Monday Morning Media Quarterback

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.

Yes, it was Easter Sunday, but this week my wife wondered where the Target Sunday ads were.  In another body blow to newspapers like the LA Times, the ad insert was only online.  Yes, a few trees were saved, but at what cost to readers?

Newspapers have been dying a death of a thousand cuts, from Craigslist grabbing all the classified ads (it’s hard to compete with free) and shrinking circulations and of course, vastly reduced real estate advertising.  If Target and the other big retailers go away, that’s a mighty big nail in the coffin.

Newspapers are also losing some of their best writers, whether they’re pushed or jump out of the burning building.  At the Mercury News in San Jose before the last round of cuts, reporters were told to wait at home by their phones.  If they didn’t get a call by 10AM, they could go to work.

 Dean Takahashi, a well-respected technology journalist (who I know a little bit), put it this way:

“I guess the worst thing that could happen is the business could fall off a cliff the way the music business did,” said Dean Takahashi, a former technology reporter for the Mercury News, who left last month to become a blogger just before a round of layoffs. “I worry that is possible.”

As for the content, formerly known as the news, it’s too simple to say ‘it will all go online.’  Most people I know don’t like to read longer pieces on line, certainly not on a Blackberry-sized screen. 

If newspapers and the way they surprise you with local, international news, sports, fashion and more disappear, we’ll be not a little, but a lot, poorer.

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.”

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.”

CNN “journalist” Lou Dobbs attacked President Bush today on CNN.com for the immigration bill the President supports.  Money quote:

President Bush is building his legacy, adding another unfortunate line of hollow bravado to his rhetorical repertoire. To “Mission accomplished,” “Bring it on,” “Wanted: Dead or alive,” and of course, “I earned … political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” he has added “I’ll see you at the bill signing,” referring to his own ill-considered push for so-called comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

I’m no Bush fan, but I’m troubled when a network’s leading anchor foregoes journalistic objectivity to blast a President, particularly when that President is trying to address the immigration issue with a bipartisan solution.   A current poll reveals that ”a strong majroity of Americans-including two-thirds of Republicans- favor allowing illegal immigrants to become citizens to become citizens if they pay fines, learn English and meet other requirements.”

That doesn’t stop Dobbs from dancing on the edge of paranoia, xenophobia, and yes, racism, once again.

In what other country would citizens be treated to the spectacle of the president and the Senate focusing on the desires of 12 million to 20 million people who had crossed the nation’s borders illegally, committed document fraud, and in many cases identity theft, overstayed their visas and demanded, not asked, full forgiveness for their trespasses?

Illegal aliens and their advocates, both liberal and conservative, possess such an overwhelming sense of entitlement that they demand not only legal status, but also that the government leave the borders wide open so that other illegals could follow as well…

Does this help CNN maintain its hard-won reputation for integrity and credibility? And is a ranting Lou Dobbs the face of TimeWarner that CEO Richard Parsons want to show?

Bloggers often criticize the MSM, or mainstream media, for what gets covered and how.  Certainly there’s a lot to critize–but not necessarily along the political barricades bloggers typically man.

For example, FoxNews is often criticized as the Orwellian opposite to its “fair and balanced” slogan, generally promoting the Republican/conservative line. 

But what’s more interesting in terms of the news that doesn’t get covered by Fox (and other Fox-owned news outlets like SkyTV and the NY Post) are issues of democracy, religious liberty, human rights, forced sterilization under the one-child policy and anything else touchy on China. 

As the world’s largest Communist country, China, like North Korea and Venezuela, would be a natural target of Fox commentators, but according to reporters at the equally conserative Wall Street Journal, “News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch has a well-documented history of making editorial decisions in order to advance his business interests in China and, indeed, of sacrificing journalistic integrity to satisfy personal or political aims.” Fox has been conducting a China news blackout for years.

On the other side of the political divide, the Los Angeles Times is typically seen as a liberal publication.  Yet respected reporter Nancy Cleeland is leaving the publication in frustration at the Times’ lack of labor coverage.  Money quote:

“The Los Angeles region is defined by gaping income disparities and an enormous pool of low-wage immigrant workers, many of whom are pulled north by lousy, unstable jobs.  It’s also home to one of the most active and creative labor federations in the country.  But you wouldn’t know any of that from reading a typical issue of the L.A. Times, in print or online.  Increasingly anti-union in its editorial policy, and celebrity — and crime-focused in its news coverage, it ignores the economic discontent that is clearly reflected in ethnic publications such as La Opinion.”

Of course, she’s leaving with 55 other editorial staffers, a cutback  in the face of structural change and dire revenue loss . But things haven’t changed much in the 30 years since my father, a teacher’s union chapter chairman, told me that you’ll never see fair labor coverage in a newspaper because they’re employers themselves.

Whether a media outlet is left or right-leaning, commercial considerations always always influence editorial direction.