Hoaxes and Non-existence: When is Richard Pérez-Peña going to start writing about the future of the NYT Company?

Richard Pérez-Peña, the New York Times senior media writer, does a stand up job of covering the American media scene, most recently A senior fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence By Richard Pérez-Peña and coverage of the hoax NYT edition (covered by this blog before the NYT).

The IHT is happy to run corporate press releases concerning good news stories - appointments of new editors, opening of print sites, publishing partnerships etc.

But there seems to be a resounding silence from the NYT and the IHT's media writers about the future of their employee.

Normally, I am against in-house media writers covering their own paper, and don't like the above mentioned examples of corporate puff pieces - there is a credibility problem.

But if the senior editors will run these puff pieces, isn't it time for some serious reporting about the rather dire straights of the NYT Company. It is, presumably, a two way street, and of some interest to IHT readers (at least judged by emails and traffic to this blog).

Time, I think, with NYT time stock trading below $8 and the blogosphere awash with NYT stories, for either Pfanner or Doreen C. to be tasked this story, because it sure ain't coming from Richard.

They even managed to run a piece about how companies were turning to blogging to report layoffs (especially in media sector) to be ahead of the blogosphere. Perhaps someone might re-read that story and see whether they can see any relevance in it to the NYT itself.

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'I read A Place in My Country with absolute unalloyed delight. A glorious book.'
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‘Ian Walthew was a newspaper executive with a career that took him round the world, who one day did a mad thing. He saw a for-sale sign on a cottage in the Cotswolds, bought it, resigned and moved in. For the first few weeks he just lay on the grass in a daze. Then he started talking to his neighbours and digging into the rich history of this beautiful part of England. Out of his inquiries grew this affecting and inspiring memoir.What sets it apart from others of its ilk is the author’s enviable immunity to cliché and his determination to love his homeland better than he used to. His elegiac account of relearning how to be an Englishman should be required reading for anyone who claims to know or love this country.’ Financial Times



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If the future of newspaper print is so grim, why would progressives imitate the NYT in print to make their point?

I'd say this story about a fake edition of the NYT, circulated in NY yesterday, is about the best news the NYT has had in a long time. Who says print is dead? It isn't, it just isn't giving (younger) people what they want.

It's interesting that this parody/satire was in PRINT and NOT just a web-based venture.

I rest my case.

Not that the ever-anti dead tree gang over at FishbowlNY see fit to make this rather critical point.

By the way, it wasn't the "Yes Men" who did it, it was me (and a few others).

Wednesday, Nov 12 (Fishbowl NY)
The Future of the New York Times is Fake!

Those of you who work in the city are probably already aware that some enterprising souls (Gawker is pointing to the "Yes Men," which seems to be the case) took the future of news into their own hands today and created their own fake(!) New York Times. The spoof paper, which was distributed by thousands of volunteers across the city, was dated July 4, 2009 and ran the headline "Iraq War Ends." By all accounts it was "an exact replica" of the real thing (notwithstanding the content, obviously):
[The fake Times included] International, National, New York, and Business sections, as well as editorials, corrections, and a number of advertisements, including a recall notice for all cars that run on gasoline.We have yet to see the real thing, but according to people we've talked to it's rather well done — complete with a Thomas Friedman op-ed ("The sudden outbreak of peace in Iraq has made me realize, among other things, one incontestable fact: I have no business holding a pen, at least with intent to write") as well as an apology from the Times for supporting the Iraq war. It even comes with fake ads!
There is even a website to accompany the paper, which was down for much of the morning, is eerily similar to that of the real NYT (except without the page-long Mac ad). As the Times City Room blog noted many of the links lead to "dozens of progressive organizations." Obviously this was a huge and expensive undertaking, but why now?
Bertha Suttner, one of the newspaper's writers, tells Romenesko:
"It's all about how at this point, we need to push harder than ever...We've got to make sure Obama and all the other Democrats do what we elected them to do. After eight, or maybe twenty-eight years of hell, we need to start imagining heaven."Ah yes, heaven. The Times responded to our email (and others' it would seem) thus: "This is obviously a fake issue of The Times. We are in the process of finding out more about it." It's hard to imagine the Times not getting some enjoyment out of such well-done imitation — it is the sincerest form of flattery afterall. Also, we're told that under the parody exception to copyright the Times is pretty much unable to sue.

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"Books about cosmopolitan urbanites discovering the joys of country life are two a penny, but this one is worth a second glance. Walthew's vivid description of the moral stress induced by his job as a high-flying executive with the International Herald Tribune newspaper is worth the cover price alone…. Highly recommended." The Oxford Times

Amazon.co.uk

'I read A Place in My Country with absolute unalloyed delight. A glorious book.'

Jeremy Irons (actor)

‘Ian Walthew was a newspaper executive with a career that took him round the world, who one day did a mad thing. He saw a for-sale sign on a cottage in the Cotswolds, bought it, resigned and moved in. For the first few weeks he just lay on the grass in a daze. Then he started talking to his neighbours and digging into the rich history of this beautiful part of England. Out of his inquiries grew this affecting and inspiring memoir.What sets it apart from others of its ilk is the author’s enviable immunity to cliché and his determination to love his homeland better than he used to.

His elegiac account of relearning how to be an Englishman should be required reading for anyone who claims to know or love this country.’

Financial Times

For more reviews visit ianwalthew.com

Business trip to the IHT in Paris or friends and family coming to visit you? Fed up with hotels? Bring the family (sleeps 6) to superb Montmartre apartment - weekend nights free of charge if minimum of 3 work nights booked;. Cable TV; wifi, free phone calls in France (landlines); large DVD and book library; kids toys, books, travel cot and beds; two double bedrooms; all mod cons; half an hour to Neuilly and 12 mins walk from Eurostar. T&E valid invoices.

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N.B One element of this posting is fake.

What the U.S Elections Told Us About MSM

First-off, print is alive and well. The NYT had increased print runs (35% more copies election Wednesday than usual, an increase of about 150,000. It then added another 75,000) and ran a full-page advert on Thursday offering readers an election result day copy of the paper for a staggering $14.95. Despite the fact that if you check EBay the going rate is $200!

What a bloody shambles, what a chronic sign of miscalculation on their print runs. Only a 35% extra print run? You're kidding me right? They had people queing round the block on Wednesday to buy their paper!!!

Kiosks ran dry, they didn't even believe themselves how many copies they could sell. Absolutely staggering and a sign that not even the NYT's own circulation department believes any longer in the power of print.

The anti-newspaper blogosphere was laughing its head off.

Wednesday, Nov 05
Obama Sells Out Dead Tree Editions of Local Newspapers

We've noticed a number of people twittering and facebooking today that they couldn't find a copy of various papers this morning. Turns out they weren't imagining it! The Daily News sold out of even the extra printed copies of their regular morning edition and planned on printing and distributing an updated second edition. The New York Times reported that the New York Post had also sold-out (in our non-scientifically based experience it is always the first to go) along with the Times.

The [Times] printed 35 percent more papers in the 'single copy' print run, which supplies newsstands. Still, by morning, company officials found that papers were "selling out all across the metropolitan area" and decided to print 50,000 more copies for sale in the New York area.This isn't a New York-based phenomenon, either.

Apparently the Washington Post also sold-out of newsstand copies and the Chicago Tribune was experiencing very long lines. Now if Barack Obama could just do something historic and momentous every single day for the next four years he could feasibly save the entire print journalism industry!

Secondly, Palin: She got a free ride. Not only that but I didn't see a MSM outlet explore this possibility, which happens to be my own personal opinion:

Did the Republican Party of George W. Bush want to win this election? I wonder.

With many of its moderate senators and congressmen unseated, that party still exists and it's not evident it belongs to Senator John McCain.

But either way, this was a hospital pass election if ever there was one. Perhaps either McCain, or the GOP grandees, came to the conclusion that this wasn't a ball they wanted to receive, that only a Democrat administration could wipe clean the slate for the GOP or at least begin to. Were I a Republican party grandee, I'd be quite happy to let the Democrats pick up the check for the last 8 years and try and pay it off, because the chances are they'll end up having to wash dishes in the kitchen to sort this mess out.

McCain began his primary campaign well before the financial meltdown, before the war in Afghanistan was lost, before Mexico began the final journey to becoming a narco state (a government plane crashed on the day of the election, an accident we are told, at least for now, but a fine time for a cartel to murder the U.S.A.'s southern neigbbour's Interior Minister); before Bhutto's assasination and a nuclear Pakistan possibly falling to the Taliban, before the escalation of Iran's nuclear capabalities; beforethe Congo, before India degenerating into ethnic chaos, before global recession/depresssion, before Obama won the democractic primary. Surely he must have realised that the presidency was a poisoned chalice.

Chosing Palin, someone so clearly incompetent and in the very midst of an ethics investigation, a person who who stood a 1 in 8 chance of becoming President, given all the variables, was the equivalent of scuttling his campaign.

McCain may have started out wanting to become President of the U.S.A but by the time it looked like he might actually have a chance, he bailed.Palin moved the undecided and previous moderate republicans firmly to Obama. Race relations in the U.S.A are so appalling that only such a fine W. mess could possibly have allowed a black man to be elected, even a half white one who has spent his entire adult life less than 12 miles from an elite American university campus.

Berlusconi's tasteless remarks about Obama being young, handsome and even tanned pretty much summed up what type of black man is 'in'. Gays on the other hand are still very much 'out' as judged by the large number of anti-gay marriage ballot successes.

Nevertheless there was a photo from the campaign trail of a confederate flag with the slogan "Even Rednecks Have Had Enough". Perhaps so had McCain.

I'll leave someone more eloquent than I to explain this Palin Oversight by papers such as the NYT but MSM failing to nail Palin, as they could and should have done, is cited below as a reason why MSM is imploding:

Andrew Sullivan: The Daily Dish 06 Nov 2008 11:51 am
The Civic Responsibility Of Carl Cameron
Look: I understand that information given strictly off the record cannot be used. I am a stickler for that myself and there's stuff I know that I cannot tell Dish readers because of those rules. But at the same time, my commitment to you is never to bullshit my opinion that reflects that information. And the reporting of Palin fell into that category at times. I became convinced very early - just from public information - that she was obviously a disastrous choice, made on a whim, and obviously not ready for prime time. On August 30, I posted the following quotes from serious leaders in Alaska who knew Palin:
"She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" said Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"
And this:
Anchorage Democratic state Sen. Hollis French said it's a huge mistake by McCain and "reflects very, very badly on his judgment." French said Palin's experience running the state for less than two years hasn't prepared her for this.
But actual reporters were soon finding this out for themselves - and not even conveying the gist of that to their viewers and readers. Why not?
They kept taking Palin seriously as a veep candidate when she didn't come close to even minimal standards for passing a citizenship test. I'm sorry but I think this is a terrible failing, and it is a reason the mainstream media are imploding. They let the rules of the game over-rule their duty to tell the American people the truth as they began to discover it. The truth is that Sarah Palin had no business whatever being on a national ticket. It was an insanely reckless choice. She could never adequately perform the job of president at a moment's notice, and the McCain campaign and their media enablers were putting this country and the world at serious risk by perpetuating this farce.
It was a farce. And it was a potential threat to national security if anything happened to McCain in office. But they couldn't admit a mistake because it would have killed their campaign, destroying our impression of McCain's judgment and management skills. So they kept this farce alive for two months, putting the country at potentially great risk to massage their own careers. Now they are doing all they can to dump on her. But the dumpage goes both ways. The McCain camp picked Palin and stuck with her far longer than any people who put country first would have. Every reason why she should not have been picked is a reason why McCain should never have been president.


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Business trip to the IHT in Paris or friends and family coming to visit you? Fed up with hotels? Bring the family (sleeps 6) to superb Montmartre apartment - weekend nights free of charge if minimum of 3 work nights booked;. Cable TV; wifi, free phone calls in France (landlines); large DVD and book library; kids toys, books, travel cot and beds; two double bedrooms; all mod cons; half an hour to Neuilly and 12 mins walk from Eurostar. T&E valid invoices.

10% Discount for NYT employees; 15% Discount for IHT Employees

The perils of link journalism at the NYT

Thursday, Oct 23 (Daily FishbowlNY)
New York Times Loves the Little Guy


In Jon Pareles' column yesterday, "This Is the Music of the Blogs," the New York Times music critic details a night he spent going to concerts hosted by music blogs during the CMJ Music Marathon.

His evening out offers an intimate portrait of the relationship between indie bands and the blogs that love, hate, make and break them. "Sometime in the mid-2000s, the words indie-rock and blog became inseparable. The two were made for each other," Pareles writes. During the course of the article, he attends showcases put on by four separate blogs — The Music Slut, Pop Tarts Suck Toasted, Brooklyn Vegan and Stereogum.

Interestingly, in the online version of the article only the first two are linked. We found this strange. While the latter two are bigger and, therefore, might need as much press, they are hardy "household names." Considering the author feels the need to explain CMJ, it's clear the article is aimed at the general public who likely wouldn't have heard of Brooklyn Vegan and Stereogum. A link in the Times leads to increased traffic and recognition — while she declined to cite specific numbers, via email The Music Slut told us her traffic doubled yesterday because of the mention — and we are curious as to why the paper wouldn't link to all four. It's not as though it's difficult or time consuming.

We contacted Pareles to find out if he had any say in what was linked and what wasn't, but he has yet to return our call.

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But About.com revenues rise 16% (or shoutld that be only?)

I think my PERSONAL CONSUMER views about About.com are know - so know emails please - but the NYT's own media correspondent RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA should know better to write about increases in about.com revenues (a meagre 16.1 percent) as if this was something to write home about. From what base Richard and how fast do they need to grow to prop up that declining print revenue? And how much of that growth came from acquisitions?

There's no BUT here Richard, only an ONLY about About.com revenue.




October 24, 2008
New York Times Co. Posts Lower Profit
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
The New York Times Company reported a 51.4 percent decline in third-quarter profit on Thursday and swung to a loss on continuing operations as deeper-than-expected expense cuts could not keep pace with declining revenue.
The company said it would consider cutting its dividend and planned to write down the value of assets in its New England Media Group, which includes The Boston Globe, by as much as $150 million.
“Our board of directors plans to review our dividend policy before the end of this year to determine what is most prudent in light of the overall market conditions,” the company’s chief executive, Janet Robinson, said in a statement.

Online revenue rose just 2.5 percent for the company’s newspapers, which include The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The International Herald Tribune and 17 smaller papers. But the company’s other online businesses, including About.com, increased revenue by 16.1 percent, despite the economic downturn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/media/24times.html?ref=business

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More Chinese Water Torture - NYT Technology Coverage

I've blogged many times on the cumulative affect of media criticism of the NYT, not so much in the consumer market, but in the trade market. If young wired media buyers don't buy the NYT brand on a subject as important as technology, why would they think the NYT's readers do?

To the power of people two years behind the curve?


Tuesday, Oct 21
NYT Writes Wired Article, Two Years Later
The New York Times isn't known for the timeliness of its technology coverage, but today's article about how bot networks are a danger to the Internet comes almost two years after Wired covered the same problem — much more thoroughly — in its November, 2006 issue.

Attack of the Bots (Wired) — "The latest threat to the Net: autonomous software programs that combine forces to perpetrate mayhem, fraud, and espionage on a global scale."

A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer (NYT) — "An automated program lurking on the Internet has remotely taken over the PC and turned it into a 'zombie.' That computer and other zombie machines are then assembled into systems called 'botnets' — home and business PCs that are hooked together into a vast chain of cyber-robots that do the bidding of automated programs to send the majority of e-mail spam, to illegally seek financial information and to install malicious software on still more PCs."

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New York Times Credibility Stress.

In times like these, people have got to believe in your brand. A NYT subscription is easy to cut from one's personal budget (and lest we forget, the NYT Co. does still earn about 30% of its revenue from circulation) and you surely want info you can believe in.

I fear an awful consumer tipping point (again that phrase) for consumer confidence in the NYT.

JB, JM, and now this: a NYT writer distorting a survey’s findings to fit his theme, contrary to The Times’s standards of integrity. (Oh yeah, I liked a correction in the IHT yesterday that got the number of a loan wrong - it was US$500 million, not US$5oo billion as previously reported. Please. Coffees on me.)









October 21, 2008



Corrections
Editors’ Note
An article in the Itineraries pages last Tuesday reported about the increasing stress on business travelers, and cited the findings of “Stress in America,” an annual survey of the American Psychological Association. That survey found that economic factors were the leading causes of stress levels in 2008, but it did not say, as the article did, that “the crisis on Wall Street was the No. 1 cause of anxiety,” nor did participants in the survey say they felt most vulnerable to stress “in the office and on a business trip.”
The survey included data from Sept. 19 to Sept. 23, 2008, a period of volatility on Wall Street, but none of the questions in the association’s survey referred to Wall Street or any economic crises. Participants were not asked how business travel affected their stress levels or where they felt most vulnerable to stress. The author of the article distorted the survey’s findings to fit his theme, contrary to The Times’s standards of integrity.
The article also quoted incorrectly from a comment by Nancy Molitor, a psychologist in Wilmette, Ill., who told the author that, “In my 20 years of practice I’ve never seen such anxiety among my patients,” not “among my banking and business patients.” While Dr. Molitor does have patients in banking and business, she did not single them out as being more anxious than her other patients. (Go to Article)

OK, those are the facts, no big deal you might think. You read the correction, if you spot it, appreciate their frank and timely response and move on.

But here's the damage.

Gawker reporting, love 'em or hate 'em, and the comments from Gawker I like to post because I think they do often reflect undercurrents about the NYT's brand perception (and my fear of this tipping point), follow below, but it's interesting to note how many of the comments from Gawker readers fit into Slate's criticisms of the NYT's back of the book feature people coming up with false trends. Gawker is Gawker but Slate is in fact owned by the WP.

And both, I am sure, are read by young, impressionable media buyers and planners within agencies. Chinese water torture...

I pick up a range of opinion that Thursday and Sunday NYT's are full of soft-news rubbish. That's 2 out of 7 days of that 30% circulation revenue.

The NYT people I speak to just don't seem to have any sense of this weakness within their brand perception. We're the NYT, Krugman has a Nobel Prize for God's sake, we're invincible. A must read, a must advertising buy.

There is no such thing as a must read and a must advertising buy when you're dealing with people who don't read much and buy advertising.

The Times ran a special editors' note this morning accusing one of its freelancers of twisting the truth "to fit his theme, contrary to the Times' standards of integrity." The writer, Paul Burnham Finney, apparently distorted an American Psychological Association survey to reflect his article's thesis that business travel and the Wall Street meltdown are stressing people out more than anything else. In fact, the survey showed the economy generally is stressing people out. Also, he rewrote a therapist's quote to also be more specific in the same way, the paper said. Having developed something of a history running false stories, the Times seems to have been eager to get out in front of this one, running its correction barely one week after the original article came out — quite a speedy timeframe for deciding one of your contributors is a liar.

GAWKER COMMENTS (BTW, you can skip the first rather crude comment if you like but I'll bet you a pound to a penny he's an IHT reader living in France.)

drunkexpatwriter 7:00 AM
You know, this could almost become an underground game/meme. People could try to get freelance gigs at the Times and then intentionally insert obviously false/misleading information into the stories to see what level of bullshit gets through.
The point of the game would be to see who could become possible for the most ridiculous correction in the Times.
Like, seriously, I'd love to be the dude who writes a story that eventually ends up leading to this type of correction:
"An article appearing in last Sunday's Times Magazine about Hollywood celebrities contained information that was skewed by our contributor, Bart Calendar, to fit his theme. While Paris Hilton did indeed make a sex tape, she has never said "I'd rather suck a Doberman's cock than lick Alan Arkin's asshole." Instead, she said "I'm thinking about getting a Doberman and appearing in a movie with Alan Rickman." In addition, Lindsay Lohan has battled drug addiction in the past, but did not say "I love shooting heroin with Milley Cyrus." Rather, the actress commented that "I'm going to be the heroine in a new movie they are shooting with Miley Cyrus." Furthermore, representatives of Tom Cruise insist that he never said "I'm a Catholic cockaholic and terrified of tasting tuna, suck my balls you bitches."
The Times regrets these errors.

drunkexpatwriter You know, this could almost become an underground...
4 replies by drunkexpatwriter, zaropa, drunkexpatwriter ...

AlexanderKerensky 7:55 AM
@drunkexpatwriter: That would, indeed, be the best correction ever.
Now the trouble is getting a gig with the Times after saying that.

AlexanderKerensky @ drunkexpatwriter : That would, indeed, be the best...

drunkexpatwriter 8:09 AM
@AlexanderKerensky: Do you think they really check credentials?

drunkexpatwriter @ AlexanderKerensky : Do you think they really check...

zaropa 9:28 AM
@AlexanderKerensky: You dont need a gig at the Times after that, you just go to Fox news.

zaropa @ AlexanderKerensky : You dont need a gig at the Times...

drunkexpatwriter 9:55 AM
@zaropa: But where is the challenge in doing that to Fox News?
Plus, you can't frame a video correction and keep it on your wall.

drunkexpatwriter @ zaropa : But where is the challenge in doing that to...


7:03 AM
veganrampage2 7:03 AM
I find the truth stressful enough.

veganrampage2 I find the truth stressful enough.


7:45 AM
PRIsNotJournalism 7:45 AM
Does that mean he doesn't get paid?

PRIsNotJournalism Does that mean he doesn't get paid?


9:05 AM
plasticene 9:05 AM
Does anyone believe the Times anymore?

plasticene Does anyone believe the Times anymore?


9:34 AM
Aaron Altman 9:34 AM
The ultimate stressor? Commercials for the Times "Weekender" subs.

Aaron Altman The ultimate stressor? Commercials for the Times...


10:45 AM 1 reply
themediatrix 10:45 AM
They have an entire section of articles twisted to fit the suppositions of the reporters. It's called the health section. Terms like "obesity crisis," and "lifestyle choices," and "the study reveals an association between..."
There is a sad lack of science literacy among Times reporters, and as a result, the health and medical writing is all based on givens, and conventional wisdom. They don't understand statistics, and continue to repeat information that is untrue without ever questioning their assumptions.
And I hate that stupid Tara Parker Pope, who can't manage to write anything original. WTF.

themediatrix They have an entire section of articles twisted to fit...
1 reply by themediatrix

themediatrix 11:36 AM
@themediatrix: FOR EXAMPLE, from today:
"One of the best ways to prevent cavities in children is to treat their molars with a dental sealant that protects the teeth..." Really? One of the best? According to...?
Sure, let's not worry about sourcing that "fact," everyone knows it's true, right? Plus, it sets up your whole column for today, right Tara. Actually, one of the best ways of preventing cavities is to keep kids from eating processed carbs and processed sugar, while pumping them full of raw milk [source: weston price]. But hey, it's better to say this other thing so that you can get that blog post pumped out, right?
[well.blogs.nytimes.com]

themediatrix @ themediatrix : FOR EXAMPLE, from today: "One of the...


10:50 AM 1 reply
HK_Guy 10:50 AM
I smell a rat, in the shape of an editor. Editors constantly badger freelancers to torture their quotes to fit some a priori theme in the editor's head. Since freelancers are under such stress to get stories in so they can get paid and go on to the next gig, they eventually succumb. So the freelancer takes the fall for the editor.

HK_Guy I smell a rat, in the shape of an editor. Editors...
1 reply by Seeräuber Jenny

Seeräuber Jenny 12:29 PM
@HK_Guy:
That is a possibility. Perhaps we'll hear more.

Seeräuber Jenny @ HK_Guy : That is a possibility. Perhaps we'll hear...


12:28 PM 1 reply
Seeräuber Jenny 12:28 PM
So the moral of the story is that it's better to just make sh-t up as they do every Thursday and Sunday?
At least the freelancer didn't claim to see Pol Pot masquerading as a Native American who was raised by a ghetto foster mother while engaged in the act of personally carrying aluminum tubes that could be used for weapons of mass destruction.

Seeräuber Jenny So the moral of the story is that it's better to just...
1 reply by HK_Guy

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Obama and the race question and the NYT coverage of it.

IW: I'll tell you a little story, one I've told before, one that I wrote last Tuesday.

I live in one of the most hard-left leaning areas of France. We have an enormously popular Communist Party deputy, the only new CP member to be elected in France in the Chircac-Le Pen runoff. In the last election when Sarko came to power, his majority even increased to around 75%.

Local politics isn't about left or right, it's about people. A mayor has a list of 11 people to be councillors, you cross off who you don't like, you add the name of some individuals who might be standing on their own, without a counter-party list of 11 names themselves and that's it. Many communes have no opposition lists. The fix is in, the consensus is kind of understood. We go along and vote, and maybe get something off our chests about someone who slighted us, or give a pat on the back to someone we like.

Down in town, there's a little bit of a left/right going on, but not much. It's people, but people and personalities that tip the balance, their connection with our shared 'pays'.

In the last municipal elections earlier this year, an extremely successful and popular mayor of our local town, who had been responsible for a wide number of high profile, successful and broadly used social and infrastructure projects, lost power.

Why? I don't know.

I do know that there are people in positions of elected power and state authority that say that it was because the mayor added a black man and a Frenchman of Turkish origins to his list.

And that's here in one of most hardcore left wing voting parts of France. Forget Iowa or Florida.

I've already said Obama is going to lose in the voting booth, partly because he is black, and I still think that's the case.

Suddenly, as Obama begins to pull away in the polls, the IHT/NYT are all over this issue in yesterday's newspaper. Why so late?

I don't know the answer to that either.

Obama works for the working-class vote
In voting booth, race may play a bigger role
For some, uncertainty starts at racial identity
In generation seen as colorblind, black is yet a factor

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Online Watchdog Sniffs for Media Bias (NYT)

John Atcheson, left, and Todd Herman, creators of SpinSpotter.

October 16, 2008
Online Watchdog Sniffs for Media Bias
By RICHARD PEREZ-PENA
If you don’t trust the news media, what are your options? You can fume about bias, wonder what you’re missing and suppress the urge to throw things. Or ignore some sources and turn to those whose slant you like.
But what if there were a device that objectively flagged questionable elements in online news articles, poking and parsing words and phrases, and letting you contribute your own critiques? Well, a Seattle company called SpinSpotter has produced a piece of software — a free download that works within a Web browser — that tries to do just that.
As its creators acknowledge, it still has to overcome some daunting technical and human barriers to live up to its lofty aims. (Its home page at spinspotter.com proclaims, “Behold the epiphany of unfiltered news.”) But a month into its release in a test version that is only available for the Mozilla Firefox browser — an Internet Explorer version is expected in a few weeks — it gives an interesting peek at where the future of truth-squadding may lie.
Any attempt to judge news articles could rely on experts, a broad audience of readers or a set of formulas. SpinSpotter combines all three, but for now the formulas are still being adjusted, the audience is not yet big enough, and it remains to be seen how unbiased or effective the experts are. SpinSpotter grew out of a longstanding obsession of Todd Herman, a conservative former talk-radio host who is the company’s chief product officer. “I thought of this 10 years ago,” he said. “The things I’d see in mainstream media drove me crazy.”
The chief executive officer, John Atcheson, is politically liberal, and he and Mr. Herman say they tend to balance each other out. “We don’t delude ourselves into thinking we’re going to eliminate spin, and that’s not even our objective,” said Mr. Atcheson, who has been an executive of several technology companies. “We just want it to be transparent, above the surface.”
With the SpinSpotter plug-in, anyone can call up a news article, insert red flags over offending passages and, in a pop-up box, explain the perceived problems and suggest edits. Another reader seeing the same article will also see those flags, can comment on them and, crucially, can vote on whether the offense is serious or not.
In addition a panel of journalism graduate students at the University of Missouri picks through a random sampling of articles, and critiques the critiques. That is supposed to help guard against a group with a particular bias “gaming” the system, but it is not yet clear how well that will work.
Each individual user earns a “trust rating,” based on other readers’ votes, the judgment of the graduate students and how often they agree with other users who are highly trusted. Users will not know their ratings, but comments posted by those with the highest scores will predominate.
SpinSpotter has an advisory board of journalists and journalism professors who helped devise the company’s standards. They have varying political stripes, and include some well-known writers like Jonah Goldberg of the National Review and Brooke Allen of The Nation.
The company has also devised algorithms that search for potential fudge phrases like “critics say,” and that learn from users which expressions are most often censured.
“The algorithm approach also has serious limits, which is why the human element is essential,” Mr. Herman said. “There is no algorithm that can interpret language with anywhere near the sophistication of a reader.”
One problem with the “wiki” approach, relying on the self-correcting wisdom of the crowd to reach a rough consensus, is that there needs to be a critical mass of people picking apart each article. And there needs to be some assurance that the crowd, through self-selection, does not have serious collective biases.
SpinSpotter’s creators acknowledge that they are not there yet, though they say it is only a matter of time. (They will not say how many users the software has so far, or how many it needs to be effective.)
In the last month, they say, it has become clear that their limited following is far too small to cover the vast array of online news sources. So starting this week SpinSpotter is focusing primarily on the Web sites of five major news outlets: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, The New York Times and Yahoo! News.
The software insists that reader objections fit into one of six broad categories: lack of balance, using the reporter’s point of view, using passive voice, using a biased source, disregarding context and selective disclosure. But for now those categories have their own limitations. Some journalistic misdemeanors — citing just one source, or failing to offer supporting evidence for an assertion — do not fit neatly into any of the categories.
One category of complaint, use of passive voice, seems bound to flag phrases — “four people were killed in an accident,” for example — that are far from biased.
“We’re constantly tweaking,” Mr. Herman said. “People are asking us, for example, about creating a category for things that are provably false.”
SpinSpotter has financial backing from a number of venture capitalists, primarily the firm Epic Ventures, who are drawn more by the commercial possibilities than the implications for journalism.
The SpinSpotter site plans to sell ads, but the main hope for revenue lies in selling services.
“Anybody who deals in marketing and communications, a P.R. agency, a corporate marketing office, a political campaign, we can give them information on what phrases are being used out there as spin, or are being perceived as spin, where those phrases are showing up,” Mr. Atcheson said. Press releases, he said, can be scrubbed of phrases that sow doubt.
Which might just point the way toward newer, subtler ways of spinning, not toward the transparency the company advocates. But Mr. Atcheson said he is hopeful about what SpinSpotter can do for news reporting.
“We’ve even talked to some news organizations that are interested in having a version of our service behind the wall,” he said, “so they can prescreen their work.”

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How the NYT thinks we are feeling about the financial meltdown (Slate)

How Are We Feeling?
Panicked? Jittery? Wondering whether this is merely a manageable situation, a crisis, the second coming of the Great Depression, or a full-on calamity? Media outlets and people on the street are trying to find the words to fit the financial times. Here’s the syntax the New York Times has been using in its coverage in the last month.

How are we feeling?

What would you call, this state we’re in?

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Disintermediated News and A Place in the Auvergne

One of the things I think news sites should do more of is to disintermediate the news.

Help readers find source material, and without any reporting, parsing, abbreviating etc. by journalists, let the readers at the raw material. There's no reason why this can't be done in print either (at a minimum links within news, news analysis and opinion pieces). I've posted on Link Journalism but this term is shorthand for external links, when internal links are just as important.

I get my best handle on the two American presidential candidates various policy positions and a sense of them as candidates, not by reading numerous commentaries and news reports about their speeches, but by simply reading their speeches. It takes time to find them, and it's a lot easier if someone has already done it. Which is why I appreciate posts like these on to these today on http://www.iht.com/.

Text: McCain's speech
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The following is the text of a speech given by Senator John McCain on the American economy in Virginia Beach on Monday as provided by the McCain campaign

Text: Obama's speech
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The following is the text of a speech given by Senator Barack Obama on his economic policy in Toledo, Ohio, on Monday as prepared for delivery and provided by the Obama campaign.

By way of contrast there is no link provided to even one of Palin's speeches, despite this article today:

POLITICAL MEMO
Palin's speeches electrify, but her zeal poses risks



I mention my Auvergne blog, because it would be interesting to find blogs that:
(a) don't make any comment on the news - which mine nearly qualifies for however it does make the odd observation very rarely; typically A Place in the Auvergne just re-organizes IHT content in a way I can understand and follow world events more clearly - story telling basically beyond a simple aggregator, article selection obviously playing a role but leaving space for the reader to draw their own conclusions;
(b) don't even use any journalism reports at all, but just went to source material itself. In the case of politics, the two speeches quoted below are an example; in the case of a WHO or UNHCR report, simply their text alone on any given subject and the text (press releases for example) of governments, organisations etc taking a contrarian view to their reports.

The above examples are something http://www.iht.com/ does do, occasionally, and the newspaper extremely rarely (and even then, extracts and selected passages).

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Looking back is great, but look forward too.

One of the things I very much like about the IHT is how it comes back to stories that were big, and sees where we're at.

A good example would be this article below on where a girl, who was at the centre of an epic cultural and political battle in Turkey earlier this year, is now and her views.

My only complaint, is that it's simply too long, focusses too much on the past (which isn't new-s) and doesn't bring enough that is new and forward looking. Clearly there is a need to put this recent interview with her in context, but this much?

To give a sense of this time-line issue, I've put in bold, in the article below, that which is new (to me at least). And it explains why this article, interesting in part as it is, doesn't make the cut for my blog A Place in the Auvergne.





A young woman leads Turkey to examine modernity and devotion
By Sabrina Tavernise
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
ISTANBUL: High school hurt for Havva Yilmaz. She tried out several selves. She ran away. Nothing felt right.
"There was no sincerity," she said. "It was shallow."
So at 16, she did something none of her friends had done: She put on an Islamic head scarf.
In most Muslim countries, that would be a nonevent. In Turkey, it was a rebellion. Turkey has built its modern identity on secularism.
Women on billboards do not wear scarves. The scarves are banned in schools and universities. So Yilmaz had to drop out of school. Her parents were angry. Her classmates stopped calling her.
Like many young people at a time of religious revival across the Muslim world, Yilmaz is more observant than her parents. Her mother wears a scarf but cannot read the Koran in Arabic. They do not pray five times a day. The habits were typical for their generation - Turks whose families moved from the countryside during industrialization.
"Before I decided to cover, I knew who I was not," Yilmaz said, sitting in a leafy Ottoman-era courtyard. "After I covered, I finally knew who I was."
While her decision was in some ways a recognizable act of youthful rebellion, in Turkey her personal choices are part of a paradox at the heart of the country's modern identity.
Turkey is run by a party of observant Muslims, but its reigning ideology and law is strictly secular, dating from the authoritarian rule in the 1920s of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a former army general who pushed Turkey toward the West and cut its roots with the Ottoman East.
For some young people today, freedom means the right to practice Islam, and self-expression means covering their hair.
They are redrawing lines between freedom and devotion, between modernization and tradition, and blurring some prevailing distinctions between East and West.
Yilmaz's embrace of her religious identity has thrust her into politics. She campaigned to allow women to wear scarves on college campuses, a movement that prompted emotional, often agonized, debates across Turkey about where Islam fit into an open society. That question has paralyzed politics twice in the past year and a half and has drawn hundreds of thousands into the streets to protest what they said was a growing religiosity in society and in government - though just how observant Turks are remains in dispute.
By dropping out of the education system, she found her way into Turkey's growing, lively culture of young activists.
In the middle of January, the head scarf became the focus of a heated national outpouring, with Yilmaz one of its most eloquent defenders.
The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to pass a law letting women who wear the scarves into college. Staunchly secular Turks opposed broader freedoms for Islam, in part because they did not trust Erdogan, a popular politician who began his career championing a greater role for Islam in politics and who has since moderated his stance.
Turkey remains a democratic experiment unique in the Muslim world.
The Ottomans dabbled in democracy as early as 1876, creating a Constitution and a Parliament. The country was never colonized by Western powers, as Arabs were.
Turkey gradually developed into a democracy. The fact that young people like Yilmaz are protesting in the first place is one of its distinguishing features.
In many ways, Yilmaz's scarf freed her, but for many other women, it is the other way around. In poor, religiously conservative areas in rural Turkey, girls wear scarves from young ages, and many Turks feel strongly that without state regulation, young women would come under more pressure to cover up.
The head scarf bill, in that respect, could lead to less freedom for women, they argued. Even so, for Yilmaz, the angry reaction against the bill was hard to understand.
"It's frustrating when you watch people," she said, sitting in a chair wearing a tunic, jeans, and Timberland-style boots. "You think, what's the big deal?"
She continued: "When you look at it, we have all the reason to be afraid. We were mocked in the streets, we were insulted, we were expelled from universities."
With a microphone and a strong sense of justice, Yilmaz marched into a hotel in central Istanbul and, with two friends, both in scarves, made her best case.
"The pain that we've been through as university doors were harshly shut in our faces taught us one thing," she said, speaking to a group of reporters. "Our real problem is with the mentality of prohibition that thinks it has the right to interfere with people's lives."
Yilmaz's heartfelt speech, written with her friends, drew national attention. They were invited on television talk shows. They gave radio and newspaper interviews. Part of their appeal came from their attempt to go beyond religion to include all groups in Turkish society, like ethnic and sectarian minorities.
By March, the month after Parliament passed the final version of the head scarf proposal, the debate had reached a frenzied pitch.
Yilmaz and some friends - some in scarves, some not - agreed to go on a popular television talk show. The questions from the audience were angry.
One girl stood up and, looking directly at a girl in a scarf, said that she did not want her on campus, said Neslihan Akbulut, a friend of Yilmaz, who had helped to compose the head scarf statement. Another said she felt sorry for them because they were oppressed by men. A third fretted that allowing them into universities would lead to further demands about jobs, resulting in an "invasion."
Yilmaz said later: "I thought, are we living in the same country? No, it's impossible."
They did not give up. They spent the day in a drafty café in central Istanbul, wearing boots and coats and going over their position with journalists, one by one.
The girls say that the scarf, contrary to popular belief, was not forced on them by their families. Nor are they paid to wear it. Some women wear it because their mothers did. For others, like Yilmaz, it was a carefully considered choice.
Though it is not among the five pillars of Islam - the duties required for every Muslim, including daily prayer - Yilmaz sees it as a Koranic command.
"Physical contact is something special, something private," she said, describing the thinking behind her covering. "Constant contact takes away from the specialness, the privacy of the thing you share."
The head scarf debate ended abruptly in June, when Turkey's Constitutional Court ruled that the new law allowing women attending universities to wear scarves was unconstitutional, because it violated the nation's principles of secularism.
Yilmaz got the news as a text message from her friend. In her bitter disappointment, she realized how much hope she had held out.
"How can I be a part of a country that does not accept me?" she said.
Still, she has no regrets and is not giving up. "What we did was worth something," she said. "People heard our voices. One day the prohibition is imposed on us. The next day, it could be someone else.
"If we work together, we can fight it."






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