Drudge: Journalism or Not?

If you've been following the Democratic primary race, then you probably heard about the Drudge Report posting of a photo of Barack Obama in Kenyan dress, claiming it had been sent out by a Clinton campaign staffer. The story -- and the photo -- were widely picked up by mainstream media outlets, including the New York Post and Daily News, who both put it on their covers. And the news even made it into a New York Times article in the A section, headlined "Clinton Campaign Starts 5-Point Attack on Obama."

But all of these papers were citing Drudge as their only source -- no one had any other confirmation that the item was sent out by a Clinton staffer, which is the only thing that makes it newsworthy.

It's interesting that these mainstream newspapers, who have standards of journalistic ethics and -- at least at the NYT -- standards on how they verfiy things from blind sources, are putting so much stock in Drudge. It just goes to show how someone with little more than a Web site and an email address can gain tremendous credibility, even in journalistic and political circles.

Even more interesting is whether what Drudge is doing should be called journalism. On the one hand, he regularly writes his own headlines that are links to other publications -- but they are often overstated, dramatized or misleading. But, when he originally posted the Obama photo, he included his post photos of Sen. Clinton and President Clinton also wearing ethnic dress -- much as a mainstream journalist might try to qualify a statement in a quest for objectivity.

For Matt Drudge's perspective, you can read this speech he gave at the National Press Club ten years ago, called "Anyone With A Modem Can Report On The World."

An Ambitious Web Plan for an Old Journalism Institution

The New York Observer announced today a big plan to expand their popular blog on New York politics, the Politicker, to all 50 states. As someone who works in public affairs and political communications, I think this plan has a great chance for success.

As the great Tip O'Neill once said, "all politics is local." And while the quote might be overused, it still rings true. For instance, right now I'm working for a client who has an interest in an issue that's being debated in the Pennsylvania legislature. Without being in Harrisburg, it's very difficult for me to figure out what's going on on a timely basis. My only option is to read the website of the Patriot-News, which often doesn't cover our issue. So, I hope it succeeds.

A Look Back at Election Coverage

Some fun with the Wayback Machine! Here is what the New York Times election coverage page looked like on Thursday Nov. 9, 2000, and here is the eight-years-later version. These days, it's hard to imagine a news site having an all-blue background like that one did. The white background definitely adds to the clean element on the page, I would argue. Interesting that eight years ago, though, they had an interactive map (at least of Florida).

LA Times Woes Continue

As chronicled here in the New York Times, LA Times publisher David Hiller is having a rough time. The piece notes that the LAT was late to get on the Web bandwagon:

For years, as newspaper Web sites became deeper, richer and more complex, Tribune’s sites fell behind, limiting their ability to draw readers and advertisers. Just last week, the Times Web site added the ability to put hyperlinks in its articles, something other major papers have had for as long as a decade.

It's worth asking how much that strategy contributed to their current problems. I'm sure it's a lot.

One Mission, Two Newsrooms

A long, in-depth look at the challenges the Washington Post is having with its online operation (and vice versa). As a former washingtonpost.com employee, I have to say that the physical separation (The Post is in DC, post.com is across the Potomac in VA) is a huge factor. Supposed colleagues rarely meet each other face to face, which breeds big distrust. When I was there working in the Sports section as an online producer, there were a few editors on the print side who were “good guys,” but everyone else largely ignored and/or antagonized us. Another big factor then (2002-04) was that a lot of the print guys were not technologically savvy and didn’t understand — or want to understand — that the Web was important. It seems that that realization has to be clear now.

Election Coverage!

Of course, election night has always been one of the busiest nights of the year for any newsroom. But before the Internet, reporters and editors would wait for the polls to close, get as many results as they could, write their stories, and go home for the night. As we know, this sometimes produced disastrous results:

But these days, the old guard newspapers — the New York Times and Washington Post — are providing real-time updates throughout the night via their web sites. The New York Times web site features interactive maps that are updated continuosuly. The Washington Post has even expanded to the mobile world — you can sign up to get text messages with election results.

I’d love to know how popular that texting service was on Super Tuesday. My guess is that people who care enough to sign up for texts would probably be in front of a TV or at their computers.

Interestingly, the “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline could never happen online — it would simply be erased moments later, as the AP did when it mistakenly called Missouri for Hillary Clinton last Tuesday, and then had to reverse its call and give the state to Barack Obama. Little harm was done — in fact, I doubt many viewers will remember that mistake. A far cry from the fame (infamy?) of the image above.

Blog Overload?

Below are just a few(!) of the blogs that are listed on washingtonpost.com’s Blog Directory. In my opinion, there are way too many. No one could possibly follow this many blogs overall, not to mention just from one Web site. What’s more, their names do little to help readers differentiate and make good choices about what they want to read with their limited time. For instance, in the Politics section alone there’s The Fix, The Sleuth, The Talk and The Trail. Those all sound the same to me! However, they are all traditional areas of coverage for mainstream newspapers, and while producing them is certainly a lot of work, they are not totally beyond the realm of the newspaper’s coverage.

Take a look, though, at some of these names and descriptions. When was the last time you saw these topics covered in-depth in the print edition of the Washington Post?

PostRock: J. Freedom du Lac and and David Malitz riff on the world of popular (and unpopular) music.

Channel This: Writers for The Post’s Style section recap their favorite TV shows.

Offbeat: Emil Steiner on real, strange news.

Under God: Claire Hoffman takes a daily look at what we do in the name of God.

On The Plane: Post reporters file dispatches as they travel overseas with the president and other officials.

I wonder: do these topics really better lend themselves to online coverage, and that’s why they deserve space online but not in print? Or is the Post desparately trying to drive page views by blogging about whatever is left over in their notebooks?

Welcome!

This blog is intended to look at how the Web — in all its different forms — is affecting traditional print journalism. I would argue that the advent of the Web is the single biggest issue facing newspapers and magazines today, both from an editorial and business standpoint.

On the editorial front, the world simply does not operate on a 24-hours news cycle any more. By the time we get the newspaper in the morning, chances are we’ve already read about much of the “news” online. This seems to have produced two shifts: one, more newspaper content is “news analysis” — pieces that try to lend another layer to the traditiona. who, what, when, where, why and how of a story; and two, newspapers have ramped up their online content to be continuously updated. Case in point: even the staid New York Times, which didn’t even print a color photograph (too racy!) on its front page until 1997, now has a variety of blogs on its Web site. (Its blog City Room even covered the death of Heath Ledger with minute-by-minute updates — a huge departure for a newspaper that has always been above the fray of celebrity journalism — but that’s another topic).

From an advertising standpoint, newspapers are dying. Their main revenue stream — classified advertising — has been almost wholly usurped by searchable, real-time and often free Web sites like Craig’s List. This crisis is affecting newspaper in different ways, which I’ll explore on this blog. To read about a recent example, check out this video and article about the departure of L.A. Times editor James O’Shea, who quit out of a refusal to make the budget cuts he was asked to implement by the publisher.

More to come …