Memex 1.1

This is really interesting. It turns out that the mainstream media were rather too credulous about popular hostility to the US ‘bailout’ plan. Here’s what the Pew Research Center found out.

The American public is taking a bad rap for Congress’s failure to pass the bailout bill. Members who voted against the original House bill are said to be responding to strong opposition to the rescue plan from their constituents. While there is little doubt that Congressional representatives are hearing a lot of harsh words from voters back home, that clamor does not reflect broad American public opinion. It is a classic case of the squeaky wheels getting first attention at a time when Washington is in a quandary about what to do.

The most recent polls — those conducted through Monday night — show the public is at best divided over the plan. There is little indication of overwhelming public rejection of the bailout proposal. A new Pew Research Center survey conducted Sept. 27-29 found support for the bailout slipping, but still showed a narrow 45%-38% plurality of the public saying that a government plan to invest or commit billions of dollars to secure financial institutions is the right thing to do.

An ABC/Washington Post survey conducted on Sept 29 found the public evenly split with 45% favoring and 47% opposing a government proposal to use $700 billion to shore up failing financial institutions on Wall Street. The question asked in the survey also pointed out that critics of the plan say that the failing companies don’t deserve a bailout, while proponents say it is necessary to protect the economy…

I was a bit suspicious of the way TV and radio reporters were using random vox-pop interviews to support the excuses of Republican refuseniks in the House for voting down the Bill. I should have pursued the thought, but didn’t. It’s also a case, though, where professional journalism could have done better. Mainstream media have the resources to commission polls.

The Manaing Editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer has sent a memo to all staff. It reads, in part:

Colleagues – Beginning today, we are adopting an Inquirer first policy for our signature investigative reporting, enterprise, trend stories, news features, and reviews of all sorts. What that means is that we won’t post those stories online until they’re in print. We’ll cooperate with philly.com, as we do now, in preparing extensive online packages to accompany our enterprising work. But we’ll make the decision to press the button on the online packages only when readers are able to pick up The Inquirer on their doorstep or on the newsstand.

For our bloggers, especially, this may require a bit of an adjustment. Some of you like to try out ideas that end up as subjects of stories or columns in print first. If in doubt, consult your editor. Or me or Chris Krewson…

This has caused quite a stor in the blogosphere. For example, Jeff Jarvis writes:

Let me make this very clear to Inquirer ownership and management:

You are killing the paper. You might as well just burn the place down. You’re setting a match to it. This is insane. Even the slowest, most curmudgeonly, most backward in your dying, suffering industry would not be this stupid anymore. They know that the internet is the present and the future and the paper is the past. Protecting the past is no strategy for the future. It is suicide. It is murder. You should be ashamed of yourselves…

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has produced an interesting report on “the changing newsroom”.

Meet the American daily newspaper of 2008.

It has fewer pages than three years ago, the paper stock is thinner, and the stories are shorter. There is less foreign and national news, less space devoted to science, the arts, features and a range of specialized subjects. Business coverage is either packaged in an increasingly thin stand-alone section or collapsed into another part of the paper. The crossword puzzle has shrunk, the TV listings and stock tables may have disappeared, but coverage of some local issues has strengthened and investigative reporting remains highly valued.

The newsroom staff producing the paper is also smaller, younger, more tech-savvy, and more oriented to serving the demands of both print and the web. The staff also is under greater pressure, has less institutional memory, less knowledge of the community, of how to gather news and the history of individual beats. There are fewer editors to catch mistakes.

Despite an image of decline, more people today in more places read the content produced in the newsrooms of American daily newspapers than at any time in years. But revenues are tumbling. The editors expect the financial picture only to worsen, and they have little confidence that they know what their papers will look like in five years…

Thoughtful piece of work. Worth reading in full.

Photograph by Michael Dales.

We had a terrific seminar last Monday in Wolfson. Nick Davies (left in the photograph) came to talk about his book, Flat Earth News, a scorching critique of the UK newspaper industry, and John Kelly (right) of the Washington Post was the discussant. The event was chaired by Phil Parvin (centre). MP3 of Phil’s introduction is here. For Nick Davies’s presentation, click here. And John Kelly’s comments are here.

John later posted a thoughtful account of the discussion on his blog. He also counted all the roundabouts between Cambridge and Oxford. Guess how many? Er, 71.

If you read nothing else today, then read this NYT column by Frank Rich.

He begins with the obsessive attention the US media have paid to Barack Obama’s now-terminated devotion to a screwball black preacher named Jeremiah Wright. Then he draws our attention to this:

i.e. a white (note colour) screwball preacher comparing the Catholic church (the “Whore of Babylon”) to Hitler.

What’s interesting about this? Well,

Mr. Hagee is not a fringe kook but the pastor of a Texas megachurch. On Feb. 27, he stood with John McCain and endorsed him over the religious conservatives’ favorite, Mike Huckabee, who was then still in the race.

Are we really to believe that neither Mr. McCain nor his camp knew anything then about Mr. Hagee’s views? This particular YouTube video — far from the only one — was posted on Jan. 1, nearly two months before the Hagee-McCain press conference. Mr. Hagee appears on multiple religious networks, including twice daily on the largest, Trinity Broadcasting, which reaches 75 million homes. Any 12-year-old with a laptop could have vetted this preacher in 30 seconds, tops.

It seems that McCain has been shocked to learn that his clerical ally has made many other outrageous statements.

Mr. Hagee, it’s true, did not blame the American government for concocting AIDS. But he did say that God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins, particularly a scheduled “homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came.”

Mr. Hagee didn’t make that claim in obscure circumstances, either. He broadcast it on one of America’s most widely heard radio programs, “Fresh Air” on NPR, back in September 2006. He reaffirmed it in a radio interview less than two weeks ago. Only after a reporter asked Mr. McCain about this Katrina homily on April 24 did the candidate brand it as “nonsense” and the preacher retract it.

Now, here’s the funny bit. Whereas Obama’s ‘Wright problem’ has been endlessly retailed in the US media, we’ve heard awfully little about McCain’s Hagee Problem.

“Aw well”, you say, “Unlike Wright, Hagee didn’t say that America had brought 9/11 upon itself”, and that’s true. But perhaps Wright was a bit slow off the mark there. After all, two days after the attack, the NYT reported that

The Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson set off a minor explosion of their own when they asserted on television on Thursday that an angry God had allowed the terrorists to succeed in their deadly mission because the United States had become a nation of abortion, homosexuality, secular schools and courts, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

What’s interesting about that? Well,

Had that video re-emerged in the frenzied cable-news rotation, Mr. McCain might have been asked to explain why he no longer calls these preachers “agents of intolerance” and chose to cozy up to Mr. Falwell by speaking at his Liberty University in 2006.

So, here’s the situation. A (black) pastor spouting nonsense is apparently a big problem for a (black) presidential candidate. But white evangelists spouting nonsense are not seen by the US media as posing any kind of problem for a white Republican candidate.

And here’s another interesting fact that is apparently of no interest to the fearless US media. The Republican party “does not have a single African-American among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington”.

This particular column is one of the best things I’ve read in ages, not least because its savage indignation never spills over into incoherence. It’s beautifully controlled from start to finish.

Hooray for Marina Hyde…

On the one hand, it was nice to see Prince Harry in a British army uniform, as opposed to one of Hitler’s. It’s a little bit like Pokemon, really. I’m hoping he’ll give us a highly collectible Hutu warrior snap soon. Gotta catch ‘em all! On the other, is there anyone over Pokemon-playing age who believes it was really worth it? The sheer number of man-hours and money lavished on allowing one young man to experience job satisfaction is mind-boggling. It has to be the most fatuous use of Ministry of Defence resources since Geoff Hoon.

According to the executive director of the Society of Editors, who helped establish the controversial media blackout, it was not designed to mislead readers and viewers but to ultimately give them “a deeper insight into a new side of Prince Harry”. But how completely intriguing. And yet, is he basically still a fairly dim, fairly affable chap, you might ask? It would appear so. But he’s being fairly dim and fairly affable in Afghanistan. Or rather, he was until the news broke, at which point a detailed, prearranged plan to get him out - how many logistical brains are wasted on this nonsense? - was mobilised. So at least we have an exit strategy for Prince Harry, if not for the actual war…

Like many people, I’ve been irritated by the idiotic coverage of Prince Harry’s truncated wartime experiences. So I was looking forward to reading what my colleague Peter Preston would have to say on the matter. As ever, he’s spot on:

Whatever MPs planning more internet curbs may say (and the generals of Burma sing much the same shrill tune), there is no effective way of leaning on a few blokes in London to shut up in the national interest if zillions of websites are tuned in and wholly reactive. General Sir Richard Dannatt should know that as unflinchingly as any other officer commanding. Helmand isn’t the playing fields of Eton. Al-Qaeda has many formidable internet operators (and many potential press officers). Every home-grown terrorist trial ends in a pile of emails. Deploying Harry in supposed secret could never last. The fix was always going to come loose - and pose questions about what press and Palace should try to fix in a twenty-first century where freedom of information goes rather further than indignant prose and pix brokers would like.

In the new world of instant and multiple communication, reality is the true taskmaster. Is it sensible to encourage the prince to be a proper, deployable soldier? Answer yes and he (never mind the men around him) may or may not be at greater risk. Is he ready to accept that risk? Is the army (never mind cop-out commentaries about the men he serves with) prepared to put him in danger? Is Clarence House? If the answer to all those questions is ‘yes’, as it probably ought to be, then no deceptions or deals are necessary.

One of the most interesting developments in the last few years is the ease — and skill — with which some newspaper journalists have taken to multi-media work. (See Michael Rosenblum’s wonderful post about “waiting for the pencil”.) Sean Smith of the Guardian is a shining example, so it’s nice to see that the Royal Television Society has given him an award for his work in Iraq. Thoroughly deserved.

Thanks to Adrian Monck for spotting the award.

Typically thoughtful report by Roy Greenslade, who has been round the editorial floors of the Telegraph, Financial Times and Times.

In a sense, the online revolution is like a train journey without a destination. As soon as one paper arrives at a station that had once appeared to be a terminus, another title has built a new line and sped onwards. Despite the differences, everyone seems clear about the general direction to take towards an otherwise mysterious objective: the future of news-gathering and news delivery is tied to the screen.

For the moment, given the need to keep on printing while simultaneously uploading, it means driving as fast as possible towards a brave new world while keeping the engines running at full power in the old - but still lucrative and popular - world of newsprint.

Inevitably, this split has proved uncomfortable, both in journalistic terms and, seen from the perspective of owners and managers, in financial terms too. In company with editors, they have set the course to reach a single station named “Integration”. It is now clear that the days of binary staffing, with journalists for print and journalists for web, are virtually over. In most offices the initial scepticism about the utility and viability of online news has long since passed…

Paul Steiger, the retiring Editor of the Wall Street Journal, has written an interesting valedictory piece — a retrospective view of what’s happened to print journalism during his distinguished career.

On Thursday I’ll pack my last box and take leave of a place where I’ve spent 26 of my 41 years in journalism, including 16 as managing editor of the Journal. (The other 15 years, 1968 to 1983, I was a reporter and then business editor at the Los Angeles Times.) Today, all around me is an industry in upheaval, with slumping revenues and stocks, layoffs, and takeovers of publishers that a decade ago seemed impregnable. Just this month, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. completed its acquisition of Dow Jones & Co., the Journal’s publisher, and real-estate magnate Sam Zell gained effective control of Tribune Co…