Last week at CUNY, I sat with Localnewser.com’s Mark Joyella.
He took out his camera and did a small video interview on the spot. Â He posted it on his blog and on Vimeo.
In the past few days I have gotten email inquiries from reporters at local TV news stations from New York to LA to Europe and Japan. Â This is the power of viral video (and apparently of Vimeo). Â It also says a lot about simply speaking the truth.
These folks are worried. Ironically, none of them disagree with what I have said here. (Not that it is all that new or surprising). They are worried about the future of their jobs. (And I think with good reason). Â They have seen what has happened to their companions at local newspapers. Â Can local TV news be far behind? I don’t think so.
What they don’t see, apparently universally, is their management taking any kind of steps to make real changes. Â Rather, it is the death by salami – a thousand small slices until there is nothing left.
There is a real market for local news. Â Ironically, the first place management will make cuts is in the newsroom itself, the place that produces the only product that they have to sell.
What is called for here, I think, is a radical restructuring of how the news is gathered and disseminated. In a world of shrinking budgets, what money there is should be spent on putting as many good reporters into the field as possible and getting their product online and on the air.
But that is not what is happening.
Too bad.
Which is why rants like this seem to find a home.
Apparently.
11 Comments
Rosenblum November 27, 2009
If, of course, local news is dead and I have killed it then I have been pretty successful so far.. and we are only getting started. I can’t take all of the credit, but even a small bit is gratifying indeed.
And of course, local news is indeed dead or dying. It has, of course, nothing to do with me. I am merely reactive to the realities that are all around us. But some people can’t see that and they need someone to blame.
Such is life
digger November 26, 2009
How can you be against Rosenblum and for the future? That’s like saying you are for the police but against a police state.
Nino November 26, 2009
Because the future that predicted seven years ago is here now and none of his prediction came true and those who believed in him and invested both money and time are nowhere to be found now.
Dreaming is good but soon or later you have to start showing results.
Ask Michael to tell you himself of how many directions he changed in the last seven years. He is like those little wind up bumper cars that go straight ahead until they hit an obstacle, then they change direction.
Nino November 26, 2009
If local news is dead then Rosenblum should be charged with murder.
The entire new methods of keeping the public informed with information that they need to have is dead, killed by incompetence and low intelligence, both as result of hiring people that wouldn’t qualify to flip burgers at McDonald.
The victims here are not the photographers or the reporters; the victim is the public that is being deprived from receiving information vital to their everyday life.
Let me give two examples, one very serious and one not so serious, but both very important to the community that the local news service is supposed to serve. This is what’s dead.
A few weeks ago, just days after the Ft. Hood shooting tragedy we had a similar event taking place in Orlando. A mad man got into an office building and started shooting. I got a call from one of the national news networks if I could go and lend a helping hand; they know that I’m out of that kind of business but they asked me to get there anyway, they paid me my regular freelance rates which is way higher than news rates. Their concern was that there were too many; they call them “inexperience photographers†for such a news event taking place while the 13 people killed in Ft. Hood were still in a morgue in Texas.
Less than half an hour after the first police 911 call the network had in place several cameras, a helicopter, a live satellite truck and a team or reporters, not VJs, real reporters. Each reporter was strategically placed in areas of a potential source of information. Several on site plus some at the local hospital, police headquarter and even at the mayor’s office.
The event in Orlando fortunately was not as tragic as the one in Ft. Hood, one person got killed and several wounded. But as far as the public was concerned it was considerably more critical as the shooter left before even the police was able to get there, meaning that the shooter wasn’t in custody like in Ft Hood but he was on the loose, armed and very dangerous. It was the media responsibility to inform the public of the potential danger, and the media using conventional methods did an admirable job.
I-4, the main interstate that connect the Florida East to the West coasts, and one of the most traveled highway in the country that goes right thru Orlando and Disney World was shut down as the building where this tragedy took place is next to one of the interchanges. Normally when somebody sneezes on I-4 you have a two miles back up, imagine the mess that this created.
Those thousands of drivers on the road that suddenly found themselves in a long parking lot I’m sure they did not have a notebook computer or hopefully were not looking at the news on their smart phone, their only source of information of why they were standing in a long parking lot instead of driving at 70mph was that old fashioned talking box called the radio. The source of the news was traditional news reporting.
While all this was going on in Orlando there were investigative reporters searching about the company where the shooting took place and in a short time the public had the identity of the shooter and his background, including that he was a former employee and he recently filed for bankruptcy. He was apprehended without incidents a short while later.
Only about two hours passed from the first 911 call to the arrest of the suspect, the media did an outstanding job, they did what they were supposed to do, keep the public inform with as much information as it was available.
Kind of make you think of how useful VJ really are to the public, well, they are not, they are totally useless, the system has become useless, and this is why the local news is dying.
Case two. Not as tragic but with the potential of turning tragic.
There was an intersection in the Tampa Bay region that had seen is share of accidents, but nobody really paid attention because they were a bunch of fended benders with minor injuries and this sort of things don’t make the news. But a local TV reporter started digging and discovered that this intersection has more than his fair share of accidents. Fortunately or unfortunately the criteria for the highway department to make safety improvements did not include a bunch of fender benders. Their rules call that there has to be a number of fatalities in order to make safety improvements.
The reporter got mad as he wasn’t getting anywhere with the state and local authority, so he got the insurance companies involved as they have been paying millions in damages and settlements on this particular intersection. Before you know it the intersection was undergoing the needed safety improvements. Thanks to the tenacity and dedication of a real reporter the public was the winner in this case. How many more of these could the public benefit from, or how many of these benefits is the public now being deprived of due of management incompetency and the greed of “get rich quick” consultants.
Remember one thing, news is information that the public needs to know. News isn’t video or photography, nor is writing or radio, web isn’t news either. These are merely means to convey the information. News is research, investigation and hard work. These are key elements missing from Rosenblum method of gathering news.
News isn’t a street art fair, or a sidewalk artist. News isn’t even a major health fair like the one that Rosenblum has been showing for months as what he considers an example of VJ work. The reason that those reports are useless news is because they already happened; they are of no benefit to the public whatsoever. To benefit the viewers those reports should have been done before the event and not after, so they would have plenty of time to participate if interested or in need.
The gathering of information that the public needs to know requires intelligence and intelligence is the major missing element in the new wave of VJ and CJ. and is the major missing element in Rosenblum methods of news gathering, and he is right, without research and investigation local news is dead.
Research and investigation is time consuming and expensive. You can’t have this on a VJ model that is based on cheap cheap. VJs don’t do the thinking and they are not paid to do the thinking; therefore stations will not hire intelligent people and as a consequence local news is dying.
Those who understanding what’s important to the viewers before the facts not after are too expensive and demand higher pay.
VJs just show up with a camera and records somebody else’s thinking.
Local news is dead because local news committed suicide.
pencilgod November 26, 2009
Your blog ate my post… I’ll try and write it again but I know it won’t be as good.
First how I see google.
There used to be this guy outside of a Sainsbury’s in London who’d stop you as you came out ask if you wanted a taxi and then flag one down while you waited safely by the shopping. He would help you load up, you tip him and latter pay the taxi as normal at the end of the journey. Everyone wins.
There had been a few guys like him but he was better at flagging down taxis so soon was the only one.
Now imagine that he started to wear t-shirts with advertising and that paid so much that he didn’t need the tips anymore. In fact the t-shirt suppliers offered a lot more money if he got more notice by getting more people into taxis. To do that he starts demanding that taxies not charge people for the ride. If they refuse he won’t flag them down anymore and the customers are used to him doing it so there would be less rides.
How long before the taxi’s that agree go broke and we are all left walking home in the rain, the guy has nobody to look at his t-shirt and people are stealing shopping carts to get the sopping home and the supermarket passes on the cost to the customer… I think that is as far as I can take that… 🙂
Could the search engines paying a small amount for the content they use be the big answer to how to make the internet pay? Can it really be that simple?
Mark it’s the damn useless color LCD viewfinders on the silly little cameras. It’s gotten to the ridiculous point where you need to lug around an HD monitor just to make sure the junk camera that cost less than a third of the monitor to buy is actually in focus.
pencilgod November 25, 2009
Glad to se you are thinking about it Michael it’s an interesting concept and I value you insight more than that of someone who sees thing a little to much from google’s POV.
Think Differently’s comment about what have they got to lose is a good one.
I kind of think about google the same way as a guy who used to stand outside Sainsbury’s in London. I’d come out with all my shopping, put it down stand by it while he’d wave down a taxi for me. He helped me load, I’d tip him, pay the taxi at the end of the ride and everyone was happy.
Now it seems like not only he flags the taxi down but he demands it give the ride to me for free. I’m happy, he’s happy but the taxi will go broke… without them there is no reason for the guy who flags them down and I’m left walking with shopping. Even the supermarket will lose as people steal shopping trolleys to get home, which they will on charge the cost of to the customer… I think I twisted that as far as it will go. 🙂
Search engines paying a small amount for the content they use doesn’t seem unreasonable… but it can’t be that simple can it?
Mark its those damn LCD colour viewfinders, you just can’t see if you are really in focus. It’s getting ridiculous when you need to cart around an HD monitor to see if the stupid little camera is actually getting what you think it is. 🙂
Mark Joyella November 25, 2009
Michael…
Thanks for posting… love your perspective, as always.
And pencil… you’re preaching to the choir, brother… I swear my eyes are fading faster than some of the news stations I used to work for, and lately I don’t trust them. I’ve had my eyes tell me things were out of focus when they weren’t, so in doubt, I hit autofocus, and as you saw, it went for the computer monitor and I about soiled myself.
I sat on the interview for a few days deciding: content? Or vanity? Ultimately, I decided to take the lumps and get the content out there.
Glad I did.
Michael, it’s great to have gotten to know you. See you soon.
Mark
digger November 25, 2009
Yes – Jeff Jarvis google fanboyism is over the top. Practically wets his knickers every time he gets a googly.
Which wouldn’t matter a whit if he had the balls to act on any of his prescriptions.
Michael Rosenblum November 25, 2009
Hi Stephan
I haven’t blogged on this one yet because, in all honesty, I don’t know what the right answer to this one is. This is no easy call. Journalist have to find a way to keep their work from being transmitted for free across the universe, but on the other hand, the technology is such that it’s almost impossible to stop it.
My friend Jeff Jarvis has written on this extensively:
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/11/15/nose-face-cut-spite-blocking-google/
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/11/23/murdoch-madness-2/
but ironically, I find myself nodding in agreement with Think Differently, who posts this as a comment:
“Actually, Jeff, this is a very interesting movement, and you need to move past fanboism and think about it. These publishers are doomed no matter how much they embrace Google, there is no magic analysis that shows the current models working, full stop. You and all their other critics know this, and when pushed on the subject, not only isn’t it not your problem, but you want them dead. Your harsh prescription is to essentially say to that that 90% of them will die but the remaining 10% will earn a subsistence wage from Google-directed traffic. What that really means is that the majority of them have nothing to lose really, only whether they get to pick the date of their demise. Given that, the only idea that really does have some chance of success is them walking away en-masse from Google. Striking, if you will. If there is any widespread movement along these lines, at least we’re now in uncharted territory. Maybe it’s suicide, maybe it actually starts to damage Google’s brand if it becomes the place you can’t get news from the names you know, and maybe, there’s a way that some other portal player emerges as the clearinghouse for this type of content, either a new one out of a news industry coalition, which reading between the lines of all of this suggests is imminent, or it Bing or Yahoo take that role.”
The best answer I can give at this point, I don’t know, but it’s gonna be a mess no matter what.
Actually, this whole scenario was very well predicted in a great video about decade ago called Epic 2015. Check it out if you get a sec. Ah, what the hell, here’s the link to that one as well
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/epic
pencilgod November 25, 2009
Next time he needs to try focusing on you, I know its just for the web but…
On a totally different topic what do you think about the whole Rupert Murdoch and Bing thing? I’ve expected to see you blog something on that all week.
Cliff Etzel November 25, 2009
Another thinking outside the box posting Michael that is so on the mark 🙂