes an interview.  People want to be helpful, but putting their own answers in writing without the knowledge or approval of management and public relations staff can be disasterous.

Certainly, as news organizations ruthless trim staffs, the do-more-with-less pressure means journalists will be reluctant to leave the office for even the most critical face-to-face, so phoners and email ‘interviews’ will become even more important.  (Smart publicists will continue to push for press tours that bring their spokesperson and product into the office and into the journalist’s face.)

Face-to-face interviews will continue in many settings, such as all kinds of television (no one wants to read email off another screen or have to hear the reporter’s deadly voice-over) trade shows and conferences, press tours, investigative reporting (when the reporter actually leaves his office to track down a story) and for politicians and others who need to show sincerity and thus, as Calcanis puts it, “need the press.”

But email interviews are perilously close to pure public relations opportunies.  I recently sold an international airline magazine on my doing a story on a Japanese company’s innovative female CEO, a phenomenon even more unusual in Japan than here.  I’d met the woman and spoken with her briefly.

But the company publicist told me she was uncomfortable communicating in English and would only agree to do an email interview.  I initially refused, concerned I wouldn’t know who was on the other end of the line and that I would be getting canned answers crafted by the publicist.  I wanted to do a face-to-face, or at least a phone interview, because as Kurtz says, “When you see someone’s expressions or listen to someone’s voice, you get a sense of the person that words on a screen lack.”

We went back and forth for a couple of weeks, until it all blew up when the CEO resigned, with my story departing with her.

The San Francisco Chronicle is making one of the biggest newsroom cuts yet; 25%, writes a Chronicle reporter(!)  Eighty reporters, photographers, copy editors and others will be laid off.

“Analysts predicted the reductions at The Chronicle could have repercussions for readers. While an increasing number of people get news from online aggregators such as Google News and Yahoo, those stories are most often originally reported by print journalists. “

Then there’s the news website in Pasadena, that has unrepentently (and to great publicity) outsourced its city council coverage to India to reporters paid $7500 a year.

While I have sympathy for those cutback or outsourced, I’m not going to cry crocodile tears.  As my Dad told me more than 30 years ago, you’ll never see pro-labor sentiment in a newspaper because they’re an employer.  As the last person I know who owns three American cars, (a Ford, a Lincoln and a Jeep) where were these people and their publications in terms of supporting U.S. industries?

Still, it’s tough times, and for a communications person, the whirling scythe dumps more competitors into the pool.

At the Time Warner shareholder meeting microphones were set up around the room for comments.  I couldn’t resist, making a point about how media companies are vulnerable to a crisis arriving at Internet speed.  I said that Time Warner handled the arrest of HBO head Chris Albrecht on domestic charges ‘about as well as it could’ by firing him ASAP.  Then I brought up two other Time Warner properties ripe for potential crises.

One is TMZ.COM, a celebrity gossip/paparazzi site that many see as a disaster waiting to happen, with paparazzi engaging in car chases, harassment of celebrities and their kids, and pitched street battles with other photographers to get shots.   Then I mentioned Lou Dobbs on CNN with his “protect our borders” rhetoric, as having potential for crisis impacting Time Warner. I asked how the company planned to deal with it. 

“That’s a good question,” said Richard Parsons.  “Everything he says is clearly labeled as opinion.”  I don’t think so, but at least Parsons addressed the question.  The news media, on the other hand, only got part of my point; The Hollywood Reporter did it best, at least mentioning the Lou Dobbs issue. 

Claudia Eller of the LA Times, who did great reporting on the Albrecht assault, couldn’t let go of it in her piece .  “One shareholder mentioned Albrecht in passing, praising Time Warner for acting swiftly in discharging the executive after he was arrested in Las Vegas for assaulting his girlfriend and after the Los Angeles Times ran a story about his 1991 physical altercation with a subordinate.”

 When you’re the ‘covered’, as opposed to doing the ‘covering’ as a journalist, it’s interesting to see what gets picked up–and what doesn’t.