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Posts from April 2007
With Howie
I’ll be on Howie Kurtz’ Reliable Sources this morning between 10:30 and 11 about, of course, Virginia Tech.
: I’m in the CNN New York newsroom now watching the earlier segments of the show. Hugh Hewitt, Bill Press, and Gail Schister are discussing ABC’s decision and Hewitt and Press are attacking NBC for releasing the killer’s material. I disagree strongly (see this post below). Hugh’s show called the other night to have me on to discuss this but I didn’t get the message until after they had aired. It’s an important and fundamental discussion: Is is the job of journalism to protect us or to tell us uncomfortable truth? Steve Capus of NBC News says via phone that he made the right decision. He says that some of the same news organizations that are criticizing NBC now for releasing anything had yelled at NBC when the package arrived demanding that they release it all. But then the PR tide turned. “It’s just shameful for someone like Hugh Hewitt to say that we are going to have blood on our hands,” Capus says. At the end, Capus raises the real issue: “Now there needs to be appropriate discussion about the months leading up to this. Where were the people who blew through the warning signs.”
: My earlier posts on Virginia Tech: On the tapes here and here; on ubiquitous live news here and here, and the initial coverage here.
PrezVid Show: Advice for Edwards
In response to his YouTube spotlight video, I have an entirely frivolous yet still sincere suggestion for Sen. John Edwards that can change his image and the tone of the entire YouTube discussion.
It is not journalism’s job to be safe
It is not journalism’s job to be safe or to make the world safe for our consumption. It is journalism’s job to tell us uncomfortable truths.
So I’ve come to think that NBC made the wrong decision about the Virgina Tech shooter’s tapes: They should have released the worst of them. For that would force us as a society to grapple with the issues we’re still sidestepping: How can our laws and systems keep a clearly insane and dangerous man out of treatment and in the public? How can we justify laws that value his privacy — the most overexploited buzzword of the age, I say — over his safety and sanity and the safety of those around him? How can we have laws that prevent the school from telling his parents about his problems and telling the rest of us what happened in his case, even now? If NBC showed how utterly deranged this murderer was, then I hope we would have an outcry to change the One-Flew-Over-the-Cuckoo’s-Nest laws that purport to protect but only harm the insane and those around them. But NBC won’t do that because there reportedly is an outcry (though one should always be skeptical about what media labels an outcry) against their decision to release what they did.
Yet I’ll argue that by choosing to release only the safest elements of this sick collction, NBC made the killer look less dangerous, perhaps even sympathetic or cartoonish. Compare the image with the latest cover of Wired (and, no, of course, the parallel is not that they’re Asian; it’s the fictional nature of both I’m pointing to, each a character in a media narrative).
If, instead, NBC had shown the most vile of Cho’s rants, we would see just how dangerous he obviously was. We would ask the hard questions about why he was allowed to do what he did. And if you’re worried about copycats, I also think that the bilious Cho would be less likely to inspire aspiration than the cartoonish Cho we now see. To those who argue that NBC is only giving Cho his wish — fame — I say they are doing worse: They are cleaning up his image.
Now I’m not saying that NBC should show these images all the time, looping the horror, forcing it upon us. Thanks to the web, they don’t need to show them on the air at all: They could give us the option of seeing them online. Does that appeal to our worst nature? No, it shows our worst nature and the argument can be made that we must face that. By not facing that, we are raising, not lowering, the danger of copycats, of the next nut who’ll be allowed to slip through our laws and systems because we wouldn’t want to offend anyone.
It is not NBC’s job to be safe. But it is NBC’s job to be popular and in this case, that’s unfortunate. I normally reject the arguments of those who want news to be a not-for-profit enterprise. I say that the news must face its marketplace. But this is one instance in which the quest for ratings, popularity, and profit can affect journalistic judgment. Still, NBC did release some of the images and tapes. If they had wanted to be utterly safe, to offend absolutely no one, they might well not have put anything out, or they could have punted that decision to government. Some say they did this for ratings, but I have to believe they knew this would not be a popular decision in many quarters. So they did release some of the tapes. I say they released the wrong ones. If there were ever a story that required uncomfortable truths, this is one.
: See also Dave Winer on this in various posts. And see Michael Markman’s take (but also please see his apology for a tasteless allusion to my views in the comments on that post).
The CBS interview
Here’s the embeddable version of my CBS interview. A friend suggests I should loop Katie saying “Buzzmachine.”
When ‘best’ is not good enough
Juan Antonio Giner says the New York Times has the best of everything, except business management. I could quibble with the argument that is has the best, but for the sake of this discussion, let’s accept that.
And then I’ll argue that being ‘best’ leads to many of their problems. First and most obvious, thinking you’re the best at everything is the definition of hubris: ‘Because we’re the best, everything we do must be the best.’ Why innovate and experiment if you’re already at the top, then? The second problem is tougher to tackle: Any institution that thinks it is the best thinks it has more to protect and so, I argue again, it is less likely to stretch and risk failure.
Mind you, I’m not arguing that the Times isn’t great or that it doesn’t innovate. I’m saying that others find it easier or less risky to innovate thanks to their less-lofty positions. The best illustration of this is Gannett, which does not run formidable cultural citadels, only lots of local papers, and so it is surprisingly unafraid to blow up its newsrooms and try 24-hour, omnimedia, community-collaborative news. The Washington Post, as our second-city paper (forget Chicago), has also been hungry to innovate and try new things online. I can’t get through a post like this without pointing to London, where there’s a constant war for the title of best and one way to win in that war is to innovate.
I remember years ago, at the dawn of online, the Times felt it had to start a separate product to handle such tackiness as local entertainment listings, so as not to sully the mother brand. Others are not so prissy. The Times is less likely to link out to the world because it takes the value of its links seriously. Others are more generous.
So all I’m suggesting, Juan, is that you may be doing the Times a disservice listing the ways that you say it is the best at everything. And, coming out the other end of this argument, I’ll say that there are ways in which it is not the best or certainly could be better. I think many — though, yes, not all — in the Times newsroom would agree with that.
And I don’t necessarily buy the logic that because the Times is the best at everything, it must be the business side’s fault that its business outlook is getting ever bleaker. I’m not defending their business leadership — which certainly can be criticized (start with the disaster in Boston) — but saying that responsibility for the business fate of the institution certainly also falls to editorial. The product could be better.
So the more interesting discussion to me is: What would you do with The New York Times Company? I’ll start that ball rolling:
I’d get out of Boston while the gettin’s good (or not as bad as it will inevitably be). I’d get out of the paper business. I’d get rid of the regional papers and TV stations while there are still buyers. I’d then use that equity to try to buy more About.com’s (too bad Primedia didn’t almost ruin more businesses like that) and other things that look very little like the Times: social businesses, commerce businesses, technology businesses. I’d look to create lots of new products unencumbered by the weight, hubris, expectations, and rules of the Times brand. I’d consider making the Times a purely national brand and do something radical locally, where it’s just not that big (for example, making metro a web product under a different brand, if need be, to make it more collaborative). I’d reconsider the Times’ role with the rest of news; it can and should be more of a guide to journalism closer to its source; someone will become a ringmaster of news and why shouldn’t that be the Times (that would require the greatest cultural shift but if any brand could have a headstart in that role, it should be the Times). I’d consider how the Herald-Tribune and Times can become a stronger international presence, but online only. Rather than establishing a lab of outsiders to try to influence the future of the institution, I’d mix in people from the inside and give them the mandate to blow up the place (see the Economist’s Project Red Stripe). I’d consider how The Times already serves a community — a wise crowd — and try to figure out how it could enable that crowd to do more, to share more information, to do more commerce. I’d stop thinking that the Times must always be the destination, the magnet, the be all and end all, and, yes, I would start asking: WWGD?
What would you do?
(Of course, I have myriad disclosures relating to this: I used to consult for the Times Company at About.com and the Times is an investor in Daylife, where I have a role. I have relationships of various sorts with most of the other media companies mentioned directly or indirectly above; it’s a small world, this.)
Trippi: The revolution will be YouTubed
Over at PrezVid, I just posted an interview I did with Joe Trippi — who just announced he has joined the Edwards campaign — about the YouTube election.
A cam in every classroom
In the wake of the Virginia Tech murders, I’m going to repeat my suggestion — no, call — to put a webcam in every classroom for security. At elementary and high schools, at least, every class in my town’s schools has at least one PC. They could buy webcams for as little as $10.
