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The New York Times has been under heavy fire from US newspapers, media, journalists and readers, after it published on Thursday Feb. 20. a front page investigative article about senator and Republican candidate John McCain.

The story asserted in its second paragraph that during McCain's first run for the White House eight years ago, top advisers were convinced he was having a romantic relationship with a lobbyist, which could have been detrimental to his campaign. However, in addition to lack of any specific sourcing, the article offered no substantial evidence about the alleged romance - which was subsequently denied by both McCain and the lobbyist.

This wasn't the point of the story though, according to Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, who said the article was the story of a man who rebuilt himself as a fighter against corruption but is still "careless about appearances, careless about his reputation, and that's a pretty important thing to know about somebody who wants to be president of the United States."

But this explanation didn't appease many readers, outraged by the Times' angle on the story - or what they perceived as the angle, namely the claim that McCain had had an affair with a lobbyist.

"I am most disappointed in The New York Times for engaging in this sort of trash-the-candidate journalism," said one commenter to the story. The Times "has sunk below its standards and created a salacious distraction from an otherwise substantive campaign," said another. And so on.

Last Friday, the Times' story had already received over 2,000 comments, many critical of the handling of the article. "But judging by the explosive reaction to the 3,000-word article, most readers saw it as something else altogether. They saw it as a story about illicit sex. And most were furious at The Times," wrote Clark Hoyt, public editor of the Times, in a column on Feb. 24.

Should the Times have run the story? Numerous pieces have already been written, and Al Tompkins from the Poynter Institute did a good compilation of the scope of reactions, which have been varied, and offered his views on how to report the McCain story. Some believe that the Times' story had valid points about McCain that were of public interest, including Jack Shafer for Slate.

However, by choosing to refer to the affair in such a prominent way, and with loose evidence of it, the Times' opted for an angle that overwhelmingly hid the newsworthy components of the story.

"What's most remarkable about the article is that it appeared in the paper at all: The new information it reveals focuses on the private matters of the candidate, and relies entirely on the anecdotal evidence of McCain's former staffers," commented The New Republic (TNR). Similarly harsh criticism from Hanna Rosin, Slate.

According to TNR, Time magazine editor Rick Stengel told MSNBC that he wouldn't have published the piece as it was.

One of the more balanced analyses of the Times' McCain story came from the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz:

"To be sure, the piece included significant details about whether the Arizona senator had done legislative favors for Iseman's clients."

But "the hardest thing in journalism is to spend months on a story and then admit you haven't got the goods. There is, instead, a tendency to dress the thing up with fine writing and larger themes in an effort to demonstrate that it's not just about sex, when of course that is the only element most readers -- and the rest of the media -- will focus on."

In fact, Hoyt was probably one of the harshest critics of the Times' approach to the McCain story (although this may also be a strategy by the Times to weather through this storm):

"A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide."

That's a politically correct way of saying that the Times published a front page 3000-word piece that was based more on appearances than substance (read Michael Kinsley, Slate). A poor decision coming from the US' paper of record (Miami Herald).

Last Friday, the Times (re)opened the discussion about the McCain story and angle to readers. Read here.

And please send us your views.

Source: New York Times (here and here) - Los Angeles Times - Publishing 2.0 - The New Republic - Slate - Poynter Institute - Washington Post - Miami Herald

The San Francisco Chronicle trims it Monday and Tuesday editions of the paper as editor Ward Bushee continues his trend of shrinking big papers like the Arizona Republic, months before.

Several Chronicle reporters explained that Bushee stated that management had decided to combine several sections that run on Monday and Tuesday—among them, the business and sports sections as well as the classifieds and the Datebook. The new, slimmed down edition is set to debut on Mon. Feb. 25.

Bushee executed a similar plan during his tenure as editor at the Republic. The shrinkage of the paper’s Monday edition was presented to readers as an effort to cater to busy readers’ presumably busy Monday schedules, reported the Phoenix New Times website. Loyal readers saw through the rhetoric and recognized the underlying cost-cutting motives. Some were even offended Bushee and the paper’s management claimed to be acting on behalf of readers’ interests—saving them time by cutting out entire sections. The 168 letters received in the Republic mailroom on the subject illustrated that readers did not prefer the timesaving, shrunken Monday version.

It is unclear how Chronicle readers will react to the new editions.  While some critics dislike the shrinkage, others recognize the need to cut costs—and perhaps even save newsroom jobs—at the price of trimming down content.

Source: SF Weekly and Phoenix New Times

User-generated content websites have flourished and there is no question now that they are here to stay, and that ‘user’ content will increasingly pervade all media – ‘traditional’ media that is. Has the definition of ‘News’ changed, or deteriorated, with the Web 2.0 revolution?  Are UGC sites competitors or facilitators for newspapers transitioning to the online world? Martin Rogard, director of content for YouTube’s European alter ego, Daily Motion, answers some of these questions for the Weblog, to help newspapers that can be torn between opening to readers and keeping the old rules in place.

The Arizona Republic is one of the only growing newspapers in the U.S., with readership at more than 1.7 million. Margie Cochrane the advertising director at the Gannett Co.-owned newspaper explained the success of the paper through new products, audience targeting, and niche markets.

Excelsior is celebrating its 90th anniversary. The paper is commissioning a series of reportages that cover global issues from a personal point of view, in partnership with major newspapers from around the world.

Eight news organizations donated $52 million yesterday to the Newseum, the Washington, D.C. museum dedicated to the news industry — one of the largest combined media gifts in history, The Washington Post reported. The building is not yet finished, and the gift will go toward a $100 million capital campaign.

The mantra from digital publishing advocates at the World Newspaper Advertising Conference & Expo was that newspaper companies must rapidly move their business on-line or risk getting left behind.
 
Ironically, those same advocates provided one of the strongest arguments for staying in, and developing, the print business -- newspapers generate much more revenue per reader than on-line media, and will continue to do so for some time to come.

 The Editors' Weblog has compiled a provisional list of the newspapers that have printed some or all of the cartoons since 30 September 2005, date of publication of 12 cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten. Even provisional, this list is the most exhaustive on the internet, thanks to members of the World Editors Forum and to bloggers close to the EW.

The main conclusions are:

- to our knowledge, more than 130 national or local newspapers (excluding the student newspapers and online publications) published some or all of the 12 cartoons (sometimes just a pohtography) in approximately 50 countries . It also means that around 1,7% of the dailies around the world - 8,300 paid-for dailies according to World Press Trends 2005 - made the difficult decision to publish the cartoons.

- Europe was the continent where the most newspapers published the cartoons: at least 70 papers. It is not surprising that the Netherlands was the country most involved in the controversy (after Denmark)... a few months after the assassination of the film maker Theo Van Gogh by an Islamist activist. Same thing in France after the veil debate and the November 2005 riots.

- Within Europe, the first publications to reprint the cartoons in January-February 2006 were in general right-wing publications, for example ABC in Spain, Die Welt in Germany and Corriere della Sera in Italy. Then more leftist publications followed suit, for example Libération and Le Monde in France.

- Surprisingly, Arab and Muslim newspapers were also involved in the controversy from the very beginning, with the first reprint on 17 October 2005 (see below)! More than 12 Arab and/or Muslim newspapers published the cartoons. The decision to publish provoked terrible consequences for the editors-in-chief of these publications. Same consequences for some directors of television in Sudan and Algeria. 

- How to define the position adopted by American, British, Canadian and Australian newspapers? Media responsability, political correctness or self-censorship? The most surprising is not the position defined in many editorials (from The New York Times to The Guardian), but this strange impression of unanimity and consensus: only three regional newspapers on more than 1,400 newspapers in the States and zero newspaper, but a student daily in the UK for taking the risk...

- And what in the rest of the world? Nothing. Almost the desert for the publication of the cartoons in the Americas (apart Brazil), Africa (apart South Africa) and above all Asia (apart New Zealand). As if this controversy was only between Europe and the Arab world and if blasphemy was still relevant in regions as Asia and the Americas: not only about Mohammed, but about all religious issues.

My conclusion: the geography of the publication of the Danish cartoons tells us a lot about our democracies: what is allowed, what is forbidden... and what is taboo. In fact, it's more geopolitics than geography!

In an attempt to "protect its turf from the likes of online competitors like Craigslist.com" the San Francisco Chronicle is the latest US newspaper to become involved in television classified advertising. The paper has announced that it will launch a 30 minute long television program entitled 'Chronicle Jobs TV' which will run Monday to Wednesday at 5:30 PM on UPN Bay Area Channel 44.

From Reuters: "The New York Times, on Sunday endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry as a potentially "great chief executive." With just 16 days before the Nov. 2 election, Kerry gained the backing of 27 papers on Sunday and President Bush won nine, according to Editor and Publisher, which tracks the newspaper industry. Kerry leads Bush in newspaper endorsements 42 to 22, the journal said on its Web site. Bush won endorsements from the Chicago Tribune, Denver's Rocky Mountain News, the Arizona Republic and the Dallas Morning News in his home state of Texas. "We believe that with John Kerry as president, the nation will do better," the New York Times said its an editorial. The Times characterized Bush's presidency as "disastrous" and accused him of "turning the government over to the radical right."

Source: Reuters

According to Editor & Publisher, the short list of candidates for the new USA Today editor is down to four: "Mark Silverman, editor and publisher of The Detroit News; Bennie Ivory, executive editor of The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky.; Ward Bushee, editor of The Arizona Republic in Phoenix; and Susan Goldberg, executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News (Calif.). All except Goldberg are current Gannett employees."

Source: Editor and Publisher.

Some quotes from O. Ricardo Pimentel, columnist, Arizona Republic: "Perhaps you realize that the fastest growing segment of your market may very well be non-English speaking. Most probably, Spanish-speaking. More importantly, Spanish-reading... Los Angeles is shaping up to be the next big newspaper battleground. And the fight will be waged in Spanish... The national scope makes the upcoming Tribune/Hoy - La Opinión battle significant... By 2050, the entire Latino population will have grown 188 percent to 102.6 million. So Spanish-language media will be in no danger of lacking readers or viewers in the United States for the foreseeable future... If you don't reach out to the first generation, what chance is there that the second generation will adopt the news-reading habit in either language?"

Source: Poynter online.

Gannett Co. Inc. is preparing to launch a new section in The Arizona Republic geared toward the English-language Hispanics. Gannett made a strong push last year into the local Spanish-language market by buying Ashland Media, owner of La Voz, a weekly newspaper. The Republic's move is testimony to the growing portion of the Hispanic population who remain close to their culture but will consume more media in English.