In any case, they’ve come up twice in some cool stuff I’ve been looking at lately. Firstly, I caught this PBS special on colony collapse disorder one night by chance. Colony collapse disorder has apiologists (bee researchers) scared, as it (whatever it is) is killing whole colonies of bees in the US and increasingly throughout the world.

Scientists don’t know yet exactly what’s happening to the bees yet either. They just don’t come back to the hive and die.

Silence of the Bees, though, shown in full on PBS.org, explains a lot about what’s happening and where research is now on it. It’s not as dry as some PBS specials, I recommend giving it a look.

Secondly, Newsweek has a pretty interesting, short article on Parisian bees and all the cool pollen they come up with.

Testers have been surprised to find equatorial pollens from palm trees in [Paris beekeper] Darné’s honey pots. There’s evidence of a pollen that looks to be from the family of the baobab tree, the whimsical African colossus. “There aren’t any baobabs in the Greater Paris area, that’s for sure,” Darné says. Some pollens linger unidentified while researchers trade pollen photos over the Internet with colleagues in New Zealand and Madagascar. Olive tree, eucalyptus, the South African gazania flower, even cannabis is traceable in Seine-St-Denis hives, according to Yves Loublier, a pollen specialist with the French National Center for Scientific Research.

How does a reporter get a scoop? Nurturing contacts, wearing out shoe leather, poring over documents. And for some, the toolkit may include phone hacking, honeytraps and covert recording.

I remember hearing once that tabloids like the National Enquirer have some of the most robust fact-checking infrastructures, because the stakes and the likelihood of getting sued are so high. I don’t know how the British libel rules compare to the US, but check out what some of these reporters have done:

The exciting:

In 2003, Daily Mirror reporter Ryan Parry used false references to get a job as a footman in Buckingham Palace. His aim was to uncover security lapses at the Palace in the run-up to President George W Bush’s visit.

He revealed details of the President’s bedroom as well as the Queen’s breakfast habits. Eventually the Queen won a court order preventing the Mirror from revealing any more.

The worrying:

Tessa Mayes, who has worked as an investigative journalist for newspapers and TV shows, said… ‘If I had said no, I wouldn’t have got to work on those stories. It’s not unknown for journalists to sleep with their sources in order to meet a deadline. As it happens I haven’t needed or wanted to do that.’

The silly:

And it is widely claimed that in 1994 Rebekah Wade – then a News of the World reporter, now editor of the Sun – dressed as a cleaner and hid in a toilet for two hours in order to nab an early copy of the Sunday Times.

The Sunday Times, housed in the same building as the News of the World, was serialising a biography of Prince Charles, and NoTW editor Piers Morgan wanted to know what it said. John Witherow, editor of the Sunday Times, is alleged to have shouted at Morgan: ‘Theft isn’t journalism.’

Read the whole thing.

This is the Internet

Twitter. I’ve been doing it for awhile now, and it’s what’s been taking up a lot of my blog-related mindspace the past few months. The great/terrible thing about it is that it’s so easy to just post a tweet. I think I have Twitter apps on every computer I use and my phone and my clock radio, so anywhere I am I can say whatever it is I’m compelled to share, with ease that leaves little time for self-censorship. It’s a strange phenomenon.

Media has really taken to Twitter, covering and participating in it. While the rehashed RSS feed accounts have their place, the best media twitterers are the real people, talking about what they cover in their own voices. This is how I wish the media had taken to blogs five years ago. If they had jumped on the blog-wagon like they are twitter, they’d be much further along as far as audience penetration, authority, and depth. Ah well, progress is slow (and Twitter’s a lot less work than a blog).

I recently tweeted my 1000th tweet (I hate writing tweet, I really wish we would call it something else), and here are a few of my favorites of mine. My favorites of other people are here. You can follow me if you’d like to get the inside scoop.

“hey, want to read an essay about john cage?” sure, that sounds cool. “hey, want to go to a john cage performance?” no, that sounds horrible 3:57 AM Mar 30th

seth calls this “THE GREATEST story of all time” and i can’t disagree: http://bit.ly/P1o3Y 4:14 AM Feb 23rd

seriously, what has Iran ever done for me? other than the Contra series and that Flock of Seagulls song, of course 3:09 AM Feb 17th

Q: why is that money staring at me? A: it’s stalker money 6:55 PM Jan 30th

i thought “i want a dr. to take your picture,” was the vapours being romantic, but it’s actually part of the japanese naturalization process 10:39 AM Dec 20th, 2008

I woke up about ten minutes ago, have already used the phrase ‘lou dobbs bubble bath slumber party.’. So yeah, things are going ok so far 3:14 PM Dec 5th, 2008

i’ve always wanted to adopt a highway, but i’m afraid i wouldn’t love it as much as my biological highways 11:17 PM Dec 3rd, 2008

When I die I want those faux bullet hole stickers on my casket 11:44 AM Oct 26th, 2008

saw tila tequila for the first time yesterday. haven’t seen it? imagine the most terrible show possible, now take out flavor flav 9:30 AM Jun 6th, 2008

And here’s what my roommate says should be my number one, had I ranked them:

Wizards vs magic. If this were anything other than basketball, I’d be all over it 8:40 PM Jan 6th

All the focus on the campaign led to record numbers of viewers/readers for print and television news, with websites seeing some of the largest gains.

Which is to say the larger media outlets loved the election. It got people to read, to watch, to debate and to be involved with their news sources.

Also, though, the election showed the weaknesses of the mainstream media. As they got hooked, news consumers looked first to the large media for their news. There they found slow, tentative coverage with little of the analysis they craved. So they branched out, found political blogs, rumor sites, and even to a greater degree began watching the speeches and debates first hand in order to form their own opinions.

We’ve been told that new media is weakening the old guard, but during this election cycle we saw just how new media would finally break the press.

From early in the primaries, the candidates saw this happening to differing degrees, and responded in kind. From the WSJ:

“This year’s campaign…has marked a change in the role the press plays. The prominence, readership and influence of online political sites has mushroomed, taking away some of the prominence of the mainstream media — traditional television networks, newspapers and news services. Campaigns have taken to getting out word of pending shifts in strategy by leaking them to political websites, and both parties catered to bloggers at their conventions.

“For example, when word first circulated that the McCain campaign was about to launch its first TV ad linking Sen. Obama with former Weathermen radical William Ayers, the Obama campaign promptly told the political website Politico.com…that it intended to counter with an ad calling Sen. McCain ‘erratic in a crisis.’ … [W]ord of the Obama team’s planned countermove was circulating among politicians and journalists before they had even seen the McCain ad that prompted it.”

After years of getting scooped by the Internet, large media outlets now found themselves being routinely scooped in political coverage, a market they were supposed to have cornered. How did this happen? After all, it was the big guys who had the credentials, who were there on the campaign planes flying from stump to stump with the candidates.

In the Internet, candidates saw something hard to control and impossible to predict, but something where the plurality of voices lead to stories rising to the top based on the strength of the message. The candidates also saw a place that, if they hit first and well, might be won over.

Mainstream news outlets began to respond. From Time:

“As politics has expanded to more platforms–blogs, YouTube, comedy shows–the old press has followed, raising its metabolism and sharpening its tone to compete. And following it all has been by turns thrilling and exhausting.

“This is not to say that the souped-up cycle has rendered the election trivial. In a way, just the opposite. This election and its stakes are so significant that people’s appetites are insatiable. They want their voices heard, their issues resolved, their lives bettered.

…

“The traditional press, then, had more competition for scoops, influence and audience as the election became the biggest pop-culture event of the year. So the news media — all chasing the same ad dollars in a bad economy — learned the value of putting on a show. Formerly straitlaced outlets gave themselves an attitude makeover to keep up with the blogs and Comedy Central. CNN hired comic D.L. Hughley to do a late-night show, and even the stodgy Associated Press started injecting bloggy potshots and analysis into its wire stories. If you didn’t snark, you didn’t exist.”

From the Washington Post:

“Just as the Internet is changing newspapers, so it is also changing the AP. In its efforts to survive the tectonic shifts destabilizing most daily newspapers and to brand itself online…the wire service is evolving into the world’s largest virtual newspaper and a direct competitor to the papers that own it.”

Later:

“‘It’s enough that we’re expected to always be first, this incredible pressure to break the news,’ one AP political reporter told me. ‘But now we also have to magically find a brilliant and nifty lead, the unique angle, while still beating everyone else. I feel like I’m competing with Politico, the New York Times and Reuters simultaneously.’ And, indeed, they are.”

The media splintered. Analysis came quicker and reporters found their voices; instead of pretending reporters are robots transcribing events verbatim, we read them knowing they may be wrong (sometimes expecting them to be so). The robot work we’ve passed on to the video streams, the transcripts, we can compare. And in this election many did.

The media became less about trust, and more about depth. It was great.

Was great, as it turned out. TV networks pulled back on election night. For all the streamlining and sharpening they mustered in the months leading up to the election, they pussyfooted at the last second.

The NYT admits:

“It was clear long before 11 p.m. that Mr. Obama had won, but anchors were skittish about saying too much too soon.”

In fact, “Barack Obama’s victory was told tentatively, elliptically, less with numbers than with a pan of the camera as his supporters, crammed into Grant Park in Chicago, exploded with joy. Throughout the night, the obvious was hinted at with gauzy video clips filling the screen. As states toppled in Mr. Obama’s favor, news programs ran lyrical pictures of the Obama family that looked as iconic as a Kennedy scrapbook.”

But they wouldn’t say it. After Ohio came in they wouldn’t just say that Obama was the winner, was pretty much the winner, that it the chances of McCain winning Virginia, Florida, and California (one of the only ways he could have won after that) were between slim and none.

Watching CNN, I remember two anchors coloring in states, showing how many electoral votes McCain would have if he won various remaining states.

“I’m not going to be dishonest and say it’s possible McCain could win California, Washington, or Oregon,” one anchor said, leaving McCain woefully under 270 votes. “So?…” the other anchor led. “Yeah,” he replied.

Obama’s victory was only a formality of tallying votes and closing polls, but no one on the networks would go so far to even say Obama had a pretty good chance of winning at that point.

This pulling back is going to continue. Newspapers will take a break and a deep breath before bemoaning the inevitable decline of print again, and cable news will begin throwing scandal after scandal up on the screen, seeing which kinda sticks before beating it to the ground.

But the next time something captures the culture’s interest and imagination like this election did, those news agencies that took the lessons of the last two years to heart and those that change the way they cater to the journalistic needs of their audience will have the advantage.

The blogs and rumormills and social media sites aren’t going to go away, but the news sources that can provide the most timely analysis, with updates and changes and refinements, they’re the ones that’ll get through this alright.

The way journalism is made changed in this long election cycle, and people loved it. As we pared the candidates to one, they became real people with flaws just like us. Their supporters also became real people, as we saw beyond them as symbols and discovered they had motives, morals, insecurities, and virtues. But best of all, reporters began showing us their sense of humor, their opinions, and at times their fallibility, and they began to become people to.

Let’s keep that going.

Each Thursday, Pelosi stands in front of a phalanx of flags in the cramped but ornate office just off the House floor. About 30 reporters and a bank of cameras cram in front of her. But her staff says that the reporters and their mass — media audiences aren’t the only ones they’re trying to reach.

Pelosi also uses the press conferences to keep her crew in order.

“She sees it as a way to communicate, not only with the press, but with members as well,” a Pelosi aide explained.

An aide to another Democratic leader put it more bluntly.

“Things that go over the heads of reporters can still get to the right people,” the aide said. “It’s a ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’ style of leadership.”

Watching the Presidential election evolve, it’s strange watching how the candidates manipulate and are manipulated by the media. Each of the candidates are well versed in press appearances, releases, speeches and whatnot, but with such intense pressure in every word they say, they’re bound to slip up sometimes.

Rep. Pelosi, on the other hand, has been a representative since 1987, and has had pretty much the same job since she became Minority Leader in 2002. While there have been times of intense pressure focus on her, she’s become so comfortable with the reporters during her weekly press conferences that she can insert hidden — and not so hidden — messages to her rank and file.

Makes me wonder what other politicians, and companies, institutions, anything that has press conferences regularly, are really communicating through their comments to the media. What they know will go un- or under-reported, but will get to the people that need to hear it.

Anyway,

You may remember when I began this blog, well I reached the next milestone last week when I was without Internet.

In other news, back in March I wrote on an Atlantic article covering the paparazzi following Britney Spears.  The numbers have come in, and it looks like the issue bombed on the stands.  From Folio Mag:

“The Britney cover tanked, according to figures submitted by the Atlantic to the Audit Bureau of Circulations Rapid Report filing system late last month. The magazine sold approximately 24,000 copies at the newsstand, some 21,000 less than March and nearly 30,000 less than its January/February issue.”

So does this answer my question, are paparazzi the future of newsgathering? You could say that Atlantic readers aren’t interested in the sensationalism surrounding the Britney Spears media and are looking for something a little more in-depth and thoughtful, but look at these other recent covers (from the May and March issues):

Maybe Atlantic readers are just drawn by other kinds of sensationalism.

The reason, I think, is that blogging is always something I can do tomorrow. Yesterday I played tennis instead of writing, for instance. After the third or fourth day after I’ve found a story I’m usually done with it, or something else has come up that I have to find links for to write about.

This, on the other hand, is a bizarre trainwreck of a column that I read on Sunday in the Post. I put off writing about it, and I’m glad I did.

Mostly because why.i.hate.dc and the DCist did most of my work for me.

The Post, via DCist,

“…ran it to provoke, but not to offend. I thought the parallel she drew
between fainting Obama followers and Beatlemania was an interesting frame
with which to analyze the Obama phenomenon. She went further, of course, to
draw broader conclusions about the state of her gender highlighting women’s
interest in Gray’s Anatomy and Eat, Pray, Love. “

Yeah, that part is the Post’s own Outlook editor, John Pomfret’s, justification of the column. And in case you haven’t read it, here are some quotes I’ve chosen seemingly at random:

“I can’t help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women — I should say, ‘we women,’ of course — aren’t the weaker sex after all. ”

or

“Take Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign. By all measures, she has run one of the worst — and, yes, stupidest — presidential races in recent history, marred by every stereotypical flaw of the female sex.”

later

“What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental?”

Now, if you’re a female columnist (or male for that matter), and you decide you want to write the thoughts you’ve been feeling about how women aren’t as smart as men, could you please not frame it so…insiduously?

I mean, Hillary Clinton’s taken some cheap shots during her run for President, twice as many as either of the guys, and she’s taken it all with some humor. Saying that the problems with her campaign are because it’s being run in a stereotypically feminine is neither provable nor enlightening. In fact, I think it degrades the conversation.

But enough of this Clinton love. The “Second Super Tuesday” caucuses are being counted right now, so it may be curtains for Clinton.

Still, look out for my columns coming up in the Post, first on how Obama’s black campaign keeps making stereotypically black mistakes, second on McCain’s curmudgeonly old man campaign, and how I need to stop letting my dog poop in its yard or I may get the homeowner’s association called on me.

This cool story in Forbes tells the business repercussions:

“For a site that’s averaged around a million page views a day lately, the results were stunning. NYmag.com recorded a total of more than 40 million page views Monday and Tuesday, more than 34 million of which came from the Lohan portfolio, [NY Mag spokesman Lauren] Starke said.”

That translated into about $500,000 over two days from banner advertisements, or “about as much revenue per day from its online slideshow as it would from four $64,500 full-page color ads in its print edition.”

That’s pretty amazing. Shows just how out-of-control popular celebrity news nowadays.

Reminds me of Gawker bravely hosting the Tom Cruise Scientology video in the face of litigation, clocking an easy 2.3 million pageviews. From NY Times:

“Some former Gawker bloggers have criticized a new compensation system that on top of a base rate pays $7.50 for every 1,000 views that posts generate. If one of [Gawker editor Nick] Denton’s bloggers had posted the Tom Cruise video, his or her haul thus far would be more than $17,000.”

These are all impressive numbers, but where does the journalism fit in?

Well, as you may have heard, newspapers have been on the downs recently, as circulation has been falling along with advertising revenue. These big paydays have surely caught the eyes of some editors looking to get their websites making money.

Will newspapers be able to break these sensational stories before TMZ? Who knows, but it’ll be interesting to see how these big paydays entice editors.

Personally? I think they should be focusing on the long tail, but we’ll see how that works out.

Forbes ends with a disturbing thought:
“Hmm. Makes one wonder: What’s Britney up to these days?”

According to the Editor’s Weblog:

A futurist panel at the World Economic Forum has suggested that print newspapers will disappear by 2014. This type of prediction has been repeatedly heard in past years though.

I think that’s pretty soon. I hope newspapers are pretty far along in their progression by then, but I think they’ll still sell the damn things in six years.

In other news, I’ve been watching the development of WiredJournalists.com recently. It’s a social networking site for journalists.

Though it’s gained over 400 members in three days, I’m hesitant to join for a few reasons.

• Firstly, another social network to check?
• Also, I’m no longer a reporter by trade (I’ve moved to other parts of the news industry), and it’s unclear whether the site is for trading ideas on your beat (like ReportingOn) or just a place for people in the news industry to hang out and meet each other.
• Most importantly, none of my friends/colleagues are on it!

These are small reservations, of course, so you’ll probably see me on there by the end of next week.

But! The guys who made this thing, Ryan Sholin, Howard Owens and Zac Echola, all have wonderful blogs. Check them out.

“Now and for the foreseeable future, virtually everything involving Britney is a big deal,” Frank Baker, the [AP's] Los Angeles assistant bureau chief, wrote on Tuesday morning.

I was talking (arguing) with a friend of mine the other day about the goals of newspapers, and how they decide what is important. He was saying that important news stories were chosen by journalists without considering how interested the general public would be in the story. I said that considering what’s going to be popular, and what’s important to your readers, is a good gauge of what news stories in your area are important.

“Won’t this lead to newspapers being content-wise indistinguishable from supermarket tabloids?” he asked.

“Initially,” I said, “maybe. But I have confidence that popular opinion will swing back, and we’ll find a happy medium. People do care about what’s happening in their towns.”

This NYT article reminded me of that conversation.

In a memo Tuesday, Baker, the AP’s assistant bureau chief for Los Angeles, reminded his reporters that Britney Spears’ ongoing meltdown is news, and they should be covering the newsworthy aspects of it.

…“we want to pay attention to what others are reporting and seek to confirm those stories that WE feel warrant the wire,” [Baker]wrote, adding, “And when we determine that we’ll write something, we must expedite it.”

People want to know what’s happening to Britney, and as LA AP reporters, it their job to report it. And quickly.

I don’t think this is “Not a good day for journalism as a discipline.” as is quoted in the article, but I do think that this is where we need to go if we’re going to have a backlash against insubstantial reporting.

But guess what? The backlash may already be beginning. In a previous post on Gawker, I mentioned that journalists probably like taking the piss out of bloggers who snark about them all day, but after a bunch of Gawker editors quit, there seems to be some well-thought-out misgivings about the blog family’s new direction.

On top of that,a few bloggers from Gawker’s Gizmodo tech blog recently got banned from the largest tech show in the country, the International CES, after some crappy stunt.

It seems like the division between blogger and journalist is re-widening, and people are realizing that newspapers offer something that a lot of these popular blogs to not. At the same time, newspapers are looking at theses blogs as test cases, to see what people are really looking for, and what’s important to people today.