Would Nixon get away with it in the Google age? A web of ‘citizen journalists’ cannot replace newspapers.
FORTY years ago, five men in business suits were arrested burgling the Watergate building in Washington DC, the site of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters. What was initially dismissed as a “third-rate burglary” by the White House press secretary would provide the thread for exposing a thoroughly criminalised White House, led by the paranoid delusions of its very strange 37th president, Richard Nixon.
The bungled burglary may have been left as just that but for the now-fabled tenacity of two young Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Invaluably fed information from their highly placed source “Deep Throat” (later revealed to be Mark Felt, then the No. 2 at the FBI), Woodward and Bernstein painstakingly mapped and corroborated the White House conspiracy, using tried-and-tested techniques – knocking on doors and talking to people. “It was old-fashioned police reporting,” Bernstein said this week. “A shoe-leather endeavour.”
Today, some of us may fetishise the achievements, but it’s difficult to overstate their importance: their unveiling of industrialised criminality led to the only resignation of a US president, and gave all of us an enduring suffix to append to descriptions of scandals.
But 40 years on, what’s the state of political journalism? Can Watergate tell us anything about the perilous future of newspapers in the information age?
Recently, Yale University asked its journalism students to write one page on how they thought Watergate would be reported in the age of Google. The professor leading the class had arranged for Woodward to speak to the students afterwards. The famed reporter was shocked by what he saw …
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Read the full opinion on Fairfax Media’s National Times here
Martin McKenzie-Murray is a regular contributor and a former Labor political speechwriter.
• Meanwhile, as Mercury shifts from its historic home in the art-deco in Macquarie St to the former Antarctic Centre in Salamanca – hoping no doubt that this will help snap-freeze a declining circulation – comes the the swirling rumours of mainstream media discombobulation as the net revolution continues to lay waste.
In Tasmania the rumours include ever-increasing co-operation between besieged mastheads in Hobart (Mercury), Examiner (Launceston) and Advocate (Burnie). One rumour holds that all three papers will eventually be printed on News Ltd’s state-of-the-art press at Techno Park in Hobart; with sub-hubs, whether in Adelaide or Auckland, doing all the editing and small regional offices of reporters sent forth to gather.
And, nationally, the discussion at Fairfax Media board level of reducing production from seven days to three days a week … just like the …
• Times-Picayune Confirms Staff Cuts and 3-Day-a-Week Print Schedule
1:14 p.m. | Updated The Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans confirmed on Thursday that it would cut back its print publishing schedule to three days a week and lay off an unknown number of staff members.
In an article posted on its Web site, Nola.com, Thursday morning, the paper reported that a new company would be formed called the NOLA Media Group, which would include the paper and the Web site. The newspaper will be home delivered and available in stores on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays only. The Web site, meanwhile, will increase its online news-gathering efforts “24 hours a day.”
Later in the day, three Alabama papers were similarly restructured: The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times and The Press-Register of Mobile. They will become part of the newly formed Alabama Media Group and will also print only three days a week. The announcement of the changes said there would a reduction in the work force, but did not specify details.
Like the Times-Picayune, they are operated by Newhouse Newspapers, part of Advance Publications. Among the other newspapers owned by Newhouse are The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, The Star-Ledger of Newark and The Oregonian.
The moves announced for the New Orleans and Alabama newspapers were pitched as needed adjustments to the way news is delivered and consumed by the public. The nola.com article quoted Ricky Mathews, the president of NOLA Media group, as saying, “Our best path to success lies in a digitally focused organization that combines the award-winning journalism of The Times-Picayune and the strength of NOLA.com.”
This memorandum from the publisher of the Times-Picayune was sent out Thursday morning, following a New York Times report about the plans on Wednesday night:
THE MEMO TO THE STAFF
To all employees …
Read the rest, with full links, on the New York Times here
• Credentialled journo Don Knowler had a refreshingly optimistic take on the net revolution, The Chronicle 59: In New Media is Grub Street reborn …
Here’s another, idiosyncratic take on modern meedja reporting …
• Media rules: I’ll ask the questions here!
You could think of this as a consequence of the requirement that a news story be “objective”. “Objectivity” requires the impersonal voice and a flat style, which, paradoxically, means that in order to signify, a story must be newsy, and should probably avoid including information arguing against its own significance. In other words, because the style must be “objective”, the reporting can wind up being less objective by exaggerating the significance of some fact or event. In contrast, blog posts, because they’re personalistic rather than “objective”, have no trouble tolerating the idea that what they’re talking about may not be significant. For example, here’s Kevin Drum’s post again: “Is this kind of thing likely to increase? If it does, will it make much difference? Or will it just become the new normal and nobody will really care?” He just wrote that the thing he’s writing about could be completely unimportant! It’s the closing sentence of his blog post! You can’t do that in a newspaper.
Read the full article, The Economist here
Related…
Polly Toynbee, The Guardian: What happens when Rupert Murdoch doesn’t like you
• Stay up to date on the Leveson Inquiry on The Guardian here
• The Independent, via Information Clearing House: Murdoch Pressured Blair to Rush into Iraq war, Says Campbell in Diaries
• ABC Online: Fairfax slashes 1,900 jobs, closes presses, goes tabloid, paywall
Fairfax has announced plans to cut nearly 2,000 jobs, switch its landmark The Age and Sydney Morning Herald broadsheets to ‘compact’ formats, and close major Sydney and Melbourne printing presses as part of cost-cutting measures.
The media company says it will cut 1,900 jobs over the next three years and ditch the broadsheet formats for The Age and the SMH on March 4 next year.
And it will fall in line with its main competitor, News Limited, introducing paywall subscription services for its flagship online services in 2013.
It will also close printing facilities at Chullora in Sydney and Tullamarine in Melbourne by June 2014.
Our live blog will have developments and reactions throughout the day, and you can watch the reaction live on ABC News 24 ( http://www.abc.net.au/news/abcnews24/ ).
12:09pm: Watch Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s news conference this morning, during which he described the cuts as “terrible” but said many industries were being reshaped by fast broadband:
• Tess Lawrence, Independent Australia: Does the NAB and Gina already own Fairfax
THE pornography of spin has long been like K-Y Jelly to our media and The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald’s saccharine fawning over the National Australia Bank in the substantial wake of Gina Rinehart’s financial assault on Fairfax has been a spinmeisters wet dream.
The inexplicable notion of a journalist ignoring a hard news story unfolding before his very eyes in the Supreme Court of Victoria on January 19 this year, was exposed by Independent Australia on June 4; as we confirmed the presence in Court that day, six months ago, of The Age’s property reporter Chris Vedelago — who witnessed litigant-in-person Matt Norman and his wife Rebecca being intimidated by Supreme Court Security Chief Graeme Spurr, doing the bidding for legal thugs and conveying a threatening message from the NAB’s legal henchman in Sydney, one Kevin Pringle of Gadens Lawyers.
Moreover, Chris Vedelago was present that same morning when His Honour Justice Judd accused Matt Norman of sending him a menacing letter, and then reduced the Court to fly in fly out (FIFO) Justice, when he told Norman to get a move on because His Honour had a dental appointment and thus effectively gagged the by now debilitated and hapless Norman from making pleadings.
It was an ignominious performance by Judd and yet another ignominious moment for Justice in Victoria; one of many of late.
Oh, yes, in passing, did I mention that His Honour denied Norman his appeal? Surprise, surprise.
Nothing more for the Great Unwashed to see here.
That The Age’s Vedelago did not write anything about what happened that day is astonishing enough.
But for him to then write an article months later, on June 3, based on a spurious and facile report by the Justice Department that contained coy and doctored references to the above incidents, implying that Norman was the offending party, is outrageous.
Vedelago wrote up the report as if he hadn’t been present in Court on that inglorious day and he failed to contradict the DOJ’s doctored report.
Reliable sources inform me that the Justice Department’s so-called report, supposedly based on the 12 months period leading up to 2011, yet which seemed to devote great attention to what it alleged took place in 2012 at Norman’s hearing in January, was a clumsy and knee jerk pre-emptive strike by all concerned in this judicial debacle to deflect blame upon Norman and away from the NAB’s servants, their disgraceful and contemptuous conduct and the presiding Judge’s compliance to such conduct and to avoid any chance of a re-hearing — or in Norman’s case, a real hearing.
Read the rest, Independent Australia, here
• The Age: MPs: Rinehart should sign charter
COMMUNICATIONS Minister Stephen Conroy and shadow minister Malcolm Turnbull joined yesterday in declaring that Gina Rinehart should sign up to the charter of editorial independence and not try to turn the Fairfax mastheads into mining industry mouthpieces.
Senator Conroy and Mr Turnbull warned that failure to preserve editorial independence would hit readership.
The issue has been cited in the board’s resistance to Mrs Rinehart’s request for seats on the board. Jack Cowin, a likely Rinehart board appointment, when asked recently which way Mrs Rinehart would take editorial policy, said she would have a stronger right-wing view than probably the average liberal journalist, but added that she had not interfered with news policies at the Ten Network.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has expressed his concerns about mining magnate Gina Rinehart’s refusal to sign Fairfax’s charter of editorial independence.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has expressed his concerns about mining magnate Gina Rinehart’s refusal to sign Fairfax’s charter of editorial independence.
Senator Conroy said Mrs Rinehart had indicated that she was ”only interested in influencing the editorial content of Fairfax” while the board had a strong position on editorial independence.
He said there were genuine concerns that interference would destroy the credibility of the Fairfax mastheads. ”Their readership respects and admires the charter and what it represents, and if you were to start turning it into just a pro-mining industry gazette, well I don’t think you would see the rest of the shareholders in Fairfax be too excited about the collapse in readership.”
Mr Turnbull said the board’s reluctance to give her seats without a commitment to editorial independence was understandable. Part of Fairfax’s revenues ”are based on a perception that it is editorially independent and it’s not controlled by one vested interest or another”. ”If Fairfax … were seen to be a mouthpiece of Gina Rinehart and a spokesvehicle for the mining industry, that would undermine its business model dramatically,” he said.
Senator Conroy said Mrs Rinehart had indicated that she was ”only interested in influencing the editorial content of Fairfax” while the board had a strong position on editorial independence.
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Mr Turnbull said the board’s reluctance to give her seats without a commitment to editorial independence was understandable. Part of Fairfax’s revenues ”are based on a perception that it is editorially independent and it’s not controlled by one vested interest or another”. ”If Fairfax … were seen to be a mouthpiece of Gina Rinehart and a spokesvehicle for the mining industry, that would undermine its business model dramatically,” he said.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/mps-rinehart-should-sign-charter-20120618-20kco.html#ixzz1yBW0inqR
• The Australian, Wednesday: Gina Rinehart row reignites calls for media control
LABOR caucus members are renewing their push for radical intervention in media standards as Gina Rinehart’s newspaper ambitions spark a widening political storm over regulating the press.
A move is under way to punish media owners who breach editorial standards, despite cabinet ministers claiming yesterday there was little they could do to stop Australia’s richest person taking over Fairfax Media.
Wayne Swan yesterday sharpened his attack on the mining billionaire by suggesting her designs on Fairfax Media endangered democracy.
As Labor caucus members voiced fears that Mrs Rinehart would “trash the brand” and weaken journalism, Victorian MP Steve Gibbons called for laws to empower a new authority to oversee media behaviour and impose harsh penalties on those who breached standards.
The motion, which Mr Gibbons wanted to be debated in parliament on Monday, argues that the media industry has lost its “social licence to operate” and must face greater government control. “Concentration of news media ownership in the hands of a few represents, prima facie, a competitive market failure requiring compensatory regulation to ensure socially acceptable outcomes,” his motion states.
