Interview with Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal

From the April 2006 issue of Quill magazine, here is my Q&A with Marketplace host, Kai Ryssdal in town tonight for a sold-out appearance.

TEN: Quill poses 10 questions to people with some of the coolest jobs in journalism
By Wendy A. Hoke

If you’re a regular public radio listener, chances are you’ve heard Kai Ryssdal. He’s the voice of business reporting on American Public Media, delivering business news with a bit a sass, occasional irreverence and a whole lotta punch to the average Jane and Joe. Ryssdal came to journalism later in life after following an unconventional career path. But he leads the team of reporters breathing life into a traditionally staid beat. He’s come a long way from shelving books at his local Border’s. On March 20 [2006], here’s how he opened the show:

“Alright, now don’t get nervous but I’m going to say something that might startle you — record highs on Wall Street. The last time that phrase came up in conversation, well … we all know how things ended. But more than just a couple of people are saying this time it’s different — maybe. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.”

Q: What’s the origin of your name? It seems unusual for a broadcast name? Did anyone ever suggest you change it?

It’s Norwegian. My dad was born there and no one suggested I change it probably because I was in my mid-30s before I began broadcasting.

Q: You’ve had an interesting career path – U.S. Navy pilot, Pentagon staff officer, U.S. Foreign Service – did you study journalism and if so where?
I was a history and political science major at Emory University. In my junior year I had a fraternity brother in the Navy and thought, “That looks cool.” I took the physical and two weeks after graduation went to Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Fla. I spent eight years in the Navy, flew for a while and then three years at the Pentagon. I had done everything in the Navy that I wanted to do, but I still wanted to travel overseas on the government dime so I took the Foreign Service test.

I met my future wife in the Foreign Service. In 1997 after a year and a half in Beijing, we both left and my wife enrolled in graduate school at Stanford University. I figured I’d get a job in Silicon Valley because it was the height of the dot-com boom. But I could have cared less about working in that environment.

So I got a job shelving books at Borders for $7 an hour. It makes for a long, grim summer when you are 34 and trying to figure out what to do. My wife suggested I try journalism, claiming I was a weird news junkie anyway. I tried print for a bit, but as you know you can’t get in unless you have clips and you can’t get clips unless you get in.

Q: So how did you wind up in radio?

One day I was shelving books in the career and counseling section (I had gotten a raise and was making $7.25 at this point) when I came across a big fat internship book. I saw the name and number of the KQED news director in San Francisco. I wrote him a letter, said I was interested in the news, gave him a bit about my background and said I would like to learn more about broadcast journalism. He called me a few days later.

I went up in my very best State Department suit and tie and briefcase. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a public radio station, but there are no suits and ties. He said he didn’t have a job, but he had an internship available. So I took it.

I cut back on my hours at the bookstore, learned all the basics that other 19-year-old interns were doing. Eventually they needed someone to help with the morning show and then asked if I could stay all day. After a year or 18 months I was on the air doing some reporting. I wound up being a substitute anchor for the afternoon news and then worked my way up to morning. I was doing the California Report (a statewide program) when someone at Marketplace called me.

Although I said I’d really love to come talk to them, my wife was about to have our second baby and I really couldn’t leave her. My wife said Marketplace only calls once, so I called them back and went to the interview. That was the summer of 2001, my wife was on maternity leave from Yahoo and so we moved the family to Los Angeles. It was absolutely, completely fortuitous. It appears, although it’s not true, that I’ve been suspiciously lucky. But my journalism career has been absolute complete serendipity.

Q: What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned on the job?
That you need to grasp opportunity when it comes. I was on a good path with KQED Marketplace called. Yes, I had to get up in the middle of night to work mornings, and yes, I had to work hard, but it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. KQED gave me training in radio; Marketplace is training me in reporting and hosting

Q: Did your entrée to business news involve a steep learning curve?
Absolutely. It was almost like they left me alone in the wee hours and said you have to report on gross domestic product. It wasn’t quite that bad, but close. You have to sit down and digest the information because really none of us on the show are business people. It’s like learning the education beat or politics. I would call Steven Beard in London or Jocelyn Ford in China if I had questions on specific topics.

Q: Traditional newspaper business reporting is often stuffy. Marketplace has a definite tone to it and it’s somewhat sassy in a good way. How do you keep it engaging?
The charge is very clear, yet not explicit. We all know that we bare the burden of making this entertaining and interesting. We work hard on it every day working with reporters crafting angles. And then I spend two solid hours choreographing the whole show.

Q: Do you write your own copy? What goes into the writing process when you know at least a segment of the listening audience is going to be tuned in on their way home from work?

Yes, I write my own copy. After the morning editorial meeting, I don’t immediately sit down and think how I can craft the show. I let it sit in the back of my brain and bubble around. Around 11:30-12, I get a sandwich and listen to the stories and the commentary that are in and then I start to write. I start with the end of the show and write it backwards. I’m at my most creative under pressure and I find I can’t get it right if I try to work from the top of the show down. So I work my way up so that by 20 to 25 minutes past 1, I’m working on my opening and commentary. I’ll do a table read with the senior producer to make sure it sounds good, but otherwise it goes from my computer to the airwaves.

Q: The east coast hears Marketplace at 6:30 p.m. Describe how you put a typical show together and when you’re taping?

The show is live to tape at 2 p.m. Pacific. If nothing changes during the day, stations will run it as is, which gives it the live feel. If something changes we’ll do an update. The gong goes off to start the show at 2 and then we run straight through. I don’t find I can do bits and pieces because it takes me out of the flow of show.

Q: You previously were on the Marketplace Morning Report. What’s the biggest change you’ve experienced in doing the morning and evening program?
Now I’m sleeping at night. I used to sleep in shifts. I would sleep from noon to 3:30 p.m., then get the kids, eat dinner and help with bedtime and then nap from 10 to midnight. Now I go to bed when I want. When you’re young, hungry and stupid you’ll do whatever it takes.

Q: What other job would you like to pursue?
I do run after my three boys ages 7, 4 and 20 months. But I’ve only been doing Marketplace for six months. I don’t really have any place I want to go right now. Former host David Brancacchio used to say the afternoon Marketplace job is the best job in broadcast today. I completely agree. We have the freedom to take this dense, arcane topic and do almost anything we want. I’m only the point on the end of that spear.

Nobody here is interested in business in and of itself. We don’t care what the trade deficit is, we care about what it means for interest rates and unemployment. We leave digesting the numbers to Bloomberg and Reuters, and prefer instead to think about the stories behind the stories. That’s what makes people listen.

Jay Rosen asks Romenesko readers...

"If the McCain campaign says the [New York] Times is not a legitimate news source why does the Times have to treat McCain as a legitimate candidate?"

What do you think?

In case you missed it, this question stems from a Times article about McCain campaign adviser Rick Davis's ties to Fannie and Freddie and his and Steve Schmidt's reaction in a conference call with reporters calling the Times an illegitimate news source that's "in the tank" for Sen. Obama.

Watch the YouTube audio of the conference call here.

This campaign is rapidly spinning into never-before-seen levels of ridiculousness that are an insult to the American people. Do we have any hope of seeing a frank, intelligent discussion about issues at Friday's debate? Wake me up when it's over.

Sons and daughters of the news media...

... War has been declared on us by a hostile aggressor intent on stealing whatever piddly credibility we may yet hold with the public. Are we to run, then? Or are we to stand and fight? Will Bunch has written the journalistic equivalent of the William Wallace speech.

"Because there is a war for the soul of this nation going right now, and we the media are involved -- not as some would like to think, as some kind of passive UN peacekeeping force -- but as a party that is in the acrid smoke of combat, under attack in a manner that's little different from the way that parts of Georgia were overrun by the Russian Army a few weeks ago. And frankly, American newsrooms face a situation that could be described in similar terms to that former Soviet Republic -- nearly defeated, and demoralized, with few if any allies that are willing to come to our aid. And despite the dire situation, most journalists are cruising along toward Nov. 4 as if it's business as usual, and that is what I personally find most alarming."

...

Remember, they declared war on us for the same reason that anyone declares war: Because they perceive us as weak. And why wouldn't they? Newspapers have gone from cash cows to an ink-stained version of Lehman Brothers in a couple of short years; there are fewer reporters on the campaign trail and fewer reporters at the conventions (it didn't look that way from afar, but my paper, the Daily News, has gone from four to three to two to one reporter since 1996. There are fewer reporters in Washington and, regarding a major issue in the 2008 race, fewer reporters giving a true picture of what's going on Iraq.

At the same time, consider the run-up to Iraq as the war games where the current tactics were proved so effective -- the time when we showed it was more important to let one side, the White House, set the narrative, and tried feebly to balance it with a response way down in the story, rather than trying to investigate what was the truth about Iraq's ties to al-Qaeda or weapons of mass destruction. They know that we can be crushed with our own antiquated rules -- established in a different era, when the Internet didn't exist and when newspapers had a different, monopoly role, and when politics...well, OK, I know it wasn't beanbag, but it wasn't quite the bloodsport it is today, I believe."

So what is our call to arms? Bunch encourages us to use our time-tasted battle arsenal, but also to use the weapons of modern reporting warfare between now and November 4—and beyond.

1) Make fact-checking our number one priority in reporting.

2) Don't be afraid to call a spade a spade and a lie a lie.

3) Don't be compelled to cover either candidates' video press releases as if they were news. Ditto for their families—the good and the bad. If they are deemed off limits, then let it be so.

4) Make truth-telling fun and lively. Think: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

We may lose our livelihood as we know it, but they can't take away our freedom to report! Bloggers, journalists, citizen journalists, editors, freelancers and pundits—UNITE against the tyranny of campaign lies!

The top job, take two

Great piece on women (or lack thereof) in high-profile media positions at The G Spot. H/T to Jill for sharing the link. I wrote about the dearth of women in high-profile journalism positions recently here. 

Here are a couple of take-aways from the G Spot piece, but I hope you'll read it in its entirety.

"Liberal women, and especially liberal feminist women, are not particularly welcome in opinion journalism."

"Media outlets have gotten beaten up so hard by the right for their alleged "liberal" (ha!) bias that for a long time now, they've shied away from hiring strongly liberal columnists (and the ones that fall through the cracks, like Paul Krugman, seem to get there by accident -- remember, Krugman was hired by the Times back in the days when he best-known as a fan of globalization and the neoliberal world order)."

"The key to getting more women opinion columnists and more (salaried) women bloggers out there is … to keep on publicizing this issue, and need to keep the pressure on … Some of it is just plain laziness -- men considering only people they know through their own personal networks, who tend to be largely male. Or men having an unconscious bias in favor hiring others like them (same sex, same race, similar class or educational background, etc.) With the well-meaning guys out there who are sympathetic towards feminism, probably all they need is a little pressure, a bit of pushback. I'm pretty sure we can through to them. And if we make enough noise we can at least have some influence over the others."

Time is short today, but rest assured I'll be returning to this topic frequently. 

'60 Minutes' was riveting last night

Most Sunday nights I may hear a bit of CBS's "60 Minutes" while I'm cleaning up the kitchen or folding laundry or tending to any of a number of household chores. It's my husband's favorite news program and, after making Sunday night dinner, he watches faithfully every week. Last night, I saw the story teasers and decided to sit down to watch with him.

I'm glad I did because the stories were riveting and incredibly diverse, not something that usually can be said about network news. What's amazing is that these stories were rebroadcast from earlier this spring, but we must have missed that week.

The story out of Darfur was chilling, compelling and challenging. We're in bed with the Sudanese government for intel info so we've looked the other way at the genocide occuring there. Is that intelligence worth the extermination of an entire region of people?

The Kanzius Machine was an amazing look at how some people see solutions when most others see problems. A retired businessman and radio technician suffering from leukemia, John Kanzius sought to find a better treatment for cancer involving no side effects. He may be on to something that uses radio waves and metallic nanoparticles to destroy cancer cells. I hope the funding builds and he lives to see his invention work on humans.

Finally, what an uplifting and inspirational story out of Venezuela about the National Youth Orchestra and El Sistema (The System), which teaches and saves impoverished Venezuelan children through classical music from very young ages. This kind of unusual approach to poverty is life-changing and I'm sure could be replicated here in the United States.

E&P: Study: More Than 60% Don't Trust Campaign Coverage

Now what do news organizations do with this?

Getting paid for online content at issue in writers' strike. Sound familiar?

NPR reported this morning that the Hollywood writers strike continues and the big contention for negotiations: how and if profits from new media can be shared.

The nut of this story is that work on the Internet is garnering profit in the form of ad dollars for which writers are not being paid but for which producers are earning revenue.

Writers contend that the strike is about the little guys. Sound familiar?

As I repeated often to the powers-that-be in the SPJ amicus debacle, writers are not the ones making a killing off of new media. Their demands appear simple. Residuals are very important to writers and they simply want to share in the profit with producers when producers make a profit.

Sounds simple enough, but there's always an analyst around to complicate the matter.

New media consultant Shelly Palmer: "The idea that you could tie percentages to one piece of creative makes all the sense in the world if you don't understand how producers produce and how studios produce and how the pool of risk capital is risked."

He contends that the failure to success ratio is figured into profits (implying that those profits are much less than writers believe), but of course how that is calculated is, well, nebulous.

Internet entertainment analyst Jim McQuivey: "What happens is that in the short run the producers taking their content to the Internet are actually making a very handsome profit and this is a little secret that they don't want everyone to know."

Well, of course. But then other analysts chalks it up to anxiety and uncertainty about where the revenue is coming from. Funny, I didn't hear anyone say there wasn't any revenue, just that they don't know where it's coming from. It's all very curious.

Writers are all for making that accounting process simple (call it select, focus, reduce applied to accounting): All the money goes to one place and whatever is left after expenses is paid to both producers and writers.

With the stakes this incredibly high, we're not holding our breath that this will be resolved soon.

"I don't remember a time when I think both sides needed to win more: If I was a writer, I wouldn't budge an inch. If I was a producer, I wouldn't budge an inch," says Palmer.

No long-lasting love for newspaper Web sites

Freelancer Erik Sherman offers a bit of business advice for freelancers who had hoped to turn what used to be their steady newspaper print writing into steady newspaper Web writing. His advice? Forget it. Find another market for your work. His primary source is this study by Nielson/Net Ratings (PDF) and released by the Newspaper Association of America.

What that tells you is forget doing long stories for newspaper web sites. No one is reading them, because no one is spending enough time to do so. In fact, forget these as markets. When the New York Times web site is getting under 14,000 unique visitors a month, something is definitely going wrong. Even if it's getting five times that number, this is bad news.

The top five newspapers and their page views and average time per visit for the six-month period between March and August 2007 are:

Site / # Page Views Per Month / Average Time Per Visit Per Month

1. New York Times / 13,857 / 20 min. 20 sec.

2. Washington Post / 11,682 / 14 min. 14 sec.

3. USA Today / 9,186 / 10 min. 57 sec.

4. Wall Street Journal / 8,337 / 9 min. 55 sec.

5. Los Angeles Times / 4,992 / 12 min. 34 sec.

32. The Plain Dealer / 989 / 10 min. 55 sec.

Wide Open is closed shut

Let me add my voice to the cacophony of bloggers lamenting the events of the past 24 hours that resulted in the implosion of The Plain Dealer's experiment with bloggers on its Web site.

I'll let Jill, Jeff and Tom explain the details of what happened. In a nutshell, the PD did not think through this Wide Open experiment with bloggers. It held the bloggers (whom it hired to write in a partisan fashion about the issues) to the same standards to which it would hold newsroom journalists.

I won't presume to speak for the four bloggers who participated, but my guess is if the PD wanted them to work as "journalists" they would have been less likely to join in the experiment. Their charge was fundamentally different from those working in the newsroom. They were paid for their partisan views and those views (two conservative, two liberal) were supposedly balanced. It was naive of the PD editors to believe that partisan bloggers would not have contributed to or worked for some campaign.

The PD has a bigger problem on its hands in that the public, specifically the blogging public, has discovered how political power holds sway over editorial product. That's a PR problem for Ohio's Largest Daily. No matter how valid or invalid were Congressman Steven LaTourette's complaints, the public perception is that the PD caved because a public official, who should have a thicker skin about such things, whined about unfair treatment.

I'll be honest. I'm not a political blogger and I rarely spend much time reading political blogs. They are not my cup of tea. For the most part, my dissatisfaction in the experiment largely stems from the reality that the arguments routinely fell along partisan lines. I find reading such diatribes tiresome and not informative enough to convince one way or another to support any one side.

There were exceptions—moments when real, honest, authentic dialogue took place and it usually revolved around issues other than politics, such as religion. Of course one could argue that the religious questions were also political, but the comments really tried to dig deeper into the why, which made compelling reading. Credit is due to the four bloggers who took those issues and addressed them in such an intelligent fashion.

Maybe the experiment started with the wrong kind of blogger. Politics are always fraught with questions of ethics, conflict and bias. Some of the best political blogging, after all, comes from people within the political system. I've not had a problem with blogger transparency on this issue, but I know others have.

Maybe what the PD should've done was start such a new/old media experiment with more feature-ish topics—books, food, arts, education, religion.

I had high hopes that such a collaboration would work. Hopefully, this doesn't turn traditional media off of the experiment for good, but rather provides lessons for how to do better in the future.

UPDATE: Here are some links to more on this story:

Poynter Institute E-Media Tidbits

Bad American

Plunderbund

Daily Bellwether

Content over form

No truer words were written about the untidy newspaper model for web.

"Readers just don't come to a newspaper's website looking for a messy passel of blogs. They come looking for sports, or fashion, no matter what "form" it's in. Old newspaper editors may think blogs are some crazy different variety of publication; readers don't.

The result of this bias at newspapers is the unbelievably horrible web organization of their websites."

More thoughts on new journalism site

*UPDATE

If I wasn't already serious about starting a new Greater Cleveland journalism-focused site, I am ever more convinced of its merits and necessity after reading "The Nonprofit Road: It's paved not with gold, but with good journalism," in the September/October issue of Columbia Journalism Review.

Between Charles Lewis' (that's my dad's name so it's weird to use it for someone else) article and a feature on Josh Marshall and his Talking Points Memo, I am convinced that the way forward journalistically speaking for Cleveland is an independent site dedicated to original investigative in-depth journalism, thoughtful features and intelligent commentary.

Of course, I have no idea how to pay for such a site or even what revenue model would support such a site. But I am convinced of several things that make me want to find a way financially: good stories are routinely under- or unreported yet are found everywhere, fine writers capable of telling those stories abound and the audience for those good stories exists and is willing to read them and support an online format.

Mainstream news is limited by time, space and a beat system that seems to work against the enterprise reporting MSM espouses as its most worthy content. About Marshall's efforts, David Glenn writes:

New articles in mainstream dailies often contain facts whose full implications aren’t explored, Marshall says, “either because of space or editorial constraints or because the reporters themselves don’t know the story well enough. They’re often parachuted in to work on these topics for just a few weeks."

In these parts, anything that happens on the county level is a prime example of that approach. Don't just take my word for it.

What's inspiring about Marshall's work is that it began simply, as a blog. When he needed money to cover something (such as the New Hampshire primary) he asked readers for contributions. And they responded—with minimal donations (mostly $20-$50) that eventually allowed him to hire employees and expand his site's focus. “We’ve never had any investment capital behind us,” Marshall says. “So we have to be profitable every month. It’s all on a kind of cash-as-you-go basis.”

Marshall has been blogging a lot longer than most of us — since 2000. He has grown his audience, experience and content organically, relying more on the shoe-leather of original reporting and developing sources than on some fancy Web platform and design. If content is king, then Marshall has launched his own dynasty that has daily newspaper reporters such as Dean Calbreath of The San Diego Union-Tribune, saying the site, “provides reporters with sources that might not be at the top of our radar screen,” he says. “Being based in San Diego, I’m not a big reader of The Hill, for instance. But by reading TPM, I can have easy access to [The Hill’s] pertinent articles. The commentary at TPM, meanwhile, poses important questions that we might not have thought of on our own.”

Content is king. As Elisabeth Sifton, senior vice president at Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, writes in her CJR essay in the same issue, " The Second Draft of History: Where newspapers fall short, news books continue to succeed" (not available online):

"Readers are showing, not only in their use of the Web but in their purchase of books, an age-old, still insatiable appetite for intelligently reported news; when they can, they devour five-hundred-page tomes about events near and far and make bestsellers of them. What an irony—to have news editors fear they might no longer attract readers with sustained, individuated attention to the perils of our time, and to have book publishers demonstrate the opposite."

So I'm wondering what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Does it make sense to start a site as a blog and begin to build audience and traffic before making it more sophisticated? Is there financing available to at least pay some good writers for solid content? Are there people willing to get involved with such a start-up in hopes of a long-term payoff? Web developers, marketing experts, journalists, editors, business development experts?

Other cities are doing this successfully and I will talk with their founders to learn about about the process and the model they chose. But check out the following to see what appeals to you.

Minnesota Monitor
LA Observed
Beachwood Reporter (Chicago)
* New Haven Independent

I envision a Greater Cleveland site that includes the things I'd love to see in a good print magazine—politics, business, economic development, education, arts and culture, books, sports, history, profiles, travel, architecture, style, urban culture, media, food, the environment—all related to Greater Cleveland.

The kinds of stories I'm interested in reading are those that go beyond a recitation of what happened, but that take an in-depth look at how government decisions play out for the average citizen, or how policy affects us. I want to read the work of writers capable of connecting those dots, those capable for writing intelligent, INFORMED analysis.

And that's where Lewis's article provided the necessary push forward.

"...our democracy’s need for higher-quality reportage has substantially increased. It’s time for civil society, especially the nation’s foundations and individuals of means, to collaborate with journalists and experts who understand the changing economics of journalism in an imaginative, visionary plan that would support our precious existing nonprofit institutions and help to develop new ones—the Associated Presses and Morning Editions and Frontlines of the future, in all forms of media."

[snip]

"There are tantalizing signs that specific philanthropic institutions and individuals finally realize just how severe the crisis has become. The question is: Can they overcome their sometimes short-term thinking and fickle, often idiosyncratic nature and make significant, multi-year commitments to strengthen or build pillars of journalism in their communities, the nation, and beyond? Can they think outside their own agendas and embrace the inherent value of accurate, nonpartisan information to our national discourse?

The journalists are ready. More than at any time I can remember in the past thirty years, respected journalists in the U.S. and around the world, frustrated by what has become of their profession, appear to be increasingly interested in carpe diem entrepreneurship, in starting, leading, or working in new nonprofit newsrooms locally, nationally, and even internationally. And in recent months, major philanthropists and journalists, in different settings around the country, have been talking to each other about what is needed and what is possible." (Bold is mine)

I'm ready. Let's seize the opportunity to bring something journalistically empowering, engaging and informative to Greater Cleveland.

Odds and ends

Just a few minutes of breathing room today, so I've got to keep to a few short topics.

Seeking a Web designer
In the interest of ratcheting up my marketing efforts, I'm actively seeking a Web designer for my Web site. I'm looking for a clean, professional site with pages for bio, articles, books, blog, news, contact. Most of the copy is written; however, I'm also looking for suggestions on how best to feature articles (some of which are not available as links).

I would like to be able to update frequently (and cheaply, if possible). If you can help, please contact me at wendyhoke(at)oh(dot)rr(dot)com and reference Web designer in the subject line.

Evaluating new magazine markets
Yesterday's New York Times had an article about a start-up independent magazine called Organize. An interesting idea for a niche audience. The Times referenced Ready Made as an example of another independent pub with a niche market that was eventually purchased last fall by Meredith.

However, as Erik Sherman writes today, there are warning signs that this venture is under-funded and at risk from inexperienced hands. It's also unclear from writer guidelines whether the pub intends to pay for editorial submissions. Not a good sign of quality. Bottom line for writers: Proceed with caution.

I dream of Africa
Whenever I read articles like this, I feel so depressed at my inability to tackle such assignments. I've not yet read The Vanity Fair package, but I'm always amazed by the shortcuts news organizations will take in covering the world. How do you write intelligently about a continent without hearing from the people who live there?

Narrative magazine seeking help
I'm a big fan of Narrative magazine, and have occasionally shared some of its stories here. Today I received an e-mail asking for donations to help keep this independent magazine committed to bringing great literature online going strong. Check it out and then consider making a tax-deductible donation.

What I covet
The iPhone is so dang cool!!! You've got to check out NYT's David Pogue's multimedia piece to see its functionality. Just showed my kids and they agree -- it's a must-have piece of technology.

Bill Moyers Journal: Buying the War | Excerpt | PBS

The latest must-see TV coming from PBS is Bill Moyers Journal: Buying the War. Tune in at 9 p.m. on April 25.

Exciting news on news

Some cool stuff being reported today on news. By far the coolest is news of Reuters Africa. Not only will this new service cover the continent, but it also seeks to link to external source—bloggers—to help in that process.

Read more here, here and here.

Consider this exchange between MediaShift's Mark Glaser and Reuters President Chris Ahearn:

Glaser: You talk about bringing this in as a resource for reporters and editors. What’s their attitude about it? Does it take a change in mindset to accept that, or do they feel like someone’s on their turf?

Ahearn: I think it’s both. It goes one person at a time. Our online group was involved with everything. It was more the people who were away from the experiment, there’s a level of concern in the journalistic community, ‘Are they out to replace me?’ The answer is no, God no. It’s my job in management and running the business side to ensure that there’s as much choice out there for our editors as there can be to best address the audience.

The struggle here is how do you let the audience identify what they actually care about and how do you mesh that with the two pillars of control. As a brand, I do want to control what’s around me; as a consumer, I want to control everything about my experience. My own supposition is the reality is somewhere in between. One of the reasons newspapers are such a valuable thing or that people lean back and watch TV is that at times people say, ‘Show me, I like that serendipity.’ At other times I want to be very self-directed, I don’t like that on the page.

And later, Ahearn continues:

Going from 2,400 journalists to 24 million sources — that’s a lot of scale and there’s some skepticism, but how might that change the news cycle or the ability of people to make sense [out of everything]. I also wonder how much time is wasted in the rewriting of someone’s else’s copy that doesn’t really change the story or add that much unique value. What’s the obsession with that? I like a world where there’s different levels of news trust and brands and people can mix and match. If you have something unique, then go for it. Everybody is guilty of it, everyone has their unique version, but if you matched them up, how much are they really unique? How much is there overlap vs. a story you really, really need to tell? Can you spend your resources on something incremental?

Speaking of mainstream media and bloggers working together, here's a thought from Jeff Jarvis on reallocating reporting sources.

He argues that big news organizations should be writing investigative pieces about the care and treatment of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan or North Korea's decision to invite the International Atomic Energy Agency's Mohamed ElBaradei in to the country. What we don't need from The New York Times is front-page coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death or the public un-glueing Britney Spears.

His advice: "Cover what you do best. Link to the rest."

Must see TV

Don't miss the new Frontline Series News War beginning tomorrow night at 9 p.m. on PBS. Get a preview on the Web site, watch the trailer for a sampling of the many journalists interviewed and read background and supporting materials. Got an early taste of what to expect on Fresh Air tonight.

Did journalism let the public down?

UPDATE: Check out this column in Nieman Watchdog. Former DeMoines Register editorial page editor Gilbert Cranberg asks a series of questions about press failures in pre-war coverage. As I read through the list of questions it became clear that the ones who really failed the public were the editors who determined story placement, didn't push reporters for alternate sources, didn't properly question claims and allowed themselves to succumb to either some bizarre sense of patriotism or, worse, pressure from big-media owners. Cranberg says the public deserves "an independent and thorough inquiry of pre-war press coverage." And NOT by the press.

I’m no conspiracy theorist, but revelations about big journalism and the Bush Administration keep getting curiouser and curioser. We are seeing this exposed in all its seemliness thanks to Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

Consider the chain of events: President Bush made the case for a preemptive attack (remember shuddering at those two words?) against Iraq using 16 words from his 2003 State of the Union speech:

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

With that, we were off to war. He convinced former Secretary of State Colin Powell to make the case before the United Nations and sent then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice to Judith Miller talking about mushroom clouds. We were going to “shock and awe.” Remember all that?

One individual dared to expose himself to ridicule, humiliation, political suicide and professional suicide to tell the Bush Administration it was wrong, that it’s reasoning was based on faulty intelligence. When he couldn’t get an audience with them, he took it to the New York Times and the public. He paid the price, but so did his wife, who was outed as a CIA agent.

Reporters knew who she was because administration officials told them. They had to understand on some level that this was retaliation against someone who dared to speak out against the war.

Reporters cried “stop the leak” loud enough to get investigators interested. But when the investigators turned to them and said, "Tell us what you know, the only evidence of the crime is in conversations with reporters," they shouted back reporters’ privilege. "Wait a minute! We don’t want to get to the bottom of this if we have to tell you what we know."

Big journalism was talking out of both sides of its collective mouth. Did reporters and editors stop for a minute to ask a key question: Is the public better off knowing or not knowing? Is it better that the public know a key White House official leaked the information, or that the Office of the Vice President may have been masterminding the effort?

When the investigation put them in a tough spot, they repeatedly downplayed its significance, making it sound as if it were a meaningless episode, one of many that occurs hourly in national politics and government. They went on “Larry King” and “Hardball” and “Meet the Press” and talked about its relative insignificance and how any charges Fitzgerald made would be minor, unable to dent this administration.

Bob Woodward actually squirmed on Larry King the night before the indictment while pontificating on the leaker. We later learned he had known the leaker's identity all along because he was told. Talk about duplicitous. Tell Larry you can’t make it if you have to, but don’t sit there and lie on CNN!

Was Woodward protecting his source for his upcoming book, “State of Denial”? Or was he protecting himself? He did more to damage his journalistic credibility with that appearance and his attempt to snow his editors than anything else he’s done in his career.

Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail protecting Libby, but could it be, as Don Zachary, a media lawyer with Fox Spillane says, more an attempt to “atone for the sins” of faulty reporting on the weapons of mass destruction issue? After all, Libby claims he waived his confidentiality long before her 85 days were up.

In big journalism’s efforts to challenge subpoenas and avoid damage to reporter/source relationships (to protect its own interests), an investigation that could have resulted in an indictment in October 2004 — let’s say that again, in October 2004 — was now delayed another year to October 2005.

This trial has exposed more about the cozy nature of reporters and governmental officials. Maybe the public isn’t paying attention and maybe they don’t care about the nature of the relationship between government and journalism. But they should care, because journalism let them down. The ability to weigh the pros and cons of a preemptive attack, the consequences of launching the war, an exit strategy, the stress it would place on the military as it wages a global War on Terror. These things were not sufficiently debated at the time. We were like bobble heads as the administration made the case. "Shock and awe! Yeah, shock and awe!"

I’m not saying this was a deliberate effort to pander to the government, but I am saying that if reporters and their editors had stopped long enough to ask themselves the hard questions about their own motivations, the administrations assumptions; if they had pushed their sourcing beyond the usual suspects, had spent more time following events where they were happening and less inside the Beltway; and had honestly challenged and investigated source claims, then events may have turned out differently.

If the reporters had agreed to limit the scope of their grand jury testimony earlier and we had an indictment in October 2004, before the Presidential election, where would be today?

I think that’s a fair question and I think reporters who cover government need to think about whom they are protecting? Are they protecting a government source or are they serving the public’s right to know?

Because from what I’ve seen through this trial, the administration believed it could master and manipulate journalists. Whether that is in fact the case is not the issue, it’s the perception that they are puppets of the administration and White House stenographers that is most damaging.

There are always exceptions to the rule. The Washington Post’s Dana Priest has done some time-consuming, meticulous and downright courageous reporting on national security. The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh is another example of someone consistently and courageously challenging the administration's claims. Now that President Bush's popularity has declined, journalism has again grown a set of balls, pushing this Administration for proof and details on the troop escalation and shift (if there is one) in strategy.

But is it too late? We are sitting here with a President who doesn’t really know how to get us out of the “preemptive” war he started. With only two years left in his term, it’s safe to believe that he has passed that burden on to the next guy—or gal.

Watergate was exposed by two young journalists who capitalized on the collective malaise of a Washington Press Corps that had largely fallen down on the job because of stonewalling from a paranoid administration. Hmmm, sounds familiar, eh? Let’s hope journalism learns from this and doesn't have a relapse. Because if it doesn't serve the public and ask the hard questions and hold government's feet to the fire, there are plenty of citizen journalists willing to do the work for them.

The politics of journalist subpoenas

Is the current subpoena-happy climate for journalism a cyclical phenomenon? Is it a result of the political climate? Is it rooted in ideology? Is it driven by the events of the War in Iraq or the War on Terror? Is it a combination of all of the above?

This seed was first planted last summer in an interview with Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter Dana Priest. When describing how journalism is under attack (and how until recently the public was willing to go along), she said:

"I think it’s event driven and is led by 9-11 and how we think of ourselves in light of 9-11. Our job might be hard, but it’s so critically important right now. The stakes are huge of what we’re doing and how we’re moving forward and away from 9-11. I don’t know who else is going to help people through that—in terms of figuring out what’s still right and wrong and what we really want to do about really hard questions. Some of the answers get us nowhere near where we want to be. Unfortunately, most of those issues are wrapped in secrecy right now."

Her own prize-winning reporting about the CIA black prisons was attacked by the Bush Administration, although no one ever claimed that what she reported was wrong. And yet in the back of her mind rests the notion that she may be subpoenaed to testify about her story, which was exclusively sourced by confidential sources. I asked her if she was worried about being subpoenaed.

"I get asked that a lot. There are so many things to worry about, why worry about things you can’t control? I do think about it though. I guess a shield law would help, but there’s not really a legislative remedy for this. All government wants to control information. During the war in Kosovo, someone decided not to reveal how many cruise missiles were launched the first night. When it was learned there were civilian casualties, Pentagon officials were finally forced to talk about “accidents.”

The difference in this government is that there is a freeze on real dialogue between professionals – me and them inside – it’s like they don’t understand dialogue in public is fundamental to building consensus even if it means getting jabbed when you go in the wrong direction. There’s a difference between trying to control information and retaliating when you can’t."

"When you start talking war, you start talking about a different political climate (for covering government) that infects proceedings like that involving Scooter Libby,"says Donald Zachary, attorney practicing media law with the LA-firm Fox Spillane Schaefer.

He may be charged with perjury and obstruction, but at its core, Scooter Libby's trial is about controlling information and the ensuing retaliation and cover-up that occurred when a maverick decided he and the information he possessed would not be "controlled" by the administration.

The impact testifying has on journalism

John Dickerson is in the courtroom covering the trial for Slate when suddenly his name is mentioned from the witness in the box (Ari Fleischer) and his visage projected across the big screen in the courtroom.

His name is on the potential witness list. What does he do now? Should he recuse himself from covering the trial? His name is mentioned in connection to his work with Time magazine. Does it matter that he's at a different news organization now?

While bloggers, journalists and news junkies ponder some of these big-picture questions, the public seems to care little for the big and little aspects of the Scooter Libby trial. Here in Cleveland, the trial hasn't warranted coverage before A4 and today's AP story about former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer's testimony yesterday trickled down the gutter. Though I'm certain Vice President Dick Cheney's testimony would warrant front-page coverage.

Regardless of how it's playing in the heartland, this is a huge story in Washington where the compulsion to know something before anyone else drives all else. Outside the Beltway it seems to have less significance.

"You would have to talk to 30 people to find one who knows who Scooter Libby is," says Lincoln D. Bandlow, an media law attorney with Fox Spillane Shaeffer in Los Angeles and a visiting professor at USC's Annenberg School of Journalism. (In LA yesterday, the top story was the Screen Actor's Guild Awards.) "If there hadn’t been a shift in Congress in November, I think the Democrats would be trying to get more weight out of the story. As it is, the Bush Administration has been sufficiently spanked by voters," he said.

Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified today, the first of the many reporters potentially being called. While journalists have testified at trials before, Thomas McPhail, professor of media studies at University of Missouri - St. Louis makes the distinction that such testimony has not occurred in a high-profile federal case in which the sitting vice president is a witness.

How does this impact the credibility of journalists and the organizations for which they work?

Miller's credibility as a journalist has already been skewered. "She is seen as a stenographer for the White House," says McPhail. "She was doing Libby’s bidding in terms of covering the run-up to the war in Iraq. She was making the White House case (for weapons of mass destruction) without telling readers that she got all that information from White House. She mislead the public." The implications for such faulty reporting are also huge for her paper. "The New York Times is an agenda setter," he said. What it covers has ripple affect on other news organizations since her faulty reporting was picked up by papers across the country.

Miller's testimony, which doesn't seem to draw as much fervor considering she is the only reporter who spent time in jail (85 days) protecting the identity of Libby, is overshadowed by the upcoming testimony of Tim Russert of "Meet the Press." Libby contends that it was Russert who told him of Plame's identity. Russert denies this.

McPhail explains: "Russert is the gold standard of television news and political commentary. When he is on the witness stand and under cross examination, he will divulge how close he was to various key White House people. We've heard how the vice president was writing media notes; God forbid Russert was actually using them."

There's also a great deal of concern in the journalism industry about how this trial will impact the reporter/source relationship, particularly for the Washington Press Corps. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and his predecessor John Ashcroft have repeatedly shown they are ready to throw journalists into jail if they don't get the information they want, and they do so with little regard for the First Amendment.

While some trumpet the merits of a Federal Shield Law, it's doubtful that such a law would help in this case. Bandlow says it's difficult terrain for applying reporters privilege because it's a battle between the First Amendment and the Sixth Amendment (specifically to compel witnesses to testify on his or her behalf).

"If experience is any judge, media will always aggressively fight back on revealing source issues," says Bandlow. "But it will be difficult to win because this paradigm situation is when reporters privilege is undermined. The First and Sixth amendment issues conflict. This is different then when a prosecutor is asking for information to build a case. A defendant says, 'If I don’t get this information, I’m going to jail.'Which takes precedence?"

Bandlow doesn't believe a Federal Shield Law would help much because it's not enough to trump a constitutional amendment right. "The shield law’s applicability would be doubtful under the case of criminal defendant's right to defend himself," he said.

If we go back to the beginnings of this incident, we find journalists who were calling vociferously for an investigation into who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak (His original column is no longer available. This is Slate's Jack Shafer's take.)

"Members of the media did not think all the way through this issue," says Bandlow. "The media attitude was, 'We want to get to bottom of who leaked this in order destroy the reputation of an administration critic. But if that means revealing confidential sources, we’re not willing to get to bottom of it.' "

The crime itself was only evidenced by conversations with reporters. The only way to get to the bottom of it was to go to the reporters, says Bandlow.

"Media's big pitch always is and should be the public has a right to know. At the same time, they turn around and say, 'I’m not gonna tell you about this.' It looks suspect because they are talking out of both sides of their mouth," he says.

McPhail sees several things coming out of this trial as a result of journalists' testimony. "I tend to think that it’s going to expose some of the journalists who have an all-too-cozy relationship with their sources," he says, calling into question the claim of objectivity and neutrality paramount to western journalism.

But he says the case could ultimately help journalism because it has exposed and provided a case study on how preoccupied the White House was—and is—with media coverage. That the vice president spends his days trying to come up with talking points to counter what's being reported seems a bit paranoid.

"This testimony gives us evidence that the media is important to this administration and that although (President) Bush claims not to read the news, that (Karl) Rove and (Dick) Cheney do almost to the exclusion of other issues they should be dealing with," says McPhail.

Politico debut

Have you checked out the new Politico site yet? I haven't had the time to peruse, but hope to later this afternoon.

Valerie Plame is silenced for now

It seems Valerie Plame may be a bit more important to the CIA than originally posited by the Bush Administration. Either that or the CIA Publications Review Board is excessively paranoid about an ex-operative who brought negative attention to the agency and, through her husband, the Bush Administration.

In related matters, Media Bloggers Association of which I'm a member, has announced that U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., has granted credentials for two MBA seats to cover the upcoming Scooter Libby trial. Libby is accused of outing Valerie Plame in 2003.

This is exciting news because it's only the tip of the iceberg in getting credentials for bloggers to cover major news events.