Christopher Mason

(Photo credit: Daniel Rosenbaum for the New York Times)

In today’s New York Times, Jenna Wortham examines a perhaps unexpected growth in handmade zines that stems from a deliberate pushback against the creeping levels of technology that have largely digitized the way we consume media, and ideas.

The article, although anecdotal, paints a compelling picture of a small-scale return to handmade, ink-on-paper zines whose audience appreciates their niche and the exclusivity that comes with feeling you are one of a few to have access to a publication— something that is nearly impossible to achieve online, where writing seems to have a limitless audience, even if the size of the actual audience so rarely reflects the seemingly limitless potential readership.

The irony? The creators of these zines are using the very technology— through Facebook and Twitter— to reach this new and growing audience of ink-on-paper fans.

Now, if only newspapers could tap that nostalgia for ink-stained fingers…

With the announcement of two major departures from the US media critics’ scene (Jim Romenesko voluntarily and Slate’s Jack Shafer via layoff), comes further evidence that even in the US, where there is a long-held and ingrained culture of media criticism, the field is thinning.

Gawker looks at the remaining few who cover the media, finding that the field is less than robust.

In the UK, there is a healthier culture of media criticism, led by the Guardian’s media section and, more controversially, Private Eye.

Here in Canada, the media has rarely covered itself well (save, perhaps, for a line-up of autobiographies written by Canadian journalists in the 1980s that provided an insider’s look at the industry).

Even where Gawker finds thinning ranks in the US, Canadian audiences would be hard-pressed to find any full-time journalists who cover the media for mainstream media outlets. Antonia Zerbisias used to cover the media for the Toronto Star, both in the newspaper and through an active and widely-read blog, and also used to host a show on CBC Newsworld called “Inside Media”, but it has been more than four years since she shifted over to become a more general lifestyle columnist for the paper.

Instead, Canada has a few niche, mostly-online, offerings that, although they do produce strong reporting and analysis, are consumed mostly by those who work in, or otherwise have an interest/stake in, the media.

In Canada, audiences have j-source.ca, from the Canadian Journalism Project, the Ryerson Review of Journalism, The Tyee, Masthead Online, Canadian Magazines, Toronto Sun Family blog and other individual online efforts.

Perhaps the future of media criticism is in narrowly-focused online sites, blogs, forums and Twitter feeds. However, there is a need for mainstream discussions of the media, storytellers, what stories are being told, how they are being told and, crucially, what stories are not being told.

A five-year old piece from the Ryerson Review of Journalism, headlined “In Your Face” touches on why media criticism has so rarely been a thriving beat:

For years, many publishers and editors argued that readers didn’t care about what goes on inside newsrooms. Clichés ruled the day: journalism about journalism was “shop talk,” “inside baseball” and “navel gazing.” “Historically, news organizations have not felt it was necessary to let the public in on what they did in their newsrooms,” says Stephen J. A. Ward, associate professor of journalism ethics at the University of British Columbia’s School of Journalism.

The piece goes on to recount one story of a (well-known) columnist who voluntarily put down his media criticism pen:

John Fraser learned this the hard way. In the January 2002 issue of Masthead, the former National Post media columnist wrote: “A hundred and fifty plus columns later, I ended the media commentary mandate myself and changed my column to one of arts commentary. I’d run out of cover. Media friends thought I had betrayed them; my then-proprietor’s spouse (Barbara Amiel) attacked me in her own column in Maclean’s, the ownership of my outlet had changed dramatically; and the general trend toward ‘media convergence’ had, in my view, made the very notion of media criticism not just foolhardy but downright suicidal.”

The waning reflection on the media, its inner workings and our relationship with it, is perhaps a surprising trend given that audiences are consuming more information via the media than ever before.

In Canada, where the journalism community is a small one, and owned by a handful of proprietors, objective and balanced criticism finds little breathing space in an environment where nearly everyone knows one another and grudges become ingrained. Which means, reporters out there covering the media rarely step outside the bounds of earnings reports, launching and closing of media outlets and other cut-and-dry news.

It’s enough to spark nostalgia for Frank magazine…

When I read this piece earlier today (by a good friend and fellow journo, Karen Pinchin) calling for a new approach to journalism, I recalled a similar galvanizing moment that had me thinking about journalism in ways similar to Karen’s response to coverage of the UK riots.

For me it was the Arab Spring coverage in the first months of 2011. In February, the Toronto Star did something not many media outlets are doing any more: they sent a sizeable team of journalists (nine reporters in all) across the Middle East and North Africa to simultaneously cover the uprisings in countries throughout the region.

It was a move that, at face value, was an impressive deployment of resources. And really, it was. Any media outlet that invests in foreign reporting these days deserves all the credit in the world.

But at second glance, the Star’s coverage was an impressive use of resources, but was it an effective use of resources?

Within their reporting staff, the Star has journalists they can lean on for expertise in the region: reporter, Michelle Shephard, who is among the most respected national security reporters out there, as well as several others, such as Oakland Ross and Mitch Potter among others, who have extensive experience both in the Middle East and as foreign correspondents.

But, the Star, like most every other newspaper that has been cutting back on foreign postings the past two decades, is finding itself with fewer and fewer reporters and editors on staff who have foreign reporting experience. So it means that when management signs-off on an impressive, ambitious reporting exercise like sending nine journalists across the Middle East and North Africa, the paper has no choice but to send abroad a number of journalists who, although they are great journalists, have little or no experience in the region, or more broadly as foreign correspondents.

And so the Star paid what must have been at the very least high five figures, if not well into the six figures, to get foreign coverage that could have been matched, and perhaps exceeded, by engaging with experienced freelance journalists already living in the region who would have had the contacts, experience and insights to contribute comprehensive coverage at a fraction of the cost.

[My views on this are partly formed by an experience in early 2008, when Kenya was experiencing post-election violence. I was headed to the Kenyan border from Kampala to cover the flow of refugees coming into Uganda. I pitched the story to a Canadian media outlet, which would have cost them somewhere in the range of $500. They accepted my pitch, and then later backed out of it when they decided to send their own staff reporter to Kenya. Watching their coverage unfold was mind-blowing. After a run of stories that the Star frankly could have pulled off the news wires for free, the reporter left the country, completing an assignment that would have cost the newspaper a small fortune.]

Examples of major international stories, like the UK riots, the Arab Spring and, say, the miners in Chile, show that media outlets have resources. Unfortunately, they often all decide to unleash those resources at the same time, to cover the same story. The first media outlet to say Let them all rush to Chile, we’ll be happy to rely on Reuters, AP, AFP and/or on-the-ground freelancers to drive our coverage of it and instead deploy our resources to cover other stories will find themselves with a loyal, trusting high-value audience that engages with the media outlet on a deeper level than simply clicking through to a photo gallery, video or story, staying for a couple minutes and then disappearing forever. If I were an advertiser I would take one trusting, loyal and engaged audience member over 100 or even a 1,000 of the fly-by clickers that drive so much of today’s online content.

For whatever reason, coverage by Canadian media lately is sparking a lot of reflection on the future of journalism. The television coverage by CTV and the CBC of the Royal visit to Canada by Kate and Will sparked a lot of debate over what compels media decision-makers to lead their newscasts, and spend considerable resources, covering such a non-story. Here, Tim Knight, a former senior CBC staffer and PBC and ABC alumnus, says he has had enough with The National, while Kai Nagata flat-out quit his post as CTV’s Quebec City bureau chief after the network’s coverage of the Royal visit.

Karen proposes an interesting alternative, where media outlets would, as an organization or through individual reporters pursuing specialties, produce in-depth content that could be made available to media outlets everywhere, either for a fee or subsidized through sponsorship.

In the meantime, there is a way to get in-depth, knowledgeable reporting in specific regions, topics or individuals: experienced, freelance reporters.

A freelancing future

The future of journalism is not in an institutional, unionized environment staffed with journalists who work shifts and spend all or most of their career with one employer.

Like a great many professions, journalism is undergoing a fundamental change away from life-long, pensioned careers and towards a more entrepreneurial (and yes, unstable and insecure) model.

But in moving (slowly) towards a freelancing future, journalism is returning to its roots.

The first daily newspaper I worked for was the Ottawa Citizen while I was still in school. On my first day I was (naively) shocked to find most everyone worked shifts. This is crazy, I thought at the time, the news doesn’t happen according to structured shifts, so why are journalists doing shift work?

Before I’d ever set foot in a newsroom I just assumed that journalists would work schedules according to their beats or assignments. If you’re working a story that requires you to be out at midnight, then you work at midnight. If there’s nothing happening till noon the next day, then sleep till 11 a.m.

Now, certainly many journalists do work schedules according to the stories they cover, but at the bedrock of most newsrooms is a regimented schedule of shifts that makes it difficult to do journalism the way it’s meant to be done.

More and more we will be seeing coverage driven by freelancers who have built their career on a certain region or issue and sell their work to a range of media outlets, rather than exclusively to one.

The Magazine Model

Eventually, media outlets will be forced to follow the magazine approach of having a small, strong stable of staffers who guide the editorial decision-making and editorial voice, while relying on a vast network of experienced (and hopefully well-paid) freelancers who are commissioned to do stories based on their expertise, contacts and/or location.

In a way, that model for a newsroom would address the breaking-news challenge facing media outlets who are struggling to produce journalism that is still relevant the day after a breaking-news story has happened. When your audience is closely engaged with an unfolding story via Twitter, Facebook, TV, radio and any number of instant news sources, how do you produce a story for the next day’s newspaper or broadcast that is relevant and still tells a story?

This was raised yesterday by New York Times reporter Brian Stelter at a conference, as tweeted by Jill Van Wyke: “New role for editors: @brianstelter says eds should monitor reporter’s tweets from scene, fold into breaking-news rewrites. #aejmc11”

But beyond that, there is a need for that next day’s story to shift hard to analysis and explanatory journalism to remain relevant, which again touches on Karen’s post calling for journalists who are deeply-connected with an issue and who could then produce those well-thought-out analysis pieces for the next day’s issue or broadcast.

Sports journalism as a model

In many ways, sports journalism has already faced-up to the relevancy issues the rest of journalism continues to struggle with.

It used to be that sports reporters were the lifeblood of any sports fan. I remember as a kid counting down the days to buy the Tuesday newspaper because it would have a full page of team-by-team statistics, for the NBA, MLB or NHL, depending on the time of year. I would spend the next two or three days reading every line, every number to absorb all the stories those numbers told, and then spend the following days counting down to the next Tuesday.

Yes, I was a bit of a loser as a kid.

But when the Internet came along, Tuesdays didn’t mean anything any more. I could get those statistics any day, any minute, and box scores too.

Sports reporters realized their game stories weren’t much needed any more, because by the next morning everyone who cared already knew who won and who lost thanks to websites and 24-hour sports channels. So sports journalism began a fundamental change that today has led to a calibre of writing, storytelling and in-depth, long-form journalism that is difficult to find anywhere else in a newspaper.

Despite being an ardent baseball fan, I’d like to think that I’d read the likes of Chris Jones (of Esquire and also now Grantland) or Joe Posnanski (of Sports Illustrated) just for their storytelling, wit and the insight.

Grantland

If other forms of journalism could produce a publication (online or in print) like Grantland, I’d be a happy camper.

Grantland was founded by Bill Simmons, backed by ESPN, with the goal of becoming a hub for great writers to explore, explain and debate sports and pop culture.

Just read Simmons’ explanation of the site’s goals and apply it to any other form of journalism:

“We had four goals for this site. The first was to find writers we liked and let them do their thing. The second was to find sponsors we liked and integrate them within the site — so readers didn’t have to pay for content, and also, so we didn’t have to gravitate toward quantity over quality just to chase page views. The third was to take advantage of a little extra creative leeway for the right reasons and not the wrong ones. And the fourth was to hire the right blend of people — mostly young, mostly up-and-comers, all good people with good ideas who aren’t afraid to share them.”

Amen.

Granted, not everyone is convinced that Grantland will survive. Others are more optimistic.

Page views are important. Few online news sites have managed to escape the intoxicating allure of a story that goes viral. Despite the best of intentions, the feeling an online editor gets when they see a spike in hits is not unlike a kitten who just got its first mind-blowing shot of catnip— especially as companies struggle to monetize online content for something more than pennies on the dollar compared to print advertising.

The challenge is, how do we get away from flooding the zone with quick-hit pieces on a story like the UK riots, and instead replace it with longer-form, insightful analysis when audience numbers and revenue depend on getting the most clicks online.

By abandoning the out-of-breath race to go viral, we might just find ourselves producing thoughtful, smart, engaging and unique journalism that finds itself a healthy, trusting, loyal, and yes, perhaps smaller, audience.

Grantland is not the first to try to get away from page hits, and to recognize that a reader becomes a grumpy reader when they are inundated with pop-up ads, ads at the start of every video and banners everywhere. Quality, long-form journalism keeps readers around, and traditional media learned decades ago that audiences who have trust, faith and loyalty towards a particular media outlet are more likely to see advertisements broadcast or printed via that media outlet through the same prism.

Quality over quantity, based on the flexibility of freelancers and a strong core staff. Count me in.

The case against branding in journalism. Key line: “Newspapers used to give readers what we thought they needed. Now, in desperation, we give readers what we think they want. ” More useful discussion, including comments from Weingarten and the professor who assigned the branding question to the university student, can be found here. Buttry makes the good point that Weingarten is a brand unto himself, whether that’s his first priority or not.

All journalists are about brand-building, and so are the newspapers and magazines they write for. But that brand needs to be built on something more than an active Twitter account, which is the point Weingarten is getting at.

Earlier today, I popped over to Google to look something up about Harry Truman.

Typing “Truman” into Google took me over to YouTube, where I came across this video.

That’s all well and good, but Harry Truman wasn’t the only famous Truman (and no, I’m not talking about the movie).

I’ve long been a fan of Truman Capote’s book “In Cold Blood”, so when searching “Truman” produced some Truman Capote results I was naturally curious.*

*Bad move

That got me on to a Capote appearance on one of Dean Martin’s roasts from (I think) the early 1970s.

Which led to a look at Capote’s Wikipedia page.

Which led me back to YouTube, and an appearance on the Dick Cavett Show (a great show, btw), also from the early 1970s.

Which, of course, let me to return to Wikipedia for a refresher on Groucho Marx.

Which, of course, led me back to YouTube and a look at some of his final appearances, one with George Burns, and another with Bill Cosby (featuring Spanish sub-titles).

Which… now where was I?

Oh yeah, Harry Truman.

p.s. Dick Cavett writes a great blog/column for the New York Times. It’s well worth a look.

This article from the Knight Digital Media Center explains why the role of curator is so vital in an online world where the sheer volume of information makes it near impossible for any one individual to sift through in search of valuable knowledge.

Instead, through Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, RSS feeds, blogs tumblr, Google alerts, storify and other tools we develop a network build on trust, reliability and credibility on which we depend for the information and knowledge we need.

Storify is one among many recent entrants to offer curator services. As Amy Gahran writes in the Knight article above,

“Curation is quickly becoming a core skill for news professionals. It involves recognizing that news and journalism are, and always have been, a collaborative process between reporters, sources, and communities”.

That’s where Storify, and services like it, come in. Reporters and sections/departments within media organizations should be using tools like this to build communities of people who are intensely interested in any one given topic/region/issue/person/group. With the exception of media organizations like the New York Times, CNN, BBC, etc., people rarely engage with one entire media outlet. Instead they’ll engage with that media outlet, mostly online, when that outlet produces content that directly interests them. They will rarely stumble on that content, but will rely on their trusted network to point them to it, or the media outlet themselves to alert the individual to it if they are engaged through Twitter, RSS feeds, e-mail alerts, etc.

Through this, each media outlet creates communities based around topics—little islands in Marshall McLuhan’s global village. The Financial Times has done this particularly well. Certainly, there is still the core Financial Times, but more and more they are building niche communities based around core offerings and people who are intensely interested in that niche, such as FT Tilt and FT Alphaville.

Within the rising tide of information is so much fantastic journalism that the greatest problem is building a network on which you can rely to point you to the good stuff.

Longreads plucks fantastic journalism out of the sea each week, and also allows its audience to build their own lists of favourite journalism.

Another is The Electric Typewriter, which is similarly dedicated to finding good journalism. It’s worth a regular visit (and it’s a tumblr site so if you’re on tumblr, give the site a follow).

It was through Longreads that I first became acquainted with Paul Ford. His website is a treasure trove of great writing, and ideas. Examples to be found here and here and here.

These sites and tools are important, because even in 2007 (eons ago in digital years), mankind transmitted the equivalent of 174 newspapers per person per day using digital technology.

Today, that figure would be significantly higher. Each year the volume of information we create and transmit grows by leaps and bounds. Consider that the US National Archives received 32 million e-mails sent to the Clinton administration during Bill Clinton’s time as US president. Eight years later, they were given some 100 million e-mails sent to the Bush administration (granted, e-mail wasn’t yet widely used during the first years of Clinton’s presidency).

For decades, journalists have fashioned themselves as creators of information, and they still are. But more and more their audiences will look to them to be curators and organizers as much as creators.

This week’s round-up of interesting stories, with a mix of forensic science, sports, journalism and the closing of a legendary Manhattan haunt:

1) “The Lazarus File”

By Matthew McGough (from The Atlantic)

Nutshell: Using a great mix of storytelling, research and interrogation transcripts, the author mixes the progress made in using DNA evidence to solve criminal cases with efforts to solve a murder dating back to 1986. Turns out the murderer was within reach of the police the whole time.

2) “Weird Science”

By Michael Hall (from Texas Monthly)

Nutshell: Here, the author explores how forensic science can be less authoritative than many of us, jury members included, believe. Like McGough in The Atlantic article, Hall here weaves one example through the piece to illustrate how forensic science can put innocent people behind bars.

3) “Sports Illustrated investigation reveals eight-year pattern of violations under Tressel”

By George Dohrmann and David Epstein (from Sports Illustrated)

Nutshell: Sports Illustrated conducts a lengthy investigation into Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel. The results likely sped-up the process that led to Tressel’s recent departure from his job. It’s an example of extensive research and interviews to produce an authoritative article that one does not have to be a sports fan to appreciate.

4) “Last call at Elaine’s”

By Kevin Van Valkenburg (via Chris Jones)

Nutshell: Here, veteran sportswriter Kevin Van Valkenburg reflects on the closing of legendary New York restaurant Elaine’s, which is a place where many a writer has hung their hat over the years. It’s a moving, eloquent piece, hosted on the blog of Esquire writer Chris Jones— if you’re a fan of great writing, then Jones’ site is well worth following.

5) “Heir to the Times’ Throne?”

By Katie Feola (from Ad Week)

Nutshell: Here, Katie Feola profiles one of the many members of the Sulzberger family working with the family business: the New York Times. Of the younger generation now working for the company, David Perpich has perhaps been paid the least amount of attention. Although it’s worth noting when a Sulzberger rises through the ranks of the newspaper’s newsroom— as Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, son of the company chairman has through his current posting as Kansas City bureau chief— in an industry where media companies are racing to be the first to figure out how to monetize the glut of new technology, the fact that the NY Times’ hopes may rest in the hands of a Sulzberger on the business side of the company is a development worth paying attention to.

6) “The Way I Work”

By Liz Welch (from Inc magazine)

Nutshell: David Karp is the mid-20s phenom behind Tumblr. Here he describes his unconventional way of doing business, free from the tie-downs of such things as “schedules” and “meetings”.

Also worth noting:

- “The Human Algorithm” by Mark Little

- “Writer urges Internet junkies to ‘switch off’ and think” by Agence France Press (AFP)