JD Lasica

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journalism

When bloggers practice journalism

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Journalists & bloggers discuss what’s ahead for the expanding media ecosystem

The following exchange took place Sept. 17, 2002, at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and appeared a week later in OJR. Note: I’ve left original terms like “webloggers” intact, even though the language now seems outdated.

By J.D. Lasica
Online Journalism Review

When do webloggers practice journalism? What do informed amateurs and niche experts bring to the media ecosystem? Should journalists blog? And should they rely on weblogs as news sources? Should bloggers and those in traditional media engage in a dance of fear and loathing, or do both sides stand to gain from the other? Should blogging be taught in journalism classes?

Those were some of the questions tackled last week at the University of California Graduate School of Journalism. Three journalists — Dan Gillmor, business columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, Scott Rosenberg, managing editor of Salon, and myself — as well as veteran bloggers Rebecca Blood (author of The Weblog Handbook) and Meg Hourihan (co-author of We Blog) exchanged views before 75 journalism students and members of the public.

By coincidence, six days after our panel, the New York Times ran a piece that mirrored some of the topics raised by the panelists, and Providence Journal columnist Sheila Lennon did the same in her weblog. Here are selected excerpts from the panel on weblogs and journalism:

Moderator Paul Grabowicz: We made the mistake of putting the class description up on our Web site. Wired News ran a story about it, and all hell broke loose. One blogger said that the class, if journalists were doing weblogging, would be the Altamont of the blogging world. Why was there that kind of reaction? [Read more…] about When bloggers practice journalism

Layoffs.com: A look at the state of the online news Industry

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I was interviewed by PBS’s Online NewsHour in 1999 and again in 2001 after the dotcom crash. The latter exchange is below.

J.D. Lasica is a new media columnist for the Online Journalism Review, a Web-based journal produced at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. He recently published a four-part story on the state of online publishing.

The following are his responses to questions posed by PBS’s Online NewsHour.

Two years ago, you said the Internet was becoming the place people turned to in order to get a richer news experience. Is that still the case?
Not long ago I read a study that found the typical user spends a total of seven seconds on any given Web page. Seven seconds! So online journalists need to understand that underlying truth about the medium: To many people, the Web is Short Attention Span Theater. You need to grab the reader by the collar with news that’s summarized quickly and cleanly, stripped of anecdotal leads or clever, prosaic approaches more suitable to another medium and another era.

Now, that doesn’t mean that Web journalism begins and ends with snappy headlines and terse writing. Today, headline news sites are a dime a dozen. Some, like Yahoo News, do a great job of rounding up the top stories from credible sources and transporting users to news sites with the best coverage. Other headline news services draw no distinctions between trustworthy news providers, tabloid stories, and thinly disguised PR material masquerading as journalism.

Online news outfits need to offer more than headline roundups of breaking news, or shovelware [recycled news] from this morning’s print edition. They need to commit editors and writers to reporting news that’s breaking in their community during the day. And they need to provide depth, context and perspective to the news by digging beneath the surface to explore not just what happened but how and why, and to report their findings through text, photos, audio, video, informational graphics and scanned source documents.

Major news organizations like CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USAToday and others understand this, and that’s why the public turns to them during big stories like the presidential election aftermath. Unfortunately, we’re now beginning to see cutbacks in online news staffs — the Miami Herald, for example, just laid off its only Web reporter.

Also in 1999, you said many online news organizations hadn’t gotten a good grasp on the concept of interactivity. Is that still the case? What kind of interactivity seems to appeal to visitors most?
Last year I wrote a 52-week series for the parenting site BabyCenter about the birth and development of our first child, and the resulting interactivity with the readers each week was staggering: hundreds and hundreds of e-mails and forum postings from expectant mothers and new fathers, offering advice about feeding and weaning, sharing their own heartfelt experiences, and basically just wanting to have their voices heard. More than a few were surprised and grateful when I took the time to respond to their comments, as if it were somehow remarkable for a journalist to deign to climb down from Mount Olympus and interact with ordinary mortals.

That’s the challenge our profession faces: Too often we give in to the institutional ivory-tower conceit that says: We’re the expert news gatherers who decide what’s important, you’re the passive recipients — end of discussion. That’s pure arrogance, and it’s antithetical to the Internet’s core ethos. I think the folks working in news organizations’ new media units understand this, but they’re still a small minority — and that’s the problem. Everybody in most news organizations, from the interns to the executive editor, ought to be online and plugged into a two-way dialogue with the public, not just a designated handful. But interactivity still scares the daylights out of old-school journalists.

Still, some points of light have begun to pierce the darkness. Last week I spoke with the editor in charge of interactive media at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, who said, “More and more of the newsroom’s reporters are asking to have their e-mail addresses printed in the paper because they love the feedback.” Other papers are also trying to change the newsroom culture. Reporters and columnists who spend a lot of time online invariably say they get their best story ideas, and the most rewarding feedback, directly from readers over the Internet.
What do you think is in the cards for Internet-only publications in today’s Web climate?
I hope they can hang on. With online advertising shrinking and Wall Street putting the squeeze on content sites, Net publications are sailing in rough seas. The grandiose visions of a few years ago — city guides brimming with rich content, product-comparison sites steeped in consumer journalism, ad-supported finance and sports startups — are giving way to the realization that producing high-quality content is both really expensive and really hard to pull off. Some Web-based publications with questionable business models, like the crime news site APBNews.com, won’t be around for long.

I’m more hopeful that Salon, Slate and the entertainment-news site Inside.com will make a go of it. They won’t be profitable this year but they’re savvy enough to weather the storm. America Online, of course, is another online publication that reports the news, and they’re going to be with us for a very long time.
Is Internet news doomed by its nature to be a profitless venture? Are there any business models that seem to be working?
The challenge facing online news organizations is: How do you make money in a medium where information is ubiquitous? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. The Star Tribune‘s operation is profitable because the tech staff builds Web sites for local businesses. WSJ.com is close to profitability because users value the breadth and depth of their financial coverage. Other papers may find similar niches by becoming the paper of record for newsworthy activities and events in their back yards.

Eventually, as news sites’ online work intersects with the print and broadcast operations of their corporate siblings, we may stop thinking about Internet news as a separate entity. This month CNN and the News Corp., owner of FoxNews.com and FoxSports.com, scuttled their Internet divisions and merged their online staffs into their broadcast divisions. The Tribune Co., one of the smarter media companies around, has a long-term strategy of combining their print, broadcast and Internet assets all under one roof.

Online news sites may or may not become profitable, but the Web is only one medium. Farther out on the horizon, digital news ventures are likely to make money from wireless applications, interactive TV services, broadband, portable tablet-like devices, and personalized newspapers that come rolling out of a printer in the home.
How do you see wireless technology and digital television playing into the future of news on the Web?
We’ve already begun to see Internet startups show off the latest gizmos: handheld wireless units connected to the Net that call up not just stock quotes and sports scores but headlines, stories and news alerts. The McClatchy Co., publisher of the Sacramento Bee, is working with a partner on a venture where you’d be able to get tailored news updates when you drive to work — on your timetable, not the radio station’s. The technology’s getting there, now it’s just a matter of forming the right partnerships and finding out just how much real-time news consumers actually want. Early indications suggest there may not be as much demand for wireless news as originally thought and what people really want is to send and receive short text messages on cell phones.

Digital television could become a huge deal. Not the wide-screen, high-definition TV, which faces a lot of technical obstacles, but the kinds of services we’re already seeing with Tivo, Microsoft’s Ultimate TV and other digital video recorders and set-top boxes. Last election night, a partnership between the NewsHour and WebTV allowed thousands of viewers to get a more personalized election experience by letting them click on candidates’ victory and concession speeches and follow local returns. That only scratches the surface. We’ll see more of this, on a much larger scale, on all the major networks before the decade is out.
After this new media reorganization is over, will there be a resurgence of Internet news or will the consolidation of the past few months continue?
We’re likely to see more online news layoffs and cutbacks in the months ahead, but the worst is probably behind us. The downturn should be over by fall, and next year we’ll likely see small incremental growth rather than big expansion plans. It may not be until 2003 that online news ventures take off again in a significant way, though we won’t see a return to the spasmodic expansions of the past two years. Analysts say traditional retailers should start advertising on the Web in a big way starting late this year. I hope that’s true. It’s amazing how much journalism is still at the mercy of market forces outside our control.

CNN Memo to Staff

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CNN Newsgathering President Eason Jordan’s memo to CNN staff:

To: CNN colleagues
From: Eason Jordan

The CNN News Group will undergo a radical transformation in the weeks ahead as we strive to make our great news organization better than ever, heightening CNN’s competitive edge.

I am an outspoken advocate of revolutionary change within CNN and am the architect of many of the initiatives we are implementing across the News Group, especially in Newsgathering. In this note I provide details of the coming Newsgathering changes and explain why I believe these innovations are not only desirable but essential. [Read more…] about CNN Memo to Staff

2000 election coverage from the wired right

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Peer-to-peer and conservative news sites offer counterbalance to mainstream media

This column appeared Nov. 21, 2000, in the Online Journalism Review.  Here’s the version on the OJR site.

With the political crisis over the presidential election heating up, what’s a conservative true believer to do? Turn off the left-wing mainstream media, fire up the PC and head to a news site of the political right.

That, at any rate, is what an increasing number of Americans are doing, as conservatives complain that the traditional media are laying the groundwork for Democrat Al Gore to “steal” the presidency, with the help of the Florida Supreme Court.

Community news sites like FreeRepublic.com and conservative news sites like NewsMax.com and WorldNetDaily.com, which earned their chops during the impeachment imbroglio two years ago, are once again galvanizing the political right in support of George W. Bush’s claim that he won the election.

[Read more…] about 2000 election coverage from the wired right

Yahoo-Murdoch: A marriage made in hell

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Yahoo News’ possible partnership with the News Corp. could jeopardize its credibility

This column appeared March 12, 2000, in the Online Journalism Review.  Here’s the version on the OJR site.

Word comes that Yahoo and the News Corp., Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, are thinking of hopping into bed.

The announcement, revealed in the March 6 New Yorker, was treated by the tech and business press as just another in a series of possible strategic alliances between corporate titans.

Under the proposed broad partnership, News Corp. — now practically invisible in the online space — would get access to the Web’s biggest platform of all. Yahoo, trying to counter America Online’s pending merger with Time-Warner, would get access to News Corp.’s assets, including 20th Century Fox studios (remember a little flick called “Titanic”?), Fox broadcasting, HarperCollins, the Los Angeles Dodgers, newspapers, 15 TV stations and other holdings. Fox’s satellite networks, which deliver Internet services to consumers, would also be part of the mix.

From a business standpoint, the proposal makes a certain amount of sense.

From a journalistic viewpoint, it bodes something else: a marriage made in hell.

Yahoo News, the largest headline news service on the Web, is a class act — and a rare act in cyberspace. The ultimate news portal, Yahoo News puts news judgment and reader interests ahead of financial considerations. Second-tier news organizations can’t buy their way into the Yahoo News network of two dozen news providers. And tabloid news reports won’t find a mention in its news, politics or crime sections. [Read more…] about Yahoo-Murdoch: A marriage made in hell

Clash over exit polls pits new vs. old media

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This column appeared March 6, 2000, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site.

The online publication Slate raised a ruckus early in the primary season by publishing the results of exit polls in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan hours before the ballot boxes closed.

When Slate stopped the practice last week under threat of legal action, the National Review stepped into the breach, publishing exit poll data from Virginia while voters were still casting ballots. They plan to do the same during tomorrow’s Super Tuesday primaries in New York, Ohio and California. So does Matt Drudge. [Read more…] about Clash over exit polls pits new vs. old media

Lewinsky scandal: Case study teaching notes

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The following teaching notes accompany Internet Journalism and the Starr Investigation as part of Thinking Clearly (Columbia University Press, 2003), a textbook on journalism case studies.

By J.D. Lasica

Synopsis

Most journalism students today have grown up using the Internet as an important way of receiving news. They are likely unaware of the various stages of its development and may accept current practices as the only possible way of communicating. This case was designed to help students think through the challenges the Internet created and the choices journalists have made.

Use of the Internet slowly broadened from use by the technologically savvy to use by the general public as a form of communication. According to public opinion surveys, as late as 1997 only 37 percent of the public went on line, but by the summer of 1999 half of those questioned reported having used the Internet (Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach, Warp Speed [New York: Century Foundation, 1999], p. 11). [Read more…] about Lewinsky scandal: Case study teaching notes

Speed vs. context and accuracy in covering the scandal

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Part five of Internet journalism and the Starr investigation

Because of the Internet, when a major story breaks, people now tend to go online. On the day the Starr report swooped into cyberspace, news sites saw their online usage surge. A poll by the Pew Resarch Center for the People and the Press found that the public turned to Internet sites in large numbers as a news source during the scandal. Journalists should be heartened by the knowledge that online users gravitated to the major national news sites: MSNBC, CNN Interactive, USAToday Online, nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com.

But they should not be smug or complacent about their role in cyberspace, for millions of users accessed the report directly — without the filter of the news media. A few years ago such a document could only have been conveyed to the public by reporters. Now it was instantly available to anyone with an Internet connection to read, dissect, forward to others, debate in an online forum, or print out and share with friends and neighbors. [Read more…] about Speed vs. context and accuracy in covering the scandal

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