Buy one anyway? High hoot value!

I love the news business but in the same spirit as the 12-step post that doesn't mean I have to love the medium. So this tongue-in-cheek video, created by Slate V, is a hoot. Journalist or not, you've gotta laugh. To find out more about who's who in this particular zoo, click here.

The newspaper 12-step program

An alcoholic in recovery gives up all the things that remind them of their past life. They throw out their "One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor!" t-shirts, they replace the Jim Beam medallion on their key ring with the serenity prayer and they don't ever risk getting the "taste for it" back by even trying a non-alcoholic beer or a piece of amaretto cheesecake. All these things perpetuate the idea that I'm still a drinker and so they cast off that skin as the first step to changing their lives.

Ah, but what are we going to do with newspapers? No wonder the newspaper can't find a new identity when even their name forces them to hold onto the past. Newspaper.

It's not surprising that the newspaper's identity is all wrapped up in the physical - that's our history, our roots, what made us great. It harkens back to patriots printing dissenting views and fomenting revolt against the British in small, dark colonial print shops. It's a glorious history, now tarnishing and trying, painfully, to survive.

But we're stuck with this moniker. We have newspaper companies, operating newspapers, selling newspaper advertising and, even more bizarrely, operating newspaper web sites.

Other transforming industries don't have this same problem.

The central product of the book publishing industry is a book - it may be a hard cover edition, a paper back, an ebook or a digital book. But it is still a book. If printed books went away tomorrow, the industry would not have to battle the identity crisis of losing its essence.

No industry has transformed quite as much in the just the past decade as the music industry. And it's a good thing that they knew their central product was the music and not the record, tape, or CD that the music was recorded onto. The loneliest places in the country today must be record stores. Are there even still record stores?

But then there are newspapers where even our name evokes the ink-on-paper albatross that is dragging the industry rather than allowing it to transform. A few years ago, Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper company, realigned and renamed its divisions. What had been the Newspaper Division was renamed to...

The Community Newspaper Division. Gannett missed an opportunity to rebrand its identity and jettison the paper. Some larger newspapers have tried to brand themselves as media groups made up of websites, magazines and newspapers. That's a step in the right direction, but it is more for show than actually a sea change in attitude.

So much of the industry's identity is wrapped up in the medium rather than the product that we can't really see past it. Bloggers say "Newspapers are Dying" and we need to "Save Newspapers". And we worry that journalism won't survive because it appears inexorably linked to the medium.

It's time for this industry to admit that it is spiraling out of control and needs to get in a program. So here's 12-step program for newspapers.

1. Admit that we are powerless over the changing market conditions and that holding onto the past has become unmanageable.

2. Believe that we are a dying industry because our customers have found us irrelevant. Honestly, that's the ultimate reason.

3. Make a decision to evolve not devolve. We will stop acting like the sky is falling!

4. Make a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves. Admit that we have completely given up most real journalism, that we are afraid to be hard hitting and that we have deeply buried all the greatness that made us indespensible. News flash: Readers have noticed this!

5. Admit to our readers that we have only given lipservice to involving them in the news gathering process. We have created forums so they could talk - to each other - not help us shape the direction of what we were covering. Most days we don't even look at that stuff.

6. We know that these defects in our character are a big part of what is dragging us down and we are ready - really ready - to change.

7. Time to remove the dead wood. We know that the future of news has a smaller footprint, so, yes, there are going to be reductions in the work force. In many cases, that dead wood sits at the top of the tree. Start hacking away - hack being the operative word here.

8. Make a list of the values that defined the news industry: inquisitiveness, skepticism, intelligence, public service, honesty, objectivity. And admit that most newspapers long ago traded those in for revenue, quick hit, easy, non-threatening, feature, good-news pap.

9. Recognize that failure to maintain Step 8 is why you are irrelevant today. That irrelevance is why readers are abandoning you in droves. That abandonment - as well as your greed - is why advertisers have slipped away. Quod erat demonstratum.

10. Accept the fact that greed is killing you. 40% profit margins are a thing of the past. Accept it and move on. If you can't get this step down, you may still be doomed!

11. Stop whining. Newspapers have been wringing their hands over lost readership since the end of World War II, when the decline started. And in the past 50 years have done very little to change the trend. In 2000, Gary Watson, then president of the Newspaper Division, told a NEXPO audience that we were not in the newspaper business; we are in the information business. Bold words repeated by executives over and over in meeting rooms and conference speeches from San Francisco to Manhattan. But words only have power when they empower action. Stop whining and start changing!

12. Take the paper out of newspaper. Change the moniker and really believe it. You are holding onto a past that is never coming back and good riddance. Step up and lead or get out of the way.

Oh, yeah, and throw out that "Journalists do it dirty" t-shirt.

Where have the facts gone?

Once they were the hallmark of American politics, literary society, art and literature. But today conversation, persuasion and debate are nearly a lost art - or at least their voices are barely heard above the din of the screaming.

We used to have "talking heads" or "news readers" on television; now we have all "commentators" and "analysts" who are so disinterested in discussion or other opinions that they shout over each other while the host-moderator stands by impotently like an NHL umpire watching a gloves-off fight.

Remember the idea of conversation or persuasion - you talk, I talk, you have facts, I have facts, we discuss them, potentially I change your mind or you change mine, but at the least, we each walk away with a little more information than we had before. We each are somewhat better informed. And we, most importantly, we did so with some respect.

There seem to be two reasons why this form of debate and discussion no longer exists: first, it requires intelligence and actual facts to pull it off; and second, the mass media finds it more profitable to air entertainment disguised as news - just as the NHL is a giant fist-fight disguised as sport.

As newspapers - the last bastion of verified and vetted factual information - begin their slide into the ooze, a lot of bloggers and media analysts are looking for the next generation of information. Where will it come from? How will it be delivered? Are bloggers journalists?

The question really seems to be at this point whether the public knows the difference between news and entertainment. I suspect the answer is no. The major component of news is actual verifiable fact which means that it was supported by more than one source or by a single incontrovertible source.

In the endless blathering about Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, I have heard various CNN "analysts" report that the New Haven firefighter's lawsuit that she ruled on - as a part of the US Circuit Court of Appeals - was brought by "white and hispanic firefighters" or by "white firefighters". So which is it? It's not all that hard to find out with a little digging.

I can already hear the voices of citizen journalism decrying the old "legacy media" obsession with facts rather than the bigger picture. Unfortunately, a bigger picture made up of inaccuracies is a surrealistic masterpiece. Facts matter. It's not the same as bad grammar - it's bad information. And because most people believe what they hear, it is all the more important that we get the information right.

There is a legitimate debate to have about the naming of any individual to the Supreme Court - to review their decisions, to evaluate their judicial preferences and temperament, and to assess whether the nominee has the mental and emotional stamina the job most certainly demands. But that debate has to be based on factual information - not innuendo, misrepresentations and hearsay. Consumers of news believe what the news outlets say and as such they have a responsibility to present fact, to ask questions of news sources that result in dredging up more facts and present fair information to the consumer so that each one can make an intelligent decision.

The new journalist is grasping onto tools like Twitter and Facebook as a way to facilitate crowd sourcing - using your readers to help you gather information. But crowd sourcing is an investigative tool that adds to reporting, not one that replaces it. All too often, journalists go all-in one way or another - a story is either nothing but the person on the street opinion or nothing but the dry recitation of facts. Whether they write for print, for blogs, or report for video outlets from YouTube to CNN, journalists/bloggers have - with few exceptions - yet to figure out how to merge the two. And it appears to be getting worse.

Why should you care? Because the burden falls on the consumer to find the facts amid the commentary and the shouting. It also falls to the consumer to demand better information from the prime news outlets whether they be blogs or TV networks or printed newspapers.

News - like everything else - is a product and if the consumer seems happy enough with the product they are getting, there's little incentive for the news and information outlets to do anything much different.

Demand your right to a fair and accurate information stream. Give it up and it may be far harder to get it back than it was to lose it in the first place.

Altered States: Values we can't live by?

On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in an office tower in Arlington, VA. The conference room where we were all watching the horror unfold in New York City overlooked the Pentagon. When the plane hit there, we panicked and rushed down 30 flights of stairs into an underground parking garage and from there into the biggest traffic jam I've ever seen. To this day, when I see a plane flying low or making that slow, wide turn, a chill runs up my spine and my hands start to sweat.

So I can completely understand the reaction of New York and New Jersey residents to the Air Force One photo op Monday. It was costly, senseless, insensitive and just downright stupid.

But that aside, the part that really confuses me is the flip-flop attitude toward altering reality that is evident both in the press and the public.

A week ago, the mainstream media reported on the shirtless photo of President Obama planned for the May cover of Washingtonian Magazine. Bad enough that the leader of the free world's pecs and six-pack abs would be cover fodder, but many outlets covered the fact that the original photo - taken last year in Hawaii - was actually altered by the magazine, apparently both for ashethetics and design considerations.

The Associated Press wrote: "That didn't hold water, hot or cold, with some commentators and academics, who felt the magazine should have adhered to a central tenet of photojournalism: You don't alter photos: period."

Howard Kurtz, media critic for The Washington Post and host of CNN's Reliable Sources, said:
"Journalistic organizations shouldn't doctor photos of the president of the United States."

CNN and Fox anchors decried the Photoshopping of the president as well. And I agree with them all. Photographs purporting to be news are snapshots in time and they should show the world as it is - not as we would like it to be. Alterations of photos - changing the color of the president's swim trunks, for example, turn the photo into a "photoillustration" and should be disclosed by the publication (digital or print).

Now, on the heels of this outcry over changing black trunks to red and possibly adding a bit of a health glow, now comes the NYC flyover and it's mantra: 'Hasn't anyone ever heard of freaking Photoshop."

Analysts on CNN's 8 p.m. airing of The Campbell Brown Shown on Monday said the military should have saved the money and angst by just Photoshopping the picture. Pete Dominick on XM Radio's Stand Up program reiterated this same statement several times on Tuesday's 4 p.m. show. And CBS anchor Katie Couric in her notebook wrote: "As for Lady Liberty, she's wondering if anyone at the Pentagon has heard of a little program called Photoshop."

The New York Daily News - a newspaper that established its reputation with news photography - is actually having a Photoshop contest and asking readers to send in photos with Air Force One in improbably places.

I can appreciate what we used to call in the newsroom "the hoot value" of the Daily News's contest, but not the message it delivers.

We are truly a nation of expediency and, it seems, our values are easily dispatched with or modified to suit particular circumstances. It makes my mind reel to think how quickly the media would react to news that the administration had photoshopped a photo of Air Force One flying magestically over New York.

What other altered realities might we accept: Instead of a smiling handshake between Chavez and Obama, suppose we photoshop in a different pix of the prez with a more stern and disapproving look? How about an upright Obama facing the Saudi Arabian king eye to eye rather than the he's-not-really-bowing bow that caused such an uproar?

Is that really different? No, it's not. A photograph is a moment in time captured forever. We rely on its accuracy for our historical perspective. They document our times, our attitudes, our struggles and our victories. If we cannot rely on what we see with our own eyes as being factual, then we are truly lost.

Certainly photos are altered all the times in publications and on the internet. In this case, they are either clearly altered - such as the muscle bound Ronald Reagan that once graced the cover of Washingtonian magazine - or identified as a photoillustration.

We seem to be growing into a nation of situational standards. We thump our chests about our values but we are quick to put them away when they are inconvenient.

The flyover was a mistake, period. The White House office that approved it - at a cost of $382K - made a major miscalculation. The NYC mayor's office, which was notified four days in advance, was careless in not realizing the impact this would have.

But the answer that our media commentators and experts put forward should not be to alter the reality to the give the government what it wants. The answer should be that the government should not have done it. Period. We cannot open the door - however small the crack - to permitting the government to lie to us whether in a photo or a statment or an action. There is no situation where we should ever consider that acceptable. Period.