Duty to inform us about Paris Hilton?

Peter Himler calls me (at least via link) one of the “self-anointed new media pundits” and lumps me in among those who “believe the live media interview (is) outmoded.” While I appreciate the link (no such thing as bad publicity), I think he misunderstood what I wrote. At least he misrepresented it.

Calling what I wrote “vitriol” is a bit much. But the good thing is because what I wrote is available for everyone to see (and not buried in a reporter’s notebook), people can reach their own judgment.

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:Updated – Peter weighs in with a nice comment below. Thanks for the clarification, Peter.
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Actually, what I said was I thought all sides in the controversy had overreacted. Of course there’s a place for the phone or in-person interview… that’s the way we do most of them. And I suggested a way Calcanis and Winer could have done the interview and still have had their “cover” through an audio recording. Journalists quite frequently record interviews; in principle, there’s no reason why Winer or Calcanis couldn’t do the same (provided they cleared it in advance with the reporter.)

My disagreement with Levy was with the sky-is-falling nature of his lament, and his contention that journalists are “not acting out of self-interest, but a sense of duty to inform the population.”

Of course there’s some element of truth in that; as I said, we all have a mixture of motives behind what we do. Some of our motives are noble like that, but also in that mix for journalists is a desire to be first with the story, or get the exclusive.

For example, in my work we have had examples of representatives from two competing network morning shows interested in the same story. When one found out that the competitor had interviewed the subject earlier that day, the reporter put away the camera, packed up the lights, and went back without the story.

Did the story suddenly become something that was no longer important information for the public? Obviously not. Looking for the competitive leg up meant the second network didn’t want to cover the same story as the first.

That’s all fine. They have businesses to run, and a big part of their calculation is what they think will increase ratings. And, in Mr. Levy’s case, if he’s not thinking about writing columns that will attract and engage readers, you can bet his editors are.

Which is why I get a little impatient with journalists who act like everyone in business has ulterior motives, while they as journalists are above it all…just “acting…out of a sense of duty to inform the population.”

“Duty to inform”…is that why Barbara Walters got the post-jail exclusive with Paris Hilton?

So…the phone interview isn’t dead, nor should it be. But when Mr. Levy writes his column, or Mr. Vogelstein his article, they get to take time to say things in exactly the way they want.

Like I am right now. The Republic is not imperiled by some interview subjects like Calcanis and Winer asking for the same consideration. The journalists are free to refuse the request, and then the subjects can decide whether they want to participate or not.

We do lots of media interviews. We’ve done many by email, often suggested by the journalist for his or her convenience. I don’t think the stories were “impoverished.”

If anything, Vogelstein’s story (if he still writes it) will be more impoverished by not including Calcanis and Winer at all than it would have been by at least getting their considered remarks for consideration. He could have done the email or blog interviews and then decided not to use any of the statements, if he didn’t find them useful or genuine.

My fellow “self-anointed” pundits like Dan Gillmor, and Jeff Jarvis simply aren’t doing what Peter insinuates when he says:

The call for all interviews to be conducted via email is short-sighted, if not naive, from a PR perspective.

No one is saying all interviews should be conducted by email. That’s a red herring. Ironically, Wired is exploring crowdsourcing, collaborative journalism. Online interviews with Calcanis and Winer would have been in keeping with that.

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44 More Leave Star Tribune Newsroom

The Minneapolis Star Tribune announced today a force reduction of 44 in its newsroom, mostly through voluntary buyouts, which comes on the heels of 24 who left three months ago:

Another round of goodbyes — the second in three months — began at the Star Tribune on Tuesday as the paper prepared to send 44 newsroom employees out the door with buyouts, most of them voluntary.
Longtime reporters, a photographer, editors and support staff who covered some of the state’s biggest stories during the past three decades said they were leaving to retire, go online or write elsewhere.

“I remember when I was in my late 20s I was impatient for people in their late 50s to get the hell out of the way,” said reporter Chuck Haga, among the people who will leave the paper June 15. “So now I’m getting the hell out of the way for youngsters.”

Except there aren’t any youngsters being hired to take his place. This is a straight reduction.

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Mutual Hyperventilation

In Newsweek, Stephen Levy’s The Technologist column examines the controversy involving Fred Vogelstein of Wired magazine and a couple of bloggers who refused to submit to the oral examination of an interview.

Here is what happened to Vogelstein when he sought his interviews. First, blog entrepreneur Jason Calacanis told him he would not speak to him, but answer questions only by e-mail, something Vogelstein wouldn’t agree to. Then, blogging pioneer Dave Winer told him he would not be interviewed by phone. He suggested that Vogelstein e-mail questions that he would then answer publicly on his blog, a solution for which Vogelstein had even less enthusiasm.

Winer and Calcanis reportedly were concerned about possibly having quotes taken out of context, so they wanted their interviews in writing. They also didn’t want a slip of the tongue or a “gotcha” question to lead to something being published that didn’t reflect their real views.

Levy sees this as a troubling sign. His conclusion:

We in the journalism tribe operate under the belief that when we ask people to talk to us we are not acting out of self-interest but a sense of duty to inform the population. It’s an article of our faith that when subjects speak to us, they are engaging in a grand participatory act where everyone benefits. But these lofty views don’t impress bloggers like Rosen. “You have to prove [you represent the public],” he says. Yes, we do. But every time we lose the priceless knowledge from those essential, real-time interviews, our stories are impoverished, to the detriment of our readers: you.

What we have here is a case of both sides overreacting. Winer and Calcanis could have done the phone interviews, but asked permission to record them. Journalists make this request all the time of their subjects: “Is it OK if I record this? I want to be sure to get it right.” Then, if the article came out and didn’t quote them accurately, they could release or post the transcript or the audio file on their blogs. I understand that they might prefer to have time to pause and reflect in answering questions, though, so what gets printed isn’t just what they happen to blurt out.

Levy’s lament also is a bit overwrought. Lots of interviews happen by email, and it’s often for the convenience of both parties. An interview-via-blog is probably much more unusual, but in principle it’s in keeping with what Wired is attempting with its crowdsourcing initiative. Make the interviews and notes available to the world, and let readers judge for themselves how well you captured the essence of the story.

A greater concern is the attitude that comes through in his conclusion. Too many journalists seem to be suspicious of everyone’s motives except their own. “We in the journalism tribe operate under the belief that when we ask people to talk to us we are not acting out of self-interest but a sense of duty to inform the population.” Does he really mean, or expect us to believe, that journalists are the only people for whom self-interest doesn’t play a role?

If their only motivation is “to inform the population,” why would they object to publication of their interview on a blog? Wouldn’t that provide more information to the population?
The reality is that journalists are like the rest of the human race: we all have mixed motives for what we do. That’s why news organizations seek exclusive interviews: they want to get the story (at least as they see it) to the population, but they also want the prestige of being first with the story, or the only one with it.

The other reality is that while there was a time when journalism was the main source of information for the population, that’s no longer the case. People can get information directly, im-mediately, literally, “without media.”

Good journalism remains important, but I believe we will all be better off when we don’t create artificial distinctions between members of “the journalism tribe” and everyone else.

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Mayo Clinic for Horses?

Now I’ve seen everything.

Tuesday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a special report under the headline “At Pegasus, Mayo Clinic for Thoroughbreds Meets the Four Seasons,” with this as the lead:

REDMOND — The sign on the iron gate at the end of 260th Place Northeast spells P-E-G-A-S-U-S in such a way that a visitor concludes that what’s to come is something special.

Special, indeed.

Pass through the gate and what comes into view on about 100 well-groomed acres on a bluff above the Snoqualmie River Valley and the town of Carnation is a complex — the Pegasus Equine Rehabilitation and Training Center — that has to be the equine equivalent of the Mayo Clinic augmented by five-star luxury.

I’m glad I work at the Mayo Clinic for people, and that at least the P-I also runs our syndicated Medical Edge newspaper column, which is offered through Tribune Media Services.

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Video On Demand is Amazingly Cool

As part of our cable internet package we got a reduced-price trial of the HBO, Showtime, STARZ and Cinemax movie packages.

With the holiday this weekend, we had a family movie festival, and it was SO neat to pick the movies we wanted, when we wanted them, instead of the old days when you had to have a program guide. Being able to hit the pause button, or to rewind to catch missed dialogue, or coming back to catch the end of a movie after leaving for a graduation open house, was fantastic.

Of course, I remember the old days, when if you missed Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, you had to wait until the next year to see it again.

My wife’s grandfather was born in 1898 and died in the 1990s, and we always used to marvel at how things had changed during his lifetime, from the Wright Brothers’ first flight to space travel.

But think about it: I bought my first Apple IIe in 1984, with 64K of memory. My brother-in-law bought a 5 megabyte hard drive for $1,800. I bought a flash drive/key chain with 200 times as much storage at one of those day-after-Thanksgiving sales last year for $10.


I bought a monster boom box in 1980 for $270. That’s $713 in today’s dollars. It could hold one cassette at a time. Today my $300 iPod can hold 15,000 songs. And instead of having to go to the library to look for the information to compose this paragraph, I can get it by Googling the phrases “60 gigabyte ipod how many songs” and “consumer price index 1980.”

And even if I can’t buy the Rudolph movie on iTunes (yet), I can hear Burl Ives crooning the theme song for 99 cents in just a few seconds. And I can go to YouTube and find parody videos like this one:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=MvWVzjBfrn0]

When I was growing up Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock had personal communicators, and George Jetson had a picture phone. Now (almost) all of my kids have cell phones with cameras and video capability. We have web chat. My Dad has a camera built into his laptop for video chat.

And of course, through services like WordPress.com, we can publish our observations to the world (in color) for free. No printing cost. No distribution cost. And we can include video.

We talk a lot today about “Death by Powerpoint.” But I remember overhead transparencies. And 35mm slide carousels. And filmstrips.

Grandpa George saw lots of things change in his lifetime. The last couple of decades have brought changes at an even more breathtaking pace, and rate of change is accelarating.

Ultimately, it goes way beyond the fact that we can watch Raising Arizona, The Man in the Iron Mask, and Mission Impossible III on our timetable. With YouTube and other web video sites, and iTunes, and TiVo, the number of “channels” available to anyone with broadband internet (and that’s more than half of the population) approaches infinity.

The implications for people in public relations or corporate communications are immense. We need to make our message something people want to see and hear instead of interrupting with ads. And more importantly, we need to remember that it’s a conversation, and hear what our customers are saying.

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