Las Vegas TV station KWU apparently has decided to react to the drop in advertising dollars many news operations are experiencing by product placement on its newscasts.  Anchors recently delivered the news with iced coffees from a popular fast-food franchise on their desks.

As Angela Grant points out on News Videographer:

“In my opinion, this conflicts with several points in SPJ’s Code of Ethics “Act Independently” section:

·         Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.

·         Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

·         Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.

Certainly pressures are building as news organizations adapt to the shift in the way our audiences want to receive the news. But this smacks of at least the appearance of advertisers influencing news content. This also points out  why it’s so important for  SPJ to continue to push ethics at this time of change. We need to maintain a watchdog approach and be vigilant to make sure the high standards we have set over the past century do not erode.

Elections are coming up.

Before you snore through another meeting about elections, read what Jack Lail and Scott Karp wrote about link journalism in the Neiman Reports, now online.

Some newsrooms still are living in old school molds of having the “scoop” – real “His Girl Friday” stuff from the 1920s.  But Lail and Karp make good arguments for why those notions can’t fly anymore.  But by helping readers navigate through all the voices on the web, our tradition as a trusted source may well save us.

Karp:

“This is not just a responsibility, it’s an opportunity, for when journalists select the best of the Web’s political coverage, they are able to uphold their standards of verifying and validating information. When newsrooms distribute what they find on the Web, they can maintain their relevance as a destination for people interested in politics by becoming a gateway to the best of all political coverage, not just their own.”

In Knoxville, Lail and his folks put it to the test with great success:

“The idea was elegantly simple: supplement presidential campaign coverage with links to other content. …

…Here’s what it took to make this happen:

·         Number of sit-down meetings: None.

·         Number of conference calls: None.

·         Number of contracts or releases: None.

·         From concept to execution: A couple of days.”

So skip that meeting all together.

I spent last week wading in data for our second biennial package “Judging the Judges.”

It’s a survey I helped develop two years ago with our local bar association, getting lawyers to help evaluate judicial performance.  We also elect state judges in Wichita but rules on judicial ethics prevent candidates from campaigning or really saying much. So we also evaluate the performance of attorneys who are running for office, and it’s become an important guide for voters.

We started this, in part because special interest groups were doing their own evaluations and endorsements, and we wanted to provide a more objective tool.  No one knows judges better than the lawyers who face them.

I really works well on the web. From my spreadsheets, content producer Katie Lohrenz built an interactive feature allowing readers to compare scores between judges and candidates.  You can see, we kept the copy short, because the real star is the data.  We only had a week to prepare from the time we received the raw data until Sunday’s publication.

It’s rated among our top web features so far, both Sunday and today.

FADE IN: (After a busy week wrestling with a data project, RON is catching up on his reading, scratching his head like a curmudgeon. We hear the narration of his inner voice, resembling Woody Allen):

MERANDA WATLING wrote a post on her blog which reminded me why the news business will survive.

She commented on comments to a post by JESSICA DASILVA, another young firebrand of new journalism Now, I will comment on that.  (No, Meranda, you’re not the last blogger to write about it, I am.)

The passion both these young women show for journalism is exactly what has kept this curmudgeon going back to work for three-plus decades now.

RIPPLE FADE TO:

MERANDA:

“I am 22 and about as tech-savvy as an employer could possibly hope for their employee to be. And you know what? I LOVE my newspaper job. But I don’t love it because I am wedded to the idea of a printed product or because I long to wear fedoras or be Woodward and Bernstein or any of that. I don’t. I really really don’t. I rarely read the printed newspaper (my editor hates this), and I’d much rather be putting together an interactive graphic than sitting through a school board meeting.”

CUT TO

RON:

I did get into this business because of Woodward and Bernstein, and on occasion have donned a fedora (and look as dapper as Ryan Sholin). I also said this week in a news meeting

CUT TO Weekly staff meeting

RON (as reporters and editors nod off around the conference table): “We can’t cut staff and change the makeup in our newsrooms while continuing to cover the news the same way we have for the past 50 years.  That includes writing about every school board meeting.”

FADE TO: Tampa Tribune newsroom, where JESSICA hears editor JANET COATS say that despite doom surrounding pending layoffs, journalism is “Is worth fighting for.”

JESSICA:

“Out of all her quoteable moments, those were the words that stuck with me. It was that powerful statement that conveyed the hope, faith and prayers of all journalists worldwide. That maybe this industry can’t be demolished because of its importance and that maybe our love and passion for it could be enough to keep it running.

“Well, it’s going to take more than love and passion. That love and passion must move us to find solutions to keep our industry, our jobs and our identities alive and well.”

RON (laughing while reading comments of Jessica’s critics, who keep mentioning declining circulation of the print product, as if it makes their points, rather than hers):

Can we agree that our audience is moving to the Web?  (Speaking very slowly for those who still don’t get it)  People are reading their news on their telephones — as I do, as long as my old eyes will allow it. Meranda and Jessica get what many veterans don’t:  the means of delivering the news is changing.  The news isn’t.  Reporting isn’t.  The people who love news and reporting it aren’t. (He pauses, as he often does when writing, wondering if he’s making any sense to anyone but himself. Undaunted, he continues…).

Of course, we have to do our jobs differently than we have. But all we’re doing is what wire service reporters have done since the 19^th Century:  looking for faster ways to get the news out.  (Curmudgeonly allusion ahead) Our goal is no different than Edward G. Robinson in “Dispatch from Reuters” (1940).

That’s doesn’t mean our newsrooms will always be producing newspapers. And there will always be a need for news.

CUT TO

MERANDA:

“But they will need accurate, reliable news sources. And the skills I am learning working as a beat reporter are preparing me to be that source. It’s not perfect, for sure. Newspapers won’t ever regain their dominance. But I hate to see the best of the best being shooed away and told working for a newspaper is a death sentence. Trust me, journalism — democracy — needs those people not to flee too far from good old-fashioned community journalism and not to give up.”

(Background music swells with Gloria Gaynor’s 1970s-era curmudgeon standard “I Will Survive” as we) FADE OUT

Good tips are worth remembering and repeating.

Here are some from Bill Dunphy of Web U (via Mindy McAdams)

1. Are there original documents you can link to?
2. Are there any photographs (related videos, sound files, slideshows)?
3. Can you map it?
4. Can you gather past stories together and link to them?
5. Can you post the audio or video of an interview or a performance or a meeting?
6. Can you direct readers to an authoritative (external) site for more info?
7. Can you invite comment or start a conversation?

Dunphy has good descriptions and explanations to go with each, like finding photos:

“You don’t have to own a file to share it with your audience. Need a photo of a coffee-addicted dog for a story on off-leash dog parks? Go to Flickr’s creative commons site and search for what you need.”

Easy and entertaining.

I picked this up and realized I hadn’t blogged in almost a month.  Part of it is the intense energy I bring to work every day.  I’m sapped by the end of the day, running my the work blog on courts, trying to complete the enterprise projects and keep up with multimedia, which in recent weeks has meant looking at death.

I see death regularly.  I cover murder trials.  But rarely do I get to see it.  Until last week.

Often, I’ve heard prosecutors explain to jurors about circumstantial evidence. “I don’t have a video of the crime,” they will say, “but you can still look at the evidence and tell what happened can’t you?”

In the trial of Cherish McCullough the jury, and I, saw a killing. And in the era of multimedia, we could share it online.

McCullough was 19 years old when charged with killing a 27-year-old woman in a Wichita convenience store.  The store had 15 security cameras, which caught the crime from every angle.  I plugged my small Canon into the video pool, and we recorded what the jury saw.  Then we posted it online.  Well, parts of it. You might want to read until the end before you decide to click on the links below.

First, there was the fistfight between the women.  That was played on the first day of the trial. After the fight, McCullough left the store.  Everyone thought the fight was over, until she returned and stabbed LaShonda Callaway.

Not too long ago, only television news would have been able to replay it. Across our city, editorial discussions were going on in newsrooms.  What do we show, just because we can? We didn’t show the stabbing.  There was another view that caught it on camera.  It was quick.  Callaway seemed to be unaware she was stabbed, until she collapsed.  What our audience saw only hinted at what happened.

I tell myself, we showed what we did, because it showed the overwhelming evidence against McCullough, and why the jury eventually took only an hour to convict her. And not just because we can.  I hope we did the right thing.

The video we didn’t show was brutal. I’m still having nightmares about it.