Setting the House Afire

This story has been floating around on a couple sites for the last two days. That Media General doesn't flat-out deny it seems to lend credence. We keep telling newspapers that this is such a terrible idea but  so many are hellbent on self-destruction--and the wreckage of people's careers--that we are simply wasting our breaths. 

Rumor: Media General Plans To Consolidate Copy Editing, Designing, Thus Cutting Jobs

By Rachel Kaufman on Oct 29, 2009 01:56 PM

We hear that Media General is planning to consolidate the copy-editing and design functions for most of its papers into a central location, which would ultimately end in reducing staff.
Several sources, including but not limited to Media General journos chatting in this thread have said that the company plans to move all its design, pagination, and copy editing crew to Lynchburg, Va., starting in the first quarter of the next year. That team will copy edit and design all of Media General's papers (except, perhaps, for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Tampa Tribune, MG's flagships) from the centralized location.
Presumably those who can relocate will be asked to reapply for their old jobs, but some won't be able to move, and, we speculate, there won't be enough jobs for everyone anyway because the whole point of a consolidation is to, well, consolidate.

Copy Editors, Meet Your Future

Oh, swell. Who needs editors? And surely people will want to read the same stories, the same pages, all over the country(ies)?

Muir Named Head of Pagemasters North America

By E&P Staff
NEW YORK Toronto-based Pagemasters North America, a subsidiary of The Canadian Press, has appointed Stewart Muir managing director, marking the start of operational activity for Pagemasters North America after its launch was announced in August.
The company will provide U.S. and Canadian newspapers with a full range of editorial production services, from copy editing and headline writing to page design and layout. Citing "very positive feedback and interest," Pagemasters North America said it expects to have its first production center in full operation early next year.
Pagemasters North America is a collaboration between The Canadian Press and the Pagemasters subsidiary of Australian Associated Press which provides services to newspapers in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (E&P, March, Sept. 2009).

Pagemasters helps cut clients' production costs by efficiently preparing, editing and designing pages tailored to each newspaper's specifications. A key component of the new venture's business model is having the work done in North America by editors who are familiar with local culture, language and style guidelines.

Awards to Editors

It's always nice to see ACES people and other editors recognized for their good work.

FTC and the Future of Journalism

From Bill Densmore:

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is organizing a two-day symposium on the future and sustainbility of journalism. This is a visionary effort by what is normally a regulatory agency to help get ahead of the curve on the needs of a critical element of participatory democracy.
The FTC is taking comments for the record to inform the discussion at the Dec. 2-3 symposium and for ongoing analysis and ideas.
One of the critical new journalism constituencies are the owners/operators of emerging local online news communities (LONCs). From West Seattle to New Haven, and Minneapolis to Paulding County, Georgia, these operators are plowing new ground in participatory media, use of video, advertising forms and running a news organization on a shoestring. How can we help them?
Federal Trade Commission Chairman John Liebowitz gave this answer to Jeff Jarvis on the Media Talk USA podcast released Sept. 7, 2009:
"We do two things at the FTC: Competition and consumer protection. Both of those issues touch on the future of journalism, particular news in the era we live in. Right now, the news industry is in some form of crisis or turmoil and we want to ensure, because news is so important and journalism is so important to the functioning of a democracy, that it continues and we think that by holding a series of workshops and bringing together stakeholders -- bloggers, journalists, economists, university faculty -- who have thought about this issue, we might be able to come up with some ideas about what policy makers or lawmakers might think about doing, or refraining from doing, going forward."
What would you tell the FTC about advertising, privacy, antitrust and other forms of regulation?
Tracy Record, who co-owns the West Seattle Blog with her husband, has offered to draft a consensus statement. Please take a moment and send her your thoughts/URLs. If you contribute, she'll circulate a draft to you for comment and, if you like it, you can ask that your name be added to it.
 Tracy's email.

Not a Newspaper. That's for Sure. UPDATED

Yeah. Like, who gives a crap about whether it's true, right? Because after all, we'd rather read garbage and rumors than fact. Denton should be embarrassed to have written and circulated this memo. But he's probably not.

From the Awl, a memo from Nick Denton to Gawker staffers.

From: Nick Denton
Date: Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 6:33 PM
Subject: We're not running a newspaper
A few cases recently where we've thought *way* too much before publishing. Even when we've had exclusive information or even documentary evidence.
There's always a good argument for waiting. Let's check to see whether the associated claim is true; oh, the source might be exposed.
But we should publish anyway, making clear what we know to be true and what remains up in the air. Or even just publish a headline or quicklink and fill the story in later. We can always update. We can always write a second post when we've established more of the facts.
We've brought in some of the better traditions of newspapers. We're breaking more stories than we ever have. That's awesome.
But there's no way we're going to slow our publishing schedule to that of a ponderous newspaper-style organization — where everything has to go through layers of edit and approval and checking and legal. If we did that, we'd be neither as authoritative as a newspaper nor as nimble as the smaller blogs that *do* indeed publish as soon as they get something.
At some media organizations you might get rapped for running a premature story. At Gawker Media, you'll lose way more points for being scooped on a story you had in your hands.
Nick

  A little update, because this memo is so disturbing. I did a little legal work a couple of years ago, preparing to serve as a defense witness in a libel case. Had it gone to trial, the suit would have turned on accuracy and whether the paper had done the utmost to report and verify the facts, and had stuck to good journalistic practices. And as a copy chief at one point in my career, during which the city desk never met a deadline it couldn't blow, I would occasionally yell out to the rim as time ran out, "If it ain't libel, send it." But, you see, that was the one unbreachable barrier--libel. You simply cannot tell your staff to skip the well-established editing process AND the lawyers and think that that won't blow up in your face someday. I await the first legal test of this foolish memo's premise.

Cause and Effect

Really? Scrimp because they didn't get a cost of living increase?
Is anyone bothered by the tone of this story? I distinctly recall seeing stories a few days ago where one state actually lowered its minimum wage because the cost of living had declined, and the state is required by match changes in the cost of living with its payments.

I realize the cost of living may be affected by the cash for clunkers or other programs but unless someone can write a story that explains specifically the way seniors are more squeezed than others--and they may be by medical or other costs--than this kind of story really doesn't inform anyone in any significant way. And many of these folks are already on a really tight budget--blaming it on the lack of a COLA increase seems odd.

Social Security freeze means seniors must scrimp

By MATT SEDENSKY, Associated Press Writer Matt Sedensky, Associated Press Writer – 49 mins ago
PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. – If her check were bigger, 76-year-old Agnes Conti might be able to spring for a better cut of meat for her pot roast. She could afford to send her nine grandchildren more than $20 for their birthdays and Christmas. She'd be able to buy some nice new clothes, like she sees on QVC, not what she settles for at Walmart.

If only. The government has said the Social Security checks Conti and tens of millions of other seniors rely on as their primary source of income will not increase next year as consumer prices have fallen overall. And while the retired hospital clerk will get by, she'll be watching her spending even closer, knowing she can't expect the annual raise she's been accustomed to.

"We were good citizens all our lives. We went to work, we lived by the book, we weren't on welfare, we didn't ask the city for anything," Conti said while taking a break from crafts at a senior center here. "And what do we get?"

At the Southwest Focal Point Senior Center in this Fort Lauderdale suburb, seniors lamented the cost-of-living freeze and praised a White House plan for $250 checks to soften the blow. But they took all of the news in stride, saying they've had a lifetime of experience living on a fixed income and would manage with the money they currently receive.

HuffPost Headline Test

This is practically sacrilege in these days of SEO-driven editorial decisions but I wonder if this Huffington Post test of headlines over which one draws more readers really means one headline is better than the other?

Kudos to HP for trying to improve. It's an interesting technique. But I have been complaining about that site's headlines for a long time, not because they're boring but because they sometimes wildly overstate the facts,or misuse words ("hone" for "home" in very large type last week, for example.) Too often the site relies on splashing large type, no matter the value of the story. They reflect, too often, tabloid values rather than good and reliable information. Perhaps this is a good step toward at least thinking about the content some more. We'll see.

The First Annual or Whatever WORDIES

I've been thinking a lot lately about language blogs, which led to a contest idea. If everyone else can do Top Ten lists and invent ridiculous statistics or contests to rank everyone, why not me? So, for the first time, here are my first completely biased and subjective Wordies.

Category: The language blogger who makes me most happy that he doesn't live close enough to pick apart my work:

Fred Vultee, at Heads Up, the Blog

Fev is a master of spotting flaws in logic, poor word choice and just dumb assumptions in daily journalism. If you're not reading him now, you're overlooking a great resource. Highly recommended to professors or editors responsible for training journalists to avoid or spot and fix flaws.

Do you know how long it took me to realize what Fev's name was? That it was an acronym. Stop. Do not tell me it's not an acronym because "Fev" is not a word. Yes it is. As in, I'm going to Fev you if you don't learn how to write logically.


Category: The language blog most likely to remind me of my failure to major in 18th Century English literature and send me running to the dictionary:
John McIntyre's You Don't Say
There's always his recent instant classic, a slight sneer at references to the origins of a certain indelicate word often described as Anglo-Saxon ("...It has not been discovered anywhere in Old English or, for that matter, Middle English. It appears to have emerged in English sometime in the 15th century, adapted from Low German, Flemish, or Dutch.") Why yes, that's just what I was going to say.

Category: The holy cow discovery: a YouTube video of a Barry Manilow song getting diagrammed.

Mighty Red Pen

Need I say more?

Yes, Efficiency Starts at the Copy Desk

It's not that some production jobs can't be filled and shared with other publications/online operations. It's just that the copy desks shouldn't automatically be the first stop.

The idea that the copy desks don't contribute to content is nuts. And copy desks are already running shorthanded, which is clearly contributing to the many, many errors we're seeing in print and online. Yes, celebrity slideshows with no local connection could be shared and handled by one person for multiple sites. Maybe some national news, though you have to be careful to not overlook a so-called national story with importance to one local operation but perhaps not another in the same organization.

Please don't use the Chicago Tribune as a model for this or anything else.


Sun-Times buyer Jim Tyree: Media magician? -- chicagotribune.com

Surprise! World's Problems Continue

At first glance, this headline makes the "woes" appear to be of Obama's making. That's not what the story says: they are problems around the world that Obama must tackle.

Analysis: Obama's woes keep piling up around globe
By BARRY SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON – The woes keep piling up for President Barack Obama.
While it is unfair to blame him for all the world's problems (although some folks try) there is no question he is having trouble finding the right answers.

On Poll Bias

Nate Silver has a good assessment of how the order of questions can affect poll results. Question Order May Bias Health Care Polling

Every copy editor ought to be reading this guy.

Bloggers and the FTC

A new decision from the Federal Trade Commission creates questions about what constitutes blogging and what are really ads masquerading as honest review.

Right away, there's a problem of definition.

The FTC ruled Monday that bloggers must disclose any "material connections" for items they've received for product review. I'm not seeing anything that indicates a price minimum. The idea is to stop people who represent themselves as honest critics from taking, in essence, payoffs for writing favorable reviews, and, as the Los Angeles Times describes it, is the FTC's "first attempt to impose order on the largely unregulated world of blogging."

Certainly it is that but it immediately raises more questions, starting with, who's a blogger? If you work for the Daily Bugle but your copy winds up online, is that blogging? What if one of the duties from your newspaper job means occasionally posting web-only stuff, even though most of your work goes into print? Is there a difference? Does the First Amendment prevent the FTC from applying the rules to newspapers?

  Most newspapers I'm familiar with have enough pride, not to mention rules, to not allow the arrival of free review copies of, say, books, to affect their reviews. Quite the contrary, there's often a perverse pleasure taken in not allowing any influence over the review. That sense of not getting paid off, even with a cheesy little item, is part of the newsroom culture.

At a couple of newspapers I'm familiar with, the often-substantial number of review materials, from books to computer games to food samples, winds up being sold off to staff, with proceeds going to charity.

That actually works pretty well and everyone benefits.

What the FTC is trying to control is either the planting of information about a product or deliberately tainted reviews in order to collect free goods. Some of those products are expensive--if you're talking a game console or other computer-related products, you could be into the hundreds of dollars.

The FTC says it's main interest is advertisers, that companies stop the practice of creating fake endorsements, or misleading claims excused by "results not typical" disclaimers and that it will go after bloggers only if there are repeated complaints. (Penalties could reach $11,000 per incident.)

The problem I have with this, though, is who this applies to. I can't see the FTC going after a quality and trusted writer for a mainstream publication but what about operations that live on the web and have clearly well-established experts who write about products all the time? The people at places like TechCrunch and Mashable?

Are bloggers automatically less trustworthy than those who write primarily for print? I'd say sure, a few of them, but certainly not all.

The lack of clarity and ever-changing means of delivering information will complicate any FTC enforcement. I can't see how this stands up for very long unless the FTC really does intend to target advertisers and not writers.

Here's the FTC guidelines.

And, in the interest of free disclosure, I receive lots of books for review on many sites. The most recent batch wound up donated to a school organization for use in raffle baskets.

Farewell, LATWP// 2nd UPDATE

Washington Post, Bloomberg to launch news service
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Washington Post is teaming up with Bloomberg News on an information service that will focus on political and economics coverage beginning next year.
The partnership announced Thursday fills a void created by the dissolution of a 47-year-old news service that the Post and the Los Angeles Times had jointly owned.

Those of you in the newspaper business are probably familiar with the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service and its strong reputation for delivering quality stories. It will, unfortunately but not surprisingly, shut down effective Jan.1.

I worked for LATWP for 10 years, editing Newsday stories for the service, during pretty newsy days, from the Clinton impeachment, multiple plane crashes, including that of John Kennedy Jr., and of course, through Sept.11, the anthrax attacks and the invasion of Iraq. The very first Sept.11 story on the wire came from Newsday, and the first report of the release of two kidnapped Newsday journalists from pre-invasion Iraq came from LATWP.

When Cablevision bought Newsday, the people running LATWP kicked the paper off the wire, not wanting to have contributions from a non-Times Mirror/Tribune paper. That took an estimated 15 percent of content off the wire, just like that, including, perhaps most significantly, coverage of the New York sports teams. I lobbied hard to keep the paper on the wire and, not incidentally, my job, but to no avail. On my last day, as we awaited the close of the sale, I prepared my last few stories on the wire; the final two were the story about the close and then a little book review I'd written for Newsday, e-mailed the LATWP boss to see if there had been a reprieve, and when there was not, said goodbye to my Newsday and LA colleagues.

It's sad to see the demise of a good news operation but one whose time had run out, for different reasons, and that had not adapted to the changes that have shaken the newspaper industry.

The first thing to put the service on a death watch was, of course, the Tribune takeover of Times Mirror. Tribune already had a number of other syndication operations in place, including participation in what was then the Knight Ridder news wire; the latter was later merged into McClatchy-Tribune. From the day of that sale to Tribune, those of us working for LATWP knew our days could be numbered; that it hung on as long as it did as its own separate operation is pretty amazing. But it was not always clear to the staffs at the separate services that LATWP would be the one to shut down--I know there were some nervous times for the other guys, too, and we traded speculation and rumors for some time.

It always seemed to me that the services could have been merged somehow. Frankly, LATWP was a little more selective about what it used; the McClatchy wire/nee Knight Ridder, bombards subscribers with material, including duplicate versions of the same story but offers far more stories overall. There was, until the decision to kill LATWP,room for both kinds of service.

The second thing, in my opinion, was a resistance to change. The service's web site was inaccessible to non-subscribers; once you got to the site, you could see that it consisted of little more than a copy of the wire itself: you could scroll down the page and see the story slugs and numbers just as they appeared on the wire and you could open the story and copy it, if you had to, but that was about it. Suggestions that the page be pumped up, redesigned to keep fresher news, to add RSS capabilities, to do something to keep up with technological changes, were simply rejected. The page, in fact, frequently failed to work properly; for years, many Newsday stories wouldn't show there even though they were clearly on the wire. It always seemed to be a bit of a shoestring operation, one that ultimately kept it from growing and now, even surviving.

Similarly, the decision to refuse to allow stories with bylines from Tribune papers that were not officially part of LATWP contributing newspapers onto LATWP simply pissed off a lot of editors and reporters and left LATWP less valuable. After Tribune merged its newspapers' Washington bureaus, for example, a story written by, say, both a Newsday reporter and someone from the Chicago Tribune, could not appear on LATWP. But it could and usually did appear on McClatchy. How could this end well for LATWP?

The third thing, and this is just a guess, is that fewer papers were willing to keep subscribing. Even though LATWP's fees were quite modest, I hear, there are simply too many even cheaper alternatives for news. With shrinking news holes and declining interest in national and international coverage, LATWP, I'm sure, became a luxury for some papers. I do believe it's another sign of the willingness to give up some quality to save money.

For those of you who thought the LATWP stories were too long, and, within the old Times Mirror family, grumbled endlessly about how the LA Times stories,in particular, weren't cut, sorry,you're wrong. Practically everything that went onto LATWP got edited down to more reasonable lengths.

And, just so you know, some times those long,long stories were appreciated. While working at The Hartford Courant years ago, I came to use quite a lot of them. One of my jobs was to fill pages that came with zoned ads, zones that didn't match editorial editions. It was kind of like having my own little newspaper, with sometimes as many as 48 pages over two days that had to have stories that fell outside of editorial's editions--if you could reach only a third of, say, Enfield, you couldn't very well put Enfield news on them. And we didn't want to let the space revert to house ads. So mostly, LATWP, and occasionally Knight Ridder, stories took over the pages. (With lots of BIG pictures.) Readers in certain parts of Connecticut got rich, deep coverage of national and international issues, in bits and erratically because of the inconsistency of available space, but they got it.

The Hartford Courant may have been the only paper outside of Los Angeles to have used the Times' excruciatingly long--I mean multiple hundreds of thousands of words spread over several days--examining gas prices and shortages, back in the late 1970s.

Ah, the good old days when the biggest problem of the day was filling space around the tidal wave of ads.

The question now is what the Post will do to get its stories out to the world. The Times has already announced it will expand its contributions to the McClatchy wire but will anyone buy just the Post? I hope so and guess that somehow it will be part of the Post's general web-based news operation. Or perhaps the Post will try something new, offering stories on a case-by-case basis, or marketing specific packages and perhaps delivering through a different system.

I hope my old pals, at both ends of LATWP, survive these changes, and that folks at McClatchy prove to be as friendly to their new LA colleagues as they have always been to me.

UPDATE: A number of LATWP people will be losing their jobs in this move. The publisher's memo that talked about the LATWP team moving over to work with MCT did not mention that several terrific editors would be left behind and out of jobs, not assigned to regular LAT spots. It's unclear what is happening to the WashPost team.