media notes 02-03.02.13

02/03/2013

 
Media notes for Saturday-Sunday:

Jay Rosen, the journalism scholar at New York University, publishes on his Pressthink blog a succinct yet wide-ranging argument about the climate in traditional journalism --- what it is right about (among other things, overload), what it is wrong about (among other things, business ignorance) --- that summarizes the challenges of the craft. 

Jay Kirsch, the president of AOL's business, technology and entertainment group, weighs in on the recent controversy involving CBS' involvement in its subsidiary CNET's decision to recognize a CBS rival and litigant with an award (the award was rescinded and CNET was restrained from writing about the rival Dish Network product). Kirsch writes at TechCrunch (one of AOL's holdings) such involvement in the so-called church and state relationship doesn't hurt the church --- it hurts the state.

David Gelernter, the Yale computer science professor widely credited for his foresight about the web, writes for Wired on the emergence of information timeline streams and how they will create the end of the web, the reorienting of search, and the shift of computers to devices that "tune in" to the latest information.
 

media notes: 15.01.13

01/15/2013

 
Media Notes for Tuesday:

There continues fallout from CNET's move last week to rescind an award at the annual CES convention to The Dish Network at the direction of CNET's parent company, CBS, a competitor and litigant against Dish. BuzzFeed notes that a leading reporter for CNET has resigned, saying he could not tolerate the impact on his independence, and The Hollywood Reporter says that the decision to rescind was approved at the very top of CBS by Les Moonves.

The Atlantic had a busy day in the limelight Monday, first featuring and then dropping an online "paid content" advertorial on the accomplishments of the Church of Scientology.  The Hollywood Reporter has a look at the issue. The feature raised concerns about the seemingly thin line for readers at times online between journalism and advertising. The Next Web reports that another element of the issue was The Atlantic's decision to moderate the online public comments, but notes the online/offline fuss may have given the sponsor more attention than it would have otherwise received.

Alan Mutter, in his latest post on his Reflections of a Newsosaur site, analyzes the U.S. newspaper audience changes since 2010 and concludes that three-quarters of the audience is now aged 45 and older. He says that is up from about one-half only three years ago. The difference is the absence of 20- and 30-somethings from the mix. He concludes the newspaper audience wil die off because these younger people won't grow into print readers.


 

Two Canadian cents' worth on Katie Couric

04/11/2008

 

Much as this is a blog on media change, it is impossible not to get drawn into the last few days of speculation about the future of Katie Couric and her role at the CBS Evening News. I'll get to the media change part soon.
The New York Times weighs in today with a lengthy backroom piece, co-bylined by its sterling media writer Bill Carter, that reveals a recent CBS executive discussion with Couric and her agent about whether she might leave the anchor job before her contract expires in 2011 --- say, right after the U.S. election later this year --- and occupy a new network role.
Now, I've only managed in the much tinier Canadian division of this big league, and only for a couple of years, but the leak of this discussion is almost certainly the kiss of death for her tenure. Anchor loyalty is frail and needs constant nurturing. Audiences flee easily. It's hard to imagine how viewers will provide loyalty (not that they were, anyway) when it's feasible Couric and CBS are even musing about a premature departure. Just to have that meeting and discussion --- or to leak it, anyway --- is to essentially generate the goodbye.
Which brings me back to the topic of media change, because Couric was supposed to be it --- a new approach to nightly news, a new vivaciousness, perhaps with a new set of commitments around life-relevant themes, in order to connect with a disaffected audience and help save the genre. While many of the purists were worried she would fluff down the news, their concerns were the least of the eventual worries.
No sooner was she on than did she start seeming more solemn and, well, wholly traditional. She'd surrendered that wondrous breakfast-time Today Show effect and adopted nothing magical in moving to dinner-time CBS News.
Her status today is an eight-figure mess and her demise will once again touch off the debate about the viability of the nightly newscast. U.S. network television news ratings are in decline, partly because of the addition of all-news networks like CNN and Fox, and partly because the hour of the broadcast is harder to fix as an appointment in a commuter/long work day world.
Given that it was reported this week that CBS News is in talks with CNN about cost-sharing its newsgathering worldwide, the Tiffany network is in the midst of a journalistic perfect storm.

 
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