Robert Niles: June 2008 archive

"Wait, she has a mom?" Laurie asked.

"Yeah..."

"But, she's not on the show."

(Cyrus' father, one-hit wonder Billy Ray Cyrus, plays her father on their Disney Channel sitcom.)

"She didn't fit in," Natalie replied.

Natalie continued. "It's a Disney show. The mother always has to be dead."
There's more...

I can't imagine how I could code, blog, comment, correspond and do all the other stuff required to lead a website and still watch all the TV I did in the early '90s.

But, what about you? Do you, for one, welcome our new Web overlords, or are you still loyal to TV? (And if you don't care about either, vote for the one you do more anyway.)

I International Congress on Online Journalism
University of Porto - December 11-12

The ObCiber - Observatório do Ciberjornalismo (Observatory of Cyberjournalism) invites submissions for its I International Congress on Online Journalism - December 11-12, 2008 - in the University of Porto, Portugal, under the general theme of '3G Journalism'.

In addition to the general conference theme, the Scientific/Programme Committee wishes particularly to encourage papers on the following themes:

Challenges posed by Convergence and Multitextuality;

Backpack Journalism;

Journalism and Blogging;

Citizen Journalism;

Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Application details, and deadlines, after the jump.
There's more...

It just isn't very big.

If it were bigger, then you'd be in the metro-publishing business, not the neighborhood one. That is also why, over the years, neighborhoods have been so under-served by professional print media. Maybe you'd get a weekly, in middle-class to wealthy suburbs. Or a shopper with a few local notices. But most of the real news of the community -- school lunch schedules, meeting notices, local council news, deaths, births and business deals -- were delivered in other ways: school flyers, church newsletters, word of mouth.

A publisher cannot afford to staff a full newsroom to cover a small market. Yet that's the mistake that many journalism entrepreneurs have made, and continue to make. They hire reporters, copy editors and senior editors before lining up the advertisers necessary to pay all those salaries.

The small market problem is made worse when publishing online. Every non-homeless resident of any neighborhood has a front porch, doorstep or mailbox at which to get a newspaper. But not even the most wired neighborhoods have 100-percent, always-on Internet penetration. If you publish online instead of print, you are giving up a percentage of the potential market. But even though you are publishing in a smaller "virtual market" than the real neighborhood, you aren't getting a break on rent, labor, insurance, advertising or any of the other costs associated with running a business in that community.
There's more...

Dan Gillmor's been challenging the "conventional wisdom" of journalism in online medium for about as long as there have been journalists in online media. I spoke with him over the phone last week about his latest initiative, the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, at Arizona State University.

"It's all very new," Gillmor said of the program, which began with a grants from the Knight and Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundations last year.

"The really simple goal that I have, and that the school has," Gillmor said, "is to help the students understand the value of, for lack of a better expression, inventing their own jobs."
There's more...

I'll be traveling on Monday, but anticipate having a post up before I go. Then I'll pick up a regular posting schedule on Tuesday.
There's more...

My wife and I have stood by for the past five years, ready to purchase a home, but refusing to participate in the Ponzi scheme that American home lending had become. When we decided to stay in Pasadena, back in 2003, we did the math and figured how much we could afford to pay for a house, using traditional mortgage affordability formulas. Heck, we even fudged it up a little bit, and priced a 30-year, fixed-rate loan that would take a third of our income, rather than the traditional 25 percent.

Forget about finding a home in the area at that price; we couldn't even find someone who would write us the loan. Every broker we spoke with tried to move us into an "80/20" double loan, with a variable-rate second loan that would cover the "down payment" that would qualify us for the first.

Real estate agents told us we were naive for taking such a conservative view of what we could afford. With prices rising so fast, one agent we know urged us to forget about affordability. Get a negative amortization loan, with a artificially low introductory payment, "just to get in." We could soon sell for a big profit, or at least refinance and take money out of the house, she said.

Having been in the Web publishing business since 1995, I'd seen this thinking before. That bubble burst, and I knew the real estate one would, too.
There's more...

I was talking over lunch today about sources who don't want to talk about certain aspects of their lives.

Someone mentioned a profile she'd read recently that ignored wide-spread rumors about the subject's troubled past.

"Ugh. Who wants to read that?" she asked.

Sounds like the writer was just trying to get the story out, I replied. If the source won't talk; skip it. Make the deadline. File the piece. Send the invoice.
There's more...

Journalists should not forget to ask these basic background questions of all political candidates they cover. Their answers will provide warnings about legal, ethical and financial controversies a candidate might face during the campaign. The answers might also provide a good lead for a news feature, and at the very least will guide your research into the candidate's past. Couple these answers with an investigation into who's giving money to their campaigns, and you've got some solid campaign coverage that goes beyond the spin of the campaign trail.

You'll have the best chance to get the straight answers you want -- and to follow up when a candidate gets evasive -- if you ask these questions in person. Protect yourself by recording the candidate's answers, too. Follow up 'yes' answers by seeking full details. Allow candidates to explain themselves -- sometimes past experiences become powerful incentives in a person's development. But if a candidate refuses to answer, or fudges an answer, note that, as well.

A complete set of candidate questions and answers (or refusals to answer) can become a valuable citizens' resource on your organization's website.

Here are the questions...
There's more...

Please keep sending in story suggestions, tips and questions that you'd like to see addressed here on the new site
There's more...

For those Web publishers who are using third-party ad networks on your websites here is today's tip, from my personal experience.
There's more...

News organizations should revisit their work (as well as the work of colleagues) from time to time. Journalism is a social science, and testing previous work is an important part of social science. But setting out to find examples of "liberal bias" can devolve into cherry-picking: the citations that seem favorable to liberals make it into the report, but will anyone record the reports that favored conservatives? And what about the stories that the newsroom missed entirely? How might those omissions have skewed coverage?

Journalists also would be naive to address charges of "liberal bias" without acknowledging the recent history behind those claims.
There's more...

Yes, I am a stats geek, and take a hard line against the use of garbage polling in news reporting. But this post isn't so much as news report as an opportunity for an online discussion. A reader vote provides a quick and simple way for readers to see, graphically, what other discussion participants think about a question.

We've had a lot of fun with votes on Theme Park Insider and on Violinist.com. (And, yes, I did some on OJR, too.) So I am planning to continue the tradition on Sensible Talk.

Here's our initial vote, then.
There's more...

$12.50 to excerpt five words on a website? (Background on AP/blogger controversy here and here.)

Let's take 50 percent off the top for overhead. Do any Sensible Talk readers know any reporters over at the AP who are getting paid $1.25 a word?

Hey, if that's the price that AP's putting on their work, that's what their reporters ought to be getting paid. Right?
There's more...

Because that's how we make better journalism -- with sensible talk. Our ability to report is only as good as our ability to perceive, and our perceptions are best informed by both our senses and our understanding of facts.

When journalism is working well, good reporting flows from facts to conclusion to action, giving citizens the tools to build a better society.

Journalism fails readers when it regurgitates ideology, from publishers or from sources, instead of exploring facts. Just as political leaders fail the public when they do the same. Unfortunately, the past decade has seen too much of both in the United States.

I've built this website as a community for journalists who want to speak truth to power, and for readers who want to do the same. That's why I call the site "criticism from the reality-based world."

We hope that you will join the talk, too.
There's more...