Thursday, January 31, 2008

Call it Fake News!

Posted by Jane Abao 1/31/2008 7:51:14 PM
Article Feedback to “Real Paths toward Entrepreneurial Journalism”
E-Media Tidbits
Poynter Institute

We call this fake news or advertising, not any form of journalism. This so-called “entrepreneurial journalism” simply constitutes doing some write-up after which follows the name of the holy product towards the end of the exposition. This practice is bent on selling its form of reality to the public. Journalism? Not so. It is pure and simple advertising.

When this kind comes to news sites, you can be sure people not only gnash their teeth. They wonder where in the world people learn doing this thing. Where? In the profit world.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Editors Sometimes Twist Stories

For Article: What Makes Reporting and Blogging Successful?
E-Media Tidbits
Poynter Institute
Posted by Jane Abao 1/14/2008 8:59:23 PM

Journalists take deadlines seriously. Yes, that should be. And yes, they generally report better – than bloggers. That is the way journalists had been trained. However, beating deadlines has nothing much to do with “bad reporting.” Looking at some writing as “bad reporting” so that the editor makes some material changes would not augur well for truth. Correct judgement is called for. I had a bad experience regarding some editing made on my story that ended as the opposite of what I had intended.

In a feature story where I wrote about a beggar child south of my country, I had intended to let the public know about government neglect on street children. My character was one that slept on cement floors in some streets during the day and roamed around the city to steal food and enjoy his world at night. The police caught up with him and had him placed at a boy’s town. He had escaped back to his world of his own when a matron brought him home for some Christmas vacation. Now, it was government neglect I had wanted to showcase but the editor twisted the story and rendered an ignorant child rejecting the confines of government with donations from benevolent spirits - not to exclude those from other countries. Yes, the child got fed up of life where he was just a specimen. Had he enjoyed those camera shots of visitors? You bet, he did. But he had wanted freedom. This beggar child was Every-beggar-child on the streets.

It’s time we ask the journalists what they think about “bad editing.”

No Way with the Conceit of I’s

For Article: The Rocky's New Capitol Blog: 6 Easy Fixes
E-Media Tidbits
Poynter Institute
Posted by Jane Abao 1/16/2008 8:57:44 PM

First person, Amy? I think it’s the other way around. The first thing I tell my students is to shun away from writing in the first person – if they have to be reporting. Unless the material is an eye-witness report, writing in the first person is a habit of amateur writers. It shifts attention away from the topic and on to the source. That is as far as professional journalism is concerned – unless you want it down to the blogging level where materials are normally peppered with a lot of “I’s.” This mode tends to make the source report out of his own perspective rather than reproduce the event in as objective a manner as he could.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Ganett Sorely Needs to Ask the Reporters

What I said about Ganett is that the reporters must be consulted for any critical shifts in media systems because it is they who are the workhorses. You do not run systems that highly need mental work by just memorandums.

I wrote this in my blog, CONCERNA in November 4, 2006. Let me reprint it here.

For Critical Shifts in Media Systems, Ask the Reporters, Please!
Re: Gannett Info Centers

I don’t work for Gannett. I am a professional journalist, and a communications specialist by education. I have some doubts about this Gannett approach. From newspaper to information center, that’s their business. But looking at it from the perspective of legitimate communication practice leaves some doubt.

The Memo begins: “The Information Center will let us gather the very local news and information that customers want, then distribute it when, where and how our customers seek it.”

Note that it says, “want.” News is news whether we want it or not. Information is information whether we like it or not. This could be excused and counted as an inadvertent slip, but here it says again: “News and information will be delivered to the right media -- be it newspapers, online, mobile, video or ones not yet invented -- at the right time. Our customers will decide which they prefer.”

Preferred medium? This maybe doable and still expedient business-wise, but at best, these are all mere desiderata. The variety of media per se is not the problem, however, but the nature of some of these media is. When in print or online, the contents are there for reader inspection and evaluation. But when it comes to video and mobile, the reader has very little chance at evaluating objectively the presentation of news. News in these media will have become more as editorials rather than the more objective news.

I would congratulate Gannett if it were able to control and preserve the news elements when they get transformed from newspaper approach to video and mobile. Otherwise, what they would be producing is something other than news.

What obviously would compound problems in the Gannett approach? The memo says, “The changes impact all media, and the public has approved. Results include stronger newspapers, more popular Web sites and more opportunities to attract the customers advertisers want.”

The big question then is: how much representation did reporters have in the decision-making of this plan? They are stakeholders who are the very workhorses who make possible the existence of news agencies. In critical plans like this, they need to be represented because they have to be asked their commitment, how much they are willing to risk and give up and bend over and accept. For this approach, let’s face it: advertisers will hog the operations and the way “news” will be treated. This is the very reason reporters have to be asked their say. Their write-ups will constantly have to be chopped up, re-directed, changed, or embargoed altogether and they can only take so much.

Did I say that about Ganett?

I tried to translate a Chinese version of a metadata in Google mentioning my name and this is what I found [Extract from http://www.apceo.com/Html/News/2007-1/18/155350856_3.html] -

Information Center ": In the future, the newspaper news editing room?

 10 万份的报纸收到了来自国内外读者的海量回应,以至于没有足够的人手来处理相关电子邮件和来电。 100,000 copies of newspapers from home and abroad have received a massive response to the readers, so do not have sufficient manpower to handle e-mail and calls. 而该报网站的流量 6 周内出现了前所未有的高涨。 And the flow of the newspaper Web site within six weeks of unprecedented high. 最后,迫于报道压力,相关的公共事业单位将收费降低了 30% 。 Finally, due to reported pressure on the relevant public institutions will reduce fees by 30 percent. ⑧ ⑧

虽然甘耐特集团的改革才刚刚开始,是否有成效还有待检验,但是因甘耐特在美国报业中的巨大影响,在改革消息宣布以后,华盛顿邮报也宣布将改革其健康、食品和家庭三个具有 “ 广告亲和力 ” 的版面,以更好地适应网络出版。 Although Gan Nytex Group of reform has just begun, has been successful or not remains to be tested, but because of GAN Knight in the press in the United States the tremendous impact of the reform was announced, the Washington Post also announced that it would reform its health, food and families with three "advertising affinity" layout, so as to better adapt to network publishing. ⑨ 纽约时报也宣布将整合纸质版和网络版的内容编辑。 ⑨ The New York Times also announced that it would integrate paper version and the network version of the editorial content.

  四、信息中心面临的挑战 Fourth, the challenges facing the Information Center
甘耐特集团推出的信息中心改革要获得真正的成功,还有以下困难要克服: GAN Nytex Group Information Center launched the reform to be truly successful, there are difficulties to overcome the following:

   1.“ 内容为王 ” 的原则没有改变,如何实现创新还有待探索。 1. "Content is king" principle has not changed, and how to achieve innovation has yet to be explored. 甘耐特集团 CEO 雷格 • 杜波指出:有了信息中心后, “ 新闻和信息将能通过正确的媒介传播出去,我们的顾客可以自由选择他们自己偏好的媒介来接收 ” 。 Knight Group CEO Leigedubei Gan pointed out: With Information Center, the "news and information will be transmitted through the media right away, and our customers are free to choose their own preferred medium to receive." 甘耐特集团旗下《辛辛那提问询者》报记者乔治 • 科特( Gregory Korte )说: “ 未来的报纸将需要更多的计算机编程人员,而不是文字编辑 ” 。 GAN Knight Group's "Cincinnati inquiries" journalists Jiaochikete (Gregory Korte) said: "The future of newspapers will need more computer programmers, rather than the text editor." 但美国波因特研究所( poynter.org )的专栏评论家简 • 阿宝( Jane Abao )则认为,在目前的技术背景下,提供跨平台的内容不难实现,在商业上也很精明,但是当今时代,问题的关键不在于传播平台的多样性,问题在于这些媒介所传播的内容本身。 However, the United States Poynter Institute (poynter.org) column A Bao commentator Jane (Jane Abao) that in the context of current technology, providing cross-platform content it is not difficult to achieve, which is quite smart business, but In contemporary times, the crux of the problem does not lie in the diversity communications platform, the problem is that these media by the spread of the content itself.