Disaster fatigue?

Anderson Cooper, the blue-eyed face of CNN News, is at it again. In this edition, Mr. Cooper and his team are charging down to New Orleans to cover the inevitable wreckage Hurricane Gustav will wreak in the enfeebled New Orleans area. Will it be gripping coverage? Most certainly. Emotionally affecting and dramatic? Without a doubt. Just look at this short blog from one of AC's producers: http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/31/lights-out-suddenly-it-seems-real/. Its bone-chilling in its poignancy and immediacy...and another example of how much the media has evolved these past few generations. With the advent of cable news, the American public can witness these events closer than ever before.

But are we over-saturated with this coverage? Does the fact that every channel we click on or every radio station we tune into offer "coverage you can't get anywhere else" make this event less momentous?

I'm afraid it does. What we are experiencing today is a bit analogous to Stalin's quip "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." The American public simply wearies of these repeated stories, broadcast in all vast reaches of media. Interestingly, the closer and closer we get to the tragedy, repeatedly, the more common it seems to be. Not to sound insensitive, but what seperates this catatrostophe from the Chinese earthquake of a few months ago or Katrina a few years ago? From a media standpoint, it's essentially the same-- eyewitness accounts on ground zero, the talking heads back in New York decrying the circumstances that enabled this to happen and trumpeting this as THE worst thing to hit mankind.

I read Mr. Cooper's book, "Disptaches from the Edge," immediately when it hit bookshelves. I was haunted by the accounts of post-tsunami Sri Launka and tragic death in Africa. Appropriately subtitled "A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival," in it Mr. Cooper masterfully illustrated his experiences during those sexy accounts of news coverage, what we're now witnessing here. I was shaken and moved.

Now? It sits on bookshelf, dusty and untouched since I finished it within a week. Yep, the stories sure were arresting ... it's a shame I'm now so desensitized I now look back on my reaction as naive.

Was Picking Sarah Palin a "Woman Thing?"

I can't help but notice how a lot of news channels are playing up the fact that McCain's chosen running mate is a woman. Sure, I completely understand that that is a big deal, and that it's newsworthy. But, at the same time, it is reminding me of how the media handled Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign--playing up the fact that she was a woman (a.k.a girl power) and grabbing a ton of women's votes.
Did McCain choose a woman to possibly scoop up all those girl power voters that would have voted for Hillary? Maybe. But whether he did or not, it seems like the media might be (intentionally or unintentionally) playing games with women voters.

Lloyds Is Pants

I don't know if this is too silly but I found this piece on BBC news and I figured if they thought it was news worthy it must be. I figured it tied into media in that it is essentially about censorship, which is probably why BBC news published it. It was also highly educational, as I've never heard pants used as an insult before. BBC is my favorite news source mostly because they are willing to put funny pieces like this out there, next to all the important stories. It reminded me areas of interest that was mentioned in our required reading; the idea that each citizen has his or her own issues that he or she cares about, and issues he or she is ignorant of. BBC does a great job of trying to touch all subject areas. You can sign on and see a report about Putin, and the recent problems between Russia and Georgia, or you can read about the nun beauty pageant.

Who Says Politicians Play Dirty?

In The Wall Street Journal today, there was an article mentioning a link to a John McCain ad that people could find when searching for 'Joe Biden' on Google. The link appears on the right side of the page under Sponsored Links and it states "Joe Biden on Obama." The link goes right to McCain's site to an ad where Biden seems to praise McCain and not his leading man.

"The move mimics the "ambush" strategy that advertisers often employ: buying a competitor's term so that an ad for the buyer's own product appears when a consumer searches for the other brand. Sen. McCain was able to pull off that sleight of hand because he outbid his opponent for the search term "Joe Biden."' Therefore Obama's ad appears underneath his competitor's.

Talk about knowing how to play dirty, in business and politics.

high tech fortune cookie?

Imagine, you work in an Ipod assembly line somewhere in Southern China. As a goof, your colleague grabs a freshly minted iPhone and snaps a picture of you flashing smiles and peace signs. Before putting the coveted gadget back in the box, your colleague fails to delete the picture, leaving the file on the phone's memory card. There, it is discovered by the British buyer of said iPhone, for whom the picture probably is the closest he has come to actual contact with a female since his mom kicked him out of the house. Soon thereafter, you are an Internet hit. Do you think she will be on Letterman next week?

jumping ship

Jay Mariotti, the high profile Sun Times sports columnist is leaving the paper. Apparently he thinks that newspapers are fighting a losing battle against web based journalism, so he decided to jump ship. Whether or not there are some other reasons behind his departure is anyone's guess, but to me it seems as people in Chicago still rely heavily on their daily newspapers to get info about the cubbies and da bears, or am I wrong? Anyhow, nowhere is the tension between bloggers and mainstream media higher than in sports writing, it seems.

Interesting experiment

The Minneapolis Star Tribune is turning its opinion pages into a continuously updated blog. A blog, how revolutionary! Talking about coming to the party late. Maybe this will turn out to be a success, but I am a skeptic. This is the set up of the experiment:

"We’ll start each weekday with a post that will summarize the discussion that takes place at our daily Editorial Board meeting and invite readers to comment on the issues we plan to write about. Those online discussions will inform — and sometimes influence — our opinions."

I actually find the whole concept of pontificating editorial boards an antiquated one, so while I applaud the Trib for requesting input from its readers, I think newspapers ought to consider getting rid of them altogether and just run authored columns instead. I realize that many may disagree, but newspapers' editorials do not matter that much anymore, yet the editorial boards keep acting as if they do. I find it a bit sad, really. Take the above statement, in all its magnanimousness, the wise men and women of the editorial board have decided to have their opinions informed and -brace yourself- even sometimes influenced by what their readers write. Next thing you know, they will allow their readers to vote.

The tragedy, of course, is that their readers have not waited for the editorial boards to finally climb down from their ivory towers and listen to the rumblings of the common folks. The commoners went off and started blogging and "citizen-journalisming" on their own, for better or worse. I write this with a fair amount of cynicism, because I do think that newspapers had the opportunity to capitalize on this untapped resource ten years ago, when they still had a tighter grip on their audiences.

Around the turn of the century, as a young graduate student at the University of Minnesota, I was doing research on people posting on the message boards of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. People were discussing politics and public policy issues in a very interesting way, somewhat more vitriolic perhaps than what we were used to see in the letters to the editor section, but with passion and commitment. I tracked their conversations, sent some of the users online questionnaires and theorized -as many other grad students in the late nineties- about the potential of this new public sphere for journalism. My research was hardly groundbreaking and flawed in many ways, but it made me think about the potential of the Internet as a way for newspapers to feel the pulse (or at least "a" pulse) of their communities. This was also at a time when "public journalism" was making waves in newsrooms and academia. At one point, and my memory is vague here, I and some other graduate students were at some sort of panel with an editor of one of the two Twin Cities papers. I told him about my "research" and asked him if he saw any potential for newspapers in those messageboards as a way to engage in a community dialogue. He scoffed and quickly dismissed the idea stating that the Internet would never be able to fulfill this role. Granted, I was a bratty young grad student trying to tell a veteran editor how to do things, so I deserved the smack down. But I also think that this stubborn underestimation of the power of the Internet by editors with a lack of vision and an overdose of arrogance at least partly explains why so many newspapers are still playing catch up with new technology, even today.

2016 Chicago?

I think that watching the Olympics has ignited the fire among Chicago-ans about hosting this even eight years from now. An article in today's Chicago Tribune suggested that things are looking good for us (and even suggested that an Obama election would be beneficial to Chicago's bid). For a journalism school, being involved in this event and the run-up to it, would just open so many opportunities for our students, it could give us a real boost, we would be the journalism program closest to the action. Maybe we could so something like this eight years from now... One is allowed to dream, isn't one?

Mainstream media 1 - Obama campaign 0

August 22, at 11.50 pm I received a CNN Breaking News email announcing that Senator Obama had chosen Joe Biden as his running mate. Strange, because the Obama campaign had promised that it would text message whoever was generous enough to supply his or her cell phone number as soon as Obama had made his pick. Isn't it a bit sad that the Obama campaign gets outscooped on its own message? If this is an indication of the level of message control we can expect from an Obama White House, the media might be in for some good times the next four years. (I know, a qualifier is missing in the last sentence, there is still an election to be held...) After the news was made public by CNN, the Obama campaign rushed to get out the text messages at 2 am Chicago time, probably waking up a fair amount of supporters who forgot to switch off their cell phones.

On a different, but related note: when I left my office at the Loyola Water Tower campus yesterday, I caught a glimpse of the Junior Senator from Illinois, who was exiting the Park Hyatt hotel next door in a black SUV.

Another one bites the dust

In a memo sent to Romenesko, the Sacramento Bee announced that it will drop its ombudsman position. The Bee has had a public editor for "several decades" and it does not bode well for the future of this position that in the last year both the Bee and the Minneapolis Star Tribune disposed of their ombudsman/public editor. Both newspapers have a long tradition of having an ombudsman on their staffs, but no longer seem to be able/willing to support the position. An ombudsman is a sort of independent in-house critic who at the same time addresses readers complaints and communicates about his endeavors through a regular column. The idea is to make the paper more "accountable" to its readers. It always seemed a good idea to me, though given the rough economic climate, I can see how newspapers rather cut this position than a reporter's. The Bee also states that the changes in technology in the last 10 years have made the position also somewhat obsolete:

"Times have changed since the era in which many ombudsmen and public editor jobs were established. Readers now have multiple ways to be heard within the newspaper and in the community. Bee journalists are accessible via email, and we publish their phone numbers as well. Our story comments let readers complain openly about parts of coverage they do not like. Newspapers in general have become more accessible to the public. Most recently, Editor Melanie Sill has been writing a weekly column as a way to converse regularly with readers. And I interact with readers via phone or e-mail virtually every day."

True as this may be, the ombudsman's voice carries a sense of authority and reason, standing between defensive editors and outraged readers, and I doubt that the mechanisms mentioned above can replace this. The Chicago Tribune also has a public editor, Timothy McNulty, let's enjoy it while it lasts.