Five stories I enjoyed recently
A few random stories I enjoyed recently:
- I really liked Paul Duggan’s story in the Washington Post last Friday about a D.C. couple who were surprised when a massive package of marijuana was delivered to their house. A drug dealer was supposed to pick the package up from the front steps, but apparently mistimed it. While the story is interesting on its face, what I was really fascinated by was how Duggan wrote it. He doesn’t reveal what the news is until the 20th graf. Instead, he uses a strong, detailed narrative to tell a story, and then after the reveal, it turns into almost an issue story, examining how common this technique is used to deliver drugs and how D.C. police are handling the issue.
- This Slate piece on the history of the relationship between Whales and humans contains this incredibly fascinating tidbit:
In Australia in the early 20th century, shore whalers at Eden, on the coast of New South Wales, co-operated with a pod of orca led by a bull male named Old Tom. The killer whales—so-called by early hunters because they saw these whales killing their own kind—would herd humpbacks passing by on their migration south toward the Antarctic. The orca would corral the unsuspecting great whales into the cup of Two-fold Bay. There the human hunters would row out to harpoon them. As the carcase sank to the shallow sea bed, the orca would be allowed to claim their part of the bargain: the humpback’s tongue, the only part of the animal they relished. Twenty-four hours later, bloated with gas, the dead humpbacks would rise to the surface for collection by the whalers.
- And finally a trio of really good political profiles: First, an in-denial Rod Blagojevich in Esquire:
Read more…
Everybody goes to Wally World
Sometimes I think my background (New England-born, Washington, D.C.-educated, college major in journalism and government and politics) could potentially qualify me as a member of the often-demonized “cultural elite.” Then I read sentences like this one:
Until recently, I had been to exactly one Walmart in my life, at the insistence of a friend I was visiting in Natchez, Mississippi, about 10 years ago. It was one of the sights, she said. Up and down the aisles we went, properly impressed by the endless rows and endless abundance. Not the produce section. I saw rows of prepackaged, plastic-trapped fruits and vegetables. I would never think of shopping there.
That’s from Atlantic food editor Corby Kummer’s piece on Walmart v. Whole Foods on selling sustainable foods.
I’m not going to begrudge those who choose not to shop at Walmart, but how have you never been to one in your life? That literally takes effort. They are freaking everywhere, and they carry everything. How has it never been convenient for you to shop at a Walmart?
I should also note I really enjoy Kummer’s writing, and I’m not trying to single him out for criticism. But I’m just baffled as to how you can be middle-aged and only have shopped at Walmart once in your life.
Six thoughts on the Massachusetts Senate election
From The Boston Phoenix
Here are my thoughts on the political thunderbolt that just landed in my home state:
1. Shortly after Coakley conceded to brown, Washington Times reporter Eli Like tweeted that a correspondent in Massachusetts had told him that “The American people called. They want their country back.” That statement is simply incorrect.
This was a local failure, and specifically, the failure of a terrible politician who had terrible advisers. Martha Coakley ran a god-awful campaign, and Scott Brown ran a good one. Brown won. Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic has a pretty definitive takedown of her campaign’s argument the failure was a national one. Coakley didn’t even call Boston Mayor Tom Menino — who has the strongest political machine in the state — until this week. The newly-elected Mayor of Lawrence, another Democratic stronghold, wanted Coakely to come swear him in. She never returned his call.
This election had very little to do with national politics, and everything to do with local ones. I don’t mean this in the way Globe columnist Joan Vennochi does — I’m not blaming Beacon Hill for Coakley’s loss. I’m blaming Coakley. This was an atrocious, boring, uninspiring campaign.
Brown’s campaign, on the other hand, was exciting and bold. He’s a Republican and he compared himself to JFK, ferchrissake. (Coakley is not Lloyd Bentsen.) He campaigned energetically and had a simple platform — tax cuts for everyone! He needed to make noise to overcome the inherent advantage Democrats have in the Bay State, and he did that.
National politics did play a role in this election. Dissatisfaction with Democrats nationally gave Brown an opening with which to attack to Coakley and a way for him to raise money out-of-state, but she could have shut the door pretty quickly by just waging a normal campaign, responding to him and making a case for a Democratic policies. She didn’t. She hunkered down, said nothing, avoided debates and acted like she had something to hide.
2. A lot of people — including Tucker Carlson on Sunday — were making the case that this was about health care, and that more specifically, it was a rejection of Massachusetts’ own experiment with universal health care. Um, not really. The last Globe poll on the issue — from September 2009 — showed Massachusetts residents supporting the plan by a two-to-one margin. Massachusetts residents like their health care, even if that doesn’t fit the national narrative.
And Scott Brown didn’t campaign against the Massachusetts health care bill, even writing in a Globe op-ed that “I hope other states follow our example.” He did take a stance against national health care reform, but that was because, as he wrote, “we are way ahead of the rest of the country with our own state reforms, we will get nothing in return.” He had more substantive objections to the bill — he said it would cost too much and cut too much from Medicare — but these were secondary to his “Tax Cuts for All!” enthusiasm.
3. Hey, MSNBC. You keep putting this guy Mike Barnicle on TV. Yeah, he seems nice. But he’s an unethical plagiarist hack and possible fabricator. How can anyone trust anything he says? I realize he’s not reporting, but to those who know Barnicle’s history, it makes the entire network harder to trust.
More points after the jump…
The future of Annapolis coverage
I’ll say it straight up: the major news organizations in Maryland don’t cover the state capital enough. The Sun, which once sent half-a-dozen reporters to Annapolis each year, has been so decimated by cutbacks that it now generally has two reporters working the beat. The Washington Post also sends two reporters. Both papers generally have one story a day coming from the capital, if that.
The work these reporters do is good, but there’s not nearly enough of it. Just from my limited experience covering state politics, I know there are stories — lots of them — going unreported out there. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when The Post’s Chris Cillizza asked for the based state-based politics reporters, only two from Maryland were named, and they apparently weren’t submitted until the final day.
Blogs make up for this somewhat: both the Post and the Sun have blogs, and the Post’s First Click is an excellent overview of the previous day’s news. And unaffiliated blogs like Maryland Politics Watch (which recently broke an interesting story about the MoCo Council giving a huge subsidy to Costco) and O’Malley Watch are adding to the discussion.
But there’s a still void of original reporting. In the past week, two new sources have stepped forward to fill it. The first is Maryland Reporter, which is headed by former Baltimore Examiner editor Len Lazarick. The second is Center Maryland, which sports an array of local luminaries among its founders. Both of these sites show promise (although I think the Reporter is more promising), but I also have significant concerns about the ideology and reliability of both sites.
Again, these concerns are lower for The Reporter*, which I think has gotten off to a great start. But Lazarick worked for the conservative-leaning Examiner, and in between the Examiner’s closure and the Reporter opening, he was a fellow at the Free State Foundation, a libertarian think tank focusing on Maryland issues. That said, I haven’t noticed any ideological slant in the Reporter’s reporting (heh) so far.
The non-profit Center Maryland, on the other hand, is so far raising (to me) all sorts of ideological alarm bells. Three of its five founders have extensive ties to Gov. Martin O’Malley — Steve Kearney was O’Malley’s communications director, Marvin Knott was appointed to state boards by O’Malley and worked on the gubernatorial transition team and Damian O’Doherty is an adviser to Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith (an O’Malley ally). The remaining two founders are Howard Libit, a long-time editor at The Sun, and Tom Loveland, who helped the lead an effort to repeal Maryland’s technology tax.
There are quite possibly other links between these five, but those are just the ones I know from reading their bios and off the top of my head. These raise concerns, primarily about their ties to O’Malley. Another worry is what appears to be the site’s pro-business slant. From it’s About page:
Center Maryland recognizes that government cannot solve all of society’s problems. But government can and should be an effective partner – working with the private sector – to move our state forward.
Moderate political leaders understand the critical role played by entrepreneurship and innovation in lifting our state. The private sector is a force to be nurtured. And both government and business share a responsibility to return Maryland to the moderate, pragmatic leadership that has been central to our state’s success.
The site’s other goal, it seems, is “moderate, pragmatic” leadership. It aims to promote moderation. Its slogan? “The News You Need — Right down the Middle.”
Center’s first news stories have featured developers fretting over how new rules governing runoff could negatively impact smart growth, and its first featured column — by Roll Call Senior Editor Josh Kurtz — was about how O’Malley primary challenger George Owings could really do some damage. The rest of the site is stories aggregated from elsewhere, but in a story written about the site’s goals, Libit seems to have much higher aims (reading the post is recommended, it does a good, thorough job of explaining how Annapolis coverage has declined, and the possible role non-profit news can play in the future).
So I have hopes for both sites, and think they (along with the new Allbritton site focusing on metro D.C. being run by Jim Brady) can help fill some of the Annapolis coverage void. But right now, judging off a mere one week of coverage, my hopes are higher for the Reporter, which seems to be better resourced (four reporters to what looks like one for the Center) and less ideological.
*Full disclosure: The Reporter recently hired Erich Wagner, who I worked with at The Diamondback, as a staff writer.
Is journalism too wordy?
This Michael Kinsley essay in The Atlantic about newspaper story lengths and structures is getting a lot of attention. The headline (“Cut This Story!”) and first three sentences (“One reason seekers of news are abandoning print newspapers for the Internet has nothing directly to do with technology. It’s that newspaper articles are too long. On the Internet, news articles get to the point.”) are misleading, since Kinsley really isn’t talking about story length, but rather about how journalistic conventions unnecessarily add words and obscure meaning in stories.
He makes some good points, as does Spencer Ackerman in talking about how modular journalism like that practiced at The Washington Independent (which I am a big, big fan of) can solve many of the problems Kinsley raises.
Civil commenting: The impossible dream?
Washington Post political reporter Chris Cillizza – better known as The Fix – asked the following yesterday on twitter:
Serious question: Is it possible to have a civil and edifying comments section on a political blog? If so, how? Advice welcomed.
I’ve often said that if you ever want to lose faith in humanity, you should just read online comments on newspaper stories – it doesn’t matter which paper, what kind of story it is, or when it was posted. Many, if not most, of them are going to be ill-informed, vitriolic, filled with grammatical and spelling mistakes or all of the above.
The Diamondback is, sadly, generally no exception to this rule. The first comment I ever moderated was on a story about the College Park City Council. It boldly asserted that there was no College Park City Council, and that the only two cities in Maryland were Annapolis and Baltimore. This is demonstrably false.
But the comments never got as bad as they did this semester. The university was in the midst of several controversies focusing on campus diversity, which led to a lot of outright or borderline racist remarks being posted (for obvious reasons, I’m not going to repost them here.) The system we used to monitor comments didn’t do a good job of filtering, and we weren’t alerted when comments were posted. This meant I or the web editor would check the site in the afternoon, only to find a mess of vitrol, often too big for us to contain.
Soon, this problem expanded, thanks to the efforts of one very persistent, very annoying commenter.
Scout’s honor
OK, I was never a Boy Scout, but I do promise that from now until school – and the unstoppable monster known as The Diamondback – begins again in late January, this blog will be more updated. I realize my faithful readership of eight is thrilled with this news.
So tomorrow (hopefully), I shall regale you with tales of The Diamondback’s faithful struggle against one crazy web commenter, and what this (theoretically) indicates about the future of user discussions online.
For now, I’ve made some massive upgrades to the blogroll, and some other minor cosmetic and formatting changes to the blog.
In the meantime, entertain yourselves with the brilliance that is The Awl’s End of the 00s series. Read this and this and this and this and this.
Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick
The first newspaper in the United States was Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick. Its lone issue was published in 1690 in Boston.
Today, newspapers, faced with shrinking resources, are being forced to choose between either foreign occurrences or “domestick” ones. For years, this trend was leaning towards less and less foreign coverage, and even less coverage of national affairs, to focus on local news. But this week, The Washington Post seemingly made the opposite move. They closed bureaus in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, while leaving their extensive network of foreign news bureaus untouched. From Howard Kurtz’s story on the move:
“The fact is we can effectively cover the rest of the country from Washington,” Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said. … “We have for years been able to cover issues around the country for our readers with a corps of traveling reporters. It’s more possible than it’s ever been to cover the issues that matter to our readers from a Washington perspective.”
Is closing these domestic bureaus a significant blow to the Post? Former reporter Allen Lengel thinks so:
As far as substance, the Post bureaus have generated some great journalism over the years. Can the paper do as well parachuting in reporters for the big stories in big towns like Chicago and New York? Can they serve readers as well by using free-lance writers? The answer is most likely no. As the cuts come, the paper has to be careful its credo does not become “Good Enough.”
I disagree. The Post has enough money to parachute reporters anywhere in the United States. And the fact is the United States goes far beyond New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. When the shootings happened at Ford Hood, did the Chicago reporter really have sources other reporters wouldn’t have? I’m guessing not. The Post used to have an Austin bureau. Reporters there might have had better sources, but even that might be stretching it. While I think this is a loss, it’s not a huge one.
Expanding target audiences
This Nieman Lab blog post by Zach Seward has a lot of interesting information about how Steve Brill plans to make his Journalism Online pay-to-play system work. But I found this the most interesting:
Broadening the target audience
In the spring, Brill told me the goal was “to get the 5 or 10 percent of your most committed readers to pay.” This summer, he expanded that target in an interview with CNN: “The idea is that a newspaper probably has 10 or 15 percent of its audience who are the most engaged, who come to that Web site all the time. Those are the people who will be asked to pay a small portion.”
At Yale last week, he said “10 or 15 or 20 percent” of a news site’s unique monthly visitors might be willing to pay. I don’t presume to know what a realistic goal is, though that’s obviously crucial to the success or failure of paid-content plans. I do know that one study found “core loyalists,” who visit 2 to 3 times a day for 20 days a month, represent 25% of visitors to newspaper sites. So if you’re probing Brill’s estimates, there’s your starting point.
So 25 percent of newspaper readers are willing to really pay for news. Is that going to be enough? I don’t know, but I think newspapers need to work on expanding that number.
I think a lot of newspapers just assume their target audience online is their local audience, even if people all around the world can read their newspaper. But I think newspapers can take something unique about the region they cover, nationalize, and develop a new corps of dedicated readers who might be willing to pay.
A ProPublica for foreign news?
Non-profit news sites have been popping up everywhere. The most recent of these was the launch of the Texas Tribune, which focuses on state politics in that state. The most prominent one is ProPublica, which has done a lot of great investigative reporting in its short time of existence. Other sites that have launched include the New Haven Independent, The St. Louis Beacon and the Voice of San Diego.
These sites, by and large, are fantastic. They simply add to the number of journalists covering specific areas and are able to do stories the big metros might not have time for. But I am a little worried about the uniformity of direction they have: virtually all of them have a local or hyper-local focus.
The amount of foreign news provided by American news organizations has been in a relatively constant long-term decline. Off the top of my head, I can only think of six print-based news organizations that still have extensive foreign coverage: the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, McClatchy and Tribune.
I think most media watchers would agree more foreign news coverage is needed. I think a solution to this could be a ProPublica for foreign news, funding journalists around the world and sharing their stories with established media outlets. I haven’t heard much talk about the non-profit approach tackling foreign news, which concerns me. But maybe an already-established, internationally-focused foundation (Gates? Ford?) could underwrite the site at the beginning. It would then rely on further funding from the foundation and from other donors to cover its operating costs, perhaps in addition to some advertising.