a. fish

Hyperlocal

Who would've predicted - but it's coming I tell ya - globalization begets an age of place. Hyperlocal H20Town blogger Lisa Williams has made a 1000 place blog bet with PressThink's Jay Rosen. Said some naysayer: "Lisa Williams is special.  There are so few of her that hyperlocal will never take off.”

To that comment may I just say: BWAHAHAHAA! I can only guess the doubter a Tom Sawyer protege attempting to kickstart a hyperlocal media movement with an old fasioned double-dog "I betchya can't do it" schoolyard dare.
(See also: Slate's Jack Shafer on How the New York Times Makes Local Papers Dumber. Uh huh.)

Here in San Fran we've seen a quiet rise in the microdailies. First the new Examiner, reduced to "compact" (tabloid) layout, distributed sans charge in subway stop-dotting newsracks; cluttering up the driveways of the tony addresses admired by advertisers everywhere.

Next we see a neighborhood newswire, published by public power activist Steve Moss. Inspired by a study showing a direct correlation between the trust readers had in a publication and the proximity of its focus, Moss created the wire service to be used by niche neighborhood publishers. Place begets trust, he concluded, and the neighborhood newswire was born.

Then the publishers of the East Bay Daily News set up shop here at www.sfdaily.net. Noticing an untapped lower-tier advertising market, they wisely seized what they saw as an opportunity. And this 16-page Monday thru Friday paper did something really evil that kept me coming back for more: they introduced that bloody timesucker of a puzzle, the Sadoku. They publish two - one sinfully easy, the other deceptively difficult - per day. (Bastards.)

But wait - just yesterday, The Marina Times tossed their August issue, expanded to 16 pages (from 10), to my doorstep. The publishers must be catching onto a reader loyalty hook: they premiered the Godzilla Sadoku  - that's right, fill in digits 1 through 9 and letters A through F in every square, row and column. Oh and there's some good local stories to boot.

Time-vaccuum puzzles aside, local media rags represent just about every neighborhood (the Potrero View, Sunset Beacon, Richmond Dispatch, Noe Valley Voice) and niche demographic (El Tecolote, The Haight Beat, Bay Area Business Woman) you could encounter in this city. And unless my eyes are deceiving me, the smaller papers are getting fatter, and their coverage is getting better. Now why is that?

Current.tv's Christoff returns from Mississippi

On MUNI's N train tonight I met Christoff from Current.tv. He was sunburned and red-eyed, having just returned from Mississippi. He was heading home from Current's headquarters, where he and his producer finished up editing two segments which will air on Current tomorrow (Wednesday.) Some tidbits he gave me in conversation on MUNI:

• He and his producer were able to drive down into storm-ravaged Mississippi in a Hertz-rented SUV. They encountered no barriers on their way down last Wednesday, yet they managed to get there three days before FEMA.
• Christoff recounted throwing up (which will be in his "pod" or tv segment) and personally seeing twelve bodies during his time there.
• The two-man reporting crew, who brought Power Bars and bottled water for themselves, gave the first bottled water to survivers they met on the trip.

That Christoff and his producer were able to rent an SUV from Hertz and just wander into this area, and be the first outsiders to greet some of Mississippi's Katrina survivors, should make for some worthwhile alternative tv news. Christoff said the segments will only be viewable on the television portion of the network, and will not be streamed online.

Author J.D. Lasica at Stacy's 12:30 Today

J.D. Lasica, blogger and journalist will signing copies of his book Darknet at Stacy's bookstore at 12:30 today.

Stacy's bookstore is at 581 Market Street. Event copied from today's SF Examiner, print edition.
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UPDATE 8/24/2005: Well he was pretty good. I asked J.D. if he knew of any movement afoot to teach 'Media Literacy' in schools, or if he found any such movement when researching his book. The subject of 'Media Literacy' could encompass anything from DRM issues, all the way to how to read a newspaper, how to differentiate an editorial from a hard news story.

Lasica said he hadn't seen any movement to teach 'Media Literacy'. In fact, he found quite the opposite: there are efforts on behalf of the RIAA and MPAA to warn young people about the legalities of copying. But there were no comprehensive educational efforts on behalf of other groups, with more balanced interests.

If anybody is interested in starting a 'media literacy' educational movement, Lasica said, they may want to contact the American Library Association. One task such a movement could kick off may be development of an online course curriculum to help teachers teach the subject to students.

James Doohan Tribute Podcast - SFGate

UPDATE 8/24/2005: Doohan Tribute podcast is here. Enjoy.

In the print edition of today's Chronicle, it says Jane Ganahl's hilarious story on the wake for Star Trek "Scotty" actor James Doohan, which took place at San Francisco pub Edinburgh Castle, has an accompanying podcast. I can't find it. In fact, the url they list in the paper, sfgate.com/blogs/podcasts, returns a 404.

And on the web edition of the story, there is no mention of a podcast anywhere. I'd like to send it my brother in New York, avid childhood Star Trek fan and often homesick for the bay area.

UPDATE 8/24/2005: Doohan Tribute podcast is here. Enjoy.
UPDATE 8/25/2005: Steve Rhodes was there, and took pictures.
UPDATE 8/26/2005: See count-dante's writup of the event. "Thursday night, Count Dante teamed up with Patrick 'Security' Burger and BDFS drummer Jim 'The Truth' Henderson to form the heavy 'Classic Trek' instrumental trio Savage Curtain and closed the rousing, whisky-soaked tribute to James Doohan aka Montgomery Scott at the Edinburgh Castle Scottish pub in San Francisco."
UPDATE 8/27/2005: My mom writes in with a little family history about this story.

Bay Area Newspapers

Ouch: Double Vision hits the SF Chronicle twice in one week: The San Francisco Chronicle had the same cover photo of an Iraqi sand storm as the New York Times on Tuesday, and shared a Cindy Sheehan story photo with the Oakland Tribune on Wednesday. If papers rely more and more on stringer photographers and wire services such as Associated Press, are there some procedures they could employ to prevent this embarrassment in the future? It seems like the press version of showing up to a cocktail party - only to discover two other guests wearing your dress :(

The San Francisco Examiner is just humming along. Today it expanded beyond a five-day-a-week paper with its Saturday-Sunday edition. Roger from A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books says there may be a weekly local Independent Bookseller's Recommendations feature. The Exam is so different from the Chronicle: it takes a hyperlocal focus on San Francisco, the city, instead of trying to cover the entire bay area; it's a service-oriented paper with "what to do in SF today" sections prominently printed inside the front flap instead of buried inside the Datebook in tiny font. As a reader, I think both papers look better when there are such contrasting alternatives to choose from. (For more on local coverage upping reader trust, see Jack Shafer's Slate piece Why I Don't Trust Readers.)

The Contra Costa Times' editor Chris Lopez keeps a blog. I highly recommend it - Lopez provides a glimpse into every day decisions at the East Bay paper, from the mundane (like a new puzzle they're adding to the Time Out section) to the tough judgement calls behind printing graphic Iraq carnage photos. Lopez constantly asks blog readers for feedback. Kudos to Lopez and the CCTimes for being a good example to the industry; that's a paper which really appears to respect blogs. Lopez gets out in front using new media to nurture reader trust by aggressively soliciting and sharing constructive criticism.
(This is quite a contrast to journalist groups lambasting papers asking for citizen input, as pointed out by Dan Gillmor, here.)

Bloggers, Journalists, Subsets and Journals

Yes, what Don Park said. I mean, duh!

Mr. Park: "This is an old popular topic but I thought I should state my opinion. I don't think bloggers are journalists."
A. Fish: A blogger is not necessarily a journalist. But since a blog is like a journal, it's safe to say bloggers ARE journalers.

Bloggers ⊄ Journalists

Mr. Park: "Journalists who maintain blogs are journalists."
A. Fish: They're journalists...AND journalers.
 

Journalists who maintain blogs ⊂ Journalists

In other words...

Bloggers who are Journalists ⊂ Journalists

CCTimes' Editor has a blog, gives story previews

Chris Lopez, editor of the Contra Costa Times, has a weblog. Last week, Lopez' post Friday's Schedule gave a day-in-the-life peek into the newspaper editor's typical tasks. Last night, Lopez blogged a scoop preview.   

Lopez' post titled That Time of Year about typical May and June stories of government budget decisions shows both cynicism and sweat: "It can get maddening, if not confusing, reading the various stories on government budget plans, and our job as editors is to challenge how the stories are being written and presented so that they are comprehensible and relevant to people's every day lives."

 

When is Grad School worth the cost?

It seems like people have an odd fixation with grad school not as a means to a successful career, but an end in itself. Another frequent pattern are people who explore a career by getting the Master's degree first, then changing their mind with piles of student loan debt. Why not just take a night class or two, or learn on the job?

A city college news writing classmate sent out a link to this article If Your J-School Knows What's Best for You, Check it Out with the comment: "This was too interesting to not share with the group. A rather disheartening perspective on J-school especially and the field of journalism in general."

East Bay is now a two-paper region

East Bay Express, a free weekly, was the only paper dedicated to the entire east bay area (East Bay Area=Contra Costa + Alameda counties). Now Knight Ridder has purchased a free daily chain from the peninsula, and launched the East Bay Daily News which is delivered "to area stores, offices, restaurants, and coffee shops. Knight Ridder plans to ramp up the circulation to 10,000 in a matter of days, according to a statement." - From Editor & Publisher.

Hearst Irony: Tabloids are the new Black

Tabloids are the new Black,
originally uploaded by afish.

(An ad for the SF Examiner, taken at an underground bart/muni station.) Papers across the country and world are converting to Tabloid format. The San Francisco Chronicle still prints on quarter-folded broadsheet.

From what I recall, "Tabloid" used to be synonomous with racy, cheeky "yellow journalism."

Tips from a photographer veteran raised on LIFE, trained in darkrooms

(NYTimes: Stop Them Before They Shoot Again )

A few weeks ago, Chronicle photographer Katy Raddatz showed slides and spoke to our San Francisco City College news writing class. In contrast to word-driven stories of today, Life magazine's photo-driven stories inspired her, and Raddatz soon entered the darkroom to work on her Junior High school paper.  She feels no threat from freelance photographers. Some Raddatz photog tips:

• weather needs a context - try not to catch a rainbow by itself, squeeze a city landmark in the frame. On hot days there'll be plenty of SF beachgoer pics. She heads away from the sand into the Mission district, and captures shirtless bluejean-clad kids running through the stream of a neighbor's hose.
• walk AROUND the problem to get the best angle. A few years back, a car crashed into a breakfast diner near the Sunset. Nobody was hurt. Raddatz got one shot of the crunched sedan. Then she noticed two older ladies sitting firmly in their booth - sitting, smoking and gabbing, just like the deep lines in their faces suggest they've probably done from that very booth for years. Raddatz got a second, more telling, shot of the scene with these two indifferent diner customers in the foreground, car damage and yellow police tape behind them.
• show not just what something looks like, show what it feeeellls like - she showed a slide of a passenger Ferry in full  motion, tipped to the side with a white wake tail, making a sharp turn under the Golden Gate. The passengers' hair and clothes flapped behind them.
• look at the audience! - at street fairs or rock concerts, the stage can be predicable and, well, too rehearsed. The audience conveys authentic, candid reaction. One shot of an outdoor rocket fair had everybody looking up in the sky. The first day of kindergarten had predicable mugs of the teacher and kids, but anxious parents watching from the window was a rare, unique angle of this annual story.
• a picture is useless without a name, useless without a caption -  On her first Examiner assignment in the 1970s, Raddatz learned this the hard way. Knowing nothing about sports, she covered an A's game and caught a red-faced first base coach roaring over referree's bad call. She eagerly brought it back to her editor who said, nice - did you get his name? They didn't print it. She urged us to label all names of relatives and friends even on family and personal photos, because "trust me, when you get old you forget."

Drive by thought dump

Stuff on the mind:

• urban environmentalism: sneak green into nooks and crannies wherever possible; peaceful coexistance of industry (need better word?) and nature; to earn a "C" as an environmentalist you must simply enjoy nature and express (writing, art) why you enjoyed it; triangulating environmentalism - can backpacking fight youth crime?
• journalists vs. journalers: shocking there's no bar exam or series seven license for journalists; news orgs with more fact checkers per writer should advertise that fact; hand a pad and pen to someone in underrepresented district (bayview?) or demographic (who?) and put more editors on that beat; if keeping a private journal is journaling, doesn't that mean blogging is journaling, not journalism?; is fiction a subset of journalism, or of journaling?
• school, my writing class: three sessions to go and I've had a good time, but my writing has not improved at all - illusion or sad accuracy? the study-more-upfront curve vs. the cram-for-final-exam curve, crisped at three weeks to go, can barely pick up book or get excited for class; Billy Collins poem on students beating the meaning out of a poem with old brooms;  what a good teacher is (hint: he or she is not perfect, but it some way excellent, ok that's one version there are many); a B is satisfying when...first class ever where I gave it my all, attended every class (wow) did not approach it with dread.
• W: first 100days. (365 x 4) - 100 = 1360 remain of accidental-boy-king's reign. Not outrageous anymore. Just tiring; find humor in this, surely it's in there somewhere & you're just tired;
  
• how to travel, how to camp, plan a trip: need to write this if not yet written, else read it; weekend in May; pick one.

SF Newspapers use more of the web

The San Francisco Chronicle published articles about local podcasters, and how to make a podcast, and reporters Benny Evangelista and Tom Abata published a podcast of their own.

Last month, on the same day that Superior Court judge declared California's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, sfgate provided a forum for readers to share their immediate reactions. The forum (which I cannot find now, it may have been removed, it was like this) worked like a message board but it did not provide threaded discussions to reply to user comments.

The San Francisco Examiner, on the other hand, has a permanent threaded messageboard/forum using phpBB. They also have a guestbook, though nobody has signed it, and the heading says it is a sounding board, but really it's just a mailto link to Editor Sarah Randolf.

Using their partnership with tv station KPIX, The Chronicle provided a clip of the April 6th Ritz-Carlton hotel Arnold Schwartzenegger protest along with the story article and photos. The paper also published video of KPIX interviews with 9-year-old Selah Kalaf and his father Raheem Kalaf, the subjects of the feature story Operation Lion Heart, which last Monday won a Pulitzer for feature photography.

And like Markos Moulitsas ("kos" of the dailykos,) the SF Examiner started a few baseball blogs: examiner-giants.blogspot.com for the San Francisco Giants and examiner-as.blogspot.com for the Oakland As. Each baseball blog has only one post each so far.

Stephen Buel's East Bay Express Formula

Ah the wonderful world of blogs, where you can post your eighteen inch story on East Bay Express editor Stephen Buel using only a few inches of bullet points, hurray! I'll post the full story in the the last installment just for yucks. And heck - yucks aside, the main reason for journaling, more recently known as "blogging", is to have a record of how far your work has come since the days of your first news writing class.

Lede: "Stephen Buel of the East Bay Express had an impressive number for journalism students last night: Since he became editor in 2001, circulation jumped 40%. Audit Bureau of Circulations’ records confirm that rate, along with declines for The Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News."

Questions popping in head, which I didn't have time to research: is this a trend for alt newsweeklies? Are they the place for quality reporting, given the Williamette Week's Pulitzer, the fifth ever awarded to an alternative weekly? Deadlines are sacred, the teacher says, so these and many more are left unanswered for today.

So, what is behind that impressive number Buel dropped at the very end of his class appearance? Well looking back at our notes we can glean a few clues:

1. format and distribution mechanics,
2. content on under-reported areas and topics, and
3. (maybe) the winning combo of seasoned newsman with practical business sense that is Buel himself. (sound too kiss-ass? yeah...could be.)

Part 1. Mechanics

• 2001 New Times Inc. bought EBX February 2001. Converted from quarter-folded format to tabloid June 2001. It's a trend: SF Examiner, Christian Science Monitor, and others, doing the same.
• 2001 New Times provides EBX with their first ever free standing news racks in bright yellow by the hundreds. (Sounds like a duh! move to me. New Times has the money, not everyone does.)
• 2002 Art Director Mark Gartland gives EBX "cleaner, brighter, punchier" new cover, having an "immediate impact" on circulation. Buel: cover design's influence on circulation "cannot be overstated"
• Circulation Editor Weslie Chung, Buel praises this "outstanding" guy twice. Free papers can boost circulation just by printing more papers. Buel: "The reduction of our return rate from 11 percent to 3.5 at the same time that our circulation was increasing from 62,000 [in 2001] to 87,000 is indeed very remarkable." (how long did it take to memorize that sentence, and make it sound casual? I kid, he was actually quite cool, and very straight forward. Also his clothes were not wrinkled. Not saying that's unusual.)

Coming soon: parts 2 (content) and 3 (editor's personality). Also: the whole written story, in non-bulletted format. And maybe a part 4 (all other factors I couldn't squeeze into eighteen inches.)

The capitalist angle: women benefit newspapers

SFChron's newest columnist Pati Pablete says it all.

"Bottom-liners, take note," says Pati. This is not to make life more fair. Life isn't fair. More women should be in the newsroom because it would sell more newspapers.

"While the dearth of women in high positions isn't unique to newsrooms, the reasons to reverse the trend are." Newspapers are losing readers, and "women make 80 percent of all household purchasing decisions, and that their median income has increased 63 percent since 1970. (The median income of men has increased less than 1 percent)."

Read what else she discovered in the daylong "Women in the Newsroom" workshop. Or don't. It's your loss.

SF Chronicle: the paper we love to hate

Hah! I'm not alone. Local bloggers love to hate the SF Chronicle. Or is it hate to hate? Honestly there are some true gems buried within that paper, buried being the key word. Some get it: Benny Evangelista did some nice legwork for his article about podcasting (and even made a podcast,) so he must be up with the scene. Others are shockingly late to the game.

Tiger Beat: Today Steve posts his admonishment, Chron clueless on blogging. Yesterday they covered Supervisor Chris Daly's new blog, noting a) it's on the taxpayer's dime, b) in blogs people can say stuff, and c) in a blog, Daly could add links "that take visitors to noncity Web sites."

SFist: the same article inspires SFist's Rita to express mock admiration for theChron's cutting edge awareness: "The Chron, fresh from learning that "'blog' is short for 'Web-log,'" (UPDATE 3/11/2005: Rogers shows that a lot of papers are still explaining this term.)

San Jose Merc: Enter our Oscar pool, win an Ipod

Because this little opportunity was printed above the fold, peaking out the window of the sidewalk-mounted vending machine, I actually forked over a quarter to buy the print edition of the Merc today. Luckily I get home to find it online as well.

What a simple, cost-effective way to utilize the web: interact with readers and the community without losing editorial control, I love it. Props.

Email to my journo teacher

I wrote a looong email to my journalism teacher. Im taking journalism101 "News Writing and Reporting" at San Francisco City College. I have no expectations of becoming a fulltime reporter, I just wanted some writing instruction to hopefully publish an article in a tech mag somewhere someday.

But this email which just came out made me realize I have pent up feelings: resentment, shared anxiety, compassion, outrage for the news business today. Originally I sent Jon (the teacher) a NYTimes article about podcasting, and asked him why The SF Chronicle (our local paper) has a less than stellar tech beat. He responded that "Some people would say the Chron has pretty extensive tech reporting, but those are opinions" he has no opinion (_sigh_), and asked me to elaborate. (Email below).

Uncertainty needs a home

Suspicous anxiety dustbunny sans anchor might go away...yeah right. Janet Jackson was velcro for unassigned, unrelated unease. The biggest black eye in the Eason Jordan story, in my opinion, is not the bloggers on the right, not the bloggers on the left, not Jarvis, Jordan, the Davos organizers, but CNN - do they care?

His accusers may be right, his allegations true, both, nobody seems interested. A TimeWarner quarter priority ladder: risk avoidance, ratings, real news, truth.

This giant suspicion cloud ("it's an outcome still unexplained, reporters on the media beat")-  the source, either CNN, Jordan, some kind of authority can quell the upset by giving it a home. Doubters from the right: he was one of many who just happened to get caught - why should we watch? Doubters from the left: they report it, unless of course it upsets the wrong people in which case they'll spike it and fire the reporter, we decide - why should we watch? "The most trusted name in news"?? Sounds like "Fair and Balanced".

A citizen's modest request: punch back!

Rebecca McKinnon: "...CNN has done itself more harm than good over the last several years by being horribly afraid to stand up for any particular set of principles. It tries very hard to please everybody and offend nobody"

A boxing match, circa 1938:

...A short left preceded a tremendous right. Schmeling's head wobbled uncontrollably, and his hair shook like a mop as he plummeted, face-down, to the canvas.

It was high drama, and the entire Yankee Stadium crowd was on its feet, roaring. Thousands who had cheered Schmeling in the introductions had switched allegiances in less than two minutes.

Contest of the Equivocators

The San Francisco Chronicle wrote an Editorial on Howard Dean as the next DNC chair. I read it three times and couldn't decipher where they stood. Here is my LTE in response:

Editor – your editorial on the new DNC chair “Can a left turn save the Democrats?” was a muddled composition of hair-splitting equivocations; I wonder if you were trying to show the Democrats, not by your words but by example, how NOT to behave.

You praise Dean’s “inspirational skills” and because of them deem him a "solid choice” as party chair. In the same paragraph, you judge that Dean’s “desperate enthusiasm” in Iowa and subsequent primary losses show he was not “the answer” to the party’s needs.

You caution Democrats that Dean’s “ideological fervor” will not propel the party back to power. Yet you cite conventional wisdom that “boldness and idealism” positions a party to become dominant.

You fret that Dean’s record shows no red-state appeal (oh come on, balanced budgets and an A rating from the NRA?). Then you conclude ”Democrats will know they are making progress when their candidates no longer fear the word 'liberal,' the way Ronald Reagan transformed 'conservative'”.

No more flip-flopping Editor, was Dean the right choice for party chair? Are Democrats moving in the direction to become a winning party? Making decisions can be tough. Trust me, I know.

Alison Fish
Democrat

Building Community: Norcal Next of Kin (Iraq)

Families of Iraq vets killed in the war met in a Town Hall in San Francisco last night. Televised on KPIX 5 tonight at 7:15pm. Civil dialog unites the families, some supporting the war some against the war, all affected personally. Some for Bush, some for Kerry. All speaking candidly, giving us an opportunity to meet and honor these courageous vets.

Sfgate features profiles of the heros from Northern California. See also: United by Grief.

I have to commend KPIX for having the guts to air an hour-long program, free of commercials, for airing a local story with responsible coverage when they could have made more money from sitcom reruns.