Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

As a cog in the machine of the MSM, I don't take it personally when one of my favorite bloggers, Brad DeLong, repeatedly laments the sorry state of journalism and asks "Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?"

DeLong winds up asking that question several times a week because, A) he understands economics, and B) an awful lot of reporters writing about it don't.

If you have any particular area or areas of expertise -- or even if you're just an enthusiast on a particular subject -- then I'm sure you've shared DeLong's frustration at some point. At some point you've come across an article that addresses a topic you already know something about and that gets it howlingly, obviously wrong. And at that point you realize that neither the reporter nor any of the editors who touched this piece had any clue what they were writing about and you, too, ask "Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?"

An economist is going to wind up asking that question more often than most readers because his area of expertise -- economics -- is something that reporters write about almost every day. But just about everyone reading a newspaper is an expert on something, and if the paper bungles its coverage of that something then that particular reader learns to distrust the paper's reporting not just on their pet subject, but on everything else as well.

So why oh why don't we have a better press corps?

Part of the answer to that question is that our newspapers are being asked to do something they were never designed to do and something they are fundamentally and structurally incapable of doing: they're being asked to provide shareholders with double-digit and ever-increasing profit margins.

This is a ridiculous expectation. If you are an investor looking for a 15- or 20-percent return on your investment and you've purchased newspaper stock, then you're a bad investor. You are, in fact, a stupid and a silly investor. You have invested in the wrong thing for the wrong reasons and you are expecting the wrong results. You are expecting impossible results.

Newspapers have a solid and reliable, but modest, business model. Owning a newspaper -- even now, even with competition from cable news and the Internet, and even with Craigslist all but eliminating the classified ad market -- is like owning a license to print money. But only a modest amount of money. Buying newspaper stock is thus much like investing in CDs. It's safe, but humble.

Remember the Savings & Loan debacle of the 1980s? That's what's happening right now with newspapers.

In the '80s, investors liked the idea of putting their money in certificates of deposit, but they wanted a higher rate of return. Deregulation of S&Ls meant that thrifts could start offering extremely unthrifty returns on investment. Instead of the traditional modest low-single-digit returns that S&Ls had been providing depositors, some began offering CDs that paid 10 or 12 or 18 percent. Big depositors and investors began chasing the CDs with the highest return rates.

This pursuit of ever-higher returns on CDs was considered a rational process, the logical desire to maximize profits. But it was only rational to the extent that the depositors chasing these double-digit CDs also refused to bother to ask the obvious question: How on earth could any Savings & Loan possibly be promising to pay that kind of interest?

That's not what S&Ls are for. That's not what they were designed to do. Even a cursory second thought would have told these investors that they were putting their money into institutions that had no business model for living up to these outlandish expectations. All things being equal, opting for an 18-percent return instead of a 6-percent return might be a rational step, but all things are not equal. There was absolutely nothing rational about the idea that a Savings & Loan could ever, in any way, be expected to provide an 18-percent return.

The end result of this irrationality was as predictable as it was inevitable. The S&Ls that tried to meet these irrational expectations were consumed in the process. They could not be made to do that which they were never intended or designed to do and hundreds of Savings & Loans were destroyed by their managers and their investors by straying from their business model.

The current prevailing notion that a newspaper can or should be expected to provide similar gaudy returns is also completely irrational. The management of most newspapers and the bulk of their shareholders are repeating the exact same foolishness that destroyed all those S&Ls back in the 1980s. They are not just expecting, but demanding profit margins that the newspaper business model was never designed to provide and that it is not capable of providing.

This is the equivalent of driving 60 miles an hour in first gear. Your car might actually be capable of this. Once. Briefly. But it's still a really, really Bad Idea if you want your car to survive.

Walk into any newsroom these days and you can smell the burning transmission. You'll see only half as many reporters as were there 20 years ago and maybe a third as many copy editors. And you may notice that the remaining skeleton crew looks pretty young.

What that means, among other things, is that none of these people has the time to get up to speed on the background or sometimes even on the foreground of a lot of the stories they're trying to cover.

Let me give you a very specific example. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency  announced that it would, for the first time, begin accepting public comment on the potential risks of nanosilver. Our paper reported this, on the front page, in this story: "Another look at risks of tiny technology."

I copy-edited this piece. It was read by a content editor before me, and it would be looked over by another set of eyes after mine, but none of us had much time to spend on this and none of us knew much of anything about nanosilver other than what we read right there in the article.

Does the article get the science right? I don't know. The reporter is someone I might trust, but it's not an editor's job to trust the reporter. The job, in a sense, is to distrust the reporter or, in Ronald Reagan's phrase, to "trust, but verify." But in this case, on this subject, I was completely unqualified to verify anything.

We all wanted to run this story by our science editor, but of course, we don't have a science editor. (Science editors were among the first up against the wall once management started promising shareholders implausible 20-percent profit margins.) So let's try to do some research and see what we can quickly learn about --

Time's up! Pencils down. Skeleton crew, remember? Nobody has the luxury of spending all night, or even a whole hour, trying to get one story right. So this story goes to print, ready or not. Maybe the science is right or maybe the next morning chemists will read it over breakfast and shake their heads and mutter, "Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?" None of us who edited or copy edited this story had any way of knowing which was the case when we committed it to paper.

This is a common situation and it's the inevitable result of trying to make newspapers do something their business model was never intended to do.

Brad DeLong might be somewhat encouraged to learn that his frustrated cries have not been entirely fruitless. His long rant on The New York Times' coverage of a then-potential Citigroup bailout --

... that no editors said "wait a minute! this doesn't add up!" is yet another signal that The New York Times is in its death spiral: not the place to go to learn anything about an issue. ...

-- prompted our paper to do a fairly major reworking of the AP account which, as often happens, was closely patterned after the didn't-add-up Times article.

So in that case, at least, DeLong himself was able to be one reason why oh why we had a better press corps than we otherwise might have had.

To cap things off, driving home Monday morning I was listening to the BBC's coverage of the by-then official Citigroup bailout. Who did the Beeb decide to call for an interview explaining what this meant? American economist Brad DeLong ...

Comments

[Hawk]

Definition of journalist: Person laypeople accept as an expert on a topic the journalist knows nothing about.

I've been interviewed by journalists several times in my own field, and each time the resulting story has read like it was written by someone who said: "I've never heard of this subject, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night." Only once have I had a journalist come back and run a story past me for a fact check.

Seems to me -- nothing personal, Fred -- that far too many folks in the field are in denial about the real reason newspapers (and other media) exist: to make money by selling newspapers. Informing the public, or getting the facts right, seems to be a distant second goal.

[Mad Latinist]

Well spoken, as always.

And, what the hell... first?

[SueW]

Newspapers make a profit?

[Chrissl]

Seems to me -- nothing personal, Fred -- that far too many folks in the field are in denial about the real reason newspapers (and other media) exist: to make money by selling newspapers. Informing the public, or getting the facts right, seems to be a distant second goal.

You could, however, make a case that newspapers shouldn't reasonably be expected to make that much profit, which I think was Fred's point.

The last time I looked (I used to work for one, but my memory may be faulty) the industry standard for grocery stores was that they expected to run at about 1% to 2% net profit. Like newspapers, grocery stores exist to sell stuff and make a profit. But they don't generally seem to be terribly distressed that they "only" make a small profit -- so long as it's there. (True, grocery stores have an advantage over newspapers in that their audience is rather more captive: people don't seem to think they can get all their milk, bread, fresh produce and frozen pizza from TV and the Internet.)

This, however, suggests another aspect to the newspaper problem that I don't think Fred has addressed directly here: the market is changing, and some newspapers have been very slow to adapt. TV and the Internet seem to be taking over much of the function of getting headlines (and photos) of interesting news out instantly, which used to be newspapers' big selling point. (Extra! Extra! Read all about it!) For newspapers to have a useful niche, it seems to me that they ought (?) to be looking at providing more background, context, and analysis -- something they've always done a certain amount of, along with the headlines.

Instead, they seem to be trying to still do their old job. And impossible financial goals also make it impossible to invest anything in changing. Good editors don't come cheap.

[Personal Failure]

Yeah! I finally caught up to the present! (I've been reading the archives from the beginning. Took me a month.)

I call this He's-an-expert-because-nobody-can-get-the-microphone-out-of-his-hands syndrome. I've heard a politican lump nine inch nails in with gangsta rap, numerous reporters who clearly never even watched a preview for a video game pontificate ad nauseum on the dangers of said games, and news anchors discuss religion as if christianity had just landed from mars.

I spend more time researching the background of an article then reading the article, and I suspect, more than the writer himself did. Is it all about money? In a way. The vast majority of people don't know or don't care, so why spend money paying someone to do research when (a) hardly anyone will notice and (b) no other news provider is either?

Sorry, I've got no answers but cynicism, it appears.

[Personal Failure]

I do have another anecdote, though.

About two days after the election, on CNN I heard this, "A politician from Germany said that Obama's election means the end of white civilization." looooong pause. "I suppose we should mention that he is the head of the neoNazi party, a small and despised political party in Germany."

My first thought was: You should have mentioned that first. Followed by: It would only qualify as news if the head of the neoNazi party said something nice about a black man. What this woman "reported" was in the same league as water is wet or the sky is blue. (I would try italics, but I've seen that end tragically around here.)

It's not just lack of information, it's lack of context that shapes the news these days.

[victoria]

I feel this way every time Bill Donohue is interviewed as an "expert" on all matters Catholic.

[hapax]

Personal Failure, the biggest shock to me in that report would have been that Germany HAS a neoNazi party. I thought that they were quite diligent about banning them.

[hapax]

Hmm. Now that I check in Wikipedia, I see that Germany has not one, but several neo-Nazi parties. Ick.

And even Israel has a few. Double ick.

[Andrew R.]

I wonder how much of the problem is with the existence of the Journalism degree. After all, if you're a newspaper and hire someone with a degree in History, English, International Relations, Chemistry, whatever, you're at least getting someone who know in-depth information about *something.* Hiring someone with a Journalism degree, though, means you're getting someone with an expertise in... journalism.

[Richard Hershberger]

I realized years ago, long before the internet went mainstream, that journalists are frequently called upon to write about subjects they know nothing about. This was always obvious about lightweight feature articles, but the first Gulf War brought it home to me that this was true of "serious" subject matters as well. But even then I figured that politics was the one subject that journalists could be expected to understand and report well. Then we entered into the Bush era of stenographic journalism, and the mindless horserace reporting of the recent election. So I find that by far the best election analysis came from Nate Silver: a baseball statistician.

The standard journalists' critique of blogs as the replacement for traditional journalism is that bloggers are unlikely to have the resources for either in-depth investigative journalism or old-fashioned shoe-leather beat reporting. This is likely true, but newspapers by and large aren't doing these either. I read my local small-town paper, but hardly ever look at a newspaper for national news. What's the point? They have mostly gotten out of that business.

[KJK::Hyperion]

I have recently watched "Network", a movie about the same phenomenon in a hypothetical TV network.

Shareholders of the network decide that they aren't going to accept the "common wisdom" that news programming loses money, because it "doesn't make business sense". Depressed news anchor Howard Beale gets suicidal at the prospect of being fired after years of service, and announces his suicide on air. He goes through a spiritual crisis, and becomes an instant sensation with his audience, who love his angry street preacher's monologues. This gives cynical network executives the idea to turn the evening news into a trashy talk show, opening with Beale's eschatological rants and continuing with a variety of colorful hosts (including an astrologer), their only concern being steady ratings. It only gets more depressing from there (Beale's ratings eventually wane...). And it's played entirely straight, no satire meant.

It's been on my mind a lot lately. Very prophetic, explains AM talk radio and FOX News perfectly to me. Hats off to writer and director for having the clarvoyance to conceive of and tell such a story in 1976.

[Tonio]

our newspapers are being asked to do something they were never designed to do and something they are fundamentally and structurally incapable of doing: they're being asked to provide shareholders with double-digit and ever-increasing profit margins.

Reminds me of how American auto makers have focused on increasing market share instead of on simple profitability, and how they're now in a similar bind.

I've been interviewed by journalists several times in my own field, and each time the resulting story has read like it was written by someone who said: "I've never heard of this subject, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night."

Journalists are expected to know a little about many different things. Theoretically, the news-gathering process should be an education on the subject for the journalist as well as his or her audience. One can only effectively report on a subject when one has at least a basic understanding of it. If you're in a technical field, I suggest using simple metaphors to explain critical but unclear technical concepts - I've heard this suggested to engineers who have been asked to serve as spokespersons.

Only once have I had a journalist come back and run a story past me for a fact check.

While I can appreciate your point, I strongly suspect that most editors would advise against that, because it could be misinterpreted as giving a source veto power over what appears in the story. (An exception may be trade publications.) Some editors even urge reporters to not let sources go off the record because this can too easily be abused or misunderstood.

[Tonio]

news anchors discuss religion as if christianity had just landed from mars.

I see two main problems with religion reporting. First, theology is a difficult subject. I suspect that even theologians have to study for years to understand all the nuances. Second, the standard for newsworthiness (unusual events) rules out most aspects of religion except for conflict and controversy. The latter explains why the self-appointed fundamentalist demagogues like James Dobson and Tony Perkins are overrepresented in media coverage of religion.

[Yeltar]

Huh. I've already read a hefty percentage of my local paper before it even hits the ground every morning--I read the AP feeds online to a pretty fair depth, and so much of the local is just a cut 'n paste of those. I wouldn't bother with it at all except that it does keep up with just barely enough local reporting to justify its newsprint. Barely.

The proofreading is so sorry that it's a source of unintentional hilarity, though; the homonym errors are especially goofy. When I was growing up, my best friend's mother was the head proofreader of the local newspaper, and she took her work so deadly seriously that she read it all again, every word, every day, when the paper hit the porch. And she would literally wail aloud if she'd missed something. Nowadays? *schnort* Lucky if anyone runs it through spell-checker....

[Chrissl]

Totally off topic but, hapax? Did you mention your blog with a link once, sometime? I remember finding it once, but didn't bookmark it....

[Mary]

Regarding the linked article on nano-technology in particular -- I'm not a chemist or a toxicologist and I don't really know about the risks of nanosilver materials -- but I am a Physics Today subscriber, and that article reminds me of this long report in Physics Today about "nanoscientists'" perceptions of the risks of nano-technology, and their perceptions of the public's reaction to those risks.

In a nutshell -- "Some 30% of nanoscientists believe that nanoparticles could lead to new public health problems, compared with only 20% of the public." The public OTOH has a more exaggerated fear of other risks such a new arms race, privacy threats, and potential loss of jobs and nanotech develops. The scientists are afraid of a nanotech backlash similar to the biotech backlash against GM crops and so on, but the author doesn't think that's likely.

The stats about scientists' perceptions of the risks are probably the most relevant and interesting part, albeit a little unspecific. One great quote: "The nanoscientists Powell interviewed had virtually no familiarity with or interest in toxicological studies of nanomaterials. Nearly all of them got their information on nanotoxicology from mass media outlets such as the New York Times and CNN, and only one had read peer-reviewed articles on the topic. Yet they were aboslutely certain that the public, basing its fears of nanomaterials on information from the same kinds of scoures, was behaving irrationally." I can readily believe that. Most scientists' attitudes toward safety seems to be "Well, it hasn't hurt *me* and I've been working with it for years, so I don't know what you're all so worried about." But so, interviewing more scientists and having a science editor might not have helped much

I'll also throw in a link to this Metafilter thread about using copper surfaces for their anti-bacterial properties, only because someone towards the bottom links to a couple of papers suggesting that using heavy metals for this purpose might actually increase anti-biotic resistance. That's definitely a worrying one, along with the heavy-metal poisoning concerns.

[Mary]

I want to correct myself -- interviewing more scientists would help if you interviewed toxicologists, I suppose, and having a science editor would definitely help if she or he knew that the people to talk to were toxicologists. Just don't ask the chemists -- IME chemists are *not* safety-conscious people.

[Erl]

Parroting Mary, I took a look at your link, and within my--albeit modest--knowledge about the uses and risks of nanotechnology and nanoparticles in particular, it seemed spot on. Re: the larger point. What's the solution? How do we convince those who control capital that what they need is a stable, low return investment in an industry that the conventional wisdom says in trouble?

[The Oracle]

The WMD are no longer missing.

Weapons of Media Destruction.

Weapons of Mortgage Destruction.

Weapons of Monetary Destruction.

Weapons of Math Destruction.

Weapons of Market Destruction.

Weapons of Mass Destruction...although this now refers to "Pedophile Priests on the Prowl," and is related to the Catholic Church specifically (Mass), since no actual Iraqi WMD has ever materialized. Dribs and drabs, yes, of old, depleted stock from the 1980s, but none of the vast quantities of WMD touted as the reason why the U.S. had to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein post-haste in 2003.

And all of these WMDs have been bequeathed to our nation and the world courtesy of conservative "media-monopoly, media-message-control" zealots, "free-market, anti-regulation" zealots, religious "anti-science" zealots and war-mongering, war-profiteering zealots.

[FrenchRoast]

I wonder how much of the problem is with the existence of the Journalism degree. After all, if you're a newspaper and hire someone with a degree in History, English, International Relations, Chemistry, whatever, you're at least getting someone who know in-depth information about *something.* Hiring someone with a Journalism degree, though, means you're getting someone with an expertise in... journalism.

I agree. And there's a similar thing going on in education/teaching. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good, qualified teachers. But there are just as many...possibly more...horribly unqualified teachers. The more qualified (from what I've observed) tend to be those who got their B.A. in the field they're teaching, rather than a B.A. in education, then took master's or certification classes to be able to teach. Because learning about the field of education/how to teach is important--but it's not much good knowing how to teach if you don't know what to teach. I imagine journalism is much the same. It's substance vs. format, in a sense. You can get both, but if you have to choose, substance is the more important of the two. In print and on TV, I'd rather get less news, provided the news I do get is solid.

For newspapers, it may be that the large, nation-wide papers are seeing their end-days, at least in print media. But there's a huge opportunity for local papers to specialize in local news that very likely won't be net-worthy. If my local paper printed details about city council meetings/decisions, local school events(besides football), and interviewed interesting local people, or any of a dozen other things that only someone who lives here would care about, it'd be worth buying. In fact, that's exactly the reason the university library I work in has kept its subscription to the small newsletter-type newspapers in the state, yet is dropping its print copies of the newspapers with larger circulation(assuming we get the online version). They have info that literally no one else has.

Also, it's not just the journalism/newspaper industry that has ridiculous return-on-investment expectations. Very few companies can realistically be expected to grow and increase profits by large percentages every quarter. Not unless you want the people in this country to go into debt and bankrupt themselves as they buy stuff and keep the profits booming. Apparently that *is* what we wanted, given that's what we're dealing with now.

[not_scottbot]

Not that I actually want to defend a man who feels the best way to have a discussion is to delete the comments of those he disagrees with (try to discuss tenure and John Yoo with the good professor - obviously, academic freedom is much more important than imposing any actual penalty on a man who was involved in helping torture become American policy) - who says Boing-Boing is a pioneer? - but at least in the past (haven't read anything of his since his spirited defense of Yoo's entitlement to not being kicked out of his position), his point about a better press corps was more an attempt to discuss why individuals couldn't do a better job of presenting facts and truth as part of their job than it was a deep investigation of institutional issues.

Which, of course, became hollow hypocrisy following his principled stand in defending the rights of a torturer to academic positions in law schools, as some freedoms are more clearly equal than other freedoms - the freedom to keep your job in an academic setting being clearly more important than other's freedom to not be tortured by torturers employed by the American government.

'Impeach Bush' - what a sad joke, for a man who seems to have no problem having one of Bush's torturing minions sharing all the rights and privileges of a faculty member of good standing.

But then, Delong's position is shared by his fellows -
'Types of unacceptable conduct: … Commission of a criminal act which has led to conviction in a court of law and which clearly demonstrates unfitness to continue as a member of the faculty. [Academic Personnel Manual sec. 015]

This very restrictive standard is binding on me as dean, but I will put aside that shield and state my independent and personal view of the matter. I believe the crucial questions in view of our university mission are these: Was there clear professional misconduct—that is, some breach of the professional ethics applicable to a government attorney—material to Professor Yoo’s academic position? Did the writing of the memoranda, and his related conduct, violate a criminal or comparable statute?

Absent very substantial evidence on these questions, no university worthy of distinction should even contemplate dismissing a faculty member. That standard has not been met.'
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/news/2008/edley041008.html

Who knew that what we really needed was a better academy? One of Yoo's documents can be read by all at http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/doj/bybee80102ltr.html

Nonetheless, the importance of keeping a man who participated in the rise of the torturing nation that America has become means that 'no university worthy of distinction should even contemplate dismissing' said torturer.

See how easy it was to correct the words, and I didn't even have to resort to the German word Schreibtischtäter - 'Ein Schreibtischtäter ist jemand, der staatliche Machtstrukturen ausnutzt, um eine Straftat durch eine andere Person begehen zu lassen.' ( http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schreibtischt%C3%A4ter ) I believe Prof. DeLong knows how to read German, but for those that don't - 'A 'Schreibtischtäter' is someone who use state power structures to perpetrate criminal acts through others.' (A better translation is welcome, but the meaning should be clear enough.)

If only the press would be good enough to report on those that feel job security for torturers is a bedrock of academic freedom, but I don't think that is what Prof. DeLong has in mind about improving the press corps.

[not_scottbot]

Oh, I should add that I assume Yoo is on the Bush pardon to-do list, which means that said torturer will never have to fear losing his faculty position according to the stringent standard of 'Commission of a criminal act which has led to conviction in a court of law...' because Yoo is unlikely to ever face an American court of law. Yoo, however, may want to carefully review his international travel plans in the future.

Makes me feel so proud to be an American, to know that a man like Yoo will never have to fear that his academic freedom will be restricted due to his actions, but instead can count on the defense of fellow Americans such as Prof. DeLong. Based on an important principle, as DeLong sees it - tenure being the bedrock of a system which defends academic freedoms, even for torturers.

I leave the irony of a Berkeley faculty member defending a torturer's tenure in the law school due to higher principles to someone else - it simply disgusts me.

[Dash]

Hawk: Only once have I had a journalist come back and run a story past me for a fact check.

Tonio: While I can appreciate your point, I strongly suspect that most editors would advise against that, because it could be misinterpreted as giving a source veto power over what appears in the story.

Tonio makes a good point. But, recognizing that that is not his argument, but a commonly used one that he is merely citing, I would answer that it's a silly argument. First, anyone who knows anything about how discourse operates knows that the chances of being misquoted are high, even if you're reading from a prepared script. So double-checking to make sure you got the quotes right, particularly when the source is discussing technical or complex matters and speaking more or less extemporaneously, is simply due diligence. Second, even if the source does object, the reporter or editor can do precisely what s/he will do if the source protests after the fact: say, "I stand by my [or my reporter's] notes on your conversation."

[Cowboy Diva]

I keep thinking this is why reporters are assigned specific places, like the Police Beat, or City Hall Beat, because that way they learn the players and the politics for that specific topic of news. If they're any good, they have information that goes beyond the names and events; that's what I want. Getting the local angle on a national story seems kind of pointless, and instead of getting an ap wire review of a given movie or play I would much rather have the local reviewer give her insight because over time hers is a voice I trust. Even if I disagree with her I know to expect that and respond accordingly.

[Tim]

Skeleton staffs are a fact of life in corporate and government jobs. I work as a prosecutor for an area holding 60,000 people. There are two of us, and we're losing our paralegal due to budget cuts. My dad works as a research scientist for a former Dow Jones Industrials company. He has weathered 15 years of layoffs, and has no technicians to assist his research.

The problem is wide-spread. People are penny-pinching to be penny wise - but selling out their corporate or societal futures in the process. I have to triage what crimes get prosecuted, and the DJI-company mentioned earlier slashes R&D at a time that demand for their flagship product evaporated.

[hapax]

I think that it's an excellent point that one of the problems is the Journalism degree. Not that I think that journalism degree, or any other professional degree (education, business, social worker, librarianship, etc) is a bad idea; the problem is, that too many of them are forgetting what they are supposed to teach and aping the post-graduate academic degrees.

A professional degree should reflect a mastery of the trade, in effect. (Actually, an academic degree does, too; it's just that it's a very specialized trade of thinking and research and reporting the results of the same). With the exception of the very high status trades (law and medicine), however, most professional schools abandon teaching good trade practice (how do you make an effective homework assignment? is it more cost-effective to retain staff during down business cycles? what is the best way to organize diverse materials?) for vague and nebulous "philosophies of education" and "theory of information" and heaven knows what-all.

From my acquaintances at journalism schools nowadays, it's much the same thing; not nearly enough "how do you evaluate the veracity of a source?" and a lot more "what does Journalism *mean*?"

[hapax]

Chrissl: hapax? Did you mention your blog with a link once, sometime?

Umm. I have a very sporadically maintained Livejournal here, but I say without a smidgeon of false modesty that it really isn't very interesting -- I mostly use it to knock off my quota of writing practice.

You may have been thinking of Praline's or Ged's blogs, both of which are quite worth reading. And Jesurgislac, who used to hang around here, has a site on Fred's blogroll.

I think there are others who have blogs, too, but I don't remember the locations. It's been a long time since we've had a good blogwhoring around here, anyone want to pipe up?

[MikhailBorg]

I have a LiveJournal, which is accessible by clicking on my name down in the corner of this post. Also, the name of said LJ should not be hard to guess.

At the moment, it's about 60% "I'm recapping the interesting points of my day so I can remember them when I'm 80", 25% philosophical posts about various issues, 10% discussion of how I feel about occurrences in the world of SF/F fandom, 5% reposts of my Tweets for the day, 2% alt.sex matters (generally filtered), and 1% stupid quizzes. (Yes, there's overlap.) So far, though, very little LJ drama, for which I'm thankful.

My goal this year is to cut back on the 60% and ramp up on the 25%. One of the biggest obstacles in my writing (besides my shameful lack of discipline) is my difficulty in opening up and discussing how I really feel about something, doing so out there in the cold wide world where anyone can stomp on it if they wish. I'm using LJ to practice that on occasion.

In unrelated news, the happiest of gratz to JayH from the other thread on his new Burrito!

[Thomas]

The article looks perfectly reasonable to me (it's an area I know slightly). My only comment is that it was my impression that nanosilver was a different sort of concern from the general nanoparticle lack of data, or from the carbon nanotube health risks.

Silver is an effective (and in soluble form, pretty safe) antimicrobial -- it used to be put in newborn baby's eyes, until the early 80s when it was replaced with antibiotics. It doesn't get widely used as an antimicrobial because there's no convenient way to apply it -- you don't want to pour silver nitrate on your socks, and a lump of silver doesn't release enough to do anything. Nanosilver lets people use silver much more widely as an antimicrobial, so there will be much more waste silver going into the environment. This could be really bad news. Or quite possibly not. Either way, it would be nice to know in advance.

[Michele my bell-flower]

@ hapax: It's been a long time since we've had a good blogwhoring around here, anyone want to pipe up?

I'm happy to blogwhore! :-)

My blog is titled "Michèle's Handbell Blog", but since I'm in school right now, it's also about the classes I'm taking (like Marine Biology which is the BEST class I've ever taken!!).

My professional site is The Golden Dance.

I also have a presence on Facebook and Flickr.

And for you handbell folk, there's also a Handbell Community "social networking" website sponsored by the Handbell Podcast.

[Julie paradox]

Just a datapoint, in response to the person talking about education:

In Britain, only (some) primary school teachers do their first degree in education. Secondary teachers need a degree in at least a vaguely-related subject; I'm not sure how strict the criteria are but a maths teacher wouldn't have a history degree. And vice versa. You then take the Post-Graduate Certificate in Education to learn how to set effective homework and so on (that's the idea, anyway. I failed mine on crowd control...).

[Boze]

As someone who considers himself kind of a Charismatic, I tend to feel this way anytime the media tries to run a story on religion. It was especially bad when Sarah Palin was still in the runnings, but my anger isn't confined to those ridiculous anthropological deconstructions of my own beliefs. Lately I find myself getting offended on behalf of Muslims whenever the MSM pretends it knows anything about Islam or Iran.

[llewelly]

Part of the answer to that question is that our newspapers are being asked to do something they were never designed to do and something they are fundamentally and structurally incapable of doing: they're being asked to provide shareholders with double-digit and ever-increasing profit margins.

I believe it's becoming known as the wrecking-crew theory of investment. On the grounds that it forces repeated layoffs and abandonment of quality control.

[hf]

The more qualified (from what I've observed) tend to be those who got their B.A. in the field they're teaching, rather than a B.A. in education

My math teacher parents certainly take this view.

[Jon]

My name has a hyperlink to my blog, Threshold. I don't have any particular focus, generally just recapping events in my life with a "humorous" spin. My sense of humor is rather idiosyncratic, so your mileage may vary as to how humorous it actually is, thus the quotes.
The people I know seem to think it's entertaining, but it's possible that they're lying to me or that actually knowing me is a prerequisite for finding it entertaining.
Beyond writing about my life, or whatever comes to mind, I frequently post drawings and paintings I've done, the artistic merits of which are dubious at best.
I also have a Web site, Heroic Portraits, from which I sell custom fantasy portraits. Well, theoretically I sell them; I've only ever had one customer.
As for the topic of the post, as a comic book geek, for over 20 years now I've been sighing and rolling my eyes every time I read a headline like "Holy Literacy, Batman! Comics Aren't Just For Kids!" or "Biff! Bam! Pow! Comics Grow Up!" Seriously, it just needs to stop.

[hapax]

Seriously, it just needs to stop.

Dear God, yes.

[Dahne]

Cutesy puns of all sorts in newspaper headlines need to stop.

[Randy Owens]

"Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?"

Ironically, the first thing that comes to mind is the economics reason: Because the Invisible Hand of the Free Market has decided that that's as good a press corps as we're willing to spend on.

And yes, I've been thinking for quite a while now that many of the problems of the economy are attributable to excessive expectations of profit. And not just in the economy; it seems to trickle down to affect the environment, quality of life, etc.

Personal Failure: "A politician from Germany said that Obama's election means the end of white civilization."

(To hapax too) Also, I'm pretty sure that that politician was from Poland, not Germany.

On a personal note, I especially decry the dwindling market for proofreaders and copy editors because if the market for them weren't so tight, it might be a good field for me to get into, given my natural aptitudes.

FrenchRoast: The more qualified [teachers] (from what I've observed) tend to be those who got their B.A. in the field they're teaching, rather than a B.A. in education, then took master's or certification classes to be able to teach. Because learning about the field of education/how to teach is important--but it's not much good knowing how to teach if you don't know what to teach.

This seems to be especially true when non-biologists are teaching about evolution, or at least are supposed to, and then their students end up having doubts about it, largely because they haven't been properly taught the theory. (Excluding the hard-core creationists who weren't going to have any of that, anyway.)

[Sylocat]

Newspapers will probably have a place in the world forever. The internet news sources might come out with the headlines faster, but that doesn't make them more reliably accurate, and when there are multiple accounts of a story with different facts and figures, finding out which version is true can be a major headache, especially since there's no shortage of "impartial, dedicated fact-checkers" willing to find "facts" that back up each version of it, including contradictory ones. Newspapers have the same problem or course, but at least you can carry a newspaper onto a subway and have something to read when you get bored. Last I checked, even wireless internet doesn't get reception on a subway, and even if it did you don't wanna bring your laptop on a crowded subway with you.

As for the quality issue, that's no threat either. Companies have realized by now that if you bombard the public with enough tedious ads for it, the people will buy your product no matter how terrible it is, so there's no reason NOT to release a bad product if it costs less to make. Therefore, they lay off as much staff as they can, because quality control isn't necessary at all. Why do you think the Xbox 360 has sold so well?

----

Oh, and by the way... the REAL reason Nanotechnology is a Very Bad Idea:

"Are you my mummy?"

[Spalanzani]

Personal Failure: "news anchors discuss religion as if christianity had just landed from mars."

How so? The problem I see is sort of the opposite, that they easily accept any relatively new quirk in Christianity (premillenial dispensationism,obsession with homosexuality and abortion, scientific creationism) as being simply the way Christianity is and always has been since the dawn of time. Although now that I think about it, maybe that it what you meant.

[MikhailBorg]

"Are you my mummy?"

Go to your room!

[damnedyankee]

"Are you my mummy?"

Go to your room!

Sylocat and MikhailBorg win the thread. Their prize shall be an internet with a festooning of tubes wrapped in a Union Jack t-shirt.

My blog is Abel Undercity's Two-Fisted Tales, ostensibly about my doings in Second Life, but really just a general display of my utter geekery (like that previous sentence wasn't proof enough).

[Chrissl]

I wish I could reciprocate on the blogwhoring, but I don't have a general-purpose blog, and the two blogs I do have use my real name, which I try to avoid when I'm posting anything related to religion or politics. (Considering where I work, I'm just a teeny weeny bit paranoid about any of those posts coming up on a Google search.) If anyone's curious about who I am or what my other blogs are, feel free to e-mail me privately (chrissl "at" igc "dot" org).

[Original Lee]

I agree with Thomas about nanosilver. (Not my area of expertise, but I know a little about nanotech.) Because silver is an effective antimicrobial, companies are putting nanosilver in all sorts of products, such as washing machines, without working through the possible effects of increasing the amount of silver in the environment or whether or not nanosilver behaves differently in the environment than larger molecules containing silver ions. This is not just a problem in the U.S. but worldwide, and various scientific groups are trying very hard to get the nanotech R&D crowd to do some testing on these products before throwing them out into the marketplace.

WRT journalism: IMO, I agree that part of the problem is the journalism degree. IIRC, one of the main things taught in J-school is "the story". Facts are just pegs to hang the story on, and if the narrative works better with a different set of facts, or even made-up facts, or with one or two facts left out, that's OK. With many media outlets running on skeleton crews, this tendency is exaggerated, as we saw in abundance during this past election cycle.

Fred, maybe it would be a good idea to find a friendly librarian who can recommend some general-purpose websites to help you and your colleagues out with things like this. For science stuff, Science News can be quite useful, since it's current and tends to be written for the layman.

[drakepope]

I wish I could reciprocate on the blogwhoring, but I don't have a general-purpose blog, and the two blogs I do have use my real name, which I try to avoid when I'm posting anything related to religion or politics. (Considering where I work, I'm just a teeny weeny bit paranoid about any of those posts coming up on a Google search.) If anyone's curious about who I am or what my other blogs are, feel free to e-mail me privately (chrissl "at" igc "dot" org).

So, you use your real name on blog posts? What else do you do for fun? Juggle chainsaws dipped in lava? Heil Hitler in Tel Aviv?

[Tonio]

Dash may be right that the "veto power" argument is a silly one, but I can understand why it would appeal to editors. It's more or less a given that sources spin their information favorably to themselves or their agendas. A source might ask that a quote be deleted from a story, the editor might refuse, and then the source may demand that he or she be deleted from the article entirely. Obviously such a concern would apply less to technical stories and more to political ones.

[MichaelR]

Ah, yes, I've had similar issues with "the reporters are clueless twonks" thing. I read GamePolitics, so I see rather a lot of it. The two examples that come to mind are the Hot Coffee scandal of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, in which a third party modification which you had to know how to find and install reactivated some scripting triggers that Rockstar took out, allowing you a (very bad) minigame where you have sex, and the resulting firestorm was "HOW DARE ROCKSTAR SELL PORN TO KIDS." Which ignores not only the "third party" stuff I mentioned earlier, but that the game was decidedly not for children in the first place. The other being Mass Effect, in which the fact that it was possible to see a sex scene between your human female character and an alien "female" (Asari are all woman-shaped; the details don't matter here) which lasted under a minute and would not have raised eyebrows in live action on HBO or even cable caused Fox (maybe others, mostly them) to shriek about how this was a full on porn game with full frontal digital nudity.

The Mass Effect story is extra special, because one of the panelists they called in to talk about how "Star Wars meets Debbie Does Dallas" is filth was asked, directly, if she had ever played the game. She giggled and said "no." After all of her pop psychology books got a flood of one star ratings from people who said that they never read the book but they were still qualified to judge it, it came out that all she knew about the game before going on camera was that she had asked someone about it and been told "it's like pornography."

But then again, this isn't exactly an unknown thing...

[Chrissl]

{grin} I use my real name on the blog that reports on my academic research -- because on that blog I don't say anything I would mind having show up on my resume.

I know a lot of people have intense discussions over whether it's (a) ever really possible and (2) worthwhile to try to stay anonymous in the blogosphere. Me, I'm inclined to think that any sufficiently determined researcher could probably unearth -- with some work -- the identities of a lot of would-be anonymous bloggers. But in most cases, I can't see why anyone would bother to make the effort, unless they have some compelling personal reason (or, God forbid, are trying to stalk someone).

[Dylan]

@MichaelR: I do remember the Mass Effect thing. I remember a co-worker who'd heard it on the news mentioned it at lunch one day--it took me a second to realize she was talking about Mass Effect and not some ripoff of The Sims with sex minigames built in.

But there's really a difference between what happened with Mass Effect and what Fred's talking about. The former will deliberately ignore facts for the sake of sensationalism; the latter assumes that reporters want to be competent and accurate, but they don't have the resources to do so. If you want a good discussion of the media publishing not-news simply for ratings, I recommend the book "It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News."