Internet Tops Newspapers as News Source for First Time
African Americans More Likely to Use Social Networking
Ann Curry Responds to Tweet, Finds American After Quake
Yemen Raids Journalists’ Apartment, Deports Four
Despite Quake, Libya Needs Journalists More Than Ever
Editing of NPR “Sting” Video Found to Be Deceptive
Even Journalists Can Learn From “Sugar Changed the World
Credit: Project for Excellence in Journalism
Internet Tops Newspapers as News Source for First Time
“More people said they got their news from the Web than a physical newspaper last year — the first time in history this has happened, according to an annual report on the news media,” Nathan Olivarez-Giles reported Monday for the Los Angeles Times.
“The Internet now trails only television among U.S. adults as a destination for news, and the trend line shows the gap closing, the study released Monday by the Pew Research Center said.
“The report predicted that 2010 might also be the year when online ad revenue surpassed print newspaper ad revenue for the first time. The final tally is expected this spring. One of the challenges facing newspapers is that the largest share of online ad revenue is going to non-news sources, particularly to aggregators, the Washington think tank said.
“Overall, nearly every sector of the U.S. news industry saw revenue growth in 2010, except for newspapers.
“After two dreadful years, most sectors of the industry saw revenue begin to recover, the study said. With some notable exceptions, cutbacks in newsrooms eased. And some experiments with new revenue models began to show signs of blossoming.”
African Americans More Likely to Use Social Networking
“African Americans are more likely to have created their own web content — by blogging, microblogging and social networking — than whites or Hispanics,” according to the the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s State of the News Media 2011 report.
The section on African Americans, by By Emily Guskin, Paul Moore and Amy Mitchell, says that “Almost a quarter (22%) of blacks created or worked on their own online journal or blog, compared to 14% for whites and 13% for Hispanics. 71 African Americans also use social or professional online networking sites in greater proportions than whites. In May 2010, some 71% of African Americans said they used online networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook, compared with 58% of whites.”
Sections on Hispanics, Asian and Native Americans are due later in the year.
In another finding, “An overwhelming 86% of African Americans turn to TV for most of their news, compared to 64% of white respondents and 66% of Hispanics, according to a December 2010 Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey. But black-oriented TV news programs have been rare and few have long staying power. In 2010, though, the largest cable channel geared toward an African American audience jumped back into news.
Overall, “The African American media in 2010 mirrored the kinds of challenges and changes that mainstream news organizations also faced. Most African American media outlets either began or planned to upgrade their digital enterprises in an effort to reach new audiences. But beyond that, it was a mixed year for the sector,” the report said.
Among other findings:
- “Profit for BET overall climbed in 2010 to $259.4 million, an 8.8% increase from $238.5 million the year before.
- “. . . TV One had its second consecutive profitable year in 2010: Making a profit estimated at $22.6 million, a 135% increase from $9.6 million in 2009. 84
- “In African American radio in 2010, at least two programs went off the air and the largest black broadcaster emerged from financial problems.
- “. . . Despite black radio’s relative popularity, most African Americans do not use it to receive news. Only 9% of African Americans used radio to get most of their news, according to a December 2010 Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey. Twice as many whites (18%) got most of their news from the radio and 12% of Hispanics did the same.”
- “. . . One paper suffered a sharp drop in circulation in 2010. The Amsterdam News, one of the largest businesses owned and operated by blacks in New York, suffered a drop in circulation of nearly one half from 2009 to 2010. For the six months ending September 30, 2010, the New York Amsterdam News had an average circulation of 9,750, a 44% decline from 17,477 for the same period in 2009.
“That number may be somewhat misleading. Publisher and editor-in-chief [Eleanor] Tatum attributed the decrease to two ‘extremely significant events in the African American community’ in 2009, the inauguration of Barack Obama and the death of Michael Jackson, that gave circulation figures an artificial rise.
- “. . . The digital divide between whites and other ethnic groups is narrowing. A number of different indicators show African Americans and Hispanics turning to the internet in higher percentages than in years past.
- “An estimated 71% of African Americans use the internet, according to a Pew Internet & American Life survey conducted in May 2010. This still trails whites (80%) and Hispanics (82%), but closes the gap more. 68 Emarketer data show young African Americans’ time spent on the internet has almost caught up to time watching television.”
The report also broke out other specialties within the news media:
- Associated Press: Internet Usage Transforming News Industry
- Michael Calderone, Yahoo: Online news consumption, ad revenue tops newspapers
- Eric Deggans blog, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times: State of news media in 2011: More mobile, more online use, better financials for all but newspapers
- Katerina-Eva Matsa, Tom Rosenstiel and Paul Moore, Project for Excellence in Journalism: Magazines: A Shake-Out for News Weeklies
- Marisa Guthrie, Hollywood Reporter: Cable News Viewership Declines Double Digits in 2010
- Kenny Olmstead, Amy Mitchell, and Tom Rosenstiel, Project for Excellence in Journalism: Online: Key Questions Facing Digital News
- Michael Malone, Broadcasting & Cable: PEJ Study: 2010 Was a Good Year For Stations, Grim Trends and All
- Mark Walsh, Media Post: Half of Adults Get Local News Via Mobile, 10% From Apps
“Today” show anchor Ann Curry, reporting from Japan, received a Tweet from Megan Walsh over the weekend asking for news of her sister. (Video)
Ann Curry Responds to Tweet, Finds American After Quake
“The world watched in horror as the scene was replayed over and over: a 30-foot wall of water ripping through Japanese villages such as Minamisanriku, leaving 10,000 of its 17,000 residents missing. But few felt the terror more deeply and personally than the family of 25-year-old Canon Purdy, who arrived in Japan the day the earth turned upside down,” Seamus McGraw, todayshow.com contributor, wrote Monday.
“My sister … is missing,” Purdy’s sister, Megan Walsh, wrote in a desperate Twitter message to TODAY’s Ann Curry, who arrived in Japan Saturday to cover the disastrous effects of the earthquake and resulting tsunami. ‘Please help with any news of evacuees.’
“ ‘I will do my best,’ Curry tweeted back.
“Formerly a teacher of English in Japan, where she was highly popular with her students, Purdy had left the country, but returned just before the quake to see her former students graduate. Like thousands of others, including two fellow American teachers who were with Purdy, she was quickly sent fleeing by the nightmare of the March 11 quake and the tsunami that followed.
“On Monday, moved by Purdy’s family’s plea and armed with a photograph of the teacher, Curry made her way to the middle school in what was left of Minamisanriku, which had been turned into a makeshift evacuation center.
“The good news came a few moments later: ‘She’s OK,’ and ‘somewhere outside,’ other survivors told Curry. Taken to another refugee center, Curry found Purdy, along with the two other American teachers. All three were safe and sound. . . .”
- Derek Donovan, Kansas City Star: Earthquake news out of sync with print schedule
- Peter Hart, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: Time for a ‘Debate’ on Nuclear Power–Involving Mainly Boosters
- David Cay Johnston, Nieman Watchdog: Rebuilding after the terrible tragedy in Japan
- Society of Environmental Journalists: Japan Meltdown: Could It Happen Here?
- Society of Environmental Journalists: Reporting Resources for Japanese Nuclear Disaster
- John Sullivan, ProPublica: Can U.S. Nuclear Plants Handle a Major Natural Disaster?
- Mark Trahant, indianz.com: Tragedy in Japan puts Yucca Mountain in scrutiny
- TVWeek: Quake Coverage Creates Surge in Viewership for CNN, Fox News; Overall,
Yemen Raids Journalists’ Apartment, Deports Four
“Yemeni security forces have raided an apartment shared by four Western journalists and deported them apparently over their coverage of growing anti-government protests in the country,” Al Jazeera reported, crediting its own reporting and agencies.
“The expulsions on Monday came amid further demonstrations in the impoverished Gulf state.
“Oliver Holmes, one of the journalists, said that said that one of the agents told him they were being kicked out because of their coverage of the protests.
” ‘The situation in Yemen has got quite dire in the past three days,’ said Holmes, a British citizen, speaking by telephone from the airport in Qatar.
” ‘We have all been reporting on the use of violence by the police.’
“The other journalists who were deported are Haley Sweetland Edwards and Joshua Maricich, both US nationals, and Portia Walker, a British citizen.
“Reporters Without Borders condemned the move, noting that two other journalists — Patrick Symmes, a US citizen, and Marco Di Lauro, an Italian photographer — were deported on Saturday.”
Reporters Without Borders said Holmes strings for the Wall Street Journal and Time, and Walker strings for the Washington Post. Edwards writes for the Los Angeles Times and AOL News and Maricich, who writes for various media including the Yemen Times, it said.
- Committee to Protect Journalists: As unrest bubbles, Bahrain and Yemen obstruct press
Despite Quake, Libya Needs Journalists More Than Ever
“Dictators have the darnedest luck. The Russian government would have likely gotten in a fair bit of trouble for invading neighboring Georgia in 2008 if everyone, including President George W. Bush, wasn’t too busy slappin’ booties at the Beijing Olympics,” Frances Martel wrote Saturday for Mediaite. “In 2009, the deaths of protesters in Iran over the legitimacy of their elections was silenced by the passing of Michael Jackson.
“And now, it seems, Libya’s elderly Caligula [Moammar] Gaddafi seems to have lucked out as well, with a devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake shifting the epicenter of all media coverage to the other side of the world: Tokyo, Japan.
“What Americans went to sleep believing to be the most tragic news story of the season became a mere footnote in the history books for 2011 by the time they woke up, and along with their interest in Gaddafi’s human rights abuses went the lives up an innumerable number of Japanese residents and even a small number of Americans unfortunate enough to be swept in the aftershocks on America’s West Coast.
“Anderson Cooper, bags packed for Libya, tweeted yesterday he was on board a plane to Japan. He was hardly the only one to take a journalistic detour. Christiane Amanpour, Greg Palkot, and Ann Curry, among many others, are heading to the island nation for live coverage. And while it’s easy to spot the millions of losers in this disaster of epic (literally) proportions, if the international media let their ADD get the best of them, there stands at least one obvious winner: [Moammar] Gaddafi.
- Al Jazeera: Al Jazeera staffer killed in Libya
- Sunni M. Khalid, theRoot.com: What Libya and Côte d’Ivoire Have in Common
- Ursula Lindsey, Newsweek: First Draft of History: Al-Ahram finds a new voice for a new Egypt.
- Dan Murphy, Christian Science Monitor: Once lauded, foreign journalists now threatened in eastern Libya
- Pew Research Center for the People & the Press: Public Wary of Military Intervention in Libya
- David Smith, the Guardian, Britain: Ivory Coast ‘on the brink of a bloodbath’
- David Smith, the Guardian, Britain: Ivory Coast women defiant after being targeted by Gbagbo’s guns
Editing of NPR “Sting” Video Found to Be Deceptive
“Footage posted online last week by conservative activist James O’Keefe III captured NPR’s chief fundraising official, Ron Schiller, disparaging conservatives and the Tea Party and saying NPR would be better off without federal funding,” David Folkenflik reported Monday for NPR.
“Fueled in part by the attention given the video by the conservative Daily Caller website, an 11 1/2-minute version of O’Keefe’s hidden camera video ricocheted around the blogosphere Tuesday.
“It mortified NPR, which swiftly repudiated Schiller’s remarks and in short order triggered his ouster along with that of his boss, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, who is no relation to Ron Schiller.
“. . . . In recent days, several influential journalists have written that they regret giving O’Keefe’s NPR videos wider circulation without scrutinizing them for themselves, given his past record and some of the objections that the Blaze first raised. They include Ben Smith of Politico, James Poniewozik of Time magazine and Dave Weigel of Slate.
” ‘The speed at which the media operates when a video comes out is a problem,’ Weigel said Sunday. ‘I mean, the rush to be the first to report on a video — and, let’s be brutally honest, the rush is to get traffic and to get people booked on [cable TV] shows to talk about it — and that nature leads you to not do the rigor and fact-checking that you would do in other situations.’ “
- David Carr, New York Times: Gains for NPR Are Clouded
- Daily Intel, New York magazine: The Inevitable Backlash Against James O’Keefe’s Heavily Edited NPR ‘Sting’ Begins
- Ira Glass, “On the Media,” NPR: I Don’t Understand Why NPR Is Not Fighting Back (audio)
- Michel Martin, NPR: Liking And Supporting NPR Are Different Issues
- Steve Myers, Poynter Institute: What James O’Keefe knows about media (and you should too)
- Fern Siegel, mediapost.com: Sting Operations Reveal Media Hypocrisy
Marc Aronson shows eighth-graders a sculpture that Arabs made from sugar.
Even Journalists Can Learn From “Sugar Changed the World
Sugar will never be viewed the same again for those who watch a C-Span program (video) that repeated over the weekend. It’s a presentation to eighth-graders in Brooklyn, N.Y., by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos, husband-and-wife authors of a recent book for young people, “Sugar Changed the World.”
Anyone with roots in the Caribbean — or knows people who have them — will learn the role these ancestors played in producing the driving force in the world economy for generations. The processing of sugar drove the enslavement of Africans, particularly in the West Indies, led to the creation of Haiti, the sale of Louisiana to the United States, and had repercussions in South Africa, India, Hawaii and even Ireland, where the phrase “to Barbados someone” meant to convert a person into an indentured servant who would cut cane in Barbados.
“Sugar transformed how we ate, sugar transformed who we were,” Aronson told the students. “Sugar drove the world economy.”
Ninety-six percent of the Africans brought to the Americas as slaves went to the sugar lands. Only 4 percent went to the United States.
For journalists, the saga is a reminder that even in history, following the money is always sound.
Aronson told Journal-isms via e-mail, “the message I’d say is — US history has always been part of world history — we’ve been globalized since 1492, follow any lead from our story and soon you will say how it connects to people and events on every continent.”
Short Takes
- Joe Uva surprised the media industry Monday by announcing his resignation as CEO and president of Univision. It “is believed to be voluntary and comes less than a year after one of the most successful events in Univision history, the 2010 World Cup,” Toni Fitzgerald reported for medialifemagazine. “Uva said in a statement that he had chosen not to renew his contract as CEO and president of the company. He will leave at the end of the month.”
- “Reporters Without Borders has carried out a new survey of online freedom of expression for World Day Against Cyber-Censorship on 12 March,” the press freedom organization said. ” ‘One in three of the world’s Internet users does not have access to an unrestricted Internet,’ Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said. ‘Around 60 countries censor the Internet to varying degrees and harass netizens. At least 119 people are currently in prison just for using the Internet to express their views freely. These are disturbing figures.'”
- “NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous admits that ‘a grave mistake was made’ right under his nose when advertising inserts were placed only in White newspapers on the eve of the organization’s annual image awards, which aired March 4,” Hazel Trice Edney reported for the Trice Edney News Wire. “Danny Bakewell, chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), a federation of more than 200 Black-owned newspapers, is demanding justice.”
- “The Latino-focused English-language cable channel Si TV is changing its name on July 4 to Nuvo TV, for ‘new voice,’ in a bid to better pursue bicultural Latino audiences,” Brian Steinberg reported for Advertising Age. “. . . The U.S. Census effort is expected to reveal significant growth not only among Latinos but among Latinos born in the U.S. The demographic Nuvo will aim for is very familiar with U.S. culture but also wants a little more relevance to its particular background.”
- “A survey released this week (PDF) found the ‘glass half full’ in its audit of federal agencies’ compliance with memorandums from the White House that called for more transparency,” according to Kacey Deamer of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “The audit found that several agencies made significant changes in their Freedom of Information Act procedures, including a larger online presence and more timely responses to requests. Despite a few high notes, several agencies showed no change or simply failed to respond to the audit’s FOIA requests.” The survey research was conducted by the National Security Archive at George Washington University and was financed with a grant from the Knight Foundation.
- Lou Dobbs was scheduled to debut his new hour-long show Monday on Fox Business Network, one with half the reach of chief competitor CNBC and his old stomping grounds at CNN, the Associated Press reported. “. . . Dobbs’ show is titled ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight,’ the same as the one he left in 2009 after an awkward last few years at CNN.”
- The “Blogging While Brown” conference Monday announced its schedule of panels for its July 8-9 conference in Los Angeles. Among them is “How to Avoid Getting it Wrong or Being Sued: Journalistic Best Practices for Bloggers,” led by Joel Dreyfuss, managing editor of theRoot.com.
- “The 40th anniversary of the first meeting between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, on March 8, 1971, passed us like it was invisible,” Bill Gallo wrote Sunday in the New York Daily News. “And this was supposed to be New York’s greatest event, sports or otherwise. The fight, long anticipated and heavily covered for two months prior to the actual bout, was given a surprisingly short shrift by the media this past week.”
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