Message from Michael - July 22 - Cronkite and Journalism

Message From Michael                                 

                                                                                                                        July 22, 2009                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

 

      WALTER CRONKITE AND THE ‘NEW’ JOURNALISM – A SPECIAL REPORT

 

We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael.  But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line. 

 

      It was ‘at the time’ an unusual story to air on a national newscast.  A story about a funeral service for a pheasant.  Maybe equally unusual ‘at the time’ was the fact that the story was being done by a lowly local news reporter and not a national correspondent.  ‘At the time’ Walter Cronkite was the anchor of the CBS Evening News and Watergate was still a current event and not a historic event.  I was the ‘lowly local reporter’ and the pheasant story got more attention than my investigation of the mayor, reporting on police brutality or even my undercover reporting on conditions at the county jail in which I purposely got myself arrested.  Well, now, it’s three decades later.  Steve Hartmann regularly does such feature stories, and local reporters and even local ‘citizen journalists’ report for national news.  So, appropriately, and coincidentally, after the death of the dean of broadcast journalism this issue of MfM looks at some – just some, not by any means, all -- of the journalism in the new media world.

      For example, what would he, or, more accurately, the journalists of that time, think of the fact that a Cronkite successor would be ‘teaching’ journalism skills on a website whose top rated video is about virgin sex.  YouTube has created a “reporters center” with people like Katie Couric, Bob Woodward, and Adrianna Huffington explaining how to do interviews (in Couric’s case), or the importance of investigative reporting.  When I checked it out, the reporters center site had just under 3,600 subscribers and 156,000 ‘channel views.’  For perspective, the favorite video of the day (when I checked it out) about virgin sex video and titled Harry Potter Sex Scene, had more than 643,000 ‘channel views.’  But before you discount the effort, related website CitizenTube.com had nearly 6.7 MILLION channel views, a subscriber base of nearly 35,000 and was carrying citizen video of the protest in Iran.  Of course, Michael Jackson videos were in the multi-millions when it came to views.  As a side note and portent of things to come, Qik, which allows you to share video from your phone online, has partnered with Brightcove,  ‘the world’s number one online video platform’ to let customers publish and distribute video across websites, social networks and video portals in what is being called “a new workflow for citizen journalism.’  One of the more recent and highly publicized ‘citizen journalism’ sites, AllVoices.com, which claims to meld ‘traditional’ journalism with ‘citizen journalism’ on a global scale, argues that the journalism of Cronkite no longer exists.

      Do a search for the phrase “citizen journalism” and you get more than 4 Million responses from Google, more than 5 Million responses from Bing and an incredible 36 Million from Yahoo.  It includes such sites as cjreport.com, run by two students, one at Syracuse University and one at Brussels University and the Institute for Citizen Journalism founded by ‘journalists and citizen activists’ in Vancouver; or thisisdiversity.com which brings together people “of all backgrounds to gather and be heard.’  And, of course, faithful readers of MfM (okay, let’s be honest – anybody who keeps up with the media) knows about the use of Twitter by citizens and journalists.  One of the leading centers for ‘citizen journalism’ efforts is the Knight Citizen News Network which lists more than 800 ‘citizen media sites.’  Website SourceWatch which is a project of the Center for Media and Democracy has a diverse list of more than 100 such sites from around the world, including one in Belarus and another in the Middle East.  There are numerous training sites for would-be citizen reporters.  Aside from the Knight center, the International Center for Journalists (ijnet.org) provides a ten-step interactive training module; The University of Missouri has a project exploring “the citizen journalism phenomenon” and professor Jay Rosen of New York University has an interesting way to look at it on his popular website pressthink, talking about “the people formerly known as the audience.” 

By the way, note the difference in wording which is part of the debate – citizen journalists versus citizen media.  Many mainstream, traditional journalists object to the phrase ‘citizen journalist.’  Just out of curiosity and because I am obsessive compulsive about some things, I did a search, using the phrase ‘citizen media.’  Interestingly, the responses from all three sites were many times higher for citizen media than for citizen journalism.  Google came back with 196 Million responses (versus 4 Million); Bing with 30 Million (versus 5M) and Yahoo with an astounding 316 Million (versus 196M).  What does that say?  I don’t know; what do you think?   Leading the responses on all three search engines was the Center for Citizen Media (citmedia.org) which is partnered with the Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.  As a side note, I would be remiss in this discussion of citizen media if I didn’t mention CNN’s iReports which were the source of much of the networks’ coverage in Iran.   

      Then there are the public funding or foundation efforts to ‘save’ journalism.  The public editor for the New York Times, Clark Hoyt, noted in his latest column that even the prestigious Times is taking advantage of such approaches to get stories done by others.  He talks about two of the best known sites – Spot.us and propublica.org.  People donate money to journalism projects advocated by freelance journalists and citizens.  It can be an investigation into the San Francisco transit police on Spot.us; Or even more ambitious, a nationwide check system on Propublica.org into how stimulus dollars are being spent on road, bridge and construction projects around the country.  It says something about Propublica.org, which subtitles itself ‘journalism in the public interest’ that the Georgia Department of Transportation even joined in on this one.

      Then there are the critics of journalism, and that is a large and diverse group, including to an extent, Cronkite himself.  One of the leaders in this group is freepress.net founded by media scholar Robert W. McChesney and which subtitles its webpage with “reform media; transform democracy.”  It claims to have a membership of half a million activists with the goal of ‘reforming’ media and acting as a counterweight to “big media companies.’  It maintains two other sites – savetheinternet.org and savethepress.org.  On what you might call the flip side of that is the Media Research Center (mrc.org) which subtitles itself as “America’s Media Watchdog” aimed at fighting ‘liberal bias.’  Again, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism or, for that matter, The Poynter Institute which, by the way, held a “big ideas” conference on projects that are ‘good for journalism and good for business.”    

      FINALLY:  I thought this was a good way to end this initial, brief report on journalism:  In an interview with contributing editor P.J. Bednarski of TVNewsday former CBS News president Andrew Heyward makes the point that local stations (and for that matter, I would argue – local news in general) have to rethink their “value proposition” and get away from what he calls ‘ritual reporting’ and move more toward enterprise reporting.  He argues local news’ “value proposition” (a term he obviously likes) has been eroded by the fact that there are so many sources of news.  So, he argues, “a local station needs to redefine its relationship with its community and become part of – pretentious word, forgive me – an ‘ecosystem’ of news and information in the community, which is of true value to the people who live there.  They need an integrated broadcast and digital strategy, including online and mobile, and must figure out a way to partner with other local journalists and become the place that people can go to for content.”         

 

      SOCIAL NETWORKING FOLLOW UP:  Some left over business from last week’s MfM:  China has the second LARGEST number of unique visitors to social networking sites (84.5 Million), behind the U.S. (128.5 Million).  You may recall in last week’s MfM, we talked about a comScore report that showed Russian social networking site users are the MOST ENGAGED in terms of time spent online and number of pages viewed, but that we couldn’t find figures for China or India.  Of course, right after I sent out that report, the good folks at comScore sent me all the numbers.  I have to admit I was surprised by how quickly they replied.  (Thank you, Jamie Gavin).  In any case, China visitors ‘only’ spend 2 ½ hours (158 Minutes) and ‘only’ visit 430 pages a month which is way below Russia’s 6 ½ hours and 13-hundred pages.  India, meanwhile, has 19.8 Million social networking visitors, putting it in 8^th place among users, but they spend even less time (135 minutes) and visit fewer pages (363).  Less than half of the Chinese Internet audience (42%) visit social networking sites compared to more than half for India (58%) and Russia (59%) and more than three quarters (77%) for the U.S.

      FOOTNOTE/ DISCLAIMER:  As I said at the start, this is just some of the issues being debated.  And it is only a brief beginning.  More to come in future MfM’s.  By the way, when Cronkite introduced my report, he mis-pronounced my name even though three fact checkers had called me to ask how to pronounce it.  Then again, one of the newspapers I worked with actually mis-spelled my name in a by-line on the front page.      

      SUBSCRIPTIONS:  If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com.  You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.