Unlike those he decries as "misguided cynics," global media mogul Rupert Murdoch believes that newspapers will reach "new heights" in the 21st century.
Although the print newspaper is going to face changes, "it will always be around," Murdoch said, in one version or another.
The media stands accused of failing to foresee the global financial crisis, of a lack of understanding of the issues, and even of having a hand in the problems we now face. The Editors Weblog has been following the debate, beginning with an interview with the Managing Editor of the Financial Times, Daniel Bogler, who highlighted the problem of the media "fanning the flames" of the crisis. Is the media responsible, or are these accusations merely a knee-jerk reaction?
Danny Schechter is a respected investigative journalist and the author of Plunder, a searing indictment of the modern banking system, the role of government in finance, and the greed-is-good mentality. Schechter's book was published one week before the collapse of Lehman Brothers on the 1st of September, and it examines the very problems that were about to unfold. The Editors Weblog spoke to Schechter about the media's failure, the ethics of advertising, responsible journalism, and the cult of the CEO.
Two key failures
Schechter believes that there were two key areas where the media failed. He says that there was little or no examination into the new breed of exotic financial products that caused many of the problems, such as CDO's, and that the media ignored the warnings from community housing organisations of the predatory lending practises in some of America's poorest communities. "This was a big media failure, we were not warned about it" says Schechter. If Schechter's assertion is correct, why did the media fail to fulfil its role? Newspapers, and the media in general, are supposed to be the fourth estate, a watchdog for citizens. Is it a lack of knowledge on the workings of high finance or has the media lost its way and become part of the problem?
Why did the media fail in its early warning role?
Schechter believes that the media failed in its role because of vested interests. He points out that one of the key sources of revenue for newspapers is real estate advertising in weekend supplements and classifieds, as well as advertisements for credit card and refinancing companies. As a result, he argues there is a connection between the real estate and newspaper industry, their future and success are intertwined. Schechter says, "The newspaper industry is the marketing arm of the real estate industry. In some cities you actually had newspapers getting a piece of the action of sales through the ads that they generated. So they were actually part of the corruption of this whole relationship. So of course there was little real scrutiny about what was actually happening in the neighbourhoods where houses were flipping, where people who couldn't afford to buy houses were buying them with bogus mortgages. Newspapers were making money on the sales of these homes."
Schechter argues that after the dot.com bubble burst back in 2000, all the advertisements from these new emerging businesses stopped, so the $3 billion in lost advertising revenue for the media industry had to be found somewhere. Schechter puts forth that credit card companies and refinancing firms stepped into the gap. He points out that the majority of people do not automatically spend money that they don't have, but it was marketed to them through the media in advertising and life-style supplements. Most of the money that the media makes in advertising is in the last quarter in the run up to Christmas, newspapers run articles on the best presents to buy, and so forth, all of it driving a concept of "buy and shop" which "stimulates consumption." Schechter says, "for me, on the consumer front newspaper's are a marketing instrument and on the investment front it's a confidence building instrument. The media was part of this whole sales machine, and it happened at the same time that newspapers were cutting back on investigative reporting, and ironically expanding business news targeted at the business world; not at the general public, not on the economy and how it affects you and me."
Has financial journalism lost its teeth?
Another criticism levelled at business reporters is that they are too close to Wall Street and the City, and have too much respect for the institutions they are supposed to be examining. John Friedman of MarketWatch was at the press conference announcing the Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynchand wrote, "the media were so polite and deferential to the two CEOs; they behaved as if the press conference were a victory lap for the financial services industry." Schechter believes that "business men are seen as heroes" and it's all part of the "cult of masters of the universe"; he cites the endless sycophantic articles about Bill Gates of MicroSoft and Richard Branson of Virgin. He argues that there is a kind of "cultural embedding, as financial journalists cover business, they become part of the scene, they identify with the players, go to the parties, they are increasingly in a world of fewer and fewer people that is cut off from the mainstream of American life." He believes that many financial journalists want to be like these Masters of the Universe that they write about every day.
Schechter also says that there is no real pressure at the top of media organisations to thoroughly investigate these companies. Thee reason being that they would be investigating their advertisers. As a result, there is no impetus behind financial reporting, no push for the truth and the heart of the story, not enough cynicism.
Furthermore, with the advent of multi-platform publishing and shrinking newsrooms, journalists are frequently, "fireman, going from one fire to the next. When you are doing that, there is very little time for reflective analytical reporting."
Reviewing his argument, Schechter's assessment of the media is damning indeed; but it is not unilateral. Schechter points out that many newspapers and bloggers are asking the right questions and searching for the truth in this financial crisis. He cites the UK's Telegraph and Guardian newspapers, saying they "have been way ahead. I find the coverage of the British media better, and increasingly much more critical of what is happening."
Omission and Commission
Looking back over the rapid collapse of the world's financial markets, and the uncertainty ahead, Schechter says it is, "a financial system failure, a regulatory failure and a media failure. Everyone is willing to talk about the first two, but they are not willing to discuss the last one. We are all in this. It's a media failure of omission and commission."
According to Publishing 2.0, the big players may have been slow to start news aggregation and linking, but, "now that they have figured it out, they can completely disrupt the balance of power." In other words, even though "the 800 pound gorilla is late to the party -- he's still going to shake things up."
TheNew York Times launched Application Programming Interface (API) on Tuesday, October 14. The NYT APIs are a way in which outside developers can access NYT data for use in other applications, interfaces and mashups, according to Read Write Web.
The Campaign Finance API was the first to be launched. The next API to be launched will be a movie review.
The NYT website describes the new API; "With the Campaign Finance API, you can retrieve contribution and expenditure data based on United States Federal Election Commission filings. Campaign finance data is public and is therefore available from a variety of sources...you can use the Times Campaign Finance API to quickly retrieve totals for a particular candidate, see aggregates by ZIP code or state, or get details on a particular donor."
Blogs of the past were considered a tool for amateurs and were casually dismissed by the media industry. Today, everything has changed; blogging has significantly altered the landscape of the news industry. According to the survey, blogs have become a "global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream".
An astounding 95% of the top 100 US newspapers have reporter blogs. They have become a vital part of reporting, "The lines between what is a blog and what is a mainstream media site become less clear."
The shift in the attitude towards blogging has been explored in the first part of an annual report published by Technorati, entitled, "State of the Blogosphere." Part I, "Who are the Bloggers?" attempts to unearth and analyze the trends and themes of blogging and bloggers.
Posted byAlisa Zykova on August 8, 2008 at 9:17 AM
In a memo to his staff Mike Leary, Philadelphia Inquirer's managing editor, announced that the paper would now publish "signature investigative reporting, enterprise, trend stories, news features, and reviews" online only after they have been published in print, but that the paper wouldn't stop publishing immediate breaking news online.
Bloggers may be the ones who have to adapt the most to the new policy, since they may work on content that may "end up as subjects of stories or columns in print first", according to the memo.
"What's long held back the newspaper industry and gotten it in the current mess has been holding back online innovation that might impact the legacy product (print)," said Steve Outing in his blog, after calling the new policy "backward".
In his BuzzMachine blog, Jeff Jarvis criticized the editor's memo, saying that "even the slowest" in the "dying" newspaper industry would not do something like this.
"They know that the Internet is the present and the future and the paper is the past. Protecting the past is no strategy for the future," said Jarvis.
On the other hand, citizen journalist Bill Dennis said, "By offering for free what their would-be competitors would have to offer for a fee, newspapers' free Web sites are an anti-competitive act."
It is known by now that the US newspaper industry is in a turbulent state, as print circulation decreases and ad revenue goes down. As newspapers downsize and more focus is put on Web-based news sources, the future of broadcast journalism may be in jeopardy, according to Variety magazine's Brian Lowry.
Broadcast media frequently use newspaper stories as their sources, sometimes not even crediting them, according to Lowry. But what they fail to realize at this stage is that what happens to the newspaper industry might have an impact on them; something that Lowry calls the "domino effect".
"The thinness in assembling TV and radio news -- and the manner in which they use newspapers as de facto tip sheets and newsgathering surrogates -- has long been one of broadcasting's dirty little secrets," he said.
In today's changing world, news sources do not only include newspaper reporters but also bloggers, websites and citizen journalists.
"Although a few Web-based enterprises have begun to invest in original reporting, most are satisfied to engage in opinion and let conventional news outfits do the heavy lifting," he said.
Broadcast media is seeing declining audience figures and has had to come up with money-saving solutions. One way to do that has been to use citizen journalists, who will be paid a given fee for their contribution.
"Stations will survive, but the mind boggles at the sources from which they'll derive news as the dominos topple. In-depth and investigative reporting are already dwindling, creating an information stream that's often a mile wide and an inch deep," Lowry said.
"I think [investigative journalism] is going through a difficult transitory period," said Emily Bell, editor-in-chief of guardian.co.uk, in a May interview, as part of The Guardian's "Future of Journalism" series. "The funding now available for people to concentrate for long periods of time on single subject stories, which may or may not come to fruition, has been greatly undermined by the restructuring of professional media."
Meanwhile, online news makes it harder than ever to hold onto an exclusive. As bits of the story are more likely to leak from different sources, the investigation loses its proprietary value.
Belarussian journalists and bloggers issued an online protest last Wednesday by not posting anything for an hour or using a black banner, lashing out against the "On Mass Media" law that the government adopted "without public hearings and international expert examinations", Belarussian Association of Journalists (BAJ) reported.
As the last few years have shown, independent Belarussian newspapers have the tendency of being shut down by the state. Instead, many media outlets have found solace in cyberspace, according to the Boston Globe.
However, last Tuesday the House of Representatives of the Belarus National Assembly approved the law after its second reading, Jurist reported. The BAJ said that the law violates the freedoms outlined in articles 33 and 34 of the constitution.
Belarus media outlets are now banned from getting foreign financial backing and are required to register with the government. Reporters Without Borders termed the law as "repressive" and predict that censorship will increase, the Globe reported.
The government is trying to save Belarussians "from foreign propaganda" by attempting to control the cyberspace, according to the Globe.
Earlier this year, Belarussian journalists were imprisoned or beaten up during a protest against Alexander Lukashenko, the current president. A week later, a number of journalists' home were raided as the Belarussian KGB tried to look for libel documents regarding Lukashenko, Jurist reported.
The blogosphere's interactive, communal spirit is shaking the foundations of print journalism, but traditional journalists should embrace the change, says Roy Greenslade. News, he says, is no longer "one-way traffic".
"We [print journalists] conceived it [news]. We gathered it. We published it and broadcast it," he writes. "Blogging turns that model on its head. It allows people to question the information we provide. It allows them to produce their own information. It offers them a space to air their own views."
Greenslade says he is no longer certain that his own model of the future newsroom - a core of "professional journalists" overseeing a fringe group of bloggers - is viable. The news organization, he says, is vulnerable.
"...More fundamentally, I wonder whether a news organization is as perfect a model as we might think...It is entirely conceivable that the digital revolution may, in the fullness of time, sweep the media mogul aside," he writes.
Not that this is anything to be afraid of. Greenslade is ebullient when talking about the liberating potential of the blogosphere.
"The joy of the digital revolution is that it is bloodless, and democracy is at its heart," Greenslade writes. "It is the lack of unity that makes blogging so vibrant, so critical and also so self-critical."
For traditionalists who still cling to the old model - journalists as providers, citizens as recipients - and fear relinquishing this power to bloggers, Greenslade has some advice: let go.
Chances are you've heard all about the now-'resolved' dispute that opposed the Associated Press to social news sharing site Drudge Retort, over the fair - or unfair - use of AP quotes. Even more likely is the possibility that you've heard emotion-filled - and perhaps inaccurate - coverage of the affair. So this is an attempt to untangle some of the knots.
The four-point recap, clarifications Lesson one: The blogosphere's outcry is heard Lesson two: but the winner is? Lesson three: AP - "Whither" or "Adapt"? Change the DMCA or set a legal precedent?
The four-point recap, clarifications
If you haven't followed the story, here's a four-point recap (or skip to next):
- Earlier this month, AP demanded that the Drudge Retort take down seven entries, which were in its view violating policies of fair use of content and the agency's copyright (AP wants to charge outside sources for using for excerpts longer than four words). - Drudge Retort Web host Rogers Cadenhead consequently blogged about the takedown notice, and this created a ##-storm in the blogosphere, with many influential bloggers including TechCrunch's Michael Arrington and BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis calling on the boycott of AP content. - Shortly after, on June 16, AP retreated, but didn't recant: it admitted that its request had been "heavy-handed" but didn't withdraw the takedown notices. - Then, on June 19, AP issued a statement to say its conflict with Cadenhead had been resolved, after AP lawyers gave him guidelines to make the postings suitable, and that "both parties consider the matter closed." This really meant that Cadenhead agreed to modify the contested items and ended up not reposting them.
The guidelines discussed with Cadenhead have yet to be made public though, and the AP is working on a new set of guidelines for "fair use" of its content in general. "If AP's guidelines end up like the ones they shared with me, we're headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use," Cadenhead wrote on his blog. He told the New York Times' Saul Hansell that some of the key issues for AP related to protecting headlines and first paragraphs of stories.
First clarification: unlike what has been widely echoed on the Web and suggested by another New York Times article on June 16, AP was never supposed to meet the Media Bloggers Association (MBA) in order to draft guidelines for all bloggers, according to MBA PresidentRobert Cox.
Another clarification: the blogosphere went ablaze when it learned that AP had filed a lawsuit against Cadenhead in June, seemingly out of the blue. According to Cox though, "Drudge Retort got on AP's radar due to the posting of entire articles with exact headlines which all parties agreed constituted copyright violations two months BEFORE the most recent spate of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Take Down Notices."
Lesson one: The blogosphere's outcry is heard
News of the Associated Press' June take-down notices was met with severe criticism, calls for boycott - and many profanities - by the blogosphere.
In one of his posts, entitled "FU AP," Jarvis wrote: "Bloggers, unless the AP recants and apologizes to Cadenhead, I urge you to avoid linking to the AP and to link to reporting at its source." Jarvis also encouraged bloggers to copy-paste full AP stories.
In a self-admittedly "ridiculous" post, after being quoted in an AP story, Harrington announced that "I've called my lawyers (really) and have asked them to deliver a DMCA takedown demand to the A.P. And I will also be sending them a bill for $12.50." According to Harrington this "is exactly what the A.P. would have charged me if I published a 22 word quote from one of their articles."
That short posting alone generated more than 230 comments - most of which were harshly critical of AP's stance at the time. The wildfire that spread in the blogosphere and the seemingly rapid turn-about of AP once again illustrated a known fact: blogs have gained enough traction and buzz-generating capacity to concretely influence and shape the media landscape.
Lesson two: but the winner is?
One - erroneous - interpretation is to say that bloggers - won their battle against the traditional media Goliath, which was trying "to impose some guidelines on the free-wheeling blogosphere, where extensive quoting and even copying of entire news articles is common," - a quote from a New York Times story. (The Times' coverage of the affair was, according to Harrington, hindered by a conflict of interest, considering that the Times is one of AP's members and sits on its board of directors.)
But this isn't a victory for bloggers. "The A.P. is going to assert a much stricter interpretation of fair use than most people on the Internet are used to," reported Hansell on the Bits blog.
As mentioned above, Cadenhead had to agree to AP's proposed modifications, and ended up not reposting the material. Furthermore, this case is really a microcosm for the bigger issue of how to adapt "fair use" policies and copyright to the digital age in general.
"I'm glad that my personal legal dispute with the AP is resolved, thanks to the help of the Media Bloggers Association, but it does nothing to resolve the larger conflict between how AP interprets fair use and how thousands of people are sharing news on the web," wrote Cadenhead, following his two-hour conversation and settlement with the AP.
"I think AP and other media organizations should focus on how to encourage bloggers to link their stories in the manner they like, rather than hoping their lawyers can rebottle the genie of social news."
While Cadenhead may be right in terms of global news consumption trends on the Web, the AP was clearly in its own right under the US DMCA, at least regarding the stories posted in their entirety with the same headline. But the legal provisions concerning "fair use" of content for smaller excerpts have remained vague - simply undefined - until now, something the AP hopes to reform by setting guidelines.
"I think it would be helpful for bloggers and users of social news sites to know what the AP believes to be fair use of their copyrighted work," said Cadenhead's lawyer. But "I hope that any guidelines that are issued are not interpreted as an agreed definition of fair use" under copyright law.
Lesson three: AP - "Whither" or "Adapt"? Change the DMCA or set a legal precedent?
The Associated Press versus Drudge Retort - blogosphere - affair throws light onto two main issues:
- Does this case exemplify the 'old media' versus 'new media' divide? Is the AP's stance representative of its inability to adapt to a new context?
Yes, in the eyes of new media guru Jarvis: "I value the AP and don't want it to die. I want it to morph to a new model and a new future. But I am afraid that in its fights, we are seeing its inability to adapt."
On the other hand, few bloggers have pondered the more controversial view that the AP's approach may actually be a sign of its willingness to adapt - granted, not yet to the 'utopian' world copyright-lessness. But the AP, in its own way and after being "heavy-handed," is now attempting to define new standards that are adapted to the digital age. (Read this note on June 13 by Jim Kennedy, VP and Director of Strategy for AP.) No doubt some of the outspoken bloggers mentioned previously could be quick to shatter this argument.
- As is often the case, the law doesn't evolve as rapidly as the context it seeks to protect. The blurry wordings of the current DMCA must either be reformed quickly, after multilateral consultation, or the issue of "fair use" of content will eventually be settled in court and set a precedent, costing either news organizations or bloggers - presumably both.
This is the real issue at stake: how fast can the law be adapted to the reality of the Web, in order to avoid costly conflicts over subjective interpretations of "fair use" of content? As Hansell concluded in the Bits blog, "the unsettled state of the law makes it a gamble to take the matter to court."
A costly gamble, whether it ends in a loss for the AP or for bloggers. Or both.
Note that, just in case, no AP material longer than four words was excerpted in the above.
Bloggers: you can also watch this video by DigitalJournal.com for advice from Harvard Citizen Media Law Project Director David Ardia.
 on Tuesday, October 14. <i>The NYT</i><b> API</b>s are a way in which outside developers can access <i>NYT</i> data for use in other applications, interfaces and mashups, <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_first_new_york_times_api_i.php">according to <i>Read Write Web</i></a>.<br /><br /><form mt:asset-id="1124" class="mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image" style="display: inline;" contenteditable="false"><a href="http://www.editorsweblog.org/open.jpg"><img alt="open.jpg" src="http://www.editorsweblog.org/open-thumb-160x87.jpg" class="mt-image-left" style="margin: 0pt 20px 20px 0pt; float: left;" height="87" width="160" /></a></form>The Campaign Finance API was the first to be launched. The next API to be launched will be a movie review. <br /><br /><a href="http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/"><i>The NYT </i>website</a> describes the new API; "With the Campaign Finance API, you can retrieve contribution and expenditure data based on <a href="http://www.fec.gov/">United States Federal Election Commission </a>filings. Campaign finance data is public and is therefore available from a variety of sources...you can use the Times Campaign Finance API to quickly retrieve totals for a particular candidate, see aggregates by ZIP code or state, or get details on a particular donor."<br /> <div><br /></div>&title=US: <b><i>The New York Times</b></i> launches <b>API</b>){kind=link}
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An astounding 95% of the top 100 US newspapers have reporter blogs. They have become a vital part of reporting, "The lines between what is a blog and what is a mainstream media site become less clear."<br /><br />
The shift in the attitude towards blogging has been explored in the first part of an annual report published by <a href="http://www.technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/"><b>Technorati</b></a>, entitled, "<i><b>State of the Blogosphere</b></i>." Part I, "<i>Who are the Bloggers?</i>" attempts to unearth and analyze the trends and themes of blogging and bloggers. <br />&title=US: Part 1: <b>Technorati</b> releases <b><i>"State of the Blogosphere"</b></i>){kind=link}