The TV anchor newscast format has been around for a long time, actually since Jack Parr had his morning show back in the 1950s.  So I concede, maybe it’s time to consider changes, and shake up the news format a bit.  But I think that the Tribune CO. is swinging the “pendulum” to its extreme with their plans for an anchor-less news show.

I cannot imagine a TV world without the likes of Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Anderson Cooper, et al, and before them Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather and still before, the legendary Walter Cronkite.

Ok, I get it.  The shake up is aimed at local news, for now…

I cannot blame the Tribune Co., which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008, to search for innovative ways to boost the under-performing stations.  But I can blame them for brazenly calling it “A TV Revolution,” when their plan to roll out a radical anchor-free overhaul newscast called NewsFix, is still just a prototype and plans are for it to roll out only on key stations that need a rating boost.

What is puzzling is that the push for NewsFix comes as Tribune’s stations are on track to generate more than $1 billion in operating revenue for 2010.

The NewsFix format will apparently be geared to  “infotainment.”  In the Tribune’s attempt to shake off the traditional format to imitate the Web browsing experience on TV, NewsFix will rely mostly on pre-packaged stories with off-camera narration as reported on ReadWriteWeb, and offer it all “in a glib conversational style that takes an irreverent, at times even snarky, tone in describing the details of news stories.”  Of course it will add graphics and soundtrack.  A former KIAH producer who blogged about the program at TVNewsCheck told Poynter.org. that “the new format sounds like it will go for shock value – arguably the worst quality in the TV news legacy.”

Indeed.

Abrams, who developed NewsFix in his role as Tribune’s senior veep and chief innovations officer, said, “We’re trying to get away from Barbie and Ken sitting behind a desk chit-chatting with each other with their nice teeth.” Abrams emphasized that the NewsFix push is not driven by cost-cutting concerns but by the desire to shake up what he sees as an ossified format for stations that don’t have a strong history in local news.

OK, but I remain suspect as to their intentions..

Just look at who the company is recruiting to staff their NewsFix.  Their job listing calls for a “solid team of anti-establishment producer/editors, “preditors”, to collaborate on a groundbreaking morning news/infotainment format.”  It goes to say that they don’t care about any solid newsroom or exclusive, breaking news coverage experience. Nor excellence at writing readable copy for “plastic anchorpeople.”

So who are they interested in to run this “show?”

Apparently they are searching for “an earbud wearing, app downloading, rss reading, podcast playing, text messaging, flip-flop wearing professional of any age or sex, with a real-world education, interests that are anything but mainstream, and the ability to translate your bent outlook onto the TV screen.”

Well, there goes the neighborhood — er, news, as we know it.

It is a sad commentary on our times, that the reporting of the news needs to be entertaining in order to grab attention from locals and investors.  I get it.  It won’t happen in our major cities as yet, but just consider that, what should instinctively be of concern and interest to all of us on its own merit, can only prosper when “sold” in a culturally relevant and entertaining way.

Look, news is news.  I am confident that it can survive and remain profitable through more in depth news coverage, better reporting that includes relevant national and international news that affect a community and impacts audiences no matter what locale they are in, and with less of a focus on the latest accident or crime.  Maybe it’s just too much effort, but if that level of reporting remains consistent, then there will be no need to turn local news into infotainment. For that there are other formats like The Daily Show, et al, or, for that matter, the Web.

A note of irony: it’s been reported that younger viewers say they prefer their TV news with anchors.  It’s a mentor thing, I guess…

Treasure the journalists, for as former WSJ.com reporter Jason Fry recently commentated, digital media may very well be the end of  journalism as we know it today.

Whereas that may sound somewhat dramatic, you have only to look at the digital media site that Fry mentions, Demand Media, as well as other similar ones like Associated Content or AOL’s Seed — the so called “content mills” or “content farms” — so nicknamed for the large volume of content that they churn out, based on a set of algorithms of popular search queries.

On such sites, topics are usually selected by low-paid freelancers who, because the economics of these sites’ business model that don’t allow time for several rounds of edits, fact-checking or further investigative reporting, write in a one-draft style, written with the intent to lure, as well as satisfy advertisers.

And now comes another entry in this arena, Yahoo’s new blog dubbed The Upshot.  In an interview with The New York Times, James A. Pitaro, vice president of Yahoo Media, said that their newly launched news blog, will create content “in response to audience insight” aggregated from Yahoo search and popular search queries, to guide its reporting and writing on national affairs, politics and the media.

Where is the validity of the news if  subjects are only selected to attract eyeballs and sell ads?

In contrast, journalism, to date, has been about not just informing readers and listeners, but also about illuminating something for readers, giving them a perspective that might trigger new thoughts and opinions.  I am speaking about the professional journalist — the ones who are passionate in the pursuit of a story who, by the very nature of their profession, understand how to research a story, are relentless in their hunt for facts and substance and who are able to organize their thoughts in a way that actual “tells” the story in a comprehensible way.

Demand Media has issued strong protest about being called a “content farm” and bristles at criticism of their editorial content.

Maybe both sides deserve consideration.   Maybe the word that is new and arbitrary here is “content,” which gets confused with news, but is not news.  And the “farm” or “mill” parts refer to mass content, or quantity versus “investigating reporting” quality.  Maybe digital media is about advertorials without a new labeling system.

So, for now, “content mill or farm” may fit, until new terms are found and adopted to separate digital media from journalism as we know it.

Look, advertising has always been the life blood of most news generating publishers, online or not, but the traditional wall erected to separate editorial and advertising has got to keep standing to allow for independent reporting.

But in light of digital media sites being so hot and rich, (Demand Media generated more than $200 million in revenue in 2009, and is now planning an initial public offering) that wall may very well come “a-tumbling down.”

Live car chases would become an international phenomenon after the slow-speed chase of OJ Simpson in 1994, which captivated national viewers. But over the next decade, declining viewer interest resulted in decreased coverage of car chases by local news.

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Dan Rather, anchor of the CBS Evening News for 24 years, steps down after his report about President Bush’s National Guard service proved to be falsified and erroneous. The network’s failure to verify documents damaged his journalistic credibility.

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The most devastating attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, created a massive, immediate, public demand for ‘real time information’ never before seen by modern news organization, triggering the news ticker as a supplement to the on-air broadcast. Social media would eventually fill the ‘real time’ news void.

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An FCC investigation that revealed widespread use of sponsored news segments by broadcast stations nationwide, implicated some corporations, PR firms and even the Bush Administration as culprits in distributing packaged new segments as legitimate news, tightening standards and mandates for full disclosure.

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The recent upsurge of entertainment news is changing how viewers consume media. Satirists like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and comedians such as Bill Maher and Dennis Miller have created new segments of news consumption, based upon engaging audiences through comedy.

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On October 7, 1996 the Fox News Channel emerged as a news channel different from most, in that its use of graphics and on-screen text summarizing the position of the interviewer or speaker and "bullet points" when a host was giving commentary, paved the way for the rise and increased prominence of “the on-air political pundit” as a source of news.On October 7, 1996 the Fox News Channel emerged as a news channel different from most, in that its use of graphics and on-screen text summarizing the position of the interviewer or speaker and "bullet points" when a host was giving commentary, paved the way for the rise and increased prominence of “the on-air political pundit” as a source of news.

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With a shot sent across the bow of traditional media, Seattle became a one-paper town overnight when, in the face of dwindling advertising dollars and the popularity of online news, the Post-Intelligencer, stopped the presses after 146 years and moved online in 2009.

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Google’s tug of war with the publishing industry plays out everyday. It’s familiar and goes like this… Google offers free search tools that allow people to find content that publishers publish, while publishers want to get paid for the content offered. It’s that simple. But once the cat is out of the bag, what’s there to do? Say no, no, you can’t read this for free anymore?

So somebody in that very smart organization figured out as to what remains attractive to readers in actually reading a newspaper offline, say over a morning cup of coffee or on a commuter ride to work. It turns out that it is not the rustling or feel of the pages as one might have thought, but rather the freedom to flip pages at will, that matters to readers.

The silliness of this boggles the mind, but apparently it is true that being able to read a paragraph or two of an article before flipping pages to read the rest of it, is what makes newspaper reading satisfying and efficient of a reader’s time.

So being a clever player, Google took this tidbit of information seriously enough to create the experimental news hub called Fast Flip in Google Labs, a visual search engine that lets readers flip through webpages of more than three dozen magazines and newspapers – of course, hosted on Google. In return for permission from publishers to show full pages, rather than short snippets, Google agrees to share advertising revenue with publishers.

Fast Flip is an outcome of what Google had considered a major problem with news sites: slow to load, and as such, potentially turn off many readers. They reasoned that browsing news on the web is slow and that when it is fast people will look at more news and more ads. Really?

The service is being initiated with the cooperation of about three dozen publishers, including major news outlets like BBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Newsweek; magazines like Cosmopolitan, The Atlantic, Esquire and Good Housekeeping; and Web-only publications like TechCrunch, Salon.com and Slate.

Ok, they may have cleverly found a way to flip pages online, but no one can seriously think that this will present a new revenue model for publishers or replace newspapers’ plunging advertising revenues. It is a pittance and a nod to the publishing industry that Google wants to stay wedged in as publishers continue to search various models under which they would charge for content. Apparently Google wants to be a player in those plans, too.

With Fast Flip, Google aimed at getting closer to the experience of scanning through physical newspapers or magazines. What they have done in fact, and with much hullabaloo, is simulated online what we already have offline.

That’s the real tug of war…

Rival sniping commentators, Keith Olbermann (Countdown on MSNBC) and Bill O’Reilly (The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel), are at it again, flinging insults across the airwaves. The long-running name-calling saga, silenced last Spring by parent companies MSNBC’s General Electric and the FOX’s News Corporation with a handshake agreement for a cease fire, sparked again last Monday night and erupted into a raging fire.

A pretty mad Olbermann, insulted his rival, Bill O’Reilly and the News Corporation’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, by calling O’Reilly a “racist clown” in reference to an O’Reilly statement made two years ago about a black-owned restaurant and brought up again by O’Reilly himself, (but this time much tempered and changed), following the arrest of Harvard’s Professor Gates. Olbermann, fired the first shot, and called O’Reilly on the re-worded statements and repeated, on air, his inappropriately racists remarks of two years ago. Not surprisingly, O’Reilly shot back, claiming that G.E., through MSNBC, was “promoting the election of Barack Obama, and then seeking to profit from his policies,” — which brought the “parents” back out scrambling to salvage the old cease-fire and mend fences.

Their reasons for concern are self-serving. Apparently Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Immelt are concerned about any perceived damage to their corporate reputations, when in fact it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the freedom of the press.

So the old question begs as to who sets the boundaries in reporting – “parents” who pay the bills, or journalists? Whose interests do the journalists serve first, their parent’s or that of the public at large?

I commend Olbermann for throwing caution to the wind by going against his “parent,” in using his own judgment as to what should, or should not, be said on his program — and when and how. It gives me renewed hope that “parental” pacts cannot, and should not, infringe on journalism and that unbridled journalism will prevail.

I say let commentators keep commentating. No more corporate agendas, please. No more corporate handshakes. Let the judgment of a journalist dictate as to where the boundaries lie, as long as it stays within accepted broadcast legal parameters.

It seems it was all done backwards…. First came the innovation, then the run-away successes and then – oh dear, how do we get paid?  Take the freebie online publication dilemma. Who thought that one up?  Now comes all the chest beating, albeit a bit late, in light of the need to make money – or as we used to say, manage a sustainable business.

Look, hindsight doesn’t work.  You don’t get to charge once ‘you’ve given away the store.’

Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp. is mumbling about the need to end a “malfunctioning” business, per Eric Pfanner’s article in the International Herald Tribune of May 18.  According to the article, other publishers including The Guardian Media Group in Britain and the New York Times Company said they were examining ways to get readers to pay for digital news.

Even the ever-growing and popular two-year old Twitter is getting concerned about getting paid.  It wants to steer clear of advertising, per company cofounder Biz Stone in an article on CIO.com, on May 19, 2009, but needs to consider options.  Apparently, the company is developing tools and services that it may offer on top of Twitter’s free microblogging service.  According to a videotaped interview at a recent Reuters event, Stone offered, “I think by the end of the year we’ll have something out there.  It doesn’t have to be this super home run in terms of making billions of dollars. … But it has to show a little bit of signs of life, telling folks, ‘Yes Twitter can be a sustainable business.”

Let’s hope…

Lawmakers in France have come up with a whopper (pardon Burger King) of a plan to fight against unauthorized sharing of digital music and movies, in the hopes of having consumers pay for such services.  The approved law simply threatens such pirates with the loss of Internet access.  Good luck…

There seems to be an answer amidst all this brouhaha, and the example can be taken from the music industry.  It’s about packaging, that is, not charging for what the customer expects to get free, but offer add-on services as a package — and then charge.  Example: unlimited music, packaged with broadband subscriptions or other purchases.

But just think — it would not be a bad business model if digital news were to be packaged in a similar way, with legitimate offerings consumers actually want.  Basically, sell something other than basic services, which can then remain free.  Clearly there some other attempts at getting paid for receiving the news electronically, such as subscriptions to Amazon’s Kindle DX tablet and the soon-to-come Reader from the New York Times.

One expects business paradigms to change, but in the end, business has, and always will be, about getting paid for services or products.

I think that the original allure of the Internet, with its infinite possibilities, had us all jumping into the water but, apparently, not with feet first…

It’s really a given that the public is increasingly seeking its news not from mainstream television networks or the ever-disappearing daily newspapers, but rather from surfing online, giving us the leeway to essentially behave as our own editor, seeking out news that best coincides with our own point of view, rather than hear, watch and read what is offered up by mainstream media.  Nicholas Negroponte of M.I.T. cleverly coined it ‘The Daily Me’  — a fictitious online publication of our own making.

According to an editorial by Nicholas Kristof printed in last week’s edition of the European Herald Tribune, he makes a scary point –  “there’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices.” And then Kristof adds, “The effect of The Daily Me would be to insulate us further in our own hermetically sealed political chambers.”

As depressing as it sounds, I believe that there is nothing new in that.  In fact a version of ‘The Daily Me’ exists both on the Internet and in mainstream media, for the public has always hunted for news outlets that agree with their own positions.  For example, with mainstream media, we either read liberal publications or conservative ones, but rarely both. We either select to watch Keith Olberman or Bill O’Reilly, but never both.  In surfing the Internet for news, we are not really changing what we have always done – hear, watch and read like-minded columnist and broadcasters.

I agree with Kristof’s suggestion, that of the  ‘Daily Mental Workout’, akin to a trip to the gym as our only salvation from digging ourselves deeper into one-mindedness.  According to Kristof, “if you don’t work up a sweat, it doesn’t count” meaning it will take that extra mental effort to put a halt to our preference for editing out the opponent’s point of view.

As difficult as this may be, it really is our only deliverance from the divisiveness that has engulfed us.  It will take individual discipline to really adopt a ‘Daily Mental Workout’ and sweat through our own narrow-mindedness and pre-conceptions to effect a change.

Look, most everybody gets their news online, so what was all the fuss about Denver’s recently shuttered Rocky Mountain News or the rumors about the possibility of a shut down for the Seattle Post Intelligencer or whatever is next?

The thinning of newspapers has been obvious.  It’s been blamed on disappearing advertising dollars, resulting in disappearing revenues, resulting in disappearing staffers, resulting in less journalistic talent, resulting in making newspapers on the short list of things becoming obsolete.

Not so fast…

Blogger TJ Sullivan has taken up the cause and founded Know Newspaper, to promote the Web blackout petition which urges a complete shut down of all news web sites to non-paying subscribers for one week from July 4- July 10, 2009, allowing only for published news in print.

Madness!  What is the point?

According to Sullivan most news outlets, whether online news sites, radio or TV, look to the morning dailies before assigning and assembling their own reports.  As such, evening news is mostly a regurgitation of what was already reported (minus breaking news, of course).  If that’s true, then it is the print journalists that deserve the credit for uncovering news and making sense of what matters and what doesn’t.  Still, if newspapers get shut down, most likely somebody else will uncover the news…

But the case to be made for reading newspapers, is in the detail of the story, that rarely gets heard or seen.  Clearly it can get read online, but the format is more for quick glances, promotes short attention spans and allows for a lot of ‘flitting’ – clicking over a number of sites to get more bits and pieces of evermore information, rather than an evaluation or an analysis of a single piece of news in depth.

And I do believe the community is better served by its own voice – in print.  What the Rocky Mountain News would cover (other than front page news) would have nothing to do with what the Seattle Post Intelligencer or the Atlanta Constitution would cover.   Sure, the newspapers’ sites would carry this information, but then we go back to the format that does not lend itself to any depth.

There is something else that is troubling here…

As I wrote in a blog entry on February 11, consumers don’t generally bother to check the source of their online news, so ‘amateur’ or ‘social journalism’ can ‘trump’ respected journalists.

I agree with Sullivan.  It’s a sad commentary if we let more American newspapers fade into oblivion, notwithstanding their online presence.

Besides, how would my morning coffee ritual happen without my morning newspaper?

There is no question that the news via user-generated, would-be photographers, and opinionated bloggers, travels at an unfathomable speed and, more often than not, trips up venerated mainstream journalists and photojournalists.  (Witness the images of US Air Flight #1549’s water landing taken by a person who just happened to be on a nearby ferry and who snapped a picture with his iPhone , then uploaded it to his Twitter stream, before US Airways was able to issue a statement.)

The idea of getting a “scoop on the news” is more or less out of reach today for professional journalists, with few exceptions such as frontline international news made in the hinterlands of the world, first hand government initiatives, diplomatic maneuvers, etc.

Ok, that’s today’s reality, so what’s the problem?

Would-be journalists are not trained to be reliable sources for news.  Their “news” is often subjective and, in the speed with which it is dispersed, is rarely fact-checked.  If understood as such, it makes a fine addition as a mass communication avenue.

But it becomes a problem when one takes note that there is a whole segment of the public out there that takes “amateur” journalism at face value with little consideration for the difference between them and the venerated journalists, who know how to frame the news within context, have a talent for building a story while understanding the complexities of its terrain, and who have the grasp for giving us contrasting points of views, allowing the reader to form an opinion based on our trust in them.

I think I will stick to the professionals for staying informed.