A Future for Newspapers?

I guess I won't be applying to any newspapers for work even though I have a Masters degree in Broadcast Journalism and am sort of in the job-seeking market. At a forum put on by the Stanford University Department of Communication, Bill Keller, Executive Editor of the New York Times, Gary Pruit, CEO of The McClatchy (Newspaper) Co., and Harry Chandler, former co-owner of the LA Times all agreed that there was no roadmap for the hemorrhaging newspaper industry - victims of the internet and general cultural shift away from reading news - and times would get bleaker before they get brighter. Papers get 85% - 90% of their income from ads and Craigslist alone has siphened off a huge amount of that revenue stream.

Chandler, whose family sold the LA Times said there were four likely options for newspapers:
1) A dramatic amount of layoffs and buyouts
2) Diversification (for example the Washington Post bought the Kaplan SAT-Test company)
3) Leverage the brand (big newspapers have credibility that should be valuable to some other business ventures)
4) Ownership will shift toward the pro sports model where many owners do it for the ego boost etc. rather than profits

One telling statistic (relative to cutbacks) was given by Keller, who said that when the war in Iraq was just underway and Saddam was ousted there were 1,000 reporters there. Now there are 45.

Pruitt, of McClatchy, was most optimistic saying that papers have been through the same sort of cataclysmic paradigm shifts before, when radio and then TV came "online." He's confident that newspapers will find new life on the web, albeit not as profitable as the last half of the 20th century.

Writeup in the Stanford Daily

Two months ago, I organized an evening lecture/conversation with former Tech Columnist turned Citizen Journalism activist, Dan Gillmor. He was asked a similar question about the future for newspapers and was similarly vague about the immediate future before new paradigms emerge. Here's a video clip with his full response:

Robert Scheer, journalist with a history

Palo Alto's Peace and Justice Center sponsored a talk by journalist Robert Scheer. Many are familiar with the famous Jimmy Carter line admitting to "lust in his heart" from an interview with Scheer. I last heard him thirty two years ago when I would attend his weekly talks in Berkeley with my then-housemate Charlie. The other night, he was still wearing jeans and a "workshirt" but as though someone had hit the fast forward button, he is now a hard-to-believe 70 years old.

Scheer, the former editor of Ramparts Magazine and longtime columnist for the LA Times, is as mesmorizing, entertaining, and information-laden as ever. He runs an online newspaper-blog with his sons, called Truthdig. He spoke about Presidents since his last book is about the five he has interviewed and studied as well as Bush II who he hasn't interviewed. He recounted presidential lies in every administration, but also found some good to report in nearly every case. He reminds us that Nixon was "pink" relative to the current batch of Republicans, what with the wage and price controls he implemented and his trip to China, opening diplomatic relations. (Cheney and Rumsfeld were around then and opposed the visit to China.) Thanks to Gorbachev's proposal, it was Reagan who destroyed a chunk of our nuclear weapons after their summit in Reykovik, Iceland. Carter's experience as Governor of Georgia, with a legislature that only met 60 days a year, wasn't much preparation for president and it really showed. Instead, he became a great ex-president. There just wasn't anything good to say about George II.

Scheer wrote a column in May, 2001 (five months before 9/11) blasting the administration for sending $43 million to the tyrannical, rabidly anti-American Taliban government in Afghanistan. Apparently, because they had outlawed farming opium, they deserved to be propped up with our dollars.

There was some Q & A, but I held my tongue since mostly I wanted to know how he stayed so trim and could retain so many historical facts in his memory.

Not-So-Grand Juries

Josh Wolf is a 24 year old activist vlogger, who was jailed for not providing video footage he shot at a demonstration (where a San Francisco police car was burned) to a federal grand jury investigating the case. He recently lost his appeal. How many people are acquainted with the sweeping powers of grand juries vs. the public judicial system? I'm not, but it sounds like some kind of parallel Bush-style tribunal system. Are we going to see subpoenas on anyone who had a camcorder or a picture-taking cell phone in the vicinity of any crime? Apparently a state grand jury would have been limited in demanding Wolf's footage if he was found to be a reporter protecting his sources (a federal grand jury does not have to observe these "shield laws") but the appeals judge said that Wolf is not a journalist. As Wolf points out, there is no license for journalists and a vlogger who is self publishing their footage on the web is every bit as much a journalists as the Bush-Cheney apologists on Fox. (I won't go any further with the Wolf-Fox contrast.)

SF Chronicle Article 9/12/06
At this point, Wolf, who says he has no footage of the police car burning and was willing to show the footage to the Appeals judge, may have to go back to jail until the "grand jury" finishes its term in July.