Tag: traditional media

No Twitter posts from the Washington Post – Is that a good idea?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The Washington Post told it’s journalists to keep off of Twitter after a staffer spent 140 characters defending the publication of an unpopular editorial.  The piece, by the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, made a case that gay teens committed suicide because they were mentally unhealthy.  It predictably raised the hackles of gay activist groups, who criticized the very idea of allowing such opinions to be published – which just as predictably led to the Post’s representative standing up for the First Amendment and the need for a broad marketplace of ideas.

It may seem ironic that, after a representative of the post contributed to this public conversation by citing the need for a public conversation, the Post shut down public speech from its employees.  In fact, Mashable roundly criticizes the new policy:

The Post is clearly trying to do some damage control, but in a time when it is often difficult to encourage traditional journalists to embrace social media and dialogue with readers, this will only discourage it further. News organizations should be encouraging dialogue and debate, not stifling dialogue between readers and journalists.

Actually, the Post’s policy is a good one.

Think of this in terms of a classroom debate.  A teacher poses a question.  A few students argue for one side, other students argue another.  The teacher provides facts and information, but shouldn’t be taking one side versus the other, right?  In fact, by removing their journalists from the discussion, the Post can do more to promote a discussion by not taking a side.

It’s important for media outlets to connect with their audience – as purveyors of information, they have to know what’s relevant, understand the various viewpoints are out there, and appreciate which issues pieces of information is most important to readers or viewers.  But if a journalist is supposed to (try to be) an objective resource, why would he or she want to participate in the debate?  Wouldn’t any journalist who did start to lose some credibility or give evidence of having some sort of agenda or bias?

Deconstructing the primaries

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

What might be the best wrap-up of yesterday’s primary results was published before the returns came in.  As media outlets keep dropping over-simplistic terms like “tea party support” and “outsiders vs. insiders” to explain what happened, the Washington Examiner’s Timothy Carney boils the divide in Republican politics down as “the Tea Party Wing against the K Street Wing” – a divide which is not simply ideological or experiential:

The main distinction… might have less to do with policy platforms and more to do with a politician’s attitude toward the Washington nexus of power and money. Nevada’s Sharron Angle is anti-bailout and anti-subsidy. [Kentucky candidate Rand] Paul could try to shrink defense spending and ethanol subsidies. In Florida, Republican Marco Rubio isn’t a game player like [former Senator Bob] Dole’s buddy Crist is.

This morning, we hear that Lisa Murkowski is in trouble against “tea partier” Joe Miller, that John McCain bested an insurgent challenge from a more conservative candidate, and that established Republican Bill McCollum lost out to Rick Scott.

So if you’re scoring at home, “the establishment” won some and lost some, with Alaska up in the air – at least, according to most of the talking heads you see.

But can you call McCain an establishment Republican candidate?  McCain had bucked national party leadership in his own way for decades, often lashing out at the K Street types Carney mentions above.  As Matt Lewis noted – again, before polls closed yesterday – he fought a serious race against an opponent with more clear ties to K Street establishmentism.  Last week, the New York Times saw fit to print that Alaska’s rugged individualism was either inconsistent or an outright sham because of its dependence on federal money; regardless of how the final tallies go for the scion of the Murkowski family goes, her ability to keep winning earmarks did not lead to an easy victory lap.  And Bill McCollum was part of a Republican establishment in Florida rocked with a spending scandal earlier this year.

And of course, there’s the big caveat that each race has its own local interpretations of who counts as “the establishment” and who really is an “outsider.”  All the more reason to look at the results through Carney’s prism rather than the crystal ball which other analysts are trying to use.

Al Franken’s comical take on net neutrality

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

If you thought Al Franken would give up the laughs just because he sued his way into the Senate, think again.  The SNL alum has some of his best writing since the Stuart Smalley movie up on CNN.com, which gave him a platform to discuss internet regulation:

“Net neutrality” sounds arcane, but it’s fundamental to free speech. The internet today is an open marketplace. If you have a product, you can sell it. If you have an opinion, you can blog about it. If you have an idea, you can share it with the world.

And no matter who you are — a corporation selling a new widget, a senator making a political argument or just a Minnesotan sharing a funny cat video — you have equal access to that marketplace.

An e-mail from your mom comes in just as fast as a bill notification from your bank. You’re reading this op-ed online; it’ll load just as fast as a blog post criticizing it. That’s what we mean by net neutrality.

So here’s the internet we have: a free and open landscape where the merit of ideas matters more than how much money you have.  So we want to oppose net neutrality legislation and regulations that would change that landscape, right?

Apparently, not in Al Franken’s world.  Franken likens the evolution of telecommunications companies to his work on network television, and the media consolidation that went on in that medium.

Back in the 1990s, Congress rescinded rules that prevented television networks from owning their own programming. Network executives swore in congressional hearings that they wouldn’t give their own programming preferred access to the airwaves. They vowed access to the airwaves would be determined only by the quality of the shows.

I was working at NBC back then, and I didn’t buy that line one bit. Sure enough, within a couple of years, NBC was the largest supplier of its own prime-time programming.

There are two rebuttals to this.  First, networks buy programming from other providers all the time.  In fact, one of the biggest hits NBC had this decade, Scrubs, was produced by Disney ABC.  The second point is… well, how is that all-Universal-produced prime time lineup working out for NBC right now?

Today, if you’re an independent producer, it’s nearly impossible to get a show on the air unless the network owns at least a piece of it.

True, but has getting a show “on the air” ever been less relevant for success?  An enterprising content producer wouldn’t get the same audience online that he or she might get on a broadcast or cable network, but they aren’t being shut out of the media landscape.  If that’s the yardstick for success, wouldn’t we have to say the internet as it is works just fine?

Franken starts to make an analogy between internet services providers and cable companies – which is, incidentally, the argument on net neutrality’s side that makes the most sense.   But that assumes the market stays static – that is, that everyone continues to have a wire coming into their house, hooked up to their desktop computer, delivering the internet for the whole family to gather around.

But that isn’t where internet consumption is going.

At the risk of using myself as an example let me use myself as an example: in the morning, I usually check work and personal email on my Blackberry before rolling out of bed.  I check my home computer to see if the Yankees won the night before.  At work, I check sites like Politico routinely, and if an issue I’m working on is about to come up for a Congressional vote I might dial up CSPAN and watch online.  After work, I might go over to Starbucks with the laptop to work on a post or answer emails, using their WiFi.  Count ’em up – that’s four internet providers in a single day.  If I was traveling, there might be more connections – airports, hotels, even planes.   I dare you to try to keep content away from me.

The internet is not a utility like cable, it’s a communications infrastructure.  The providers can’t afford to simply keep content from you, because you can figure it out and change easier than you can if, for example, Comcast refuses to put the NFL Network on a basic cable tier.

Regulating the internet like telephones, or cable, or even broadcast radio and television doesn’t work because those are different technologies and consumed differently.  But don’t blame Franken’s lack of insight on the fact that he made his bones in old-school broadcast network television.  After all, he’s been trying to appeal to net neutrality cheerleader Google to wire Duluth for broadband.  Maybe he’s just trying to scratch their back in hopes they will return the favor later on.

Musical chairs in the briefing room

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

After Helen Thomas’s retirement/historically ignorant meltdown, the White House Correspondent’s Association has figured it out.  The Associated Press will inherit Thomas’s chair in the White House briefing – front and center – and Fox News will move into the front row.

You won’t see the changes, since the camera is usually trained on the podium and whoever is speaking from there.  And of course, since the communication in the White House briefing room is pretty staged and rehearsed, there’s rarely ever any actual news made there.  The reporters digging up stories around town will continue to do the heavy lifting.

But hey… how ’bout that new seating chart, huh?

Helen Thomas gets Macaca-ed

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Helen Thomas’s resignation from the White House press corps came not because of offensive comments, but because the media landscape has passed her by.

Reporters are, rightfully, under more scrutiny now than ever.  Back when Thomas started, America’s romanticized view of “the media” was something like a mix of Lois Lane, Carl Bernstein, and Bob Woodward – dogged reporters turning over stones, acting as the clear pane of glass through which normal, everyday people could see the world.

But gradually, reporters (including Woodward and Bernstein) became a part of the equation.  Suddenly, people realized that the reporters weren’t just a clear pane of glass, but the entire window, limited in what they showed by their own frame.  Sometimes, to see what was really going on outside, you had to look out of several different windows.

News consumers began to understand that the person telling the story affects the story.  And news consumers care about that.

This isn’t to say that reporters should be completely without bias – but most folks feel they ought to try to keep an open mind.  Thomas’s anti-Israel diatribe was anything but open minded.

That the grand dame of the White House press room was taken down by a citizen journalist – and that it was her own words, rather than any auxiliary commentary, that did her in – speaks to another truth about modern media.  The stalwarts like Thomas are less relevant than ever before.

All politics are personal

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

TechRepublican points to this pretty cool video about the continued significance of social networking:

The importance of online engagement is nothing new to businesses and politicians – at least, it shouldn’t be.  Still, even those who appreciate the power of this communication don’t seem to grasp the underlying principles.

One set of stats stood out from this video: while only 14% of people polled trust advertisements, 78% trust recommendations from friends.  Those aren’t necessarily Facebook friends, either; the more technology becomes integrated in our lives, the more it exposes our human nature.  We trust people we know more than those we don’t know.  Political strategists from the nineteenth century understood the need for voters to hear from local party leaders, and no substitute has ever worked.

Speaking at an event in Richmond, Va. last weekend, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe summed up what that means for the campaigns of the future:

Plouffe said the campaign was built using the Internet to engage voters in volunteering, contributing money and “sharing the message” amongst themselves. Connecting these people — not only to the campaign but to each other — helped them build trust with prospective voters they engaged both online and face-to-face.

“There is a lack of trust — in government, in business leaders, in academic leaders, even in faith leaders,” Plouffe said. But, he said, “People trust each other.”

Forget about local – all politics are personal, and always has been.

South Park at 201 (and counting)

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

South Park got everyone talking last week, but not for the right reasons.

Now thirteen years old, the show celebrated its 200th episode a few weeks ago.  This milestone should have received some more attention than it did: aside from basic longevity, South Park was and is the signature show that put Comedy Central on the cable map.

More significant than that, though, is the unique social commentary South Park offers up from a center-right perspective – and the fact that no other show does that as well.

One episode called out hybrid enthusiasts as presumptuous yuppies who enjoy the smell of their own farts.  Two episodes made the point (using thinly veiled surrogates for Starbucks and Wal-Mart) that big businesses are big because people want their products, not because of some evil corporate trick. A sixth season episode managed to mock lawsuit abuse, political correctness, and draw a line between tolerance and acceptance.  A two-part episode glimpsed into a future without religion and found devout atheists arguing over whose scientific logic was superior.

South Park has been a turn-of-the-20th-century incarnation of an Ayn Rand novel – telling a compelling story while making important and uncommon cultural points.  In fact, a 2005 book about the rise of media-savvy conservative activists was titled South Park Conservatives.

But calling South Park a political show is a misnomer.  Other efforts to become conservative or libertarian alternatives to left-leaning television shows, movies, or other media outlets have failed because those outlets put politics before content; South Park is a funny show that happens to be made by people with a libertarian-oriented worldview.  It would be hilarious either way; the leanings of creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone just make it different.

If you want to learn more about smaller government and individual freedom, Hayek and Bastiat are better philosophers than Parker and Stone.  But it you want entertainment that comes from a different perspective than most of the stuff out there – and that is, despite some shock value jokes and toilet humor, pretty smart – go on down to South Park and have yourself a time.

The coming political apocalypse

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 2 Comments

Start the hand-wringing and eulogizing: 80% of Americans don’t trust the government.  Combined with the fact that some people like to own guns and the calls for rebellion by national policy experts like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are inciting rebellion with seditious rhetoric, the violent revolution can’t be far behind.

Our Republic is clearly doomed.

Based on what I caught on the Sunday Morning talk shows yesterday, here’s what we can expect in the coming months:

Increased antagonism between right-wing ideologues and progressive thought leaders. As experts examine previous social programs – and which new social programs must be implemented to fix them – the tea partiers will grow louder and louder.  Their simple-minded sentence fragments – such as a call for a more reserved and focused federal government which permits society to develop its own mores and guidelines organically to reflect those of the people combined with stronger states which work in harmony with federal officials to ensure that government services are optimized to best serve the needs of the people – will drown out the more educated progressives’ more refined and intellectual plans to pump up program budgets.

More people buying guns and getting violent. As if to gnash their metaphoric teeth in the wake of Tax Contribution Day, a bunch of right wing nut jobs got together in Northern Virginia this past weekend to rally for their Second Amendment rights.  Some even brought their guns to the rally!  In contrast, cooler heads held a rally opposing gun ownership just across the river in Washington, D.C. – where tight restrictions keep out gun violence.

Violent overthrow of the government. These bitter, angry people who distrust government may even coalesce into a bitter, angry mob and try to disrupt the November elections.  Foaming at the mouth and blinded by their hatred of the government, they may descend on local polling places, march in one by one, check in with a poll worker, show necessary identification if required, and then angrily pull levers other than the one with “Incumbent” written in next to it and thus tossing the people in office out instantly (after a careful counting of the votes and a two month transition period).

It wasn’t exactly clear how we’ll get from these initial steps to Beyond the Thunderdome.  We’ll have to tune in next Sunday morning to find out.

Free News!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Rupert Murdoch – the Australian who prints Our Nation’s Newspaper of Record – is sticking to his guns: advertising alone won’t support journalism, so if you want news from his properties, you’ll have to pay.  (Eventually.)

Murdoch has a problem with news aggregators like Google, which monetize other people’s content.  Critics say Murdoch’s time has passed, and that putting up paywalls would hurt readership.  While this is true, readership really isn’t the problem for news media, it’s revenue.

Like any foray into the online world, eyes on the page mean little unless those eyes do something.  Campaigns and causes find that out all the time.  It’s relatively easy to drive traffic to a site or amass 10,000 Facebook fans, but unless those site visitors and fans sign up, give money, and/or take action, they’re nothing more than numbers on a spreadsheet.

Similarly, if  Murdoch’s papers don’t have users that somehow create revenue, it really doesn’t matter how much news they read.  It isn’t a matter of greed; it’s a matter of keeping the lights on.  And if Murdoch chooses to monetize his content completely, then Google and Microsoft have no right to take his content and serve ads around it.

To be sure, committing to a business model that sells content means that content will have to stand out a bit.  If Murdoch’s content stands out to the point where people are willing to pay, then he should charge.  And if not, the problem will correct itself.

Happy Birthday for two TV revolutions

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

March 19 marks two big media birthdays.  Though both are cable television networks, they are significant for different reasons.

The elder is C-SPAN, which was created on this date in the great year of 1979.  C-SPAN made news this week by making its entire video archive available online, which is a natural extension of the network’s mission: to shine sunlight on the workings of the American government.

The younger is eight years old today: the YES Network, or Yankees Entertainment and Sports (which has an excellent website in addition to an excellent television network).  YES was born because the New York Yankees were unsatisfied with annual $70 million payments for their television rights from Madison Square Garden Network, another New York City-based regional sports network (or RSN).  The Yankees figured they could do better, and built their own television network to play their games and satisfy the content needs of rabid Yankee fans, who would actually watch the Yankeeography of Danny Tartabull.

When you’re the most famous sports franchise in the world, building your own media empire is much easier than if you’re a grassroots activist organization.  But the principal is the same whether you’re launching a YouTube channel or a cable channel: the Yankees knew their audience was out there, and they found their own path to that audience.