San Diego citizen journalism & media blogs

I was reading the broadcast trade magazines and spotted this blurb on "New Media."  The headline read, "People who are out to change the media world." The title alone inspires me. I love it when people actually come up with solutions instead of just complaining of how bad the media business has become.

One wants to build a database for public records. Another plans to launch street-corner newscasts. A third wants to develop a tool to turn numbers into something more visually exciting than charts. They are among the projects getting parts of the $5.1 million that the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is disbursing to push the envelope on community reporting. It’s the third year of the foundation’s five-year, $25 million Knight News Challenge, an international contest to fund digital news projects. 

—MediaBugs: $335,000 for a neutral independent site where the public can report, track, discuss and fix errors in news coverage.  (This is cool, how many time have you spotted a news story and said "wait that's not the truth.")

—Councilpedia: $250,000 goes to the NYC-centric public policy site Gotham Gazette, which will add a feature looking at local legislators’ voting records and campaign contributions. (You have to keep them honest, and now local legislators can't hide from the public, because their voiting history is easily accessable)

—Data Visualization: $243,600 is being given to the Washington DC-based Jefferson Institute to develop tools that turn numbers into charts and models that are a bit more easy on the eyes and more accessible to the public.  (I love this tool, give me numbers I can relate to, and make sense of)

—Mobile Media Toolkit: $200,000 will go towards helping media outlets and citizen journalists find mobile devices and apps to create and broadcast local news reports in a project headed by MobileActive. (look out! This could give broadcast news a run for it's money, it already has)

—The Daily Phoenix: $95,000 will connect Phoenix’s light rail system commuters with news, games and social networking to learn about their city.  (I don't ride the rails, but would be interested in checking this out)

—Crowdsourcing Crisis Information: $70,000 for a free “breaking news web map” and timeline that combines and plots reports from citizens and journalists.  (Hey, this one is new to me, the more ideas the better)

—Virtual Street Corners: $40,000 for broadcasting street corner video newscasts about two disparate Boston neighborhoods, Roxbury and Brookline, as a way to bridge the economic and cultural divides. (now you're talking, why not have a million of these hyper-local newscast, that way folks can keep up with what's happening on their street.)

—CMS Upload Utility: $10,000 is being handed to Joe Boydston and the McNaughton Newspaper Company for a tool that converts and load multiple newspaper files to a web site.  (right on!)

As you see the ideas are coming in, better yet, folks are getting grants to study and implement these ideas. What do you have in mind?  How can we create better local newscasts, how can we better serve, and inform the public. We'd like to know.

"What if there were a local newscast that wasn't about the latest accident, or the latest house fire, or shooting?" That's the question posed by Rob Curley president, and editor of greenspun Interactive. "What if it were fun and informative?" "That's 702.tv.

Curley and his staff manage a Las Vegas internet site dedicated to local information in Sin City. I checked out 702.tv. The site promises alternative stories about the community. However I found the site is doing long form human interest features in the area. What's missing are investigative reports, and enterprise stories on controversial local issues.  It seems sites like these are poping up in cities across the country, the challenge for these operations is to do real news.

Where's the news, you click internet sites, or switch on the cable outlets like CNN, and you find pundits, and opinions, and little news. Andrew Heyward past president of CBS News during the Dan Rather days says, "There's more news coverage than ever today. Yet, you'd say there's a lot missing."

In an interview with TVNewsday contributing editor P.J. Bednarski, Heyward shared his views.

"I wonder and worry about where the original enterprise reporting of tomorrow is going to come from and how it's going to be funded. We have an interesting thing going on. You have your 60 Minutes, which this year had one of its best seasons in memory. It was in the top 10 many weeks, a fantastic season, very topical, very high quality, tremendous acceptance and more enthusiasm on the part of the audience. NPR, which also does in-depth original reporting has had very significant growth. All Things Considered and Morning Edition have 27 million listeners every week. That's an incredible scale of engagement. CBS Sunday Morning, again, highly successful, unique, high quality, very, very distinctive original programming. Look at NBC's Obama special. I mean NBC went behind the scenes at the White House, and conventional television [wisdom] was, well, who's going to watch that documentary? Well. guess what? It was a huge, huge hit."

I agree with Heyward, there is a big appetite for original news programming. "There's a market or this stuff. so we need to figure out how to create in a sustainable valuable way to take advantage of the act that people do want it." Heyward added. Good advise, and something hyperlocal websites like 702.tv should follow.

Last week two long time San Diego News people signed off the air. Weatherman Loren Nancarrow, and Carol Lebeau’s last broadcast came at a time when many local stations are cutting staffs. KGTV let the two veteran news people go. They had logged more than 25 years on the air in San Diego.

Maturity, accolades, and experience don’t seem to be important to tv station managers. Most consider themselves lucky to have a job and are struggling to keep their stations afloat. So management is doing the unthinkable, letting high profile talent go. (One of my past blogs dealt with the pending retiement of Carol Lebeau.)

I remember an awards night in L.A. a few years back. Loren Nancarrow was honored with a Golden Mike. The San Diego weatherman had just captured the prize for best weathercaster. He had just whipped every station in L.A. in that category to win. I thought it was impressive, because San Diego is a smaller market compared to L.A. The tv stations in the Los Angeles market had bigger budgets, and higher priced talent. I made a point to tune in to KGTV, and watch Loren. He came across really natural, solid, and professional. He quickly became my favorite weatherman in San Diego. I’m sad to see him leave after about 30 years on the air. He says he’s dedicating his life to new ventures, and passions like gardening, and the environment.

From New York, to L.A. and in between tv stations are unloading high priced talent. These are folks who are legends in the industry, Len Berman in New York, George Michael in D.C. and KNBC in Los Angeles just cut its major anchor. Viewer comments range from outrage, to relief. Some viewers are happy to see older broadcasters retire, or see them forced out. A majority of them side with the anchors calling the tv stations cheap, and short sighted.

In the past 5 years we’ve seen a replacement for every major anchor in San Diego. The only acceptation being KNSD NBC 7/39. Their anchors (Marty, and Susan) are still intact. It’s funny that these are the very same stations which pay consultants thousands of dollars to conduct research, and help guide the stations. That research has shown viewers gravitate towards familiar faces and people they know. Most of those laid off newscasters are winding up on KUSI, a station that’s reaped the benefit from castaways. KUSI is the number one newscast at 10 pm. That station is building a following while others are sinking.

I was searching the vast cable universe for a place to park, and watch something engaging on a Sunday night. To my surprise my wife suggested the IFC channel’s Media Project.. Its brief thirty minute show, and it was worth watching. Its a program about “The News,” and subjects related to covering news, news content, and production.

I enjoyed the profile about the journalist who threw a shoe at President Bush. The show explores interesting issues in media, from ethics, to news stereotypes. In a cartoon feature called “the news junkie,” IFC explored the top 5 reasons people hate local news. The countdown talked about those annoying “news teases.” That’s right, those one-liners announcing upcoming segments. Problem is, why tell me about a future segment on the danger in food, (for example) just tell me what that danger is, NOW!

Then there’s the “news crawl.” You know that annoying line on the bottom of your screen. Most of those headlines are misleading, redundant, and wrong! Number One in the countdown went to news media scare tactics. Information that’s high on shock value, low on content.. This is evident in the repetition of dooms-day scenarios from the Y-2K threat, to the Swine Flu.

It’s so easy to sit, watch, and laugh at the media. Broadcast news deserves the ridicule. After all news consultants have, (like some botched lab project) cut, shaped, and tinkered with the format so long that the medium has turned on them. Call it the revenge of the mutant news format, or something like that.. The very same formulas that were supposed to bring viewers to the screen are repelling viewers.

Tell us your favorites. Ever since Don Henley came out with “Dirty Laundry” in the 80’s local news has been the butt of jokes. Cloned newscasts popped up all over the country, and engaged in “the clone wars.” Everyone started doing exactly the same thing because news stations were trying to out-do each other. If one station had a weather dog, other stations jumped in. If one station’s lead story was a car crash, or murder, the others tried to top that. I remember once hearing a news manager say “I hope we have a good car crash with lots of victims, we need a good lead story today.” This was in response to a typical no-news day.

So we come back to square one. How do we fix the problem? Firing all the consultants? In response to that news manager wishing for a car crash, how about covering the community we live in. News outfits have long relied on cheap news to fill the hours of programming. Instead of filling an hour, why not just fill a program with great content without time constraints. This exists on the web. People are downloading the news they want on-demand without the trappings of a format, or those fluff pieces in between.