Archive for July, 2008
Thursday, July 31st, 2008
I just wanted to update readers on changes that are happening here at PBS MediaShift and Idea Lab. In early June, I put out a call for new correspondents and “embeds” to write for MediaShift. I want to add more voices to this blog besides mine, open it up to more ideas and diverse opinions, and get better coverage of areas where I am lacking.
So far, so good. We've had our first embed report from Tim Peek at NBC, and we have a nice group of new regular contributors. However, we're still looking for more people to contribute as embeds or correspondents. Plus, we're hiring a managing editor, who would help oversee both MediaShift and Idea Lab. The details on that are below.
But first, here's the lineup of embeds and correspondents who are going to be posting on MediaShift in the coming weeks:
Embeds
> Tim Peek, NBC
> Mark van Patten, Daily News in Bowling Green, Ky.
> Kate Martin, Skagit Valley Herald in Washington state
> Roland Legrand, MediaFin, De Tijd and L'Echo newspapers in Belgium
> Alfred Hermida, University of British Columbia journalism school
> Alana Taylor, New York University journalism student
Correspondents
> Sokari Ekine, African issues
> Lucie Morillon, freel speech issues
> Elle Moxley, Beijing Olympics
> Jaron Gilinsky, Israel/Middle East issues
This is a fantastic lineup of people who will be contributing here in the days to come. But we are still looking for people in the following areas:
Embeds
> Local TV station
> Local radio station
> Magazine
> PR firm
> Record label
> Hollywood studio
Correspondents
> Online video
> Digital music
> Legal issues
> Mobile media
> Politics
> Geographical zones: Asia, South America, Europe, Australia
Finally, we are looking for someone who can step in and be a managing editor at MediaShift and Idea Lab. Here's a job description for that:
Managing Editor at PBS MediaShift & Idea Lab
This part-time job will include the following duties:
> Heavy copy-editing and direction on blog posts submitted by a new team of MediaShift correspondents and embeds. This means making sure they get copy in on time, reworking the copy, and helping craft the direction of their work.
> Light copy-editing and checking of Idea Lab blog. This means checking the blog to make sure writers are following style guide, headlines fit, and top posts are being highlighted.
> Writing a weekly blog post on MediaShift on a subject within the realm of the blog but of which you are more interested or experienced in covering. That could mean social networking, podcasting, citizen journalism, online video, or any area you feel comfortble covering. Your posts would combine opinion, informed commentary and some reporting, when necessary.
> Some video editing or audio editing of new multimedia being produced for the blog.
> Optionally the chance to produce your own video blog posts or audio reports.
> Other editorial duties as needed on the blog, including monitoring blog posts, coming up with story ideas, helping research stories, and doing blogger outreach for promotion.
The following experience will be needed to do this job:
> Writing and/or producing a blog.
> Working on deadline.
> Editing other people's work.
> Working with other people and enforcing their deadlines.
The following experience would be helpful:
> Online promotion and/or marketing.
> Video/audio production for the web.
We estimate the job should take up about 20 to 30 hours each week. The pay for this job is $425 per week. We are hoping to hire someone for this position in the next few weeks. It would be ideal work for someone who already has other part-time or freelance work.
If you are interested in being an embed, a correspondent, or managing editor, please drop me a line via the Feedback Form on the web. Be sure to include links to your resume, your best blog writing, and explain why you would fit well for these positions.
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Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
You just created the best video mash-up ever, taking a speech given by John McCain broadcast on Fox News, remixing it with the song “Ol' Man River,” and quick-cutting in clips from gangsta rappers. You upload it to YouTube and other video-sharing sites, and watch the views pile up. But have you run afoul of copyright law? Do you really have permission to use that video footage or music? Or does it fall under the fair use doctrine in U.S. copyright law?
It's an oft-asked question, and one that has new meaning as Google/YouTube battles a $1 billion lawsuit over copyright violations. When YouTube sends out take-down notices for videos that use copyrighted material, they often ensnare legal fair use of video, in cases where the producer might be commenting or critiquing material, capturing copyrighted material incidentally, or recombining material for a new meaning (as in this case above).
So the Center for Social Media (CSM) at American University decided to help video producers, remixers and video-sharing sites by bringing together a panel of legal experts and academics to come up with a Code for Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. The idea is to set out some basic guidelines, bust some myths (e.g. “If I'm not making money off it, it's fair use”) and spread the word about the legality of some video mash-ups.
The CSM modeled this new Code on a previous Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use, which has helped documentary makers navigate fair use questions.
I decided to convene my own panel of academics (some of whom had worked on the Code), video remixers and video-site proprietors to find out how the new Code of Best Practices might help spread the word about fair use in online video. This was a “virtual roundtable” that took place by email over the past week. The following is an edited version of the first part of that email discussion. (I invited representatives from YouTube and Veoh to participate, but they declined.) I'll be running the second and third parts of this conversation in later installments on MediaShift.
What do you think the Code will accomplish? We have Viacom suing YouTube and we have a lot of video usage online that includes mashups, remixes, social commentary, and satire using copyrighted video. Can this guide help bring about more clarity on fair use in online video? If so, how?
Peter Jaszi
law professor at American University and co-chair of the Code of Best Practices committee
We certainly hope so. Just as the Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use (released in November 2005) has brought new clarity to that creative environment. My sense is that the real dispute between Viacom and YouTube isn't (and never has been) about “fair use” videos, but about the uploading of large chunks of untransformed current video. But there is a real risk that new creativity could be an incidental casualty of the outcome of this litigation — however it is resolved.
Everyone in this environment seems to agree in general terms that fair use should be respected, though not necessarily on what fair use is. This Code — in addition to providing practical guidance to video makers — should move us toward a robust common understanding of what kinds of video-making should be fostered rather than suppressed.
JD Lasica
co-founder of Ourmedia media-sharing site, new media expert and videoblogger
When we launched Ourmedia.org, one of the first video-hosting sites, back in March 2005, we didn't have a compass or a flashlight, much less a roadmap. We had 80 volunteer moderators in 14 countries keeping an eye on all new content and working in a wiki to decide which items to remove and which fell under murky fair use standards. If a call was borderline, we would leave it up. That kind of individual review doesn't scale — for large video sites, it just isn't possible in a world where people are now uploading hundreds of thousands of videos every day.
We worked with Fenwick-West, the intellectual property law firm, to craft a set of fair use guidelines for the digital age because we thought it was important for users to know in broad terms what they could legally share or not — without having to attend law school at night.
In the past three and a half years, the personal media revolution has produced astonishing new forms of participatory culture, from video mash-ups to annotated commentary. To see how far we've come, take a look at one of the stories I recounted in my 2005 book Darknet. Donald Whiteside, an Intel vice president, had broken federal law by ripping a few seconds of the commercial DVD “Rudy,” adding the music soundtrack “Who Let the Dogs Out?” and splicing in footage of his 9-year-old son's Pop Warner team.
Today, that wouldn't raise an eyebrow when millions of other people borrow from the culture to create and share their own personalized, non-commercial works. The culture is expanding our ideas about what fair use encompasses. There's a sensible space between all-rights-reserved permission culture and a culture where the rights of creatives are not respected. Ultimately, society — not Congress, not the courts — will determine the contours and limits of remix culture. The new Code Best Practices is the most thoughtful analysis of this new landscape that I've seen.
Anthony Falzone
executive director of the “Fair Use Project”: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/3136 at Stanford University
JD hit an important point. Nobody seems to acknowledge the terrific burden the copyright system places on ordinary people. We have sophisticated (and relatively cheap) tools to create and share video content on a massive scale, but almost no guidance on what we're allowed to do with copyrighted content in that realm. Fair use largely defines those rights, but it's not an easy tool to use for anyone but a legal specialist. So most people are left to guess whether and how it might help them.
At a minimum, I expect the Code will help people across the spectrum figure out whether their creations are likely to fall on one side of the fair use line or the other, both in deciding whether and how to share it, and whether to defend it if challenged. Beyond that, I hope the Code will help platform providers and content owners — the YouTubes and Viacoms of the world — reach a common understanding of what's fair use and what's not so they can go beyond the generalities Peter mentioned.
Francesca Coppa
director of film studies, Muhlenberg College; founding member of the Organization For Transformative Works
I think that the Best Practices will spread rapidly and widely through online creative communities and stop some of the 'chilling effects' produced by random take-downs by sites like YouTube and iMeem. For example, even within the last year, education about fair use has led some vidders to question or protest take-downs when they happen, and some videos have been restored — or permission explicitly granted for re-upload. But it's crucial that vidders and other makers know their creative work is legitimate.
Owen Gallagher
digital media entrepreneur; founder of TotalRecut, a network of fans and creators of video remixes, recuts, and mash-ups
I think this document is a very positive step toward a stronger general consensus regarding what is acceptable in terms of appropriating copyrighted content, and what is not. In an area where there is so much confusion about what you can and can't do (thanks primarily to frivolous legal threats from the major media companies), I believe this to be a very important and much needed document which will hopefully help to reduce the 'chilling effects' that Francesca refers to.
The biggest problem in this space is that videos making legitimate reuse of copyrighted material are being caught in the crossfire in the 'war on piracy.' For example, Google's filtering technology for YouTube often wrongly identifies remixed videos as copyright infringements, but thankfully more and more people are beginning to realize that they can challenge these claims by filing counter-notifications.
Viacom's lawsuit against Google may result in less outright piracy and uploading of complete copyrighted works to YouTube, but whichever way the case goes, I do not believe for one second that the creation of video remixes, mash-ups and other such transformative works will be stifled in any way. This is a form of creative expression that is growing in popularity every day and will eventually snowball into a critical mass of truly mainstream activity.
Copyright laws will eventually have to be adapted to suit this new landscape and before that happens, as JD mentioned, it will be society, not the courts, who will decide what is acceptable and what is not. I feel that the Code of Best Practices is an important step in establishing a balance between the copyrights of original content creators and the freedom of expression rights of those who wish to build on the works of the past.
rx
political video mash-up artist at ThePartyParty.com
While I personally found the document helpful in clarifying fair use, I'm not sure what effect, if any, it will, or should have on artistic expression. As an “artist,” the last thing I'm thinking about when working on a project is the law. In fact, I don't consider any of that until too late, as I think is best. An artist should pursue his or her vision, regardless of bureaucracy, regardless of consequence. It's the “suffering for your art” principle.
Part of our role as new media artists, I believe, beyond the intended value of a given work, is to challenge old fashioned ideas of intellectual property rights and free speech. In these days where the president's spokesman is on TV saying “Americans had better watch what they say,” firmly planting the flag in defense of freedom of speech is our responsibility. If anything, perhaps the Best Practices can help the art market better understand which works are legit and which are not, and that can be a big help to artists who are trying to establish a market for their work, and therefore carry on as artists.
Mizuko Ito
research scientist, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California
In addition to the clarifying role that this document performs in helping people understand legal doctrine, I think this document also is important in providing a reference point and a focus for discussion, debate, and coalition building. I've been doing work researching youth Internet use and video remixes, mostly fan-based, and so this comes from my position as an observer of everyday video creation and circulation. When I forwarded this document to various members of remix communities I've been in contact with, most people said they had already received it from multiple sources.
Subsequently, there has been lively debate on various web forums and mailing lists about the meaning of the document for specific video creation practices. In other words, the circulation of this document gives disparate communities a focus for discussion and reflection on meta issues that are not generally part of day-to-day conversation. It also provides a focus for understanding how the interests and issues of these diverse groups are actually linked.
I think rx's point that the law is generally an incidental consideration for creators is an interesting one. I would agree. I think that is particularly true for non-professional video creation, which is often not made with the intention to circulate widely or commercialize. My observations have been that the legal considerations come in primarily at the point of distribution and circulation — when people try to figure out where they can post or show their videos. This document should be useful in helping people navigate those set of decisions.
*****
Thus ends Part 1 of the roundtable. Part 2 will look at how people might spread the Code to video producers and how video-sharing sites might help educate people about fair use. Part 3 is a discussion on whether copyright law should be changed in order to better protect fair use.
What do you think about the Code? Do you think it's a good document for outlining fair use? Should video sites such as YouTube post it somewhere prominently? How could the code be improved? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
Starting this week, MediaShift will be running reports from “embeds” at various media outlets and educational institutions. The first report comes from Tim Peek, executive producer for new media at NBC's Peacock Productions.
It was a seemingly prosaic moment at the end of the “Weekend NBC Nightly News” program Saturday, July 5: Lester Holt wrapped up the show with one of those ever-popular cute animal stories. The piece was about a baby penguin rejected by its mother and now being raised by a zoo worker in Boston.
But there was a lot more to this story than met the eye, as Holt hinted at with his introduction: “It's a story we first reported on our website. It got a lot of traffic there, so much in fact that we thought maybe we'd air it right here. So here's NBC's Clare Duffy with our report.”
The story was the first in a gathering wave of reports created originally for the Internet — reported and narrated by a producer, not on-camera talent — making air on the broadcast network. As such, it was one of those small events that may well mark a watershed toward a truly cross-platform world, with professionally produced content playing wherever the audience wants to see it and breaking down the wall of “TV network” vs. “online.”
For most of a year now, NBC News has been pushing the digital journalism agenda as a way to cast a broader newsgathering net and lower production costs. Last season, Mara Schiavocampo debuted as the first digital correspondent for “Nightly News,” producing, shooting, editing and fronting all her own stories across the network and MSNBC.com.
And the “Nightly News” website stresses original material, most of it coming from producers and others creating stories for the web only. But the penguin story marked the beginning of a true cross-platform world, where these stories play wherever they're needed, regardless of who created them or where they originally appeared.
Producer Shoots, Edits, Goes On-Air
The penguin story began as a web package created and reported by “Nightly News” producer Clare Duffy. She and an associate producer on the show shot, wrote and edited the piece a few weeks before. As she had done in several other web stories, Duffy narrated and even appeared in a short standup.
Even more remarkable: Though Duffy has been producing for “Nightly” for years (and even appeared in on-air crosstalks when she worked in Moscow 18 years ago), she began shooting and editing only this spring, after a few weeks of on-the-job training, and in addition to her usual day job as a traditional “Nightly News” producer.
Ever since then, Duffy has joined the ranks of “Nightly News” producers creating original stories for the show's website. This push has given the site a steady stream of unique content and boosted its online viewer numbers significantly. The hope, too, is that a growing web audience will translate into a growing audience for the broadcast show.
For Duffy, as for the other producers, editors and camerapeople who have tried it, walking on the “digital journalist” side has been exhilarating. The ability to totally control the assignment and embrace the full craft of storytelling is a refreshing change in what has become an almost assembly-line-like news production system of specialists.
“I think what's exciting about doing this is being able to take command of the whole process, and use abilities or skills that you knew you had but never had an outlet for,” says Duffy. “There is a 'making your own luck' aspect to this that's really rewarding; you don't have to wait for someone to say, 'Hey, let's give you a try on air.' You just do it. And there is something about the intimacy of the smaller, less intrusive cameras that gives you a different kind of story.”
Will Quality Journalism Suffer?
Not everyone at NBC is so enthusiastic.
Among producers, especially those who have been practicing their craft for a long time, there is widespread apprehension. They know this is the way the world is headed, away from highly skilled (and highly paid) specialists working as part of a large team. But they worry about their ability to shoot and edit while also maintaining high standards. Will the quality of journalism suffer in the face of technical alacrity?
The network's craft editors and camera operators are similarly discomfited by the rush to digital journalism. They see a trend to replace them with younger, lower-paid “vid kids” who are jacks of all trades and masters of none.
But even among this crowd, Duffy's penguin story met with grudging respect: “Better than I expected,” is how one editor put it.
But many also see it as a portent of the coming apocalypse. This despite the fact that more and more editors and camerapeople are being trained to tell their own stories as digital journalists (DJs). More and more technical staffers are working as parts of two-person DJ crews for broadcasts, and several editors and shooters have single-handedly created stories for MSNBC.com and Channel One News.
Duffy herself has mixed feelings about the rush toward digital journalism.
“What I do worry about is the loss of the collaborative nature of what we do,” she says. “There's a reason the best TV has been made that way since its inception and it's something that should not be chucked out wholesale as irredeemably 'old media' simply because people are overly entranced by the idea of saving money. Losing that will yield a product that's not worth very much.”
And the critics are right about something else: The digital journalist method is highly efficient, but still, something's got to give. Not even the best digital journalists can shoot, edit, write and report as well as the dedicated teams of experts who still dominate TV news production. The biggest compromise comes in technical quality. The video from DV cameras is softer than beta; the sound is not a sharp. Producer editing on low-end systems is a stripped-down affair; straight cuts and dissolves. Stand-ups and tracking from producers also can suffer. And time pressure puts everything under the gun — even though the DJ model is more efficient, it still often takes more time to get it all done well.
But for many stories, none of these compromises show up or even make a difference. Following a penguin through a cramped apartment works better with a DV camera than a beta camera. On-the-move interviews and documentary-style storytelling don't showcase the shortcomings of narration or lighting. And, most basically, a good enough story trumps all but the most egregious technical shortcomings.
Web Popularity Leads to TV
Duffy knew that a baby penguin that traveled home in an ice chest would be a hit on the web. And it was, quickly becoming one of MSNBC.com's most-viewed videos, with some 70,000 hits.
Pat Burkey, the executive producer of the “Weekend Nightly News,” paid attention to statistics like that, figuring that anything popular on the web would probably be popular on his show. When he looked at the story, he saw a standard-issue network piece; the fact that it was created and fronted by a producer made no difference.
And so the story made air and turned the usual cross-platform media flow on its head.
For years now, NBC News has been chopping stories out of its broadcasts and posting them as stand-alone videos on MSNBC.com. That's the basic multi-platform model most media companies employ: traditional outlets first, then onto the web. The Internet is ancillary to the dominant television, newspaper or radio platform.
But rarely does it go the other way. One reason is quality: Production standards for the web, thanks to its origins as a hobbyist medium (think YouTube), are notoriously low. Another reason is prejudice. A large number of traditional media workers just flat out don't think web content is good enough.
Duffy combined today's cheap but powerful cameras and editing systems with her professional-level know-how and standards to create a web story that could stand up to broadcast standards.
Burkey looked at the story on its merits, not according to how it was created. In an era when budgets, especially for weekend shows (which are not seen as marquee venues), are cut to the bone, Burkey saw the web story as a cheap and unique alternative to the agency footage that is the usual mainstay of weekend newscasts. Budget and audience pressure is the mother of invention here.
What this shows is that the new tools of digital journalism, when combined with expert producing, can create high-quality stories that pass muster in any medium. This has the potential to dramatically alter the economics of network news production by allowing much broader use of these web-oriented stories. It also means that news organizations can more easily use their content on whatever platform makes the most sense, without recutting, revoicing or repackaging to meet the quality standards of the high-end platforms (stories can now just as easily travel up the quality stream from web to broadcast as down it).
The penguin story also shows that the talent pool for high-end storytelling is a lot deeper than it used to be. You don't have to be an official “correspondent” to get on the air; you don't have to be a dedicated cameraperson to shoot for broadcast; and you don't have to be a craft editor to create for the network. And, most hopefully, it may show that a good story can speak for itself, regardless of who or how it was created.
What do you think about the DJ method and how it might change TV news production? Will more networks follow NBC's lead by doing web-first stories that make it on-air? What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of using quick-and-dirty methods for TV? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Tim Peek is the executive producer for new media at NBC News's Peacock Productions. He runs a digital production studio, NBC NextMedia Productions, oversees the high school news program Channel One News, and works to introduce new content types and workflows across NBC News. A 12-year veteran of NBC, Peek began his work there at “Dateline NBC.” He's also worked as a newspaper editor and radio news reporter. You can find out more about him, and read his MediaChange blog at TimPeek.com.
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Monday, July 28th, 2008
Elle Moxley is a journalism student at the University of Missouri who is a media volunteer for the Olympics in Beijing. She will be writing occasional reports about the scene there for MediaShift over the next few weeks.
We wrestle hi-def video cameras into our carry-on luggage, brandish SLRs at tourist attractions and arrange “Skype dates” with significant others half a world away. Blogging is the acceptable (and perhaps preferred) method of communicating with home, and the Internet at our hotel strains under the weight of so many Facebook photo uploads in so few hours. We are journalism students at the University of Missouri and volunteers at the XXIX Olympic Games, self-proclaimed new media experts and hopeless foreigners all at the same time.
Last August, I sat in a packed auditorium back home in Missouri eager to learn more about the chance to work with the Olympic News Service (ONS). ONS needed native-English speakers to staff help desks, haul equipment and hang out in the mixed zone, hoping to wrestle quotes from winning athletes as they passed. I don't really watch sports, but there's something about the Olympic Games I find intensely interesting. Maybe it's the sense of global unity. Maybe it's the spirit of competition. Maybe it's the bizarre draw of sports like curling, which my mom and I stayed up watching until 3 a.m. during the Turin games in 2006. I immediately counted myself in.
But when I triumphantly announced my plans to study abroad in Beijing, my parents (who I typically dismiss as somewhat alarmist) immediately began to question how much freedom we'd have as journalists in China. I don't consider myself naive or uneducated; I probably have a better sense of the political situation here than they do. But I also knew that as a stipulation in their bid for the Olympic Games, China had to guarantee access to foreign journalists.
And in theory they did, issuing a decree promising press freedom from the start of 2007 through the Paralympics. Early reports indicated foreign journalists still met with some degree of difficulty as they entered China, but I remained optimistic. Each time someone asked me his or her own variation of “China…are you sure?” I became increasingly indignant.
“The Olympics are China's chance to prove itself to the world,” I argued to them. “Journalists will have their freedom during the Games. You'll see.” Today, as I navigate Beijing's packed streets with a knowledge of Mandarin that begins and ends with xie xie (“thank you”), I'm not so sure. I might not speak the language, but I can still read the signs.
The Lens Turned on Us
With 59 students, we were the largest group of English volunteers the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) invited to Beijing. China Central Television and China Daily were waiting when we arrived.
For the first several days we were in Beijing, we couldn't make a move without crossing the path of a videocamera, and before we could depart on BOCOG-arranged tours to all the local attractions (think Great Wall, Ming Tombs and Summer Palace), we had to wait almost an hour for CCTV to arrive. For a busload of journalism students, it was a difficult delay to understand. If you're late in Columbia, Missouri, you miss the story, and it doesn't matter if the event you're covering is 30 minutes away in Jefferson City. You still have to provide your own transportation.
The inclusion of Chinese journalists in our activities and outings represents the same unique cooperation between the government and the media we saw when we visited the People's Daily. Though the online version of the state-sponsored paper offers a marriage of text, video and multimedia we can only hope to achieve at the our journalism school's daily, the Columbia Missourian, the accolades that adorn our walls are clippings of old articles and awards. At the People's Daily, modern architecture meets framed photos of high-ranking Chinese officials on tours of the facility. As our guides are quick to point out, the frequent visits indicate the importance of the People's Daily in the eyes of the government. Something tells me that the Columbia City Council would rather we just stay out.
Mao Zedong's portrait still hangs over Tiananmen Square, which we visited on a rainy Saturday. It's not usually this wet in Beijing, but Chinese meteorologists have been seeding the clouds in preparation for the Olympic Games. Forcing it to rain now helps clear smog from the skies and also makes it less likely it will rain through Opening Ceremony. Our tour guide didn't have a lot to say about the rioting that erupted in summer 1989, but one of the students on our trip who studied the Tiananmen Square Massacre provided us with an impromptu history lesson.
Whispers on the Tour
One of the main shopping districts in Beijing might derive its name from an ancient trade route, yet English is the dominant language of the Silk Market, and bartering feels surprisingly like capitalism. But like the People's Daily, the suburbs of northern Beijing tell a different story.
These are not the manicured lawns and large cookie cutter houses of my hometown of Kansas City. Blue signs advertise Xiangtang Village as a stop on the “Olympic Country Tour,” the one BOCOG arranged for us. We spend our morning at the water purification plant (this in a city where we've been told not to drink the water because of the potentially dangerous level of lead in the pipes), and in the afternoon, we depart behind a police escort to a place that has seen “marvelous changes…especially under the leadership of Wenshan Zhang, the General Party Branch Secretary of Xiangtang Village” (this according to the official literature we've received).
Our group of journalism students remains skeptical as we are ushered through newly built courtyards and gardens of fake flowers. Over one-third of villagers live in new housing projects.
“What happened to the old houses?” someone asks.
“They were deserted,” our BOCOG tour guide says, her voice awash in mystery.
My friend elbows me. “Funny,” she says, “how 'deserted' and 'forced to leave' have the same end result.”
We visit an “ancient” temple; we learn through the subtleties of speech that this is actually a replica. By the end of the day, we are calling this “Propaganda Tour 2008.” I'm not sure how our friends from CCTV will edit out such whispers.
Is this the free and open Beijing promised when the city received its bid to host the Games? Large digital clocks throughout the city are counting down to the start of the Games, but I'm not sure how much will change in the 11th hour. As the clocks tick past the crucial one month mark, every major news source seems eager to comment on the Human Rights Watch report that questions the reality of an open and free foreign press in China. As for me, I'm glad they're so eager to comment and link to it, because it gives me access the Chinese government will not — in Beijing, the report lies just beyond reach, blocked behind a firewall.
Elle Moxley is a student at the University of Missouri pursuing dual degrees in journalism and sociology. Currently, she is living in Beijing, China, spending two months working for the Olympic News Service at the XXIX Olympic Games.
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Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
As the layoffs and buyouts pile up in U.S. the newspaper industry, and Romenesko becomes a daily wake, there is one other troubling problem: Young journalists are less willing to stay at newspapers because the papers are so slow to change their culture.
Newspapers have a history as top-down organizations where senior management huddles in conference rooms to decide what everyone else will do. Innovative ideas usually die on the vine or in bureaucratic red tape. And that's frustrating for young folks who want to be change agents at newspapers and make a difference.
Vickey Williams studied 10 print newsrooms as part of the Learning Newsroom project from 2004 to 2007, releasing the report All Eyes Forward (PDF) to detail the challenges in changing newsroom culture. One finding surprised the research team and upset the newsroom veterans:
While a certain amount of turnover is expected and normal among the youngest practitioners of any craft — in pursuit of career advancement or reflecting a simple change of heart — these messages seemed different in both volume and intensity. A majority of younger journalists (age 29 and below) in nearly every pilot seemed to us to be saying, “We're leaving because the changes we see as necessary aren't happening fast enough.”
Williams joined the Media Management Center at Northwestern University in April 2007 as director of its Digital Workforce Initiative. She recently sounded the alarm about young folks fleeing newspapers in a blog post on the Readership Institute's website:
“[Young journalists] are turned off by the tendency of veteran journalists to argue down new ideas, cling to old ways, and avoid risks,” she wrote. “As Readership Institute research has shown, those are outcomes of newspaper people's tendencies to be oppositional, perfectionist and conventional. I've seen the generational friction play out dozens of times as younger voices get shut down by veterans who fall back on ingrained behaviors.”
Williams called for newsroom leaders to engage young folks in meaningful ways, give them timely responses to ideas, and teach them more about the business side of journalism. When I talked to Williams recently, she told me that young journalists — and really, all journalists — are going to have to become more business-savvy, whether they stay in media organizations or go freelance.
As for what organizations can do to retain people who want change to come faster, Williams believes they have to give those people a seat at the table in discussions about innovation, and foster bottom-up communication and collaboration. The following is an edited transcript of our recent phone conversation.
What brought you to the Readership Institute?
Vickey Williams: I worked in seven newsrooms in reporting and editing jobs, from small papers in Alabama to mid-sized and large papers in Oakland and Tampa. Then I went to a corporate editorial job for Community Newspapers Holdings Inc. (CNHI). We had about 200 small dailies in 22 states. I realized the best way I could work for those journalists at those newspapers would be to come up with a national training program.
It was really while recruiting and training talent and getting in the middle of some future-focused conversations that I came across the research of the Readership Institute. Long before I came to the Media Management Center and Readership Institute I was a consumer of their research. I left the corporate job in 2004 and went right into a Knight Foundation-funded research project [the Learning Newsroom] that was a joint venture of the American Press Institute and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. They had received a million-dollar Knight Foundation grant to look at the culture in newsrooms.
I knew about the Impact Study that the Readership Institute had done of 100 newspapers; it was groundbreaking research that the industry hadn't had before. I was the one who said, 'You're telling us about four cornerstones in helping to grow readership: content, service, branding, culture. When are you going to tell us what to do about culture?' The Impact Study was the first signal we got that newspapers have a really lousy culture. I should stress that I'm a journalist, and a lot of my work naturally focuses on journalism and newsrooms. We have a bad culture in newspapers across departments.
I was the program director [of the Learning Newsroom] and I contracted with two organizational development experts to help me with pieces of that training. And we went in to work with those newsrooms in-depth in-person for a year, and then we went back for six months of follow-up research. That's where the age thing came up. I've enjoyed other people's reactions to my blog post, and I agree with them strongly that this is not about age…I saw as many dyed-in-the-wool change-resistant 22-year-olds — I saw a lot of them — and I saw plenty of 60-year-olds who were very future-focused. It's very complicated. And it will play out for years.
What made you think that newspapers had a bad culture?
Williams: I don't know if you've waded much into organizational development or design topics, because I hadn't as a journalist. There's 40-plus years of research out there about how any organization can become more nimble, more anticipatory of change, can get more consumer-focused. The stories of companies that have remade themselves in the face of declining consumer demand — just as we've faced — there are many, many books on them. It's not as if this problem hasn't been studied, and it's a common problem in mature industries.
I'm convinced this is the state in newspapers, and not just in newsrooms — that we're very internally focused. When I first heard the Impact Study in early 2001, in classic journalist style I reacted strongly and negatively to the culture findings. I wanted to know what these people were looking for — these were news organizations we're talking about. It took me a day or two to really think about it and realize that the profile of an aggressive-defensive workplace — was the profile of every single one of the seven newsrooms I worked in.
When I was in newsrooms I was always in hard news, and I'm wired that way. This was in no way a touchy-feely exercise aimed at making people look forward to coming to work each day. It was all about saving the franchise, and to me, it still is.
Do you think a lot of the cultural issues are about being too internally focused and not finding out what's going on in the rest of the world, finding out what's going on with readers in the community?
Williams: It is. And it can play out in a number of ways. Certain people in an organization are going to play it safe and conventional, and say, 'We don't have any rules for that.' Certain other people are going to argue down everything. Certain people will look for this to pass, because 'gosh we've been through so many other things, let's just wait until this gets off the radar too.' We have different mechanisms for dealing with our reluctance to change, but they're all equally effective at standing still and doing nothing.
I think the volume on outright resistance to change is down even since the completion of that work in newsrooms, which wrapped up in early 2007. I would have to bet that in the 15 months since then that resistance is going down. I am not at all convinced that we know how to replace that with something constructive. So in short, we don't fight it as hard and as loudly — the fact that we have to change — but we don't know what to do instead.
When students go into journalism schools, the people teaching them came from a traditional background, and the students want to land a job at the New York Times and don't think about starting their own blog or podcast.
Williams: Which is really a shame, because I think if you took Millennials in their untouched state, they would be very much inclined to be audience-focused because they are such notorious consumers themselves. They have such high expectations for what they consume. So I wonder if some of that is being shaved off of them in journalism schools so that they come out ready to fit in with the internal focus that still predominates in most newspapers.
I've heard that some people in newsrooms who are skeptical about changes, who say 'do we really want to do this digital initiative?' — those people get shouted down. Is there room for criticism?
Williams: Sure, there is. And not every digital idea is a good idea. On the other hand, look at the agenda for the last five years for all the industry conferences. Most of them have the word 'innovation' in their titles or it's the theme for their conference. And it's a long stretch. Innovation is almost the end game and brass ring, and we're so far from a climate to foster that in our workplaces, that we have a long way to go.
What will it take to create that kind of climate?
Williams: I think we're on the way, I don't think it's hopeless by any means. We saw progress in 10 out of 10 newsrooms, and we saw three almost make it to 'constructive,' which is extremely outwardly focused and those organizations are more successful. And they met that profile in 18 months, which is remarkable, because that's usually a journey that takes five years. So I have hope and optimism that our industry can make it, but I wish it had started [to change] in 2001, when we first got the message, and we might have saved more jobs and had a lot less angst.
I read one of your blog posts about community and being outwardly focused. Do you think that's a key to a successful newsroom — involving the audience, involving the community?
Williams: Absolutely. The move toward increased interaction in community and networks is both a challenge and a godsend, because it should force us to become more outwardly focused and build greater links with the community. My boss Mike Smith [executive director of the MMC], who is very much a business and strategy guy, would say we are in for several more years of pain. There's no easy way out. If we can get more interactive and build community to build online traffic to build page views to build revenue… That's part of it.
The formula that we tried in the newsrooms was pretty valuable. In short, it was a prescription for journalists to get more business savvy — and they will get more business savvy one way or the other. If they become a victim of the cutbacks, then they will be looking at making their own living and be worried about income and attracting advertisers to their website. So getting more business savvy is only a plus.
A lot of people in the hard news world, traditional reporters, feel like they work in their own silo. They develop their sources, they do their big investigative report. And when you ask them to go out in their community and involve readers, a lot of them don't like that idea.
Williams: Investigative types were some of my toughest audience, and were the most suspicious of my motives with this program. They thought I must have some ulterior motive, and bless them, that's the way they're supposed to be. I think they're turning the corner as they see that databases [can help with] investigative reporting and using Twitter as a reporting tool is smart. As they see more applications and potential for the type of public service journalism that they love, and can see those opportunities in the digital realm, they'll become less suspicious.
What were some of your biggest challenges in doing culture-change training?
Williams: Well, this was several years ago, but I'll never forget a conversation I had in one newsroom where it was clearly the veterans vs. the bloggers. The veterans were diminishing the value of it, they didn't get it, and the bloggers said 'that's what's wrong and we're out of here.' I didn't expect this when I did the research, but it was kind of the flaming headline to me: Young people had one eye on the door.
Most of our meetings were tough because we set the stage for a very candid conversation and it was about what needs to change around here. By the topic and ground rules of this work, it made for difficult conversations — sometimes difficult to facilitate, sometimes difficult for leaders to hear.
I asked people what they thought about the data [showing that young people wanted to leave], and the veterans even wanted to argue down that the data was correct. And if it was correct and young people were leaving, it was because they were wimps, and good riddance. I remember in one newsroom, a fairly large one, where we opened the floor and said, 'Would anybody in this age group, which was 29 and younger, like to respond to this? Are we not reading you right?' A twentysomething said, 'We talk about this every single day. And the “this” is the slow pace of change, and how much time we spend talking to ourselves instead of looking outward.'
One thing you mentioned on your blog was giving younger people more power and giving them a seat at the table to do things with a bottom-up approach.
Williams: Bottom-up is exactly the right terminology. If you read one book on organizational development, you'll get the message that often in troubled industries like ours, the answers we seek are held by people at the front lines. In newspapers that means giving feet-on-the-street people a seat at the table and gathering their feedback whether they're in the newsroom or advertising or production about what's going wrong with the product.
In newspapers, even when leadership says 'We want this kind of place, we want ideas to flow from the bottom up,' it takes a long time to convince people that you're serious. Because for years, we have been an industry with our panels and task forces and we've generated lots of reports that have gathered dust on the corners of bosses' desks, and people don't have the energy for that anymore. So there are a lot of dimensions for what it will take for us to change.
I'm curious about the overall focus of the Readership Institute. Judging by the website, the main focus is getting people to read print newspapers, but now there are so many people going online. Does that change what you do as an Institute?
Williams: I think that began several years ago. Rich Gordon has been on staff and he's been looking into a whole host of digital projects for years. If you look at who's on staff, we're all digitally focused. At least it feels to us that we are. The Running While the Earth Shakes (PDF file) research is totally about digital innovation.
Do you think it's important to bring in an entrepreneurial aspect to newsrooms?
Williams: Absolutely. My post was about traditional print companies, in those workforces. I don't think it's realistic to expect that twentysomethings, Millennials in the traditional newspapers, would be given the key to the igloo where new products come out. And should they? Probably. I think it can't come soon enough.
Another question that MMC is asked is whether they should be part of the workforce or separate. And the answer is that it depends on every single situation, there's no one-size-fits-all answer to that. I agree with Jeff Jarvis that it would be a very good gamble to allow Millennials to start up companies or products. But I can't think of a single media company where that would be allowed to happen on a broad scale.
Full disclosure: Like the Learning Newsroom, MediaShift has received funding from the Knight Foundation.
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