Crimson meeting. Everyone is intently concentrating on something being said by a reporter out of the frame. They’re also wondering what I’m doing climbing up into a chair, I’m sure.
A newspaper editor friend of mine said “Everyone looks depressed. Great job preparing them for the real world of journalism!”
That only makes me wish I knew what they were talking about at the moment. This is a budget meeting, though, and I deliberately stay out of those. Immediately after the budget, though, is the critique, where we pore over the most recent issue. The short version: it is a remarkably good second issue. There are a few things to work on, there always will be. And we’re about to go on a great crusade of immediacy and urgency, but there is great potential in what this crew brings together. I’m very proud for them.
Meanwhile …
Things to read … the things to read were always destined to intersect with a “meanwhile.”
Trust in Mass Media Returns to All-Time Low:
After registering slightly higher trust last year, Americans’ confidence in the media’s ability to report “the news fully, accurately, and fairly” has returned to its previous all-time low of 40%. Americans’ trust in mass media has generally been edging downward from higher levels in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.
There are some cultural and societal issues at play here. We also benefit from a great many more voices now, too, and often those voices are critical of the media, or, more-to-the-point, illustrative of where “the media” is getting something wrong. Also, sometimes, you just get bad work. (And don’t forget comment sections of websites.)
For example … Everything you could ever want to know about AJ McCarron and Katherine Webb’s wedding. Let’s set the scene. Two months ago a young couple got married. Here is a FAQ. A reporter said to me:
@kennysmith @aldotcom I can't wait for the anniversary!
— Madison Underwood (@MadisonU) September 18, 2014
Wouldn’t it be weird to report on an anniversary? Or just stalk it?
In that FAQ there is this line: Wedding pictures FINALLY revealed.
It is an entertainment piece and there’s an audience for this stuff. Not my speed, but that’s fine, I get it. But if you write the above sentence you desperately need to gain some perspective.
I rather like interviews with thoughtful journalists. It is often inside baseball, but if you’re actually talking to a reporter about something they actually know about, it can be enlightening … Here’s Alison Gow, Editor of Digital Innovation at Trinity Mirror Regionals:
Paint us a picture: what does innovation in newsrooms look like to you?
It’s a newsroom where experimentation leading to some form of change happens all the time: it might be telling a story in a different way, or developing a new tool for news-gathering or collaboration. Personally, I think experimentation is the thing that keeps our journalism fresh and makes us relevant … but it will probably be a bit of a leap of faith and lead to an evolution of how we work, interact with audiences and present our journalism. It’s also a newsroom with a clear system for managing ideas, whether they benefit editorial, commercial, or other departments: one that understands anyone in the company may have a ‘Eureka!’ moment, and should know where to take it. You don’t get the monopoly on ideas because you’re a manager.
Often, I think, innovation is working backwards from the endpoint of an idea, refining the processes to make it happen, without ever losing sight of the final goal. Too often we compromise or give up on a final vision because operations/systems/culture won’t accommodate it. Never lose sight of what you’re aiming to achieve, and work over or through obstacles.
That’s why you often have to say yes in those newsroom meetings.
(Wedding pictures aren’t innovative.)
Who’s really to blame for ad fraud?:
Ad fraud is the ultimate case of who done it? Nobody argues there’s a problem, but as for who is to blame … well, that’s where things get dicey.
This much is for sure: ad fraud, and your definition of what constitutes it may vary, has gone from being viewed as a basic cost of doing business to becoming one of the biggest issues facing the online ad industry. The credibility of the medium is at risk.
This story is becoming an annual affair, and it is one of the best things going … Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle window washers amaze young patients at Children’s Hospital
I read paragraphs and paragraphs of this story on GoPro, the fad, the great videos, the IPO, the GoPro fails. Nothing of it was new. But I got to this part and I started thinking about Polaroid … We are a camera:
The company wants to capitalize on the mass-market home-video urge, the camera’s aptitude for capturing what GoPro’s president, Tony Bates, calls “life’s great moments,” and yet retain its reputation as a kind of philosopher’s stone, capable of transforming ordinary experience into magical footage. (Two tips: “Slow it down and you look like a pro.” “The closer the better.”)
And the next sentence mentions the Brownie and Polaroid and the democratization of video. The story continues:
But the analogy comes up short, because GoPro videos aspire to go viral. You’re sharing the photos of your ski trip not just with your family and a few friends but, if you’re any good, with thousands, if not millions, of people. The GoPro, by implication, asks its users to push a little harder, as both subjects and filmmakers. Be a Hero: The premise from the start has been that you, in every way an amateur, can go pro—on both sides of the lens. It’s karaoke, but with the full Marshall stack.
The short video synonymous with GoPro is a kind of post-literate diary, a stop on the way to a future in which everything will be filmed from every point of view. Humans have always recorded their experiences, in an array of media and for a variety of reasons. Not until very recently, with the advent of digital photography and video, and unlimited storage and distribution capacity, has it been conceivable to film everything. As we now more than ever communicate through pictures, either still or moving, perhaps our lives come closer to Susan Sontag’s imagined “anthology of images.” An obvious example is the people who film concerts on their smartphones. Will they ever watch the video? And if they do will it measure up to the concert, which they half missed? Of course not. They film the concert to certify their attendance and convey their good fortune. The frame corroborates.
Polaroid is coming into that market, as well. They’re looking at the truly democratized, less high adrenaline adventure segment of consumerism. They’ll compete with GoPro on one end and probably smartphones on the other.
Just imagine if someone was recording me when I took the photo above, on the odd chance that I fell out of my chair. Oh, the laughs they would have had at my expense. Serious journalism, indeed, undone.
