The Ink-Stained Community

So last week Congress heard testimony about the state of journalism, and negotiators worked to the last minute to save The Boston Globe. As the debates about business models, financing and bail-outs for the media continue, I’d like to offer something a little different — some thoughts from a neighbor to the north.

I’m a fan of the Canadian program, The Vinyl Café, which, thanks to podcasting, I can enjoy here in Kentucky, far beyond the CBC’s terrestrial radio signal. Some call the show a Canadian version of A Prairie Home Companion. Well, there is music and story-telling, but that’s about where the similarities end. The host, Stuart McLean, was a documentary producer for CBC’s Sunday morning magazine (another great show), and a former journalism professor. Instead of Lake Wobegon, McLean spins stories about a suburban Toronto family.

On occasion, to fill out the weekly podcasts, The Vinyl Café producers will offer a commentary from McLean. It could be about Canadian politics or culture or history. Recently, McLean was thinking about newspapers.

We know that newspapers report the issues and events in a community. McLean reminds us, though, that newspapers are vital in building community.

“A newspaper is a shared experience…. When our cities are full of newspapers, they are quite literally on every corner. That means you don’t even have to read them to know what they’re on about – you just have to walk around and they’ll seep into you like ink spilled on a blotter. And in this spilling, they’ll stain your mind. And that means we are all ink-stained: those of us who read the papers and those of us who don’t.

“And this is the important part: we are stained with the same stories, and because of that, all of us living together can carry on a common conversation…. For it’s in the sharing that we foster fellowship. And that is what creates community.

“If everyone has their own private newspapers as the webmasters would have it….we may be just as well informed, quite possibly better informed, but we’ll become a society of solitudes – each of lost in our private prejudices. And rather than argue with each other over what might and might not be the common good, we’ll drift away to the islands of the single issues and soon be lost in the forests of alienation….

“When we all read the same newspapers it means quite literally we are all on the same page. When we don’t, group activities become personal activities. Great public conversation ceases, and before we know it, we are all bowling alone.”

RFK Center Honors Kentucky Students

It’s not every day you get a call from Ethel Kennedy, but when the telephone rang in Belinda Stark’s classroom at Elizabethtown High School a few weeks ago, Mrs. Kennedy was on the line.

That’s the Ethel Kennedy – widow of Robert F. Kennedy. She was calling to tell Stark that two of her students had won the journalism award named for the former Senator, U.S. Attorney General and presidential candidate.

Jacqui Powell and Laura Pait produced the award-winning video, “More Than Just Food,” for Stark’s TV production class at the E-town school. The segment details the work of Powell’s father who started a food bank at his small radio station in Upton, Ky. The operation now serves more than 600 needy families a month.

Winners receive a bust of RFK created by Robert Berks.

Powell and Pait are two of the three high school students selected for the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards this year. The competition also honors collegiate journalists as well as professional media (reporters for NPR and The New York Times also won this year). The award was founded by a group of journalists who covered RFK’s 1968 presidential campaign. They sought to honor Kennedy’s legacy by highlighting reporting that gives voice to people affected by injustice or abuse.

Stark says she encourages her students to produce stories that can have a positive impact in their community. “I want them to know that even as high schoolers they aren’t too young to make this a goal.”

That challenge inspired Jacqui Powell. “I instantly thought of my dad’s ministry and asked [Stark] if I could cover it for my news feature assignment,” the senior says. “My dad thought the package would just be a dinky little school project, but he told me that if it was good enough, he’d use it as an aid in getting the word out about his ministry. This gave me incentive!”

Stark admits to being concerned about Powell profiling her father. But the two students insisted they would maintain their objectivity, and Stark eventually relented. After watching the girls work for weeks on their story, the teacher says she was “wowed” by the finished product. “I think they were able to capture the heart of what Don Powell’s work with this food bank is all about. Laura and Jacqui learned a whole lot about broadcast journalism and a whole lot more about the power of human kindness.”

The story aired on a local cable-access show, and has won several statewide awards. It’s also become an effective fundraising tool for the food bank. And Jacqui Powell and Laura Pait are eagerly awaiting their trip to Washington to receive their RFK Award on May 28.

And that phone call from Mrs. Kennedy? “She was very complimentary of the video that Jacqui and Laura produced,” reports Belinda Stark, “and congratulated me on having such talented students.”

Newspaper As Art

Given the modest buzz The Courier-Journal’s “Art on Deadline” project generated, I half-expected to hear that ‘80s new-wave band a-ha had been hired to perform in a rotoscope version of the NBC Nightly News. (Hey, if Chris on Family Guy can do it, so can Brian Williams.)

Seriously, though, I’m glad local artists appreciated the experiment but I wonder what journalists thought about it. (Where is late Louisville media curmudgeon Bob Schulman when you need him?) Here are a few thoughts it raised for me.

First, who paid for this? The accompanying article by Diane Heilenman reported that “Özkaya [the artist commissioned to do the sketch] is not being paid directly for his work… and the project itself has been funded by artwithoutwalls.”

It must cost something to run an extra printing plate and add pages to the newspaper. So did artwithoutwalls, the non-profit created by Louisville art collectors Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, cover those expenses? If so, does that, in essence, make the C-J’s front page a full-page ad for that organization? That would seem to be a significant breach of the editorial and advertising firewall. (Just ask the Los Angeles Times about the backlash that can create.)

Maybe the C-J funded the extra publication expenses itself — which begs the question: Is that really the best use of the newspaper’s money when it’s shrinking the news hole and asking its staff to take a second week of furlough?

I don’t know if Özkaya’s tracing is art or not. I’m not sure I really care. I do think it’s an inappropriate use of the front page of a newspaper. The front page (especially the space above the fold) is where editors and publishers tell readers about the day’s most important stories. How they choose to present those stories says much about their professional judgment, and about their respect for their readers.

Which certainly isn’t to say that innovative graphic design and experimentation don’t have a place in newspapers. A quick review of the Newseum’s Today’s Front Page feature reveals any number of compelling visual presentations. “Art on Deadline” can even have its place, too: the first page of the features section, which is a much more suitable space for such an artistic exercise.

Courier-Journal publisher Arnold Garson said their project “makes you stop and think” about “how art is a valuable part of everyday life.” That’s a laudable goal. I just wish Mr. Garson had given more thought to the journalistic mission of his newspaper and the vital need for credible news coverage in this community.

‘Bleak’ Outlook for News Media

I can’t believe I’m eager to dig into a 700-page report full of charts, graphs and statistics – especially one that includes this in its introduction:

“This is the sixth edition of our annual report on the State of the News Media in the United States.  It is also the bleakest.”

These reports from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism are fascinating in their breadth and detail.  In addition to exploring media produced by professionals, this year’s survey also examines citizen-based news sites.

Ok, I won’t read all 700 pages, but even skimming its various chapters will yield thought-provoking stuff.  I hope everyone in media reviews at least some pertinent sections.  Or if you’re short on time, check out this conversation from Monday’s Talk of the Nation on NPR, or this summary on Time magazine’s website.

Paying for Multimedia Projects

Video journalist Angela Grant posed an interesting question on her blog today. She highlighted an extensive multimedia profile of Senator Ted Kennedy produced by the Boston Globe. Then she said:

“Pieces like this take tons and tons of time to produce. In my experience, they don’t draw the type of audience that you would hope. In your opinion, is this one worth it?”

As a viewer, I would argue that, yes, it is worth it. The videos are engaging and well-produced, while the supplemental photos and source documents provide rich context that are fascinating to explore.

But if I’m the boss having to approve the time and resources to produce the biography, then my response is, it depends. I’m sure the package will generate decent traffic from the Globe’s readers simply given the subject matter. But if the profile quietly resides on the Boston.com website among the dozens of other stories and features competing for viewer attention on any given day, then it may not be worth it.

So how can the Globe, or any newspaper (or media organization for that matter), financially justify packages like this? By distributing their best work beyond their own website. Assuming the Globe acquired all the requisite rights to the photos, videos and documents, they could post their video segments to YouTube for viewing, and to iTunes for downloading. They could also produce a multimedia DVD for sale to the public, or for use in schools. And maybe, with some repackaging, there are broadcast options via the New England Cable News channel, Boston public television station WGBH (and by extension, the greater PBS system), or The History Channel.

I believe media entities can no longer simply publish items to their own sites. We have to look for creative ways to push our content to a variety of different sites, audiences and platforms to maximize the number of people we expose to the work. And each additional venue we explore brings with it opportunities to generate revenue (from pre-roll ads to licensing to product sales) that can help recoup some of the production costs, and extend our particular brand name to new audiences.

Certainly not every multimedia package lends itself to ancillary distribution, but perhaps those that do can help fund the less glamorous but no less important day-to-day journalism we produce.

Reviewing ‘Children of the Mountains’

I finally got a chance to watch online the ABC News documentary “A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains.” In exploring poverty in Appalachia, the show treads ground already well covered in other works, including Frontline’s “Country Boys” (2006), Elizabeth Barret’s “Stranger with a Camera” (2000) and Rory Kennedy’s “American Hollow” (1999).

And sadly, there is not much new to report: 45 years after Harry Caudill brought the plight of Appalachia to national attention in his “Night Comes to the Cumberlands,” some people in the region continue to struggle with poverty, disease, addiction, environmental degradation and stereotypes.

“Children of the Mountains” draws on many of the standard clichés of documentaries examining the plight of the rural poor: weathered faces with toothless grins, squalid living conditions, and gospel singing and banjo picking. Oh, and of course, the mountain folks get subtitles — because they speak a language network TV producers think the rest of America doesn’t understand.

By focusing on youth, host Diane Sawyer does offer a compelling angle to explore the effects of poverty. But the program lacked the context that could have put these stories into better perspective. How do the numbers of young people living in poverty in Appalachia compare to other regions of the country (urban and rural)? What makes Appalachian poverty unique? Why after a myriad of social programs and millions of dollars in government aid are the problems there so intractable? Ron Eller (the former director of the Appalachian Center at the University of Kentucky) and Dee Davis (founder of the Center for Rural Strategies) made all-too-brief appearances in the program. Given more airtime, they could have provided these details.

But context and balance don’t make for gripping television, and “Children of the Mountains” was focused on dramatic archetypes: the sports star struggling against the odds to find success; the child playing parent to a drug-addicted mother; and the young father doing whatever it takes to support his new family. They are characters we want to root for, especially given the enormous challenges they face.

Yet ABC does them (and viewers) a disservice by not showing how these kids fit into a greater picture of poverty in America. By so tightly focusing on central Appalachia, it’s easy to dismiss this as an isolated problem in a region usually portrayed as backward and hopeless.

Sawyer (who opened the program saying she was returning home to Kentucky, even though she was raised a good three hours from the communities featured in the program) obviously cares about the young people in the show, and I hope her coverage will benefit them. The program was a Friday night ratings hit for ABC with almost 11 million viewers. Dozens of people commenting on the show’s discussion board wanted to help (they’re being directed to contribute to the Christian Appalachian Project).

So while the program could have been a better piece of journalism, it did succeed at what TV tends to do best these days: reduce complex issues to simple stories designed to tug at the heartstrings. And although the program did little to counteract the stereotypes of the region, it served as a potent reminder of the stark challenges still facing some of our fellow Kentuckians.

Lincoln’s Other Birthplace

Historians, politicians and citizen-enthusiasts will converge on Hodgenville today to mark the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. They’re drawn to the site where the 16th President was born.

“Hogwash,” my grandfather would’ve said.

Mr. Henry, as he was called, was among the old-timers around Springfield who believed Lincoln was actually born in Washington County. Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks both lived there, and were married there on a June afternoon in 1806. Their first child, Sarah, was born there in 1807.

Oral histories passed down in the county claimed that Abraham was born there, too. Allegedly some written document states that Thomas moved his wife “and children” to Hardin County (now Larue County) in early 1809.

Now, I admit my grandfather may have been biased on this matter. His great-great-great aunt was good friends with Nancy Hanks; she even helped sew Nancy’s wedding dress. And, my grandfather spent his life roaming the same hills and pastures along the Little Beech River that Thomas and the Lincoln family would have walked.

I’m sure it galled prominent Washington Countians of the early 1900s to see civic leaders in Larue County stealing their Lincoln thunder and getting the national historical birthplace site located there. Even worse, the cabin the park founders enshrined had nothing to do with Lincoln family.

So as we mark this historic occasion, I give a tip of the stovepipe hat to the folks in Hodgenville. But some of us know the real story…..

(And while we’re on the subject, check out Courier-Journal sports columnist Eric Crawford’s wonderful letter to Lincoln.)

Local TV’s “Fuzzy Future”

Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal had an interesting article exploring how the relationships between the major television networks and local stations may evolve in coming years. There’s speculation the networks may bypass affiliates and distribute their programming via cable channels, allowing networks to keep advertising revenues they would have otherwise shared with local stations.

Embedded in the story were some pretty dismal statistics for 2008:

• CBS stations saw a 14% drop in ad revenue in the third quarter
• ABC-owned stations saw a 15% drop in revenues in the fourth quarter
• NBC stations saw a fourth quarter decline of 25%

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Journal story reports that Bernstein Research predicts local station ad revenues will drop 20% to 30% in 2009.

Ouch.

Whether networks abandon their affiliates over the long-term is up for debate. The more immediate concern is how the stations will compensate for those lost revenues.

Look for local news to take some hits.

More Newspaper Furloughs

Earlier this month, Gannett announced week-long unpaid furloughs for all its newspaper employees including Louisville’s Courier-Journal. The company mandated the furloughs occur in the first quarter of 2009, and the effects are already appearing in the C-J.

This week brought word that Landmark Communications will also require its employees to take five unpaid days off. The Norfolk, Va., -based media company owns 17 newspapers in Kentucky — many of them small town journals with limited staffs. It makes me wonder how news coverage in communities like Carrollton, Bardstown, Shepherdsville, Springfield and La Grange might be impacted by Landmark’s cost-saving measure.

The Future of Local News

The wall-to-wall coverage of President Obama’s inauguration provided a welcome relief from the media’s reporting on its own financial demise. It was a break from yet another announcement of layoffs, buyouts, sell-offs or shut-downs that have been appearing almost daily.

There is no doubt that many media companies are in trouble. Some bloggers have even said that 2009 would bring an end to printed newspapers.

I’m not that pessimistic. I think we’ll have printed products for a while longer. To me, the question is how will journalism – especially as it’s practiced at the local level – evolve?

With mounting budget woes at Gannett, The Courier-Journal’s news staff is slowly being decreased to the point where it won’t be worth reading its reporting online for free, much less paying for the actual newspaper.

The news operation at WHAS Radio reportedly survived last week’s round of layoffs by parent Clear Channel, but its future remains uncertain. The Ville Voice has also tracked recent downsizings among the Louisville TV news departments. And the economic downturn could start hurting Kentucky’s public radio and TV stations as corporations reduce or eliminate their sponsorships of the non-profit broadcasters.

Sign on Frankfort Avenue in Crescent Hill

Leaner news operations may make bottom-line-focused stockholders happy, but it doesn’t provide the community with the depth and breadth of coverage we citizens deserve.

So who will provide the next generation of credible journalism for Louisville and the Commonwealth? Probably not our current roster of media players. They are too invested in their existing infrastructure and methods of storytelling.

Who will supply in-depth and investigative reporting? The C-J continues to shorten the length of its stories and reduce the number of investigative pieces it publishes. Commercial radio and TV stations long ago gave up their commitments to long-form journalism in favor of shorter, spot news coverage. (Yes, WFPL does air some longer features, and LEO has taken some stabs at investigative journalism.)

I believe the new face of journalism in Louisville and Kentucky will come from a new organization (or organizations) that is not beholden to outside ownership, expensive corporate debt, elaborate physical plants or top-heavy management structures. A new entity that’s not tied to any one medium, or way of producing and distributing news coverage. As media entrepreneur Larry Kramer recently wrote on The Daily Beast blog, “The new news companies will be built around what they cover, not how they distribute the news.”

So what will the new journalism look like in our community? Who will produce it and how will it be funded? Serious questions with answers yet to be determined. But our city and state face substantial economic, environmental, political and education challenges, and we need a locally based news organization to report on them with depth, context and insight.

Let’s start the dialogue today so we can answer those questions sooner rather than later. Building the future takes time, and given how quickly our existing media is crumbling, we don’t have any time to lose.