Junk Food For The Soul

Hey small, local papers … you know how you haven’t really invested as much as you should into your websites because you didn’t want it to take away from your print editions? Well, here comes the reaper.

From the NYTimes on July 19:

Not content with being a sports colossus with broadcasts in 200 countries, ESPN is taking aim at hometown sports coverage, threatening one of the last strongholds of local newspapers and television stations.

ESPN is creating local sports websites, starting with the major cities first and then moving down. They did a pilot test in Chicago and in three months they became the city’s top sports site.

ESPN’s offshoots may hurt native news operations, possibly speeding the flow of fans from print to the Web. Local papers’ sports sections generally do not generate much advertising revenue, but sports news helps keep subscribers loyal.

Yep. Better start bolstering that online local sports coverage now.

Oh, and you local TV guys should worry too.

The site also offers a daily Chicago edition, three to six minutes long, of its flagship “SportsCenter” program.

“Huge” is how Stacey Woelfel, chairman of the Radio Television News Directors Association, described the potential threat to TV stations, in part because their Web presence in sports “tends to be fairly weak.”

Sorry, guys, the world is going to the web whether you want it to or not. So, you better figure out your web situation fast. Because if ESPN gets this to work don’t think CNN won’t quickly follow this model to scoop up the rest of the local news.

Adam Journalism, Sports espn, local news, local sports

I’m growing a little tired of the “Twitter is going to replace news outlets” whining. We keep hearing this because the news sources themselves are the ones who are terrified of this … and never shut up about it. But like most other cases, progress doesn’t necessarily have to do away with one piece of the puzzle when another comes along. However, the picture does change.

Twitter isn’t going to replace mainstream media. It just becomes part of the investigative cycle. Gone are the days when to get a story out you had to make contact with a reporter and convince him to write something. You would give him bits and pieces of the story until the reporter could persuade his editor to run with it.

Now everyone can talk to everyone. The holy veil has been torn down. No longer do we have to wait for one high priest to enter the “Holy of Holies” once a year and then pass on the word.

Yet, people still go to churches.

Society still wants to hear what pastors, priests, and the like have to say. Yes there are more of them, but people still trust that these men and women of the cloth have devoted their lives to knowing and understanding religion and therefore are more informed than the average man.

They are, in effect, religious editors.

Reporters aren’t going anywhere, but they are changing their routines. The few who aren’t already will simply have to spend more time actually listening to people … and doing so online. They will have to monitor blogs, the phones, other news outlets … and, yes, Twitter.

But it’s the role of the editor that I believe has become more important. John Q. Public still depends on journalists to sift through the news and make sense of it. To bring in the experts to shed light on the parts of the story that might be the most important and to make sure that both sides of the story is being told. You know, good old-fashioned journalism.

A news source doesn’t have to always break the news to be an important part of the story. Bloggers and Twitter users might be able to break a story quicker, but they normally don’t have the resources to really tell the full story.

So don’t worry mainstream media guys, people still trust news outlets like CNN and the New York Times … they just may not always turn to them first.

Adam Journalism, Technology mainstream media, twitter

I’m not trying to run down SI or claim that they are dead. I’m really wondering what their reach is these days?

I was just reading ESPN and noticed that Rick Reilly, who was famous for writing the back-page story every week in SI, is moving to ESPN. My first thought was “wow, he’s a staple at SI” but then my second thought was “wow, I haven’t thought about him in years.” And I quickly realized that I hadn’t really thought about SI in years either.

I don’t read magazines. I get my news online. I have a number of sports-related news feeds that I read through Google Reader, but SI isn’t one of them. No particular reason, I guess. It’s just that ESPN is pretty much the dominant source for sports info so that’s what I go with for the headlines. Then I’ll add in other stuff like Jayski (also owned by ESPN) for my NASCAR inside info.

So, I’m wondering if most people are doing the same. Or if they are doing better than I think in their transition from print to online. It’s no secret that magazines aren’t what they used to be, but it’s a little surprising to me that such an iconic magazine like SI hasn’t even come to mind for me – a huge sports fan and previous subscriber – in years.

Adam Journalism, Sports

When Michael Richards made headlines for a racially-charged rant while on stage, I thought the most interesting part of the story was how it came out. I guess with the leak of video showing the Saddam hanging, AP decided to finally run this story.

While I’m glad that a story was written, I think the writer totally missed a huge part of the story. The biggest contributing factor in user-captured video was YouTube. YouTube – and other services like it, including Metacafe and Google Video – have enabled average citizens to take something they captured and immediately post it online for all the world to see. He said that user video “didn’t gain significant acceptance in the United States until Sprint introduced a popular service”. That’s crazy. No one would care about paying for that service if there were no places like YouTube to post it.

Adam Journalism

It always makes me laugh when I hear big-time journalists or people involved with large mainstream media outlets trash blogs. They claim that blogs don’t follow the same guidelines that “real” journalists do. Yeah, cause you never hear about scandals involving big publications like the New York Times.

I’m not sure if it’s all an act that they feel they must keep up, or if they don’t realize that many – if not most – reporters from their publications “are cherry picking out interesting stories” from blogs.

In fact, over the last couple of days one of the biggest stories floating around the Net is the rumor that Google is in talks to buy YouTube. The story is everywhere. But it started with a blog posting at Techcrunch. From there WSJ picked it up … LA Times, TheStreet, BusinessWeek, New York Times.

Again, this all started with a blog posting. And what was the headline of this posting? “Completely Unsubstantiated Google/YouTube Rumor.”

Yep, seriously.

Of course, the WSJ will probably say that they read the story and followed up on it, checking their sources, etc. And didn’t publish it until blah, blah, blah. Whatever. Whether that’s true or not doesn’t really matter to me. The fact is they found the story because of Techcrunch.

Adam Journalism

Remember the hilarious scene in Naked Gun where Leslie Nielsen forgets to take off his mic after he makes a speech, and then everyone in the place hears him taking a leak? Well, I’m thinking the boys over at CNN thought about that scene yesterday.

On Tuesday, while CNN was showing footage of President Bush giving a speech, the audio that viewers heard was anchor Kyra Phillips in the CNN ladies room. You can hear Phillips talking to another CNN staff member, hear her zipping up, listen to her chat about her family and even insult her sister-in-law. It went on for several minutes before they finally cut away the audio to another anchor.

Last night CNN sent out an apology.

Watch the video, with her audio, below.

Adam Journalism, TV