Crazyworld

In in the interest of full disclosure, yes, I am a reporter. Been one for nearly a decade now.

So I was pretty shocked while watching an online stream of the lastest so-called "media availability" held by embattled Gov. Mark Sanford today in Conway -- not far, incidentally, from where House Republicans are spending the weekend at a retreat where impeachment is almost certainly going to be a topic.

After speaking about transparency and openness, Sanford didn't take any questions. In fact, he blatantly told a reporter for The State newspaper, "I don't work for you."

It's hard to put personal feelings aside on this one. But I'll try.

Last I checked, reporters paid taxes and most, if not all, register to vote. They tend to take their civic responsibilities seriously.

Last I checked, many reporters were more informed about the processes of government than the average man on the street and, sometimes, even elected officials.

Last I checked, elected officials should look at EVERY reporter -- from the smallest weekly to the largest daily -- as virtually thousands of people rolled into one. People as in taxpayers, constituents, residents. It's a bit of advice I got from an editor at the first weekly I worked at after college. The Internet only exponentially increases a news organization's reach.

Last I checked, millions of people still rely on news organizations to not only report information, but to do so in the larger context of how that information is presented. (Sanford complained that The State reported on his current conflict, and not as much on the records his staff pulled on past administrations and even sitting lawmakers.)

Last I checked, newspapers still employee people in this state, pay taxes of their own and have to deal with travel budgets. Many of those travel budgets are shrinking or in some cases being eliminated -- and they are wasted when media outlets send reporters all over the state for press conferences in which the person speaking refuses to answer any questions.

Last I checked, Elected Office 101 taught elected officials never to pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrell. Or, today, has access to unlimited space online. Why? They'll never get the last word. Ever.

And, last I checked, every reporter is keenly aware that it's not always obvious ethical or other infractions that must be avoided -- it's the appearance of impropriety that can cost a someone his/her credibility.

Perhaps, governor, that last part is the most important lesson of all.

If you haven’t had to deal with this question yet — and still have more than a year or two left before you retire — then you will, and sooner than you’d probably like.

The blending of personal and professional life is something I’ve struggled with for a long time. And based on comments I’ve heard from people in a variety of other businesses, I’m not alone.

As a journalist, I have a few extra concerns, but we’ll get to those in a bit. Let’s talk about the general implications of this sweeping societal change first.

It can be gradual or abrupt, liberating or jarring, and either help facilitate your career or end it.

If you’re reading this — which, if you’re not a regular Herald-Journal/GoUpstate reader, you probably found through Twitter or a link on someone else’s blog — chances are you’ve heard horror stories about people losing their jobs because of a stray comment on a social networking site like Facebook. You’ve probably heard of college students cleaning up their online profiles or deleting them completely before looking for their first job. You may have your own experiences with someone you haven’t talked to in a decade or two tracking you down on a social networking site, posting a “Remember when...?” story and then had to offer an uncomfortable explanation of it to your colleagues.

But, you’ve hopefully also heard about people using social networking to find a new job, to build relationships with customers, clients or colleagues and perhaps even used blogging as a therapeutic tool to share your thoughts with anyone in the world who cares enough to listen.

This public-private dichotomy came up not too long ago during an interview with former Clemson University professor Mihaela Vorvoreanu -- who’s now at Purdue -- about research she had done on social norms she’d observed among a specific group of college students on Facebook,

“It’s becoming a major issue in society — one that I haven’t quite figured out yet,” she said. “Are you an employee 100 percent of the time? From a personal perspective, I don’t think most of us are paid enough to consider that. On the other hand, something you say …will be associated with your employer. So it’s hard to figure this out. But both sides have valid points.”

Olivier Blanchard also touched on this in my recent story about businesses using social media:

“Obviously, you want to be careful who speaks officially for your company — and those lines are getting blurred,” he said. “If I have a blog, and it’s not a company blog, but people know I work for company x, and I say something offensive… Even if I have a disclaimer, I’m probably going to get a call from human resources.”

Everything you post becomes part of your online identity.

So, even if you’re off the clock, you’re not. You’re a representative of your company -- or, rather, a potential representative. Your personal brand has become assimilated by the brand you work for. (More on this point in an upcoming post.) And the vulnerability an organization might feel in having its employees freely interacting on the world wild web comes with it.

Ideally, as the social web continues to grow and expand, old-school thinking at companies that could intimidate or otherwise limit a person’s ability to express themselves online will die out. If it doesn’t, the companies home to such thinking probably will.

In the meantime, Big Brother may not be looking over your shoulder, but the person who signs your paycheck may be. Companies have begun forming policies for using social media technology, but the more they try to muzzle their employees, the more likely they’ll get bitten in the process. If that’s not happening now, it will. Each successive generation is more and more acclimated to using the social web as a free forum for conversations. It’s only a matter of time before the iPhone generation outnumbers the Baby Boomers in the workforce. (That’s not to say there aren’t some very forward-thinking Baby Boomers online. I’m generalizing.)

And then, there’s me. Or rather, people like me.

Journalists. Reporters. Agents of the MSM.

Reporters, as you know, are supposed to always be objective. I know, I know. I can hear the laughter through the screen. But really, we try. And most real reporters do a good job of presenting an accurate portrayal of a situation. There’s an old saying in this business that if all sides are mad at you, then you did something right.

Well, as journalists, we should be aware of and attempting to make the best use of new channels of communication. After all, that’s what we’ve been trained to do: communicate.

But the blurring line between the public and the private is all the more dangerous for us.

On one hand, social media is a great way to build relationships with potential new readers and sources. I’ve done it for a while now — slowly but surely. But I can’t even begin to count the number of times someone has told me, “Don’t tweet that.” Don’t give someone a reason not to trust you. Don’t sacrifice your credibility. Those are all valid concerns.

Journalists have long had to divorce themselves from their personal feelings when covering a story. But now, with social media, it’s almost as if you have to divorce yourself from who you are every time you plug in. With so many people ready to blame the media -- ironically, most of this comes from politicians, or at least people who avidly follow politics, and from other members of the media -- you have to be extra careful.

It’s true even on “safe” topics: If I tweet that I’m listening to Phil Ochs, do I have to listen to Merle Haggard afterward and share that with the world, too?

I think -- I’m hopeful, actually -- that this industry, too, will one day accept that its biggest assets are the identities of the people working in it and evolve from the days of old. You can have an opinion about something and still cover it fairly. It’s just more and more, people expect to know that opinion up front. After all, we (the press) often demand such disclosures from anyone else who dares post content online. And sometimes, the best writing comes from people who wear their biases on their sleeves.

There’s already been some discussion of this, of “coming out from behind the byline.” But it’s pretty controversial right now.

Perhaps, though, for all facets of the communications industry, embracing the social web and using it to facilitate individuality is the most credible approach of all.

I should've kept a tally.

Now that we've all had a chance to catch our breath, though, there's a potential lesson to be learned from Gov. Mark Sanford's admission of having an affair with an Argentine woman and the subsequent fallout. Actually, there's probably several. But the one I have in mind involves newspapers.

For roughly a two-week period, nearly every day it seemed there was a story -- or series of stories -- that broke, whether it involved him lying to his staff, his romantic e-mails, his wife Jenny's reaction, his travel, calls for his resignation, his "love story" account of the whole thing, and so on.

If you're familiar with our Web site, you've seen the "Most Read" tab over on the right. News about Sanford dominated that list -- so much, in fact, that I began to wonder if we were really offering readers anything by putting those same (or extremely similar) stories in the paper the next day. Many days, by 10 a.m., there was more breaking news that somehow made stories that were still fresh off the press seem like "old news." Granted, not everyone gets their news from the Web (yet?), but everyone was running with the wire copy, especially once the infamous Associated Press "soul mate" interview broke. If you didn't read it online, you probably heard about it on television.

It's the classic problem that's plagued newspapers since they realized the Internet existed: Do you risk de-valuing the news by putting it up (for free) on your Web site the day it moves, which is what readers want and have come to expect, or do you save it for the next day? I can't help but wonder if "reverse publishing" breaking news in the paper after it had been on the Web meant taking up valuable space in the newspaper with information people already had consumed.

Now, this doesn't apply to everything. Bob Dalton had several good stories in this mix, and I got a piece of the action every now and again. (Here's one.) But what we were doing had a local angle, or involved analysis... It was a different kind of content than what was filtering onto our Web site (and, later, into the paper).

Those are the kind of stories that are best suited for the paper, in my opinion.

Now might be a good time to say I can't speak for our paper or our company, but as a journalist, it's in my best interest to at least be aware of the best channels to use to get the most information to the most people. And everything that's been said about the way our paper handled the Sanford affair could easily apply to nearly every newspaper in the state. (Kudos, of course, to The State, for breaking the story in the first place.)

In retrospect, I wonder if producing more stories like Bob (and some of the rest of us) wrote, and simply supplementing those with bullet points from the prior day's breaking news would have provided the best value to our readers?

It's a question that needs to be answered -- or at least thought about. If there's a better model out there, it could be applied to any kind of crisis coverage, whether it involves a love-struck governor, a serial killer or any other news story that develops over time in rapid-fire daily bursts.

Like I said, I'm not able to speak for the paper. I've actually been encouraged by some conversations I've had about differentiating some online versus print content based on space and the likely audience for certain stories. Extremely encouraged, in fact.

I can see why there'd be reluctance to try a new approach, especially on such a hot topic as Sanford's sex life. It takes guts to risk not putting a story that screams "front page" on... well, on the front page.

But the Internet isn't going away, and the number of people who get their news online can only grow -- whether it's through our Web site, Twitter feed, on their phone or on their computer, whatever. The print to digital avalanche isn't slowing down, and it's best to look for a way to ride the technological wave into the future rather than be buried under it.

You might have seen the Associated Press story this week, "Another 'black man did it' hoax sparks outrage."

In a nutshell, a woman -- Bonnie Sweeten -- accused two nondescript black men of abducting her and her 9-year-old daughter. She was later found at Disney World (of all places).

The AP article is good, but basic journalism practices could have prevented this from happening in the first place. Such hoaxes cause tension between the races at a time when, it seems, that is finally starting to dissipate.

Now, this isn't meant to portray me, as a reporter, or us, as a newspaper, as perfect. I certainly don't read every single crime brief we have in the paper -- though I probably should, as they are often among the most-read items in the paper or on our Web site -- to make sure we always do the right thing.

And, when Susan Smith killed her children in nearby Union County in 1994, a similar scenario played out. Smith gave officers a vague description of a young black man who she said kidnapped her two boys, causing many real young black men in Union to feel uneasy stares and, collectively, to bear the burden of being wrongfully accused. Those feelings don't go away quick. One of my first assignments when I came to the Herald-Journal in 2004 was to write one of the 10-year anniversary stories on the Susan Smith murders. Many a black man still felt slighted.

But here's the thing: People give vague descriptions of suspects (or alleged suspects) in crimes all the time. I still look through stacks of police reports at least once a week. I can't begin to tell you how many times the suspects are listed as "two black males" or "two Hispanic males" or "two white males." Sometimes, that's the extent of the description. Sometimes, you get lucky and the fact that the culprits had on blue jeans or a white T-shirt is included.

One of the first thing they teach reporters in J-school -- and this follows the AP Stylebook, the Bible of the dos and don'ts of journalism -- is that the race of a suspect should only been used when a complete description of that man or woman (or men or women, you get the picture) is given. If a police report indicates a woman says a black man snatched her purse, what goes in the paper is "The woman told investigators that a man snatched her purse..." or something along those lines.

This is done precisely to avoid the painful fallout caused by the Susan Smiths and Bonnie Sweetens of the world.

If a suspect is listed as a 5-foot, 6-inch tall white man, likely in his early 30s, with short blond hair, weighing about 180 pounds with a tattoo of "MOM" on his right arm, then that information could ethically be used in a story or a brief. Why? Because that is a more complete description. There's a much smaller universe of people who are being singled out as having committed a crime.

Often, such decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, sometimes with the consultation of an editor, as the level of detail people provide law enforcement with about their alleged assailants varies dramatically.

So, every reporter, print or broadcast, to cover the Sweeten story should have looked at the general description of "two black men," shook their collective heads, and simply printed, "two men."

That's how it works. That's responsible journalism. It would have saved a lot of people a lot of pain.

And perhaps the collective black male community should be just as outraged at those reporters as they are at Sweeten.

... And don't say "news."

We, like most other papers, try to provide our readers with a variety of different stories on many different topics. How well anyone does that is always open to debate.

But following some conversations from my last post, which I now believe should have been called "An initial attempt to save the newspaper industry," one of the points that was brought up was content.

In the course of a conversation with one editor in particular, the idea that newspapers will eventually become an "elite" product surfaced. Not financial elite. Intellectual elite.

Looking forward, this requires a dissection of newspaper content. If we increase the value of the daily paper, then, I think, everyone wins. If we offer a premium product, we should be able to charge a premium price. No, THE COST OF THE PAPER IS NOT GOING UP. Not now, and not to my knowledge, anyway.

Overhauling the content paradigm would require a dramatic shift in the way we go about selecting stories, reporting the news and putting together the overall product. This won't happen overnight. And, keep in mind, this is just another academic exercise, one I hope will stir some debate. (You did notice that the parent company of the Chicago Tribune and L.A. Times filed for Chapter 11 protection yesterday, didn't you? What about the New York Times planning to take out a mortgage on its Manhattan building?)

The fact is, the newspaper industry is in trouble, and it has been for a long time. Every paper around has suffered through layoffs, some bit by bit, others in large chunks. Ask anyone in this business: It's painful. It hurts seeing people you've worked with go, and it hurts knowing that all of their duties will have to be absorbed by whoever is left. But this is getting off-topic.

So, back to the type and quality of content. The current model is to have "bursts" of information on the Internet, with slightly longer stories in the paper. When I started here, "enterprise" stories -- in-depth looks at a single topic -- could run 80 to 120 inches. Now, there's fewer pages and the paper is smaller. It would be nearly impossible to shoehorn a 120-inch story in the paper.

One conversation I had with a local professional a few months back was to scrap all of the short stuff, and let reporters focus entirely on longer, more in-depth pieces. (And charge more.) That may work, but it's only part of the equation. The word "burst" above was inspired by a comic book writer I follow. The general idea is that people want short bits of information from the Web, and longer stuff from the print medium. Breaking away from Warren Ellis, for newspapers this would mean creating more of a daily news magazine. In my mind, it would mean eliminating (or drastically reducing the space devoted to) breaking crime news and other event coverage, whether it's meetings or parades or whatever. If short stories come from those areas, push them to the Web. If they absolutely have to be in the paper, reverse-publish them. That is, put them on the Web first and then let the paper print the best of the bunch the next day. Ideally, this would allow reporters to focus almost exclusively on enterprise content.

That's one model. There are others. One paper in South Carolina has taken the idea of hyper-local coverage to the max, and now only prints stories about things that happen in its coverage area. This includes a bunch of short stories on everything from city hall to the Rotary Club to school lunches. It's a community newsletter with punch. Is that what people want?

Most newspapers are trying a little bit of everything. Our Town Square page is a good example. That gets a lot of community news into the paper on a regular basis, and frees reporters from compiling that information. I guess one question that needs to be asked is how much state and national news do you want from a local paper? Most of that is wire copy, unless there's a direct local connection. But if you get all of your, say, national news from CNN or The New York Times, then maybe we're wasting crucial space.

I can't help think that's a step down a dangerous path. I think back to a conference I was at a year or so ago. Gene Roberts was the featured speaker the first night. Roberts, the former managing editor at the Times, was a reporter at the time of the Kennedy assassination. He went to Dallas with rolls of coins in his pockets and came back with the famous photo of Lee Harvey Oswald standing in his backyard. He has a ton of other accolades. Roberts, when asked by a reporter about hyper-local coverage, pointed out that the more skilled reporters you have working on a big national story, the more likely it is one of them is going to find an angle that will blow the story wide open.

Of course, I'm paraphrasing. But to me, Roberts' success is proof that newspapers can't afford to go entirely local. Not if they want to continue the larger journalistic expedition in this country.

So, there goes a bunch of random thoughts. I've created a new category on this blog, "Reinventing the American Newspaper," where I hope we can establish some sort of dialogue that in its own small way is conducive to the health of the industry.

If nothing else, I hope it reminds people how important the newspaper is. To paraphrase another person I talked to -- not sure if he wants to be identified -- if you think of your local paper as fishwrap, then that's a problem. But don't just call it that. Tell us what you want.

One of my editors has this whole thing about the time I spend blogging and on Twitter: No matter what I do, it's not going to make money for the newspaper. Newspapers, in case you haven't heard, have been struggling since the Internet went mainstream several years back, and there hasn't really been a successful model built on how our industry can use online content to be profitable -- profitable, that is, to the point where it supplants or (ideally) surpasses the revenue that was once provided by national accounts, automobile dealerships, real estate, classifieds and everyone else.

So, I decided to build one.

This is totally raw, 2 a.m., off-the-top-of-my-head stuff. I haven't sat down and tried to figure out if it's possible or if anyone else out there on the World Wild Web has thought of it. But here goes, anyway.

First, this has to start at the top. We'll use our company as an example. It would have to start with New York and work down to Boston, Florida and the rest of us in the regional media group.

The newspaper corporation would either purchase or (preferably) develop in house a platform that allows people to buy things through its sites. Think: Google Shop, eBay Stores... You get the picture. This platform would be integrated into each paper's Web site, allowing ad reps to sell "featured advertiser" pages. No longer does some annoying popup or banner ad go by the wayside. You see a Sears ad on the side, you click on it, and suddenly you see, can search through and buy the products Sears has decided to advertise through our company. The purchasing platform would work best with the personality tracking, targeted advertising schemes that Google AdWords or Amazon uses -- i.e., if you always bought electronics, read technology stories, posted on TalkUpstate about the latest iPhone, iPod or iWhatever, you're probably going to be shown the latest selections from that category. This allows readers the convenience of purchasing products through our Web sites, products they would be interested in. Heck, let's throw in a wish list feature while we're at it. We get a cut, and the ad revenue -- which should be substantial because of the targeted, dedicated advertising we would be offering -- and viola, online news is suddenly profitable.

... If the readers log in, that is. Most people don't like logging in to an account to read the paper. Even if it's free. It's a hassle. So, there has to be an incentive on their end, too. (Readers would have to log in so the tracking scripts would have something to, well... track.) I'm thinking a points system like the ones credit card companies use. For every $1 someone spends through our Web site, then they get a couple of "Herald-Journal bucks" or some such. Once they get a certain amount, they can trade it in for something. Gift cards or subscriptions or maybe even a spot on the Stroller cruise. Or something.

Why start at the top? Because advertisers are going to be taking a gamble on something new, and it's best to let them take that gamble on our largest properties (or all of them combined) so that their risk is small and potential payback large. And, because the national advertisers would be best positioned to take advantage of this. But, really, you can order a pizza online these days. Why not order one through GoUpstate.com, the site we would love everyone in Spartanburg to have as their home page? And small mom-and-pops could use this, too. All we'd need would be photographs of the products, the selling prices, and a couple of other bits of information (shops that don't ship might think of an in-store pickup special for a reduced rate). Creative retailers could use this to get ahead.

Newspapers have long had the wall of separation between their ad reps and their news departments. Take Wild Wing Cafe, for example. We covered their opening like it was the best thing since sliced bread a few years back. And now we're covering their collapse. The fact that they've bought a good number of ads -- and even paid to have a Web cam installed upstairs at one point, with the video streaming to GoUpstate.com -- it didn't influence us then and it doesn't influence now. I honestly don't know how much they spent with us. I'm not privvy to that kind of stuff. And, really, the only interaction I have with ad reps is the one or two I see on smoking breaks. (We're a dying breed.)

So, there. It's going to take some up-front work, but if advertisers see news sites as a way to directly reach their customers and our readers have the convenience of shopping directly through the paper -- I mean, there's a reason Sunday and Wednesday papers sell the most copies: that's when the ads come out -- then everyone wins. And then no one else (yes, it's been mentioned here and there) has to talk about bailing out the newspaper industry, which would be a nightmare on so many levels. State-controlled information being foremost.

This issue is vital. Whether my off-the-cuff solution works is up for debate. Please, lavish praise or cut it to shreds. At least we'll be talking about it.

If this works, by the way, I want a promotion.