By: Greg Mitchell Better late than never, E&P launched its first online "chat" this morning, as I humbly submitted to both serious and frivolous questions.
To get one out of the way at the very start: Boxers AND briefs.
Here's how it went down, from "death notices" to "Bleak House," from Jeff Gannon to The Boss.
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From Brattleboro, Vt.:Q: Hi E&P. We run iBrattleboro.com, a local news Web site where the readers are the writers. On Thursday we are invited to talk to a journalism class on the subject "The Death of Newspapers" (the professor's topic, not ours). We see your reports that newsprint sales have slumped, and papers are struggling for a variety of reasons, but are newspapers indeed dying? What do you suggest we talk about with these college students?
GM: If newspapers die it will be a very slow death. Even amid this current "crisis" most of them are still racking up 20% to 30% profit margins. Yes, print is in trouble, but as you know, newspapers have gone onto the Web in a big way, obviously with mixed results. But the effort is there and in most cases newspapers are still the big local news "brand" and have very successful Web sites.
It's a little like movie studios losing profits at the box office -- but making up for it on DVD sales. Still, you saw during the Oscars show there there were repeated, and clunky, appeals to viewers to visit the local movie theater. But there is no reason to think that newspapers will not continue to expand online and make more money and remain THE credible local news source -- even if increasingly on the Web. It's amazing that newspapers are supposed to be rapidly heading for extinction, with their overall 1% circulation decline, when TV is losing much more and no one says it is dying. The Oscar show just lost 10% in ratings in one year.
from Buffalo, N.Y.: Q: What's happening with E&P's blog that you announced last year and even had a naming contest?
GM: Thanks for remembering. It's set up and ready to go and we consider launching it almost every month but always get stopped short by short staffing -- we'd rather not do it at all than do it weakly. We've also felt that the main Web site is doing so well we don't want to risk damaging that, and instead incorporate certain offbeat bloggy material, and things like this chat, on the main site. No doubt we will get the blog going, but it must be said (as some have learned already): Blogs may not work for everyone.
By the way, my favorite name for the blog, which we did not pick, was "Nut Grafs." I mentioned that at a panel I moderated last year, and Nick Denton asked if we had secured the rights to it. The answer was no, so who knows, you might yet see a blog by that name at Gawker Media.
But who is to say that blogs aren't just a fad that will slowly fade, like print newspapers? I love blogs, use them all the time, but I wonder if fatigue might soon set in. In the end, the iPod threatens all of us working in words.
From Rochester, N.Y.::
Q. What do you think will happen to Jill Carroll?
GM: Good question. I think today is the 2nd month anniversary since she was kidnapped. I can?t explain or defend why I am optimistic, I just am. I can?t say that is universally shared.
From Northridge, Ca.::
Q: What do you think of the Washington Post's refusal to conduct public opinion polls on the topic of whether the president should be impeached? More generally, how do polling organizations decide (and how should they decide) which topics merit inclusion in their polls and which do not? Do you believe that the existence of a poll on a particular subject can give that subject undue legitimacy (for example, the Fox News polls last year on whether there is a "war against Christmas") -- or, on the contrary, that the non-existence of a poll can inappropriately suppress a topic that is worthy of more widespread attention?
A: I?m aware of this question and asked Dr. Frank Newport, head of the Gallup Poll, about it a few months ago. He said he was pondering it and would pop the question when it seemed like it was gaining traction. By that he meant, when a few more people launch a serious effort in Congress?and newspaper editorials take up the cause. This hasn?t happened yet. But should that be the criteria? Polls on this subject so far from Zogby etc. have been somewhat flawed, due to how the question is posed, but even so, it seems that, right or wrong, probably 30 to 40 percent of Americans would say, yes, on impeachment, so it seems like it?s worth asking.
And, yes, in some cases, even asking a question in polls drives up interest (and the opposite is true). Maybe the Post will ask the question if Christmas declares war on Bill O'Reilly.
From Wichita, Kn.Q: You guys put an awful lot of stuff out on the Web, but I see the same names again and again as writers, or as ?E&P Staff.? You must have an awful small staff?how do you do it?
A: Yeah, we should have changed that byline to "Ian P. Staf" a long time ago, to fool ya.
We do have an amazingly small editorial staff, considering we also put out a rather elaborate print magazine every month. We are simply eight: yours truly, staff writers/editors Joe Strupp, Jennifer Saba, David Astor and Jim Rosenberg, managing editor Shawn Moynihan, writer/editor Mark Fitzgerald in Chicago, and an online editor. How do we do it? Hard work and terror?that the blogs and citizen journalism might be gaining on us! Also, in these times, there?s, oh, one or two things to get excited or angry about, even with Jeff Gannon disappearing from view.
From Tampa, Fla. :Q: I've watched a frightening trend with public notice advertising going to the Internet instead of in newspapers, either with government- sponsored websites or through companies like enotices.com. As newspaper executives, we can only lobby our state legislators so much. What do you see as the future of public notice advertising?
GM: So far, newspapers have been able to argue successfully that access to newspapers is much more widespread than access to the Internet. They often cite free copies in libraries as an example. But of course now many libraries offer Net access, and online will eventually become as ubiquitous as TV, so I think that the pressure to put notices online will increase. Some newspapers are responding as they have with classified, and putting public notices on their site. There's even a vendor that is marketing a public notices portal similar to the Legacy death notices/obituary site. That is, we think, the future of public notices.
From Madison, Wi.Q I think conservatives in this country have managed to spin media
coverage to the point where ANY reports that are critical of the Bush
Administration are viewed as "liberal reporting" and "liberal media bias." The media, all forms of it, should strive to be critical of those in power who misuse their power, either through negligence or through corruption, regardless of whether or not they are conservative, liberal, middle of the road, or libertarian. Given my above comments, what do you think about claims being bandied about that the media is liberal?
GM: Awfully big question for a little ol? chat, and you have already stated the ?should strive? angle very well. But in general, today, people just want their views verified, not challenged with facts or what might be called truth. That?s why Stephen Colbert?s ?truthiness? is so far 2006?s ?Word of the Year.?
It's often asked, what is ?media?? Does talk radio count? And I think one would have to agree that the top cable news networks, taken together, hardly grade out as ?liberal.? More on this later, time permitting.
Location unknown:
Q: At what point did you decide to become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party?
A: Hasn't happened yet, but we are open to offers from all parties. Paging Roger Ailes, paging Roger Ailes.
From Detroit:Q. Hey Greg, I enjoyed your articles a couple years ago about reporters banned from attending those Springsteen concerts because they were fundraisers for Kerry. Didn?t I read somewhere that you discovered The Boss?
A. I was born to run?stories. But seriously: It has been said that Peter Knobler and I "discovered" Bruce?but only in the journalistic sense. We wrote the first national story about him in January 1973 just before his first album came out, for Crawdaddy, an 8000-word opus titled, ?Who is Bruce Springsteen?and Why Are We Saying These Wonderful Things About Him?? (That was a play on a now-obscure Dustin Hoffman movie that had come out recently.) We then ran numerous other stories that, we were told, may have helped keep Columbia from kicking him off the label. Couple years later we published the first Springsteen cover story. You can look it up, as Casey Stengel used to say. But beyond those very early days we had absolutely nothing to do with his success, and staying power.
From Knoxville:
Q. So how is E&P doing now, after going from weekly to monthly a few years ago?I heard you were in trouble then and I don?t see the print edition anymore?
A. Thanks for asking. Actually, the switch in frequency, in our 120th year, and new focus on the Web has been a spectacular success all around. I won?t bore you with the details but everything has gone well, from display and classified ads (which we had expected to plummet) to Web traffic (up 500%). We now have more than a million unique users on the Web every month and of course many more than that in page views. And, bear with me, in the past three years we have won more Neal Awards--these are the top prizes for the trade press--than all but one other magazine. Thanks to our staff and all of you out there.
From Garden City, KS: Q: Ahead of Sunshine Week, got any favorite examples of a news outlet suing a government that officially lied to it? Lots of newsies see the and fume in frustration, but how do they fight back beyond just exposing the lie? Thanks.
GM: I can?t cite chapter and verse here, but I can cut and paste one recent example that I saved. Here is an excerpt from an AP story last December :
Gov. Ernie Fletcher and state police improperly withheld records involving Vice President Dick Cheney's brief stop in Louisville in March en route to an Indiana fund-raiser, a judge ruled yesterday.
The administration had invoked a new exception to the Kentucky Open Records Law that allows governments to keep some records secret if they can show their disclosure would pose a "reasonable likelihood" of being useful for plotting a terrorist attack. Franklin Circuit Judge Roger Crittenden ruled the administration had not crossed that threshold.
Cheney flew into Louisville on March 28, was driven to Southern Indiana to attend a political fund-raising event, then returned to his plane and left. The state police helped provide some security, traffic control and other services. The Associated Press, with support from The Courier-Journal, requested overtime, expense and other records but was denied by Fletcher's office. Attorney General Greg Stumbo's office, which reviews initial appeals of records decisions, sided with Fletcher.
It was the first time the new provision of the law had been invoked and taken to court. Crittenden said the basic premise of the exception had not been met.
From Dayton, Ohio:Q. What are you reading now?
GM. When I was in Key West recently I picked up a copy of Hemingway?s ?A Farewell to Arms,? after re-visiting his house there. After a good start, it faded, I thought. I'm now about 150 pages into the 850 pages of Dickens? great ?Bleak House,? after watching the PBS series?while also watching a tape of the Diana Rigg BBC version. What a book!
Soon we may be seeing the current White House referred to as ?Bleak House? in newspaper headlines. Failing to meet "Great Expectations." With "Hard Times" to come. Etc.
From Northridge, CA.:Q. Recently I noticed a significant difference in the quality
of headlines between those on the L.A. Times' web site and
those in the hard copy of the Times. The headlines in the
web edition were much "punchier" and seemed to encapsulate
the stories more accurately. Here's one example:
Online edition: "Book: Bush Proposed Provoking War"
Paper edition: "Book Casts Doubt on Case for War"
I wrote to the Times' readers' representative inquiring
about the differences, and received a reply that said in
part, "...some of the language I see online wouldn't be
allowed in the newsroom -- not because it's 'dumbing down'
the headline, but because the headline goes a bit further
than editors here in the newsroom might think is accurate.
For example, the 'provoking' headline probably would be seen
as pushing the facts a bit more than editors want. The
headline used in the print edition was more neutral so that
readers could decide for themselves after reading the
article."
As a trained journalist who has written heads and who
understands the constraints of deadlines and space, I was
taken aback by this response. Why should there be different
standards for an online edition and a print edition? I would be interested in your opinion.
GM: I can't judge the day-to-day headlines at the L.A. Times, but their response to your note is certainly interesting. There has long been a sense that online readers are different than print readers, and more open to opinion and "punchiness," but I wonder if that will change as the audiences overlap more and more.
[Chat ended 11:55 AM. Sorry about questions I did not get to or came in too late. See you next time.]
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