March 14, 2005
Economics of Online News
Interesting article in the NYTimes about the economics of online news, how "newspapers are cannibalizing themselves" and how news "may become an acronym for 'Not Ever Willing to Spend.'"
Since online readers often surpasses print readers and online readers are rarely charged, news sources are concerned about the free giveaway, and the erosive effect is has on news sources. However, right now it seems that no one (or not enough readers) are willing to pay for it, and charging for online viewing would result in a loss of income. Smartly, online news organizations are experimenting with charging for 'extras,' such as sports or entertainment news packages. And while, revenue from online advertisers is growing, news company manager's worry about depending on one source for all the income, but have few ideas about how to combat the problem.
The article brings up many of the same issues we've talked about it class related to online news sources, unfortunately, however, it fails to answer any of them.
Posted by ckuhn at 9:04 PM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2005
Washington Post
Although the Washington Post ranks fifth in the nation by circulation (behind the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today), it is widely considered second only to The New York Times in stature among daily newspapers.
The Post's daily circulation is about 750,000 and over 1 million on Sundays, reaching 52% of the Metro Area daily and 68% on Sundays.
Additionally, the Post has a reputation for being especially good at coverage of American national politics. Accordingly the Post has become the paper for Washington's policy makers. The Post has been read by 22 presidents, and is read regularly by 92% of leaders in the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. This far surpasses than any other daily newspaper or Capitol Hill publication, Roll Call comes in second, read by 68%. Among only the executive branch leaders the Post is read regularly by 92%, followed by the Wall Street Journal which is read regularly by only 21% of executive branch leaders.
Through the course of the Post's long history of covering American politics, two events remain memorable as turning points in the Post's coverage.
In June of 1971 the Washington Post began publishing excepts of the so-called Pentagon Papers which contained allegedly secret information about the Vietnam war. The right of the Post to publish the papers was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
A year later, through aggressive reporting and the backup of Katherine Graham two post reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, revealed the national political scandal known as Watergate. The Post received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service the following year for its investigation of the case.
The Washington Post was founded over 125 years ago, in 1877, and became the first newspaper in Washington DC to publish daily three years later. In the past 70 years or so, the Post has been run by primarily one family. Eugene Meyer became publisher of the Post when he bought it from bankruptcy in 1933. His son-in-law Philip Graham became publisher and president when Meyer died, positions he held until his death in 1963. Control of the company then passed to his wife (Meyer's daughter), Katherine Graham, who became quite a figure as the only leading women in journalism in her time. Her son, Donald Graham, followed her to become publisher in 1979 until 2000 and remains the CEO of the Washington Post Company.
The Washington Post is owned by the Washington Post Company, which also owns Newsweek and Kaplan.
Posted by ckuhn at 12:15 AM | Comments (0)
February 18, 2005
Libel
I'm not sure if we'll get to this later in the course, but another interesting aspect of control over the press are issues of libel and slander. And interesting case was decided today, in which a jury "ordered the Boston Herald to pay $2.1 million for libeling a Superior Court judge" (Washington Post).
What's also interesting in this case, is that some of the charges against the Herald are that the quotes are "out of context" not that they are fabricated. What exactly are the ethics/rules about keeping quotes in context when quoting a source?
Posted by ckuhn at 8:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 6, 2005
Convenience, Conformation and some Questions
To be honest, there's nothing deliberate or high-minded about the way I gather my news. My roommates and I have the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are delivered to our room, and we read at least the front pages pretty much every day. For the hour that I'm at the gym, I follow the cable news on closed captioning. When there's down time in lab, or I'm procrastinating in a library, I read NYTimes or CNN.com online. If I'm traveling, meeting someone at an eating club, waiting at a doctor's office, or doing some light reading on the treadmill, I'll skim the news magazines: Time, Newsweek, the New Yorker, etc.
In any given source, I tend to take note of the major issues, and then skip to what I find interesting, which can range from the rarely reported politics of Africa, to the ever debated obesity crisis, to the newest scientific discovery to the largely unsurprising congressional battles. Though this means that I'm exposed to the news from a variety of different sources on most days, it also means that I do not actively seek out the news if I do not happen to run across it in the course of a day. And while I miss knowing "what's going on in the world" when I'm out of town for a few days, getting the news is all about convenience. That said, my sources tend to be those of conformation to the mainstream; I stick to the well known and respected sources. I am aware of possible or acknowledged biases in the different sources and cherish both the "independent" and the "biased" sources, because both provide an interesting interpretation to events. My liberal inclinations usually steer clear of FOX news or the National Review, but to really know all the sides of an issue, often their coverage is worthwhile. But besides the occasional head-nod to more "conservative" sources, I trust my favorite unbiased-to-liberal-depending-on-who-you-ask sources.
As haphazard as my news compilation may be, I usually find it gives a remarkably good picture of the timbre of the news at any given moment. By skimming many sources, you figure out rapidly what's the "crisis" of the day; what story is either important enough, or more likely, sensational enough to make the cover story of every major news engine. Almost always, the story repeated on cable news, is the same story that runs for five days on the front page of the newspapers and gets the color picture on the front of the magazines. I find that it almost becomes unnecessary to read the articles on these types of stories, because the issue is excessively reported. An although I do read other articles, these tend to be more often what I would call conversational pieces, tidbits of information that either touch subject I'm personally concerned with or which provide a certain humor. And while, I most certainly achieve more coverage at important times, such as presidential elections or declarations of war, I generally miss the "real" news. The news I should actually know to be an informed voter, the news that should concern me as an educated citizen, the news that I generally ignore after the headline, unless a professor, classmate or friend calls my attention to it. In fact, my more informed peers are often my primary source of what to pay attention to in the news, if not the news itself.
Although, this may not be the ideal picture of ascertaining the news, it is in many ways I believe, a model way. As the class readings indicated, people are generally drawn merely to the news that interests them, and mainly through sources that are easiest to them. People generally distrust news media, even traditionally well respected sources, and are aware of biases, but do little to correct for them. What intrigues me about this whole picture, and the course in general, is why the news media, my personal, and our societal response at large, is the way it is. Why as a general audience do we not care about most of the "hard news" issues and stick to what affects us on a given day? What makes the "news elite," those who care about the hard news, different from the rest of us? How is the change in how we get our news changing what news we get; is the ability to easily search the internet facilitating the selectivity of our news accumulation? What can the news media do to get you personally, and you as a culture, to care more and to pay attention to the news? Is there a way to balance the economics, the expense of reporting on stories, and the uncharted nature of revenue through the internet? If we don't' trust the media, what can they do to regain trust? Are we at all concerned about the government's role in what news is or is not reported? If being an informed citizen is critical to democracy, should the government be concerned with informing the citizens?
Posted by ckuhn at 10:19 PM | Comments (2)