Grading the news in Cincy

Most interesting story about student journalists grading the news - probably not a coincidence that the lack of quality journalism is occurring in Cincy where the Kentucky Post is being killed off next year. Yes, competition does matter. This from the blog:
http://mediacrit.com/

Cincinnati News Media Grades: Average-to-Failing

The news celebrates it watchdog role, keeping an eye on government malfeasance and consumer products gone awry. But, who is the watchdog of the watchdog? How do we know if the news is doing good journalism?

That was the question behind a pilot study conducted by the Journalism Program at Miami University. A team of 24 students and I graded the news of six Cincinnati metro area news outlets.

The results were not encouraging: the best grade was the “C” earned by the Cincinnati Enquirer. The Journal News, WCPO (Ch. 9), and WRKC (Ch. 12) received “D’s”, and WLWT (Ch. 5) and WXIX (Ch. 19) got failing grades. [See table below.]

Assigning the Grades
The model for the project is the work of the award-winning San Francisco Bay-area organization Grade the News. The guiding principles of Grade the News are to encourage a “socially responsible journalism” that helps “as many people as possible make sense of the issues and events happening in the world around them.”

Six teams of four analysts from my Journalism 101 class evaluated the performance of the Cincinnati-area news media during five consecutive weekdays, from Monday, November 13 through Friday, November 17, 2006. Broadcast news teams recorded and analyzed each day’s nightly broadcast; newspaper teams analyzed the news stories of the front and local sections each day. Groups used the Grade the News scorecard to tally each day’s stories.

The Grade the News criteria are tough, and are weighted in favor of substantial news that affects the region’s citizens. Core stories about politics and government, natural disasters, education, economics and business, environment, health, major fires and accidents, weather, and consumer reports score higher than peripheral topics such as celebrity reports, lesser fires and accidents, and sports. The knowledge impact of a story makes a difference as well. High knowledge impact stories that affect more than 10,000 people in a direct, lasting way score higher than low knowledge impact stories that are just a snapshot or an episodic report.

The Grade the News requirements for story sourcing are also stringent, as more sources suggests a wider range of viewpoints in the report. TV reports with three or more named sources score highest; for newspapers, the standard is five or more named sources. The news analysts also recorded the gender diversity of named sources, and the apparent racial/ethnic diversity of the named sources.

Hyping Sports and Crime
The week of news analyzed came just after the recent milestone election, but political stories were all but forgotten. Instead, this was the week of the Ohio State-Michigan football game, a story that each outlet continually hyped.

In fact, one of the weaker moments for the Enquirer was a tired front-page feature about fans of the Big Game. Under the title “’The game’ divides spouses in these houses,” a large photo and article detailed how some family members cheer for opposing teams—and even watch the game in different rooms, appropriately decorated in scarlet and grey or maize and blue. On the plus side, the Enquirer had very good coverage of high impact stories, such as US Airways’ possible takeover of Delta Airlines. Unlike other news outlets, the Enquirer also covered politics and government, with ten such stories fronting the newspaper and local section for the week compared to only three crime/justice/prison stories.

On the TV news channels, crime led the way.

One Grade the News team analyst noted “the typical news segment began with an overly dramatized crime story” followed by “a few stories on shootings, rape, burglary, and murder, all of which were low impact, local crimes.” She was describing a week of news at WLWT (Ch. 5), but could have easily been describing any of the news stations.

All of the stations put a premium on “breaking news,” which means small stories often get overemphasized so the stations can have their requisite breaking news that day, replete with a live shot from the scene of the event.

Typical of this genre was WKRC’s (Ch. 12) “Breaking News” report on a pit bull attack on Tuesday, Nov. 14. Reporter Shawn Ley was live on the scene where two people sustained bites (not life-threatening) from a dog they claimed was a stray. The dog attack happened hours earlier, nevertheless the live report elevates this to “breaking news.” With such an assignment, Ley couldn’t give us much more than hype: “Just wait until you see the videotape that we just shot here,” he enthused. The station cut to video of a semi-sedated pit bull yelping as animal control workers led it out of a yard. There was nothing to give the story larger impact: for example, the problem of stray dogs, or dog attack rates in the metro area. Instead, the viewer is momentarily engaged by a few seconds of marginally interesting videotape, and then it’s on to the next tale of crime.

Some Worthwhile News
There was some good reporting during the week, too. For example the Journal News (the newspaper serving Hamilton and other areas north of Cincinnati) carried an excellent story by Candice Brooks Higgins on new voting machines in Butler County. But a major shortcoming of the Journal News was the brevity of most stories, resulting in inadequate sourcing. As one analyst team member observed, “In over 40 stories, only one had five or more sources in it.”

The TV news stations had some commendable reporting as well. For example, WCPO (Ch. 9) carried a well-sourced and thorough investigation of hospital emergency squad response times in the Cincinnati region. WLWT (Ch. 5) generally had good health and consumer reporting, including a package warning that flu treatment Tamiflu may cause hallucinations, deliria, and even death.

Remedial Work
But overall, the six news outlets performed poorly in a number of areas: a focus on chiefly peripheral stories, reports with low knowledge impact, and inadequate story sourcing. Moreover, all six scored badly in terms of gender diversity of sources—ranging from two-to-three male sources for every female source—and had a similar ratio of white to nonwhite sources in television news.

The study’s approach has certain limitations, and captures only simple, comparable measures of news quality according to topics, impact, sourcing, and source diversity. It doesn’t evaluate photo or video aesthetics, or writing skill.

But beautiful images and sharp writing go only so far when the meat of the news is less than newsworthy, of minor consequence to the community at large, and insufficiently sourced. If the point of a grade is to determine where there is room for improvement – well, the Cincinnati news media have plenty of work to do in 2007.

The Grades Are in for Cincinnati News Outlets

C Cincinnati Enquirer
D Journal News
D WCPO (Ch. 9, ABC affiliate)
D WKRC (Ch. 12, CBS affiliate)
F WLWT (Ch. 5, NBC affiliate)
F WXIX (Ch. 19, FOX affiliate)

professional bloggers?

Something in our organizing principles to be added here - do we "protect" professionals from the bloggers, or "professionalize" bloggers and bring them into the fold?

Story from UK Press Gazette

New bid to bring professionalism to the blogosphere

The Media Bloggers Association is to unveil new membership criteria aimed at bringing professionalism to the “blogosphere”.

MBA president Robert Cox (pictured) is proposing membership criteria which would include:

• requiring that members take an online course with the US-based Poynter Institute on legal issues related to blogging
• making members must demonstrate they have worked as professional journalists or undergone training.
• making members adhere to the organisation's ethical standards (which includes using their own names unless there are exceptional circumstances) and adopt formal editorial and corrections policies.

For bloggers the advantage of joining the MBA could mean they are more likely to get journalistic accreditation and access.

The MBA has some 1,000 members including such new media luminaries as Dan Gillmor and Jeff Jarvis.

Chron 2.0

http://www.sfweekly.com/Issues/2006-11-29/news/feature_full.html
This is a must read story, about the inner workings of the San Francisco Chronicle as it tries to move from being a newspaper to being an information company - so says the story, but it goes on to be one of the better descriptions of what is playing out inside of many newspapers today - here's a quote:
"If there is one consistent thing about the Chronicle nowadays, it's inconsistency. Editors there prefer the word "unpredictability." The paper still leads with some stories of enormous import to millions of Bay Area residents, from law to economics to the environment. And every once in a while the paper will wow the public with a big investigative project that took months to complete, illustrating the Chronicle's potential for greatness. "Perhaps," wrote Lori Robertson last fall in American Journalism Review, "'unevenness' is the true indicator of a paper trying to find its way, hang on to big ambitions, and do it all with fewer resources."

Some newspaper websites have work to do

Hard to believe that some newspapers are still behind the curve on this issue (some unions too!). There are of course phenomenal newspaper sites that folks flock to, but right now the survival of every newspaper depends on the quality of their web presence. See this article from E&P by Steve Outing:

"Just about everyone -- finally -- is on board and working to address the big problem: How to transition a significant part of the newspaper business to online and new media while keeping enough money flowing in during the transition period to fund quality journalism, and prevent newspapers from entering a downward spiral. So how's this going?"

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/stopthepresses_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003438775

Amanda Bennett's thoughts on change as she leaves Philly

As Amanda Bennett leaves the Inq. in Philly she has the following to say:

"This is a tough time for newspapers everywhere. Perhaps more so here than in most places. There are dozens of assaults from all directions on newspapers, from the Internet and other electronic media, to the changes in the businesses of the department stores, airlines and automobile manufacturers who are our big advertisers, to the changes in reading habits of young people and the way families spend their time.

But it's not the end of journalism - or of newspapers - here or anywhere else. Reinvention is difficult and painful. But ultimately I am certain that the fundamental need people have for smart, timely, interesting and relevant information will prevail.

Certainly newspapers have survived technological challenges in the past - from telegraph to radio to television. They will survive this, too."

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/16096923.htm

FCC Names Economic Studies to Be Conducted as Part of Media Ownership Rules Review

In the midst of the difficult bargaining, layoffs, and overall shake-out in our industry, not enough folks are paying attention to the fact that the FCC is back at it, studying the rules that govern the industry. It's helpful that there's been a change in the congress, but it doesn't change the current makeup of the FCC which should still give pause. It's well worth looking at this detailed account of some of the studies the FCC will undertake:

http://www.freepress.net/news/19292

A New D.C. Paper Poaches, Encroaches Cross-Platforms

A most interesting story, about a start-up paper in D.C., that really gets it about cross-platform. They also seem to understand that they have to pay the "talent," and the fact that they poached staffers from the Washington Post shows they understand the need for experience. Many questions are left unanswered, but pairing a 3-day a week paper with an existing ABC affiliate should be interesting.

http://www.observer.com/20061127/20061127_Michael_Calderone_pageone_offtherec-2.asp
by Michael Calderone

Snippet from the story: - The Capitol Leader is paired with an as-of-yet-unnamed Web site. The paper and the Web site will be run out of the same office, by essentially the same staff. The main newsroom for both will be located in Allbritton’s television facility in Arlington, Va. There will be a smaller news bureau on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C.

“Obviously, you have to have synergy,” said Jim VandeHei, one of the multi-platformed project’s first big hires. (The endeavor, in addition to its Web-friendliness, also has an agreement with CBS on the national level.) “Everything that will be in the paper will be online. All of the people, the stars that we bring in, will be in that paper.”

On how technology will affect newsgathering and news consumption

David Carr - see complete article

On how technology will affect newsgathering and news consumption:

I think people assume that, "Oh, we'll be able to use the web to assemble a portrait of the world beyond our town," and the fact is that Google News or whatever RSS feeder you've got, most of it is just annotating coverage. Somebody has to make phone calls somewhere in order for news to function.

Where are the data inputs coming from? Where is the information coming from? In other words, who is making the phone calls? Who is sending the emails? You cannot have a robust discourse without a database of current information. And if the information that's being culled through is just government-issued data without a critical eye or editing, then you're going to end up with a fairly dumb republic.

There's a conceit that young people get their news from the Jon Stewart show or get their news from the web, but there was a study not long ago at Ball State, and if you're talking, say, 18 to 24, young people just don't get their news. That's all there is to it. They don't have a strong interest in it. So there you have a very attractive advertising demographic where there's no upside in serving them with that kind of information, because they have no interest or need. There's not much news on a Playstation, man.

A great article on how everyone thinks MSM journalists are biased

Here's an excerpt from a wonderful piece that addresses the attack from right and left on the so-called mainstream media.
click here for full story
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People whose goal is to get rich don’t usually go to journalism school. The profession attracts an odd combination of cynics and save-the-worlders. Sometimes they’re even combined in one person. We worry a lot about gender and ethnic diversity but not so much about ideological diversity.

That’s because we’re supposed to have only one bias, and that’s for a good story. In telling those stories, we try to get as close to the truth as possible. But in chasing those stories — and, more importantly, in deciding which stories to chase — you bring along your own personal baggage. Your own experiences. What your friends think. Where you live. Where you go to church. If you go to church.

here's an excerpt of an excellent piece - while it does not deal with technology, it does deal in a direct and excellent way with how both left and right perceive bias in the "mainstream media."
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/kevinhorrigan/story/6815A511C8017FC38625710B002AC626?OpenDocument&highlight=2%2C%22news%22+AND+%22media%22
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The News Media: Down by the old mainstream

By Kevin Horrigan

The whole concept of a neutral, unbiased press is a relatively new one. American journalism was highly partisan well into the 20th century. The notion of a professional press wasn’t codified until Walter Williams founded the University of Missouri journalism school in 1908.

Today, when everyone with a $500 computer and an Internet connection can be his own publisher, we’re headed back in