My Dream Job Doesn’t Exist Anymore

A thought provoking commentary by Shelly Palmer on MediaBizBloggers.com

Newspapers vs. The News

In today’s MediaBizBloggers, Steve Rosenbaum writes how News will survive the demise of the Newspaper. (And provides a
cautionary tale for the Network News business.)

Thought provoking reading.

Regional News Across The Pond

And the consolidation of news operations is happening in Great Britain
as well. According to Broadcastnow, ITV and the BBC have published a roadmap for a regional news partnership.

Broadcast Sweatshops

As broadcast news attempts to reinvent itself with "produce once, run
everywhere" utilizing the same or smaller staffs, it suddenly dawned on
me that some of creature comforts that once graced our crazy business
have fallen by the wayside: edit cubicles that once turned into edit
rooms have returned to being cubicles; hourly-paid staff jobs have
become flat rate daily-hire freelancers and dinner reimbursements for
non-union workers have all but disappeared.

Young people entering the business today are working in a sweatshop,
it’s just that sewing machines have been replaced with computers. There
is nothing wrong with expecting somone to produce content for all the
news platforms, there is only something wrong asking them to do it for
60 hours a week without throwing in a free dinner here or there.

New York Nonstop

WNBC launched NY
Nonstop yesterday (3-09-09) on its digital tier and on Cablevision
(Ch 109) & Time Warner (Ch 161).

Billed as being "geared toward a city-minded audience", I had it on most
of the day in my office (and I have it on as I write). It’s definitely
geared toward an under-30 audience and I’m not impressed.(B&C
says it’s pushing itself to be "relevant with those much more familiar
with Chuck D than star anchor Chuck Scarborough".)

Over-30 me would rather watch NY1.

This Too Is Past

Broadcast Engineering Editorial Director Brad Dick waxes positive about
the future of local television stations in his January ’09 editorial "This
too shall pass".

While those of us who toil at the network or station group level mourn
the thinning of our ranks over the past two months – to see your
future, just look at the local radio business today. Enough said.

Media Cutbacks

Enough said…

Praying for… a Job

With recent layoffs oops.. downsizing at Media General, the CBS owned stations, ABC News, the Washington Post and dozens of other journalistic places, thank G-d that there is a place where there is hope for all my under-employed news brothers and sisters. And thanks to Lost Remote for pointing it out.

The End of Network News ?

What kind of blogger would I be if I didn’t have a couppla links to the
downfall of Rome, uh network newsgathering. Yes, years ago there was all
kinds of talk about ABC & CBS merging their newsgathering operations
with CNN. It appears what’s old is new again:

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/04/08/cbs-is-leaving-the-news-business/

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/cbs/cbs_cnn_in_talksagain_81839.asp

Not Heading for NAB…

It’s my own fault, I guess. I made a decision to move from engineering
to production management. Now a victim of corporate belt tightening, I
know that if I want to go to NAB in the future – it will be on my own
dime & on my own time.

So I’ll be sitting here in New York reading everyone else’s NAB blog.
Check back daily for links to the most interesting items for my fellow
news junkies.

Here’s one for starters:
http://blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/nab/

The Hockenberry Invention

The GE / Bill
O’Reilly fallout from John Hockenberry’s article
in MIT’s Technology Review continues to simmer. The pertinent
infomation and background links are contained in this update from TVNewser.

Poilce In Persuit (of Ratings)

It’s been 19 months since I ranted and raved about car chases and airplane landings as breaking news. I was going to do it again, but Don Day of Lost Remote said it much better.

Pretty As A Peacock

I hope no one outside the media biz read this…

Variety broke the story of how NBC is combining its long-form, Dateline, NBC News Productions and NBC Media units into Peacock Productions. Says the article: “Peacock Prods. will apply NBC News’ journalistic standards when clients ask for them. Or, in the case of… (one show produced by NBC News Productions)… news standards aren’t necessarily applied.” Wow, Ed Murrow & Fred Friendly must be writhing in their graves! No wonder people, especially in the blogsphere, don’t trust the MSM (mainstream media).

Until recently, if one of the Net News orgs wanted to violate its ”journalistic standards”, they would farm the show out to their “arms length” production company: Lincoln Square, EyeTwo or Media Productions.
After all – in this brave new media world – who cares if the Next
Food Network Star embelished his resume a little bit – no one put a second Eye on it.

But now it’s looking like it’s the client’s choice to have journalistic
standards a la carte, not the Networks choice. Gee, anything can be
bought for a price these days, even the cachet of NBC News.

Don’t Forget What Business You’re In

Just like the people who ran the great railroads at the beginning of the
20th Century forgot that they were really in the transportation business
and not the railroad business – don’t forget you’re in the news business
(not the TV news business.)

Keep in mind that Yahoo
(a company that gathers no news of its own,) is still the number
one source of news on the net, and the net’s where under 30′s go to
get their news.*

So when you’re asked to file a web or digital subchannel story – do it
or you’ll become an over-the-air dinosaur.

Still don’t get it? Read Jeff Jarvis’ blog entry "TV
is dead; long live reinvented TV."

(And just to emphasize how important Yahoo News is – just follow
the lead of ABC News.)

About “How Much Should You Know”

For those of you who have heard waaay too much about the
Duke lacrosse players story – it’s worth a moment to pause and think about
the alleged victim. Should the media release her name? Should they
have mentioned her race? Read an insightful
blog entry by WRAL’s David Crabtree and the even more thought provoking
reader responses.

Frank, Cronkite and Woodruff

The passing of former NBC News president
Reuven Frank got me thinking today. In the late 1960′s, the CBS Evening
News anchor Walter Cronkite went to Vietnam to see the war firsthand.
Luckily he was not injured and the anchor, who up until then was thought
to be a hawk, returned to his broadcast "
with a different perspective."

One wonders what stories
ABC’s Bob Woodruff will tell of the war in Iraq when he returns to the
broadcast he shares with Ms. Vargas. He so desperately wanted to
see the war as the Iraqi soldiers see it.

On VeePees and Miners

VeePees:
From the NY Daily News (1/4/06):
"Vice President
Cheney told a conservative think-tank audience yesterday that President
Bush’s supersecret domestic eavesdropping program might have thwarted
one of the 9/11 attacks had it been in place then."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/380074p-322752c.html
The 9/11 attacks could also have been thwarted by security check points
manned by intelligent life forms, more Federal sky marshals and Federal
law enforcement and security agencies that actually exchanged tips with
each other, but VeePee Cheney failed to mention those.
For another
viewpoint see Frank Rich’s
The Wiretappers That Couldn’ t Shoot Straight in the NY Times Op-Ed
section, 1/8/2005.

Miners:
The "Press" once again proved its power to really
screw things up when a "reliable source", a Congresswoman, simply
repeats the same rumor everyone else is mouthing. Who was there to say
that the ‘emperor had no clothes’? One cable wag had the guts to say
that it was because his audience loves bread and circuses – and boring
talking-head reporters be damned.

(Sorry about all the cliches…)
And a most interesting discussion
on
CNN’s RELIABLE SOURCES.

De-Ba’athification, Italian-style

Some time in the past year or two, the New York Times had an article of
what happens when the forces of ‘democracy’ invade a country and oust
its dictator. (I think it was in "The News of the Week & Review".)
Basically the article said that 1/3 the time the country became more
democratic, 1/3 the time it remained about the same and 1/3 the time
things were worse.

Surmise how things are going in Iraq by reading this article:

"
Cold Hands" by John D’Ulisse.

Sense and Sensibility

Being an electrical engineering school dropout rather than a J-school
graduate, I developed my news chops by observing some of the best men in
the business. (And yes, they were all men back then.) These guys had
standards and their pearls became the policy book.

Why Live?
So I don’t understand why, even in todays competitive environment, why anyone would want to show the landing of a disabled plane (or a high speed highway chase for that matter,) live without adding a few seconds of delay. If one of these jets (and there have been at least four nationally televised incidents since September
22nd,) were to explode live, I’d call it pornography, not breaking news.
In todays server environment, it’s so easy to add a delay.*

Perhaps it’s only me that thinks that the post-WWII advances in the quality
of journalism were permanent. I guess everyone in the control room and in the executive suite are yellow. (See Wikipedia.)
“This instrument, television, it can entertain, it can inform, yes, and it can even inspire. But it all depends on the will of the humans who operate it. Otherwise it is just lights and wires in a box.” – Edward R. Murrow
UPDATE: 12/27/05 – Incident Number 5 – Enough Already ! Today it was only a cargo plane.
(*Note: Yes, it’s much easier to just take the remote live. But as someone who strung two inch videotape from one VTR to another for a seven second delay – things are so much easier today.)