For a totally other take on the GateHouse story, go here.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Fair Use vs. Corporate Greed
I should be hiking Sanitas, instead of ruminating on journalism’s narrow escape from a legal ruling on fair use as it applies to the Web. But because I’m a J School grad student who’s learning digital news practices, I’m composing a new blog instead … (violins will play here when I learn how to upload audio to my blog).
On Monday, GateHouse Media and the New York Times Co. settled out of court rather than have a judge rule in their copyright infringement case. GateHouse had charged NYT with infringing on original content published on the Web as part of GateHouse’s “Wicked Local” sites, and scraped by the NYT’s competing Boston.com site. Since scraping is the basis for all aggregators, the outcome of this suit was a nail-biter for the big players in the aggregation business, particularly Yahoo and Google, Huffington Post, Politico, and the like.
But aggregators aren’t competing with original material sites — in fact, it might be argued that aggregators help the sites they link to by bringing them users who might not otherwise visit. In this case, however, Boston.com competes directly with “Wicked Local.” In fact, that was the crux of the complaint—that by scraping “Wicked Local” headlines, Boston.com was competing with “Wicked Local” by using WL’s own material.
A former Bostonian, I remember the days when the precursors to “Wicked Local” were several locally produced, 12-page weeklies that reported on town meetings and school district doings for the small suburbs that surround Boston. Over the years, these were bought out by larger companies that bought more local weeklies, etc., and eventually were bought by Liberty Media, which is now GateHouse Media.
Some complicating factors: it’s not clear that “Wicked Local” didn’t get traffic from Boston.com’s links to the originating site; and it’s really puzzling that GateHouse didn’t install software that precludes aggregators from scraping, as many sites do to protect just this sort of “poaching.” In fact, that’s one of the remedies that the agreement they struck stipulates. GateHouse will install software to bar their material from aggregators, and NYT will honor that barrier.
Probably both sides in this dispute saw that a legal ruling could severely cramp money making for everyone concerned, which is why they came to an agreement the day they were due in court. For now, aggregators can continue with business as usual— combing the Web for news and posting the headlines and first sentences of each original story, along with a link to its source, on their aggregation site. And the media conglomerates can wring more money from their Web businesses by pushing the limits of ethical journalistic practice.
So is it journalism that benefited here, or Big Business? Can we even separate the two?
My antidote for today’s exposure to the greed that infects our industry is a self-prescribed walk in the sunshine.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Pooper Scooper: Confusing Gossip with News
The Web was rife today with headlines about Caroline Kennedy's reasons for withdrawing from consideration for the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton. The Huffington Post showed Kennedy's picture sandwiched between a head that implied nefarious misdeeds might be afoot:
NY Times: Kennedy's Bid Derailed by Housekeeper and Tax Problems
and another head that said:
The articles were fairly tame, if confusing and confused, accounts of the possible reasons why Kennedy is no longer in the running. The NYT gave its headline's claim a cursory mention: the article said nothing of substance about housekeepers or tax problems. And TIME magazine's story of "fury" was a big yawn.
Later in the day, HuffPo moved the story to its front-page banner, which blared "New York Fiasco," coupled with a timeline that gives the history of Kennedy's interest in the position and the political whisperings about the likelihood of her getting it. Somewhere in all that, an unnamed source was quoted as saying, "reporters are starting to look at her marriage more closely"—but it was left up to your imagination as to what that might mean.
I'm troubled by the coverage, both by the HuffPo and the New York Times. It lacks journalistic precepts of fairness, neutrality or even credibility. The headlines are misleading, if not downright spurious. They are written to attract rubberneckers who are fascinated by possibly glimpsing an American aristocrat's fall from grace.
The stories the headlines reference were mostly unremarkable—mundane, even—except when reporters quoted unnamed sources whose comments are no better than idle speculation. To imply that Kennedy has something to hide about her marriage is not pertinent to this story. Even if there is marital discord, does that have any bearing on this? Hinting at it changes the focus of the story from "Why has Kennedy withdrawn from consideration?" to "Is this rich and famous woman unhappy in love?"
The influence of the entertainment industry on journalistic practices is nothing new. And the Kennedys have long been fodder for both hard and entertainment news, which in this case have been combined, hard and entertainment news in one scandalous story! The HuffPo and the New York Times attempted to reach two different audiences with this story: political junkies who want to know why Kennedy is out of the picture for the Senate seat and who's the likely next candidate, and those who love reading People Magazine's endless coverage of the rich and famous, whose lives are filled with tragedy and epiphany. The media did a disservice to journalistic ethics in the process.
Web-based coverage made this conflation possible. Articles from the New York Times and the New York Post—strange bedfellows, indeed—were quoted in the HuffPo's breathlessly updated timeline. Links to the full articles revealed strangely voyeuristic coverage by even the so-called "serious" publication, whose editors seem to have forgotten what they ever learned about ethical journalistic practices.
Not until I turned on NPR did I find a measured journalism worthy of the name. Reporter Nicholas Confessore (who co-wrote the NYT story on Kennedy) explained to NPR what are the differences between what Kennedy's camp said, and what the New York governor's camp said. The discussion then turned to who are the likely candidates for the Senate seat, and what experience they each would bring to the job. No gossip, no speculation, no gloating. And no compromising of journalistic ethics to broaden the story's appeal.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
What's Old is News Again
As a child of the 60s and 70s, I'm feeling it's "deja vu all over again," to quote Yogi Berra. Much of what was said by Dianne Feinstein, and then Obama, referenced Kennedy and King. Intentional and purposeful, bringing back memories of social activism, ideals of equality and equability, tolerance and striving to improve our country.
The coverage I heard was split between streaming from AP/MSNBC and then watching ABC's TV coverage. AP's pundits' comments were sexist and ignorant. "These are the only men who know what Obama is going through." "We thought the crowd was loud for Jimmy Carter, but listen to them roar for Bill Clinton ... and his wife, Hillary, who will have a place in the Obama administration."
Excuse me? How about these are the only PEOPLE who know what Obama is going through. And how do the pundits know WHO the crowd roared for? Maybe it was for Hillary, not Bill, Clinton. Or both of them. Needless to say, these pundits are men.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, on the other hand, notes that there's a huge accolade for The Clintons. She doesn't assume it's for Bill rather than Hillary. Maddow acknowleges that both of the Clintons are important public figures.
Our society has a short memory. People argue that discussing racism shouldn't be necessary, that to move forward we need to stop using the progressives' language of the 60s and 70s. But if male reporters in our national media still perceive the world through the lens of gender stereotypes, then I doubt that we can abandon efforts to consciously address racism, ageism or sexism.
Precisely the opposite, in fact. So much of what our nation is facing we faced 30 and 40 years ago and thought we could resolve in the next decade or two. Energy issues, social justice issues, controlling nuclear proliferation — thousands of young and old people worked hard to address the problems associated with theses issues ... and then the nation's focus shifted towards celebrity and status worship during the Reagan era and beyond. I wonder: if we hadn't lost our focus in the 80s and 90s, perhaps we wouldn't be scrambling to regain our momentum now.
But here we are, invoking the ideals of Camelot, with Feinstein saying, "In that spirit we pledge ourselves to unity and renewed call to greatness." And Rick Warren praying that we all strive towards a purpose-driven life.
Obama set the tone of urgency, addressing us as citizens, emphasizing our responsibility to participate in democracy. "We remain a young nation, but it's time to set aside childish things ... Greatness must be earned ... For us our forebears sacrificed. We must begin again the work of remaking America ... We must restore the vital trust between a people and their government."
Lowery's final invocation brought it full circle, sounding an updated version of the rhetoric of the Civil Rights movement, and finishing with a 60s Baptist minister's rhyming refrain, so reminiscent of Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson.
This time, I hope, we don't let up until we do achieve the changes that this country — and the Earth — needs.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Defining Friends on FB
Last fall I had a voicemail from a former high school classmate, asking me to come to our 35th high school reunion. This was not someone I'd been close to, but I had attended schools with her from 5th grade-on. We were more than acquaintances. And I decided to respond to her via FB.
The upshot of this is that we "friended" each other. My mistake, mea culpa. Because if you have fewer than 50 FB friends (which is my case), you can't avoid knowing about every change and "thought" that they have and post to their page. And her posts started to annoy me, just as her behavior in high school had annoyed me. And I hated high school, partly because the preoccupations that still concern this classmate were the dominant HS culture. In fact, the only reason I had considered attending the reunion was mostly that I could spend time with my BFF and she and I could go, and then be bitchy about it later. (Or maybe forever.) And I'd shed my middle-age spread recently, so ... You know.
But why would I want to go to a reunion for an experience I detested? DOH. So I refused the invitation when it arrived via snail mail, and after a few more weeks, I un-friended the high school classmate.
Phew! It felt great! I was able to act on my real feelings. She wouldn't ever notice (I reasoned), because we aren't friends in real life, and she had so many FB pals that one less wouldn't make a difference.
Except: Two days ago, I got a friend request from my un-friended HS classmate. She was "confused," she said: weren't we friends? For about five minutes I hesitated. What would it cost me to FB-friend her again? Principles instilled in me about good manners and politeness said I should accept her request and gracefully make up an excuse —that is, LIE —about inadvertently un-friending her I don't know how that happened oh my isn't that weird thank goodness you caught it of course we're friends ...
But we're not. And I don't want to be. Because "friend" as denoted by FB terminology has little meaning, doesn't mean I have to compromise my personal definition of the word. So I choose to accept as friends those people who are actual, true friends whom I communicate with in Real Life, not those people who I would never, ever, spend time with nor seek out to be friends with if I had met them for the first time only last week.
So I ignored the request, because my only FB choices were accept, ignore, or report for abuse. (The last choice, of course, doesn't apply to this situation.) I'd prefer to send a "No, thanks, not interested" response. Wouldn't that be the truly ethical way to respond to people's requests that you don't wish to accept, rather than ignoring them? ... which is a coward's way out. I don't like being a coward. It doesn't feel ethical.
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