Who Owns the J-Word: Videoblogger's Jailing Raises Questions for Journalists

Ever since Josh Wolf was thrown in jail in August of 2006, a debate has raged about his job title. Is Wolf -- the 24-year-old freelance videographer, blogger, and activist who was jailed for refusing to hand over footage of a 2005 anarchist protest in San Francisco -- a "journalist"? Imprisoned for 226 days, longer than any other American journalist facing similar accusations, Wolf was released April 3 after complying with a subpoena and posting the (rather unremarkable) video on his website. That didn't calm questions about whether Wolf is a journalist and, therefore, whether he should've been protected by California's "shield" law which protects journalists who are trying to keep unnamed sources or interview notes private.

Local experts, including the St. Cloud-based chair of Wolf's defense fund at the national Society for Professional Journalists, think he is, and they see his case, problematic as it may be, as a key fight to defend journalistic ethics -- and a reporter now defying a handover request from a judge in Mankato, Minn.

On July 8, 2005, Wolf grabbed his video camera to document a rally in San Francisco's Mission district held by local anarchists to coincide with a globalization conference happening concurrently in Scotland. During the protest, a police officer's skull was fractured, and there was allegedly an attempt to torch a police car. Wolf sold some of his footage of the day to local TV stations.

In the investigation that followed, a grand jury subpoenaed Wolf to turn over raw video footage and testify before the grand jury about its contents. (Around 65 subpoenas for journalists have been approved by the U.S. Attorney General since 2001.) Citing the First Amendment, his commitment to protecting the confidentiality of sources, and a belief that the media shouldn't be a tool of law enforcement, he refused -- and wound up in jail.

So. Is Wolf a "journalist" deserving protection under shield laws? Or does his unabashed activism and identification as an anarchist mean he's crossed the line between objectivity, the journalist's professed stock and trade, and advocacy.

Anthony Lappe of the progressive Guerrilla News Network said that Wolf's "oeuvre as a journalist, radical or not, is thin" consisting mainly of "online rants and what I call 'protest porn' -- contextless video of radical protests." And the conservative San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders renders verdict in a piece with a title that says it all: "A journalist in his own mind."

She writes:

The issue here is whether Wolf should be protected by shield laws designed to protect real journalists who need to protect their sources. In Wolf's ideal world, he would qualify, not because he follows journalistic practices, but because he disseminates information to the public.

Of course, Wolf's cause appeals to the liberal sensibilities of the Special City. If a kid anarchist is willing to go to jail because he thinks he's a journalist, he must be a journalist. He feels so strongly about it. Damn the consequences.

Except a federal shield law that would protect Wolf also would protect an anti-abortion activist with a camera who attends an anti-abortion demonstration that turns violent and tapes activists as they pummel abortion clinic workers.

I asked Wolf: Should an anti-abortion blogger be able to use a shield law to protect the identity of an activist who beat up a clinic worker? He answered, "There should be some level of protection, yes."

The editorial board at Saunders' paper disagreed with her assessment. "The fact that Josh Wolf has strong political views does not disqualify him from being a journalist any more than the fact that I am an editorial page editor and have opinions disqualifies me from being a journalist," said John Diaz of the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview with Kevin Sites. "The fact is, he was out at that rally, collecting information to disseminate to the public. I think that makes him a journalist."

Press freedom groups like Reporters without Borders and the Society of Professional Journalists -- an organization that, through its northern California chapter, nominated Wolf Journalist of the Year -- agree. The SPJ gave $31,000 to Wolf's legal defense, its largest donation ever for such a case, according to Dave Aiekens, a 13-year reporter at the St. Cloud Times and chair of the national defense fund. "The case is far from perfect," he acknowledged, "but they never are."While the SPJ stood firmly behind Wolf, it has no interest in the is-he-a-journalist question.

“The minute you start defining who’s a journalist you go down a tricky path of the government licensing journalists," Aiekens said. "We don’t think the government should have anything to say about it."

He added that because Wolf was shooting video and providing it to TV news stations, and has an established history of doing so, that qualifies him as a journalist.

For the sake of argument, would terrorists who videotape beheadings and bombings and send the footage to broadcast outlets then fall into that category? I'd argue no. While the subjects Wolf has taped often are masked, Wolf isn't. He posts his videos and sells footage to news stations under his own name, and the activities he's recorded -- at least in the case of the disputed clips of the San Francisco rally, which include no imagery of arson or violence -- conceal nothing criminal, as far as I can tell.

The burden of proof should fall on those who wish to disprove Wolf is a journalist. And who should do that? Certainly not the government, as Aiekens said. Jane Kirtley, director of the University of Minnesota's Silha Center for Media Ethics & Law and a board member of SPJ's chapter for Minnesta professional journalists, concurs.

"We don't have government licensing [for journalists] in the US," she said, adding, "There are many situations in which access to some event or other is restricted to 'accredited' journalists. Even the House and Senate Press Galleries engage in trying to decide whether or not someone is a 'journalist' in order to qualify for a press pass-- which is another example of journalists themselves deciding who is 'one of us.' I think we can't blind ourselves to the reality that in the past, there have been occasions when journalists have closed out by other journalists. So I guess the question is, in an ideal world, should anybody decide 'who is a journalist,' other than the 'journalist' him or herself?"

The case highlights a need, said Aiekens, for a federal shield law. Thirty-two states, including Minnesota and California have such laws, but a federal provision was shot down in 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-to-4 against the premise that a "reporter's privilege" to keep sources confidential is implied by the First Amendment. (California has a shield law, but it doesn't apply to Wolf. The alleged arson attempt on the police car makes it a federal case because, in a weird twist of legal logic, the SFPD receives some Homeland Security funds.)

"We felt if we made a big splash with [the SPJ's donation to Wolf's defense] we could get some momentum behind a federal shield law," Aiekens said. The law would "force the government to have a higher standard of evidence" in proving that information about crimes, for example, can only be obtained through reporter's unpublished notes.

He added that this kind of case "can happen anywhere, to anyone."

In fact, in Mankato, Minn., a veteran reporter is resisting requests by a judge and law enforcement to turn over interview notes.

On December 23, four hours into a police standoff with a man in the town of Amboy, Mankato Free Press reporter Dan Nienaber still had no details from police about the nature of the case, which began when police responded to a domestic disturbance call. And, according to the paper, readers were calling in, alarmed at rumors that five people had been murdered.

Nienaber grabbed his cellphone and began calling numbers in the area, ending up, by accident, on the line with Jeffrey Alan Skjervold, the man at the center of the standoff. There weren't five murders; Skjervold told the reporter he'd shot two officers and was bleeding from a gunshot in his stomach. Eventually he turned the gun on himself.

Nienaber mentioned the call in his report, and even though law enforcement agreed that Skjervold took his own life and that no other suspect was being considered in the crime, still sought Nienaber's notes. Prosecutors won't say what they want them for, but the paper said it believes this is an attempt to intimidate reporters and the paper. (Contacted last month, Nienaber said he couldn't comment as the case was "still in the courts.")

I find myself in agreement with everyone I quoted here -- and with Wolf. Lappe is right on when he says Wolf's journalistic cred is a bit flimsy. Kirtley and Aeikens are right that journalists should be free from government definitions of "journalist," and therefore Saunders is right that Wolf is a journalist simply because he says he is. The price of entry, admittedly, is pretty low. But given what's at stake -- news coverage we can trust as independent from the motives of government and law enforcement -- it seems a fair trade.

Maybe that's what Alexis de Toqueville had in mind when he wrote, "In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils that it creates."

Update: This piece won a 2007 Frank Premack Public Affairs Journalism Award from the University of Minnesota School of Journalism, the first time the prize has gone to an online journalist.

[Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.]

Beyond Newspapers: Steve Perry on Web Journalism

For several weeks, former City Pages editor Steve Perry and I have been having a back-and-forth email interview -- his first interview since leaving the Minneapolis altweekly in February -- on the Twin Cities media scene, the state of newspapers in the US, and net neutrality. The entire thing's online at Minnesota Monitor, but here's the last part:

Talking about the bright side of newspapers now is like trying to name the cheeriest thing about mass suicide. In its hour of deepest crisis, the industry is gutting its own resources in the interest of next quarter's bottom line. As a friend of mine put it, they're all being run like financial companies when they are in fact manufacturing companies that need to be looking out for their productive resources.

Most of the fun, and the sense of discovery, is on the web. Obviously. I mean, you've got tens of thousands of blogs that engage "the news" in some way. And although the vast majority just cannibalize workaday media and lay on a dollop of partisan cant, blogs have also produced a new generation of voices doing good, distinctive, original political analysis and media criticism, two huge blind spots of mainstream media.

The internet is also pressing newsgatherers to involve their readers in a more dynamic way, to let them in on interpreting and elaborating and sometimes even defining "the news." The challenge is to find ways to do that without letting the inmates run the asylum -- without letting the conversation descend to unverifiable claims, stupid in-jokes, and lumpen flame wars. Unmoderated is bad, n'kay?

The main issue for journalism is still monetizing the web, making a web platform pay for the kind of staffing that can produce useful original reporting. I have no idea how that will happen, but the smartest people I know on the marketing side of the internet think part of the answer will be elements of paid content. I know that's heresy to most users -- who doesn't like content that's all free all the time? But it's not all bad from the readers' standpoint, either. There's nothing like making people pay for content to ratchet up the pressure to make it ambitious.

It's impossible to say what the web is going to be like five years from now. There are political and commercial pressures in play that mainstream media has done an atrocious job of covering. What percentage of Americans has even heard the term "net neutrality," I wonder? How many people know that there's a lobbying movement afoot to create a two-tier internet in which the highest-speed connectivity is reserved for big companies that can pay a premium for it? Far too few. Most people regard the internet as a tool for entertaining themselves and shopping, and assume that the hand of the market will only make it more flashy, more fun, more powerful. They think it's essentially just another consumer product. Even among media critics, there's too little recognition that it's a new communication medium that's still in its Wild West phase, making itself up as it goes.

And beyond the pressures to make it a more exclusive tool of corporate commerce, there is also a lot of political anxiety about how wide-open dialogue and dissent can be on the internet. Do you remember the phrase the late Samuel Huntington coined to describe the political tumult surrounding Vietnam? He called it a "crisis of democracy," meaning there was too damn much democracy, too many voices demanding to be heard. The internet is a continual crisis of democracy in that sense, and it's naive to suppose it will stay as open in the future without political fights. There are those people who deem it unthinkable, or even technologically impossible, to limit American citizens' access to information on the web, but they're just plain wrong. (Every new communications medium spawns this kind of utopianism -- there were people in the '20s who thought radio would bring the revolution, and people in the '50s who thought TV would increase civic participation. Heh.) It's not impossible to hamstring web users. The best thing I've read on the subject is Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu's book, Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World. You have to read it if you haven't.

So in a sense, any speculation about the future of the web and of news media on the web has an asterisk at the end of every sentence. It's possible, for instance, to revamp the web to give a huge advantage to the usual cartel of well-capitalized media companies, and make it much tougher for small sites, amateur or professional, to draw traffic and to serve multimedia. It's possible, in other words, to more or less restore the old order in a new medium.

But it hasn't happened yet, and it's not entirely inevitable. At minimum, there's a lot of fun to be had in the meantime. Is there a downside to mainstream media's efforts to mimic what bloggers do? Yeah, if not understanding the spirit of the endeavor counts as a downside. I hasten to add that there are now a *lot* of good blogs scattered around daily newspaper sites, but the news business in general remains hampered on the web by the assumptions it makes about reporters as senders and readers as passive receivers. Watching newspapers try to "relate" with readers is still vaguely embarrassing much of the time -- this odd combination of unctuous and patronizing at the same time. Kind of like seeing your grandma in stretch pants, doing The Robot.

Or a Kate Parry column.

Read "Black and White and Dead All Over: Steve Perry on the Pauperization of Newspaper and the Promise of the Internet"

Who's minding the story in D.C.? Strib takes issues with McCollum's departures email

When U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum sent out her weekly e-mail newsletter on March 5, the Minnesota Democrat included a farewell to the paper's longtime Washington reporters, who will continue working for the Strib's former owner, McClatchy.

"I want to thank Rob Hotakainen and Kevin Diaz for more than 20 years of service each with the Star Tribune and wish them well in their new assignments," wrote the fourth-term representative. "I and the rest of the Minnesota congressional delegation look forward to working with the Star Tribune's intern, Brady Averill, who will now be responsible for covering the news from our nation's capitol."

The sentiment didn't sit well with Star Tribune reader's representative Kate Parry, who received "a note of concern" from a reader about it. She called and e-mailed McCollum's chief of staff, Bill Harper, and said McCollum's words left "the misimpression that the Star Tribune will now be covering Congress only with an intern. This is not the Star Tribune's plan for Washington coverage."

Two days later, McCollum's office sent out the clarification Parry requested -- prefaced with a note that in fact the paper's intern will be the paper's only Washington staffer "until an unspecified future date when they plan to 'hire at least one new correspondent,' according to a Star Tribune article on March 6." The exchange highlights that the paper hasn't been entirely clear about when and how it will replace these Washington reporters.

And it suggests a larger question: in these days of shrinking newsrooms nationwide (including the Star Tribune, where 24 newsroom employees took voluntary buyouts this week) and Walter Reed-sized scandals making headlines, how will the Minneapolis paper maintain the "vitality," as Harper puts it, that is "critical to ensure that citizens are informed" until its Washington office is fully staffed?

Parry's answer to that question: Averill will be "bolstered by reporters here and our continuing access to Washington coverage provided by the McClatchy newswire," she wrote.

Plans beyond that aren't very firm. Will they hire two positions or one? Will one be hired on as the bureau chief? When do they expect these new staffers to be in place? Strib nation/world editor Dave Peters, who oversees Averill's Washington work, couldn't answer any of these questions. Managing editor Scott Gillespie did not return Minnesota Monitor's request for an interview, and Averill declined comment.

But Peters acknowledged his desire to have more reporters in D.C. "I wish we didn’t have this disruption," he said. "I liked working with Kevin and Rob. They’re good. But for whatever reason, we’re having to change gears and naturally there’s a little bit of a hitch in there, but we’ll come out in a good place in the end, I’m confident."

In fact, neither Diaz nor Hotakainen wanted to leave the Star Tribune either, but the pay package offered by Avista, the paper's new owner, presented them few options.

Hotakainen, the Strib's bureau chief who just started as Washington correspondent for the McClatchy-owned Kansas City Star, wrote in an email to Minnesota Monitor, "It was an easy decision: Stay with McClatchy at full salary or take a pay cut to work for the Star Tribune."

Diaz said he "didn't relish" leaving Minnesota politics behind, especially with the treasure trove of material, from Al Franken running for Senate to Michele Bachmann and Keith Ellision in the House, the Republican National Convention in 2008 to Minnesota congressmen chairing influential committees.

"This was not a good time to leave," he said. "But new management really gave me no choice. The alternative was to give back every performance pay raise I've received since I came to Washington in 2000."

The same financial matters that lost the Star Tribune its veteran Washington writers may affect the hiring of their replacements as well. The paper's classified ad for the job(s) named a $60,000 to $75,000 pay range. Is that competitive, considering the expertise and connections required of a D.C. correspondent, not to mention that city's cost of living and the responsibilities that come with the title "bureau chief?"

Tom Hamburger, a Washington reporter for the Los Angeles Times, chose not to weigh in on those questions, but instead said he'd look to a broader issue, the "bleeding of quality" the situation in Washington suggests. When he began his ten-year stint at the Strib's Washington bureau in 1989, he was one of five reporters, one intern and four full-time journalists.

"This appears to be a sign of reduced commitment to Washington coverage by the paper," he said. "The most significant signs are the continued reduction in staff in the bureau and the failure to keep experienced people -- who knew what they were doing, knew how to cover Washington, and were doing an excellent job -- in their jobs."

Hamburger added that the staff he worked with continued the bureau's long tradition of reporting regional news while breaking national stories, like reporter Frank Wright's Nixon-era stories on the scandal over milk price supports, Finley Lewis' coverage of Walter Mondale's presidential run, and, more recently, revelations about the role of Minnesotans like Vin Weber in the rise of the modern conservative movement in the 1990s. (Hamburger didn't mention the story he co-wrote with Star Tribune reporter Sharon Schmickle about questionable gift receipts by members of the U.S. Supreme Court, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.) He's disappointed that the bureau is, even temporarily, reduced to a single intern.

"It's part of a general sadness that I find with what's happened to regional newspapers," he said. "But it's particularly insulting to those of us who worked at the Star Tribune for so many years. I worked there when the Cowles family owned the paper, and they were really trying to do a good job of maintaining the paper's legacy when they sold it to McClatchy. And it just hasn't worked out."

While Hotakainen admitted he has mixed feelings about leaving the paper he's worked at for more than two decades, he doesn't take anything personally. "It's simply a desire by the new owners to cut costs." He added that he suspects publisher Par Ridder and interim publisher Chris Harte won't be around in three to five years, at which point "a new managemenet team will come in and pick up the pieces."

As for the future, Strib editor Peters hesitated to predict when the Washington bureau would be fully staffed (its ad posted at JournalismJobs.com has a closing date of April 6), but said he's optimistic. "It’s going well. We’re getting good applications. I can say that much."

McCollum's press secretary, Bryan Collinsworth, hopes so. He said there's so much going on in Washington over the next few weeks that Minnesotans need to know about; topping that list, he said, is a key Iraq vote now in committee that will likely get a floor vote next week.

"You could say this is one of the most important times to have good coverage in Washington in years," he said.

Hamburger concurred. "This is an enormously busy, news-filled time in Washington: new Congress, an administration that’s on the ropes, a war that’s going poorly, the economy’s shaken," he said. "Those will still be covered. How Minnesota's congressional delegation responds is going to be covered less thoroughly. It has to be, not because the intern’s not competent -- I've met her, and I think she's very good -- but because they’ve taken away the experienced professionals who were covering it previously. That’s a loss for Minnesota."

Diaz's conclusion was more succinct. "Welcome to the modern American newsroom."

[Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.]

Strib Stress: Meditating on a Newspaper Sale

Yesterday's Minnesota Monitor column:

A reporter's job is a tough one any day -- the Sisyphean churn of deadlines, the public scrutiny, the pace -- but those working in the Star Tribune newsroom can add another layer to the stress: on Monday, the paper's sale to Avista Capital Partners, a company known more for standards of investing than journalism, is expected to go through. So, who can blame veteran reporter Randy Furst for needing a special trick to keep his professional and personal ducks in a row?

Possibly the paper’s management.

On the morning of February 20, Furst set out at around 10 for a familiar ritual. He found an empty conference room on the second floor at 425 Portland Avenue, found a chair he hoped would be out of eyeshot of those passing by the room's window, leaned back, and took a breath. Some days these meditations would mean Furst counting back from 100 to 1. Others, he'd reflect on a passage from literature that, he said, "will get me closer to my higher power." He always has his PDA, and he ends up jotting down thoughts and a to-do list for the day.

"I'm a senior reporter here, and I need to try to get real clarity about what I need to do on a given day," he said. "It makes me a better journalist."

But on that Tuesday morning, his ritual was cut short. A woman Furst didn't recognize interrupted him and told him, "There's a meeting going on and you'll have to leave."

He did, thinking nothing of it, and ended up back at his desk digging into a story. In early afternoon, he was told by a newsroom manager that there was an “important” 2:30 p.m. meeting he needed to be at. “Make sure you've got a union representative with you,” he was told, because the meeting might result in disciplinary action.

At the 2:30 meeting, with two representatives of the Minnesota Newspaper Guild in tow, he sat slackjawed as management grilled him. "They told me I'd been spotted by a senior member of management of the company with my ear against the wall, listening to what was going on in another conference room. It was a real shocker," he said. "Did I know who was meeting in the next room, they asked. I told them I didn't, and I didn't care, because I was there to meditate. They told me the top executives in the company were there and they were meeting with some major people from New York."

When word got around the newsroom that Furst, who has worked for the paper since 1973, was being questioned as a spy, there was disbelief. "The whole thing is bizarre," said Chris Serres, a Star Tribune reporter. "Initially we thought it was a joke that he'd been accused of eavesdropping. Randy is probably the most respected journalist at the Star Tribune."

But then the anger came: one reporter, upon hearing the allegation, punched a wall and nearly broke his hand, Serres said. "The newsroom is a cauldron. There's already a high degree of tension over the sale."

Management’s recent announcement that it won’t fill positions vacated by staffers who take contract buyouts didn’t help. There's a clause in the paper's Newspaper Guild contract that states that in the event of a sale to an outside buyer, Guild members can choose to resign and receive two weeks of pay for every year worked, with a 40-week cap. According to Serres, who is vice chair of the paper's Guild unit, between 15 and 30 employees are expected to take buyouts. On Monday, staffers can start submitting letters of resignation; Friday is the last day to do so.

On Monday of this week, management told Furst they believed he wasn't eavesdropping and that he had a strong reputation for honesty. His employee file would have no mention of the accusation.

Serres sounded relieved. "Had they pursued this investigation, the newsroom would've erupted. The union doesn't need a battle like this," he added. "We want to focus on the work ahead, and we don't need ridiculous distractions to get in the way."

Fallout from the sale tops the union’s to-do list. A key task will be monitoring workloads to make sure employees don’t burn out from covering jobs once done by those who take buyouts.

Layoffs are another worry. He fears staff cuts will affect the quality of the Star Tribune's journalism -- and it's long-term viability. Those at risk for layoffs, he said, are reporters without seniority. "Layoffs will hit younger people hardest," he said, the same people who tend to eager and educated on the new online journalism practices touted by management. Low in seniority, too, he added, are minority reporters who are representing traditionally under-represented populations.

"You'll get a monolithic point of view that doesn't represent the community," he said.

Over the next week, as McClatchy hands the keys over to Avista, and some of the friends Furst has made over 34 years at the paper decide to say so long, one senior reporter will likely be scoping out empty conference rooms where he can breathe deeply and pin down invading thoughts in a PDA. Perhaps he won’t be the only one. Stribbers following Furst’s path might heed the joking advice of a newsroom colleague: make sure the adjacent rooms are empty -- and be sure to bring along a Guild representative.

Annarama! Anna Nicole Smith and the Experience Newspaper

Where were you when you heard about Anna Nicole Smith's death?

An odd question, for sure, since it seems to put the tragic end of a Playboy/Guess model's life last Thursday in the same category as, say, John F. Kennedy's assassination or the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But seriously, where were you? I was at work, and a friend who gets CNN's breaking headlines via email told me about it. I definitely didn't learn about it by cracking open a newspaper. Yet, 12 or so hours later, when the morning edition of the Star Tribune came out, there was the news I—and the majority of the Web-connected, cable-news-watching, SMS-enabled, or e-mail-alerted world—already knew, right on the front cover.

But on Feb. 9, my morning paper wasn't alone. Of the 300 U.S. papers whose covers are recorded at the site Newseum each day, all but two dozen—not even 10 percent of the papers—deemed it big enough news to merit front-page coverage. Some used the photo to tease readers inside to learn more on Smith's demise, while many began telling of her collapse and death right there, along with the killing of American GIs in Iraq and whatever local happenings were deemed cover-worthy.

Why did the majority of these papers deem Anna Nicole Smith among the most important news of the day? Is a celebrity's death more "newsy" than, say, the power-sharing deal brokered by Fatah and Hamas in Palestine (which appeared on A3 of the Star Tribune that day), or developments in the case of the cab driver who was brutally gunned down in Brooklyn Center (reported on B4)? How come Smith, whose intellectual contributions to culture paled in comparison of those of writer Molly Ivins (who died Jan. 30), got front page placement when Ivins, who began her career as an employee of the Minneapolis paper, didn't?

Before the whys, here's the how-much: On a day that four Marines were killed and the sixth U.S. helicopter in three weeks was shot down in Iraq, Smith gobbled up the majority of cable's news programs. She was mentioned on CNN 522 percent more frequently than Iraq and 708 percent more often on MSNBC, according to ThinkProgress. And both the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post gave cover prominence to the story. The New York Times didn't—but it did purchase a "sponsored link" to "Anna Nicole Smith" on Google.

To state the obvious, America tunes in to lurid tales of rises and falls, rags and riches, T and A—a fact not lost on those who work in media. They just couch it in different terms.

Star Tribune managing editor Scott Gillespie acknowledged that Smith's death was a "talker," the stuff of proverbial water-cooler chat the next day. That talk factor "was helped—helped in a horrible way—by the recent death of her son, which is still mysterious," he said. Kate Parry, the paper's readers' representative, blogged on Thursday afternoon that "it was instantly the top-read story on startribune.com," echoing CNN's Larry King who, en route to capturing the coveted 25- to 54-year-old demographic that night, reported (or prophesied?), "The death of Anna Nicole Smith—it’s the number one story around the world tonight."

But what makes it news? A journalistic judgment on the part of editors or the public's insatiable demand for voyeuristic details? At the Los Angeles Times, Tim Rutten offers an answer: "[M]ainstream journalistic coverage of Smith's death is among the first such stories driven, in large part, by an editorial perception of public interest derived mainly from Internet traffic."

I'd argue with Rutten that this is the first such story: the Star Tribune's focus-group-tested redesign of October 2005 seems to be based in large part on "editorial perception of public interest." The paper partnered with Northwestern University's Readership Institute to reshape its content to better appeal to under-30 readers. Key to its success, they learned, was "intensifying" three experiences of readers: "Gives me something to talk about," "Looks out for my interests," or "Turned [me] on by surprise or humor." Outgoing editor Anders Gyllenhaal explained this so-called "experience newspaper" this way:

"Experiences are a way of converting traditional news judgment from editors’ definitions (what’s most interesting, what’s most important, what you just can’t believe happened) to readers’ definitions of how they react (what makes readers feel informed, what gives them something to talk about, what tells them the paper is looking out for their interests.)”

This trend toward consumer-driven news is what former Pioneer Press writer Jim Walsh seemed to reference in his final column for City Pages, his most recent gig, which ended abruptly when corporate bosses at New Times/Village Voice Media fired him two weeks ago. The piece, which never ran, chronicles the meeting of old-guard Pioneer Press writers at a St. Paul bar, where they lamented the death of journalism as they knew it:

The optimists talked about how there will always be a need for storytellers and good writing, no matter what the format or who/what owns/runs it. The pessimists talked about newspaper management’s desperation to woo younger readers with intelligence-insulting writing, blurbs and big graphics, and corporate ownership that values byline counts over originality, creativity, and flesh-and-blood connection with readers.

The rubbing elbows of it all, in other words, was an honest-to-God example of the human element – which, post-Enron, is the sort of grasp for grassroots credibility that corporations of all stripes are suddenly trying to replicate and fabricate (see: "Our Katie Couric" "My Star Tribune"; "My Starbucks"). And currently lost in the discussion about the corporate takeover of newspapers is how the process is slowly severing the intimate connection between readers and writers. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Annie in Andover doesn’t give a shit about who owns her paper; she cares about reading about what’s happening to her neighbors, including people who write for her newspaper.

While the Star Tribune's choice to give Anna Nicole A1 placement had little to do with what's happening in the neighborhoods of Minneapolis and St. Paul, reader's rep Kate Parry said there was fierce debate about how (and if) to include news about "the death of someone whose only claim to fame is a kind of notorious celebrity." She wrote of their conclusion:

Putting that person on page one as a straight obit could look sort of like gossip sheet fascination. But trying to find a story that explains why this unlikely person became the fascination of much of the country becomes an interesting sort of sociological approach.

Hence, the paper found an AP story that asked, "What so fascinates people about Anna Nicole Smith?" Written by Jocelyn Noveck, the story — which included three photos and almost 30 column inches of text — covered familiar terrain: Smith portrayed as the "perfect pop culture icon," "another sexy, tragic blonde" like Marilyn Monroe, and a "perverse Hollywood Horatio Alger story," while sprinkling in biographical tidbits about her days of topless dancing, teen pregnancy, the unexplained death of her son, and her famous marriage to an "89-year-old oil tycoon" (Tycoon? Is this a newspaper or "The Great Gatsby"?).

That have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too strategy seems a not-so-distant cousin to what the Los Angeles Times' Rutten calls "one of the cheapest journalistic tricks going" (and one this writer just might be engaging in): "[T]o get a piece of a mindless, tawdry media frenzy by denouncing it. The writer gets to wallow profitably in whatever gutter has everybody's attention while still being wry and high-minded. The readers get to join the fun without losing their self-respect. It's a win-win sort of arrangement for a certain knowing-wink-and-sly-nod wing of the media culture."

The Strib's coverage, while lengthy, was downright honorable in comparison to New York Spanish language daily Hoy, which devoted nearly its entire cover Friday to an image that featured an unobstructed view of the underside of Smith's breast; the New York Daily News, which included a screaming headline, "Scandal in the Wind"; or Philadelphia's Metro, which showed four Playboy covers and a fifth photo of Smith. (Ever restrained, the Wall Street Journal didn't put Smith on their cover; for contrast, it would've been nice to see Smith rendered in WSJ's trademark pointillist pen-and-ink.)

But compared to others, like West Hawaii Today, the coverage seemed excessive. WHT's editor Reed Flickinger didn't see the story as front-page news at all. "Had she burst into flame, spontaneously, perhaps, but that would be because of the cause of death, not the nature of the deceased," he wrote in an email. "Putting Anna Nicole Smith on the cover is exactly what is wrong with journalism, and to a larger degree, this country, today."

The Strib's managing editor, Scott Gillespie, says this kind of gauging and fulfilling of reader desires isn't new at all. He said, "I think it's wrong to say we at the Star Tribune have just decided in the past couple of years to put 'talker' stories on the cover. We've been doing it for years. In all 15 of the years I've worked here, there's been an effort to find the story people will be talking about."

Call it what you will — Gillespie's "talker," Gyllenhaal's "experience," Larry King's "number one story" — this belief that local audiences are served by papers piling on popular celebrity stories seems to ignore journalism's role to not just provide what readers want, but what they need to know to be active citizens. Editors argue that if diverse content draws readers who, after getting their Smith fix, keep reading about the new ballot initiative or funding for a stadium, the public interest is served. My guess is that while daily papers are enhancing the reading experience with celebrity news, lifestyle tips, and feel-good front-cover fluff, magazines like People and U.S. Weekly won't be reciprocating by upping their local news coverage.
Said Kevin Kaufman, editor of the Boulder, Colo., Daily Camera, where a photo of Smith on the cover ran with a teaser for readers to look inside for more:

I put stories out front that I think are important, newsy, interesting, odd, unusual, etc., and that will attract readers, regardless of whether they involve a U.S. Senate vote on the Bush Iraq plan, the local government moving from parking meters to parking kiosks, recruiting of players for the local college football team, the entertainment industry or an astronaut driving 900 miles in a diaper.

[Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.]

Update: This story won a first place Page One Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Who's counting? Stats blur Strib's redesign story

Early this week, Rake media writer Brian Lambert published an e-mail sent to City Pages' "letters" address by Monica Moses, Executive Director of Product Innovation at the Star Tribune and the manager of the paper's redesign, seeking to "correct some of the biggest leaps of logic in City Pages' recent coverage of the Star Tribune sale."

While the subject line read "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," Moses' note to CP editor Steve Perry wasn't private: she cc'd eight others on the communique, from columnists and reporters like Doug Grow and Rochelle Olson to former editor Anders Gyllenhaal. The tone of the several-email exchange bordered on downright snotty, generating a heated comment thread at the Rake's online property, MNSpeak, and a follow-up post by Lambert.

But while the back-and-forth banter has drawn attention, little has been said about Moses' mathematics.

Calling it "tiresome" to correct what she says are factual errors in City Pages' coverage, Moses explains to Perry why her words weren't meant for public consumption:

[Y]our publication has not proven itself to be honorable in accepting criticism and looking at facts that don't fit a preconceived, predictable, cynical, narrow portrait of the Star Tribune. Your motives are not pure. You can't be trusted to do the right thing with the information.

Perry's response: "I've always heard that you were a first-rate suck-up."

Perhaps Moses' sensitivity comes from her role overseeing the paper's cover-to-cover redesign, launched October 2005 (above, the Star Tribune, before and after). Some tie readership trends to the new look, and, in sharing hopes for what ownership by Avista Capital Partners might mean, an unnamed Strib reporter gave City Pages this stinging assessment of Moses' project: "There's some hope that they'll reverse the dumbing-down trend from the redesign. Maybe they'll recognize the need for depth and investigative reporting and stop the comic-book aspect of what our newspaper has become."

In one of the emails to Perry, Moses, who said she couldn't go on record because she's not an official Strib spokesperson, backed up the readership statistics she supplied Perry with confident assurance: "I have absolute faith in my argument."

One such statistic she offered:

Readership increased 2.3 percentage points, or 6 percent in the six months following the redesign, according to Scarborough Research.

Not understanding readership calculations, nor how 2.3 percent equals 6 percent, I e-mailed Moses, and she replied with this clarification: "2.3 is the number of percentage POINTS. On a 30-some original readership rating, the gain of 2.3 points amounts to 6 percent."

OK, but a statement in her official Star Tribune bio states something else altogether:

In the six months after the remake, readership rose 4.4 percentage points, according to Scarborough research -- the first such increase in six years.

Asked about this, her reply, which seems to arrive not from absolute certainty (but, perhaps, absolute faith), was: "I think 4.4 refers to daily and 2.3 refers to Sunday."

A few hours later, Moses emailed again, providing text "from our archives citing Scarborough research." The May 9, 2006 Strib article she included does little to clarify her conflicting statistics. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the article states, in the six months ended March 2006 daily circulation fell 2.9% and Sunday circulation fell 7.4% (the piece also mentions growth of Pioneer Press circulation by 6 and 3.6 percent for daily and Sunday editions for the same timespan).

The story did, as Moses says, reference a 4.4% increase in readership, but that figure only applied to adult readers of the weekday version. Its source? Not Scarborough Research--which isn't mentioned at all--but Ben Taylor, Star Tribune senior vice president for marketing and communications.

[Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.]

Media Monitor: January 5

• Hubbard's hardship: KSTP owner Rob Hubbard's dispute with the Department of Natural Resources is heating up: he wants to tear down an 800 s.f. cabin in Lakeland to build a 16,000 s.f. mansion with pristine views of the federally protected St. Croix River, in violation of DNR rules enforcing a 40-foot setback for such projects. Lakeland's City Council approved a variance so the 5-bedroom mansion and 4-car garage could be built, but the DNR says there's no "hardship" to warrant it; that is, the terrain and size of the lot present no physical obstacle for Hubbard conforming with the rules. "I'm not making any threats," Hubbard told the Pioneer Press, "but I've lived on the river my entire life. I intend to raise my family there. I don't think the Department of Natural Resources should have the ability to tell me that I can't rebuild a structure that is there." Hubbard is appealing the decision.

• Coleman stands by Kiffmeyer quote: In my interview published Tuesday, former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer said a reporter "cobbled together" sections of her speech at a 2004 event "to say something I didn’t say." The journalist was the Star Tribune's Nick Coleman, who wrote on the event in a March 31, 2006, column:

When I attended a prayer breakfast in 2004, Minnesota's Living Flag, Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, told the faithful that the "five most destructive words" she knows are " Separation of church and state."

When emailed about Kiffmeyer's accusation that he misquoted her, Coleman stood by the quote's accuracy, stating, "She uttered that infamous phrase at a National Day of Prayer breakfast in Plymouth in 2004. I was there. I have written about it or alluded to it several times. Amy Klobuchar, who also was there, can attest to the accuracy of it." Sen. Klobuchar, presumably otherwise occupied, hasn't yet responded to an email asking for confirmation.

• Sell, sell, sell: Via the Securities and Exchange Commission, here's the official purchase agreement for the Star Tribune; Snowboard Acquisition is a corporation formed by Avista Capital Partners.

Guild members may take the Strib's money and run

The abrupt sale of the Minneapolis Star Tribune to Avista Capital Partners the day after Christmas left many of the paper's employees wondering how soon they'd be shown the door.
But a little-known clause in the paper's contract with union journalists suggests that its employees might have good reason to look for the door--possibly in droves.

Article VIII of the Star Tribune's contract with the Minnesota Newspaper Guild and Typograhical Union ensures all employees represented by the union the right to exercise a buyout should the paper be sold to an outside buyer. Within five days of a sale, employees must express their interest in a buyout; in return, they'll receive two weeks of pay for every year worked, with a 40 week maximum. The purchase by Avista is said to be completed in "early 2007." While the Guild represents employees at the St. Paul Pioneer Press as well, the stipulation is specific to Star Tribune's Guild members.

Pat Doyle, Guild officer and veteran Star Tribune capitol reporter, says the benefit of this stipulation is that it allows employees "to trigger their own buyouts" rather than force them to accept terms established by management.

The provision in the Guild's contract was invoked in 1998 when the Cowles family sold the paper to the McClatchy group for $1.2 billion (more than double Avista's $530 million bid), but through a special agreement, only 12 employees received "buyouts." The agreement only applied only to the Cowles' sale of the paper to McClatchy; the Guild did not waive any rights to enforce this provision in the future.

"The Guild's position on this issue is even firmer and stronger than it was in '98," Doyle said. "It's in the contract. It's pretty clear-cut, and it's never been removed or shot down in any way."

But Eric Black, a Star Tribune writer for nearly 30 years, is more cautious. He says the buyout option is "enough money to get your attention," but adds a qualifier: "if it turns out to be an offer that's on the table, I'm sure quite a few people will take advantage of it."

"It's in the contract, and it's clear to me what's intended," he said. "Being cautious about such things and having been through the deal in '98, I don't foreclose the possibility that either the old owners or the new owners will come up with some kind of interpretation that would either try to get out of that offer or limit it in some way."

While Doyle wouldn't offer an estimate on how many staffers might be interested in buyouts, he said that after a Guild representative informed members about it on Tuesday, "It seemed to be of great interest to a lot of people."

A staff list circulating at the paper shows that at least 76 employees have 25 years or more experience, including some of its best-known writers: food columnist Al Sicherman (who celebrates his 39th anniversary in 2007), film critic Jeff Strickler (36 years), political reporter Conrad Defiebre (34 years), Jon Bream (32 years), columnist Lori Sturdevant (31 years), metro columnist Doug Grow (28 years), theater critic Graydon Royce (27 years), and National Press Award-winning cartoonist Steve Sack (26 years).

The Star Tribune's management representative was unavailable for comment.

The Noose or the Suit?

Newsdesigner, sure to be one of my frequently trafficked sites of '07, has an interesting comparison of front-page coverage of Saddam Hussein's exeution in the US and around the world. Needless to say, American papers seem to focus on the personality of Saddam (he's often shown in his gray suit and white shirt without a tie), while elsewhere cover stories showed the noose going around his neck.

The Year in Media: Print pales amid (another) online boom

Which do you think George Allen regrets more, his use of the word "macaca," or the invention of YouTube?

It's a tossup, I suppose. As demonstrated by his story (or that of a possibly bigger YouTubed boob, Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens) and its rapid dissemination across the internet, the definitive media story of 2006 was the rise of citizen media, and the vehicles like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, and scores of others that can be used, for free, to spread memes worldwide in less time than it takes to say "santorum."

The flip side of that story, of course, is old media's fumbling attempts to stay relevant in this new environment. Indeed, it's a curious state of affairs when TIME, one of the grand-daddies of old media, declares "You"--meaning me and you and all the other personal media producers out there--"Person of the Year." My friend Siva Vaidhyanathan, writing at MSNBC, chortles at TIME's backslapping for those of use who spent 2006 "seizing the reins of the global media... and beating the pros at their own game":

Well, thank you, Time, for hyping me, overvaluing me, using me to sell my image back to me, profiling me, flattering me, and failing to pay me. As soon as I saw myself on my local newsstand, I had to buy a copy of Time.

But 2006 was the year that saw print pale and online endeavors soar, from Google's wallet-lightening purchase of YouTube to the boom in expenditures for online employment ads, which now show online job listings outpacing those in print by a half billion dollars. Given the trend, who can blame dead-tree media for trying extraordinary tactics to make ends meet? Locally, that's meant plenty of media consolidation, cost-cutting measures, and new ventures. A less than comprehensive run-down of local media goings-on:

• This week's sudden news of a Star Tribune "fire sale" is surprising, not because, like the Pioneer Press, it's happening at all, but because the Minneapolis daily is being sold for a monstrous loss not to a well-known media company but to a private equity firm. The paper's own coverage blamed the internet for the unprecedented low valuation, and staffers are reportedly freaking out about the bombshell: " Everything we've heard from [Star Tribune owner] McClatchy recently is 'Hey, we're all in this together. We don't do layoffs.' Blah blah blah BS," columnist Doug Grow told the AP. (More to come on this.)

• Citing a drop in ad revenues (and the internet ad spectre), the St. Paul Pioneer Press announced it'd be offering buyouts to staffers this fall. By the time all was said and done, ten percent of newsroom employees were without jobs, representing a combined 502 years of experience, and another 37 part-timers were let go. The paper was acquired by McClatchy and eventually sold off to MediaNews Group; nationally MediaNews is slashing staff as well, most notably at papers in San Jose, Denver and Los Angeles.

• The Star Tribune's efforts in 2006 seemed a shotgun approach: last month it launched Vita.MN, a bars-and-bands event listing that covers that same turf as Free Time, a standalone free tabloid the paper tested out a few years back. It seems to be geared toward competing with City Pages and Pulse, but its less than dazzling content suggests it exists to drive traffic to its website. The paper's Buzz.MN seems derivative of the social networking site Gather.com, a Minnesota Public Radio joynt, and MNSpeak. (The dot-MN URL was a hot one this year, as someone figured out that Mongolia was selling domains with that locally flavored e-ppendage.)

• Speaking of which, MNSpeak got a financial boost this year when it was purchased from creator Rex Sorgatz (who has since moved to Seattle to work at Microsoft) by the "Bartel Cartel"--former CP publisher Tom Bartel and his wife Kris Henning, who founded The Rake. They installed their son Matt as editor of the site. (In other Rake news, the monthly cut loose editor Hans Eisenbeis this year, allegedly over conflicting opinions on the editorial direction of the magazine.) Grassroots online projects like the local issues forums at e-Democracy and Twin Cities Daily Planet appeared to continue with relative (grassroots-sized) gusto this year.

• Forum Communications, the Fargo, North Dakota–based media company, added to its empire this year, picking up key regional papers including the Grand Forks Herald, the Duluth News Tribune, The Daily Telegram in Superior, Wisconsin, and weekly newspapers in Cloquet and Two Harbors, Minnesota. As the elections came around, Forum came under scrutiny for its unusual policy—dictating which candidates a local paper was to endorse from Fargo, based on the preferences of unabashed Republican donor William Marcil, the chain’s owner.

[Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.]