Santa Cruz Observer

Back by (semi)-popular demand

I've received a few comments and an occasional e-mail wondering whether this website is being retired. I considered it, but I'm now rededicating efforts to keep the "lightly opinionated" site going.

Where has it been? Well, I've got to blame someone or something other than myself, so I'm going to blame Facebook. This social media whirl that we're on has a lot of pluses and minuses, but it does tend to add to the volume of our public debate. I just finished the thought-provoking book Digital Vertigo, an effort by author Andrew Keen to examine just how valuable it is to know everyone's thoughts and opinions on what amounts to a 24/7 cycle.

It seems that every minute spent on Facebook -- and on Twitter, to a lesser extent -- results in more opinions, more updates, more comments than we'd face in an entire day of old-time, mainstream media. Could more actually have become worth less? Is the constant buzz of social media updates getting in our way of thinking, considering and mulling over our opinions?

Facebook is a great venue for keeping up with old friends, but it too often has turned into an echo chamber of political talking points and shouted opinions that may or may not lead to constructive thought.

As for this blog, it started to feel like just additional noise. Sometimes, it's best to just turn off the microphone and listen and learn. And that's what I've been doing over the past few weeks.

What I've learned over these weeks is that there sure is  a lot of high volume opinionating, and maybe there is a need for moderate thinking. Maybe there is a need for occasional thoughts from someone who's non-aligned politically and philosophically. When I originally described this site as "lightly opinionated" it made sense to make it both fact-based with occasional analysis or interpretation, more as a strategy for clarity than as a desire to win over people too my point of view.  (In fact, sometimes my own point of view changes, and because I'm not running for office, I can ignore any accusations of "flip-flopping.")

So the blog has started up again. You can call it new-form journalism with conventional journalism goals. I come from an era very different from the online world of today. Notice the headline doesn't have the standard key words that could increase page views -- "sex," "porno" "lying Republicans" "big government socialists" or anything like that.

It's low-decibel journalism of an independent sort. And by the way, thank you to all those who encouraged me to start back up.

 

Museum director's honest self-examination

By TOM HONIG

Obviously I've been reading too many stories about political candidates -- the bragging, the taking credit, the never making a mistake.

That's why it was so refreshing to read a blog today by Nina Simon, executive director of the Museum of  Art and History in Santa Cruz. She marks her one-year anniversary by relating not only the "Things I'm Most Proud Of," but also "Mistakes I Made" and "Things That Surprised Me."

For anyone who celebrates honesty -- especially at the executive director level -- Simon's examination of her first year is refreshing.

Don't you wish that more executives and more politicians were  capable of giving themselves an honest self-examination? I especially like how she excoriates herself for saying that the museum was basically "failing." She says: "This narrative worked well in  the press—especially when we had early impressive results—but it was demoralizing and offensive to some of the staff and volunteers who had worked hard to deliver the best museum experiences possible in the years prior. Staff members led us in reframing our language to talk about the museum as transforming from a “traditional model to a 21^st century model” instead of failing and then succeeding.

Any government or business leader would do themselves a favor by publishing this kind of yearly self-examination.

Another step in the death march of newspapers

By TOM HONIG

Call it the next step in the slow death of the print newspaper business: copy editors are being laid off.

The copy editor is the silent representative of the newspaper reader -- the one who historically never gets his name in the paper but who is a key cog in the publishing wheel. The copy editor is the one who knows "'who" from "whom" and whether you lie down or lay down. It's the often-ignored copy editor who manages taste, style and accuracy -- ideally -- in the hastily put-together piece of chaos known as the daily paper.

But as economic realities continue to lay waste to the legacy business of newspapers, it's the copy editors who are next in the layoff chute. Reporters and photographers already have  been put out to pasture in great numbers.  And so have pure copy editors -- the ones who just read copy and then turned things over to the production people. But now comes the next step -- as news continues to go digital, news executives are turning to the idea reporters themselves (they're now known as "content generators")  handling the editing jobs themselves.

The Denver Post has announced a major upcoming change (the Post is owned by MediaNews Group, the same owner of the Sentinel and San Jose Mercury News). Editor Gregory Moore -- a good guy himself -- sent out the following memo to the staff (courtesy of the Poynter Institute)

We have focused our attention on consolidating steps in the editing process so that traditional copy editing is done at the content-generating level. That is going to result in a reduction in the ranks of copy editors. Following this, virtually every job in the newsroom will change in some way. The editing and crafting of our copy will have to be shared throughout the newsroom.

Expect this trend to continue.

It's good copy-editing that has distinguished the best newspapers in America. But as the form of delivering news changes, copy editing is a  step that doesn't pass the economic test. Newspapers now compete with online, with radio and television, and none of those news organizations care much about a higher quality of writing. Blogs (including this one) exist without that extra degree of care.

It's a sign of the times. Self-publishing moves ahead, and legacy businesses are forced to change their economic model. But it ain't a good thing.

The media and complexity in the Middle East

By TOM HONIG

Let's face it. The ever-shortening attention span of the American public is leaving most forms of the media in tatters. Exhibit A -- the Panetta Institute's presentation this week of two Middle East experts who spent 90 minutes discussing what Sylvia Panetta called "the stubborn complexity of conflict in this region."

Middle East experts Dennis Ross (who has served both Republican and Democratic administrations) and Fran Townsend (an adviser to President George W. Bush) wended through a compelling yet byzantine examination of the region.

And how could any account of 15 column inches or 28 seconds on television fairly summarize what was said.

As Ross commented to moderator Frank Sessno: "If you look at the region as a whole (from Libya all the way to Afghanistan) any  one area would be enough (to qualify as a major issue.)

Still, any trained journalist could pick out the lede: Iran's nuclear threat.

Each expert came at the issue a bit differently, with Ross citing evidence that economic sanctions just might be working. Here's why:

-- Iran's currency has been devalued by half

-- Protests in front of Iranian banks

-- Iran is finding difficulty in selling oil at a high price (despite worldwide price increases).

-- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- Iran's supreme leader -- is bringing in moderates to the government and has also (curiously) raised the subject that "nuclear weapons are a sin.

Despite these signs, Townsend said, the thought of nuclear weapons and a potential preemptive attack from Israel "still keeps me up at night."

So here you go. This account covers maybe one-twentieth of what was said, and so far hasn't even brought up Afghanistan, Syria, Palestinian issues, Saudi Arabia, Qatar,  Bahrain or the rest.

Maybe that's why Charlie Sheen and Lady Gaga and Tim Tebow are better covered in the media than the Middle East. But that's also why the Panetta Lecture Series is so welcome. 

The next in the series will be April 9, a Monday. It'll feature a discussion on the economy with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson. Standby tickets are sometimes available at the Panetta Institute at 831-582-4200.

Our local Trilateral Commission

By TOM HONIG

It was nice to get a mention in the weekly Gary Patton-Paul Elerick echo machine, sometimes known as "Bratton Online."

Never one to keep misinformation to himself, Bruce Bratton offers this critique:  "Who else can deliver those Chamber, LOBA, Business Council messages so clearly?"

I'd comment on that but I have to hurry off to a secret meeting with our local Trilateral Commission.

A dIfferent sort of letter-writing campaign

By TOM HONIG

Picture this: Sitting around a table with a group of techies, and I bring up the obscure information that February has been declared "The Month of Letters Challenge," when writers are being asked to post a letter a day.

 "You mean, as in putting a stamp on an envelope?" asks one techie.

A couple of them nod their heads. So I press on.

"Actual letter-writing is an artform. One of my favorite genres of literature is "The Selected Letters of ...." Steinbeck wrote letters. Faulkner wrote letters. Emily Dickensen. Charles Dickens. Even Georgia O'Keefe and comedian Fred Allen.

"I don't think you'll be reading 'The selected e-mails of' anyone in the future."

"Well, we don't use Morse Code anymore, either," said another techie.

Then the conversation switched. But I got to thinking about my old "Britannica Guide to English Usage," which dictated style and etiquette in crafting a letter. Or an essay by Lewis Carroll about how it's best to address and stamp an envelope before writing a letter or the unsent missive will lie unsent on the writing table for days at a time.

So far, I haven't joined in the letter-writing campaign. But I might. E-mails and Facebook posts and tweets are not a substitute for an old-fashioned letter. Neither, really, is a telephone call.

A letter says: "I've sat down and thought about you and I'm taking the time to craft a few thoughts for your eyes only."

I haven't written a letter in years. I don't even have a mailing address for most of my friends. 

There's more than nostalgia here. An artform has been sent out on the trash pile of antiquity. It's a nice thought to have a "Write a Letter" campaign -- even if the only way to get the word out about it is on blogs.

News exec quits -- and has some things to say

By TOM HONIG

You just never know where cogent commentary on the future of newspapers will come from. This one is from the chief revenue officer of the Bay Area News Group -- owners of the San Jose Mercury News, the Sentinel and most of the other papers around the Bay Area.

His name is Jeff DeBalko, and as he quit his position, he posted some thoughts about daily newspapers' strategies -- or, more precisely, the lack of a strategy.

Writing on his personal blog, DeBalko talks of his brief career in the "local media" game after having spent most of his career in specialized, business-to-business media.

It's worth following the link and reading his entire post, but essentially, here's what he has to say:

1. Hope is not a strategy (Don't say: "Oh, things will get better. We just have to wait for a better economy."

2. Corporate culture is stronger than any strategy. ("Treat employees better.")

3. Get out into the community. (He argues that the web-only Patch.com is doing this better than most old-line newspapers).

4. Diversity matters. (Old white guys -- like me, admittedly -- are running the show.)

5. Selling online is not the same as building a sustainable business. (Too much focus on "the sale" and not enough on growing a productive business.)

6. Technology matters. (You're not a media company; you're a tech company. That's your competition.)

7. People matter. (Bosses might actually ask employees what works and what doesn't.)

I especially was convinced by his comment on tech. Think of every major change in media -- iTunes, Craigslist, Groupon, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix -- and not one came from an already-established media company. There are a lot of reasons for that -- mostly the need of established companies to affix a return-on-investment requirement to every new idea. Still, old media types love to talk about innovation -- even though I can't think of one real great original idea to come out of the standard, mainstream media.

The best reporters I've known over the years were the ones who spent more time out of the newsroom than in. I think that's instructive for newspaper executives. They should stop talking with each other, get their noses out of the budget sheets and actually connect with readers and advertisers to discover their needs.

 

Inane comments and half-baked opinions

By TOM HONIG

One of my goals in starting this website was to establish a higher level of civic discourse. I'm largely happy with the comments I've received here. Part of the success is that this website is out of the mainstream.

Consider, for example, the recent retirement of an editor named John Irby, who has retired from the Bismark (N.D.) Tribune largely because he got tired of putting up with nasty and inane comments on his paper's website. In a final column, Irby says: “I am retiring because I am tired of being the whipping boy, by one and all. My skin has thinned. Life is too short to put up with all the noise.” And: "I don't want to do this anymore."

His paper is hardly the only one plagued by nasty and even stupid comments on its website. Every newspaper has the problem -- including The New York Times and the Washington Post.

A quick trip through the comments on mainstream websites is depressing. The attacks are vociferous. The claims are often wrong. Opinion has replaced fact. Just once I'd like to see this reaction: "Hmm. I had never thought about this aspect of the issue and I'm changing my mind." Wouldn't that be a treat to see?

And as long as I'm complaining, wouldn't it be wonderful if people of every political stripe would learn to use an apostrophe correctly? An apostrophe is for the possessive and for contractions. It's not for making words plural.

Some schools require a swimming test before allowing students in the pool. Maybe newspapers should make commenters pass a grammar test before writing out their thoughts.

Newspapers and a digital future

By TOM HONIG

Sentinel Editor Don Miller has posted a fascinating look into modern journalism on his blog. He describes the appointment of the new chief executive of MediaNews -- the company that owns 56 daily papers, including my alma mater, the Sentinel.

The CEO, John Paton, also runs another organization, the Journal Register Co. In a nutshell, these companies will be operated cooperatively under the umbrella of "Digital First" and will feature, yes, a "digital first" strategy. The Nieman Journalism Lab -- a think tank at Harvard -- calls it a "merger without merging."

What's interesting about all that is that newspaper executives have long known that the future of news is online. But it's still the physical paper product that brings in most of the revenue.

Miller links his blog to some fascinating articles, including this one on the website Gigaom: Is John Paton the Savior Newspapers Have Been Waiting For? And another, this coming from Paton's own blog.

By the way, three cheers for Miller, who puts all this maneuvering into context without sugar-coating any of it. I had complained here last week that other newspapers had reported on their own layoffs by burying that information inside some sort of corporate-speak.

Everyone knows that newspapers are going through massive change. Survival is uncertain. But the articles that Miller links to describe well the latest developments in the ongoing disruption of an entire industry.

The dominating source of news about the media decides to call it quits -- sort of

By TOM HONIG

The single-most dominating force in media news and gossip is someone that most people outside the media business have never heard of. It's a man by the name of Jim Romenesko. His daily aggregation of media news is required reading by anyone in the news business. He puts the site together mostly from his home in Evanston, Ill. (or from nearby coffee shops) and it's sponsored by the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank.

Actually, it's more than that. Some of us who occasionally pontificate on the ins and outs of the news business rely on news coming from Romenesko about what's happening at newspapers and other media outlets around the country. One of his services has long been to reprint internal memos from media companies -- a practice that at one time was criticized and later became welcome. (My own departure from the Santa Cruz Sentinel in 2007 was documented in his column -- which I took as an honor.)

Romenesko has announced his semi-retirement. To get an idea of his impact on the industry, check out this story by Michael Calderone in the Huffington Post.

What's fascinating about Calderone's profile is that it demonstrates 1) how influential Romenesko has been and 2) how he had no interest in doing what most entrepreneurs would do -- make a ton of money off such an influential site.

Semi-retirement for Romenesko means getting away from the aggregation and back to -- gasp! -- some original reporting. His new site, JimRomenesko.com, will be well worth reading.