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Tiger Asks Media: Leave My Family Alone

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Golfer’s Televised Apology Draws Mixed Reaction

Who Says Magazines Can’t Adapt to Digital Age?

Prof Gives J-Schools an "F" in Finance

Tea Party Examined in Context of White Backlash

FBI Looking Into Post-Katrina Police Shootings

Ex-Trucker, at Plain Dealer, Wins for Police Reporting

Public Ranks PBS "Most Trusted" for Seventh Year

Short Takes

Golfer’s Televised Apology Draws Mixed Reaction

Tiger Woods told the news media that he considered questions about his marriage to be "between a husband and wife" as he made what some called an extraordinary public apology for his infidelity. He presented his 13-minute statement while he took a break from therapy for sex addiction.

Woods’ appearance before the news media, his first since the scandal exploded after Thanksgiving, was televised live on broadcast and cable channels as well as on the Internet. Many commentators praised Woods for being contrite, while others slammed him as looking insincere. The Golf Writers Association of America boycotted the session because Woods had ruled out questions.

Woods said about the news media:

"As I proceed, I understand people have questions. I understand the press wants to ask me for the details and the times I was unfaithful. I understand people want to know whether Elin and I will remain together. Please know that as far as I’m concerned, every one of these questions and answers is a matter between Elin and me. These are issues between a husband and a wife."

The champion golfer also lashed out at paparazzi and what he characterized as false reports. 

"Some people have made up things that never happened. They said I used performance-enhancing drugs. This is completely and utterly false. Some have written things about my family. Despite the damage I have done, I still believe it is right to shield my family from the public spotlight. They did not do these things; I did," he said.

"I have a lot to atone for, but there is one issue I really want to discuss," Woods said at another point. "Some people have speculated that Elin somehow hurt or attacked me on Thanksgiving night. It angers me that people would fabricate a story like that. Elin never hit me that night or any other night. There has never been an episode of domestic violence in our marriage, ever. Elin has shown enormous grace and poise throughout this ordeal. Elin deserves praise, not blame."

He also said:

"I have always tried to maintain a private space for my wife and children. They have been kept separate from my sponsors, my commercial endorsements. When my children were born, we only released photographs so that the paparazzi could not chase them. However, my behavior doesn’t make it right for the media to follow my 2¬?-year-old daughter to school and report the school’s location. They staked out my wife and they pursued my mom. Whatever my wrongdoings, for the sake of my family, please leave my wife and kids alone."

Media commentary on Woods’ statement was instant, and much of it concerned his comments about the media. On ESPN’s "First Take," Kevin Frazier of "Entertainment Tonight" said journalists wouldn’t be following Woods’ wife and children had the golfer managed the situation better. "Do what you can then, as far as damage control," Frazier advised. "We didn’t keep the story up. People came out of the woodwork" with stories of Woods’ infidelity.

Commentator Stephen A. Smith, also appearing on "First Take," called Woods’ speech "pathetic" said Woods "came across as incredibly fake," and asserted that "the only thing he seemed genuine about was attacking the media."

But commentator Armstrong Williams, part of an MSNBC panel, said that "as someone who has gone through my own fall from grace," he could relate to Woods. Williams said Woods was correct in saying that certain matters were between Woods and his family.

Williams was referring to his own pariah status in 2005 after it was disclosed that the Education Department paid him $241,000 to help promote President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, an arrangement that Williams acknowledged involved "bad judgment" on his part.¬†

The comments on MSNBC were generally favorable, but the instant reaction on CNN was negative.

"Tony, this was a disaster," Rick Cerrone, former senior director of media for the New York Yankees, said to anchor Tony Harris.

"I think – you know what? I think he’s going to anger the media, because the media are the people that right now are on talk shows throughout the country. If he’s trying to rehab his image, I don’t think you want to shoot the people that are carrying your message. I really believe this was an embarrassing performance."

"Rick, you would not have been happy with anything Tiger Woods said today," Harris replied.

ESPN said it was covering the event extensively on all of its platforms. Donny Deutsch, host of CNBC’s "The Big Idea," said on ESPN’s "First Take" that Woods was "clearly genuine. You could see he was a broken guy." Deutsch said "you saw a guy today who could have been your next-door neighbor" and predicted that in the endorsement sweepstakes, Woods is "going to be bigger than ever" once he returns to golf.

According to the TV Newser site, only two pool cameras were present at the news conference. The Associated Press said only about 40 people were in the room.

The Golf Writers Association of America announced a boycott of the news conference on Thursday, Larry Dorman reported in the New York Times. "The ground rules originally allowed close proximity to Woods for three pool reporters who would agree not to ask him questions.

"The president of the G.W.A.A., Vartan Kupelian, said, ‘To limit the ability of journalists to attend, listen, see and question Woods goes against the grain of everything we believe.’ "

As an indication of how much Woods’ life has become tabloid fodder since Thanksgiving, the headline in Thursday’s New York Daily News was: "Tiger’s back and he wants to say sorry: LOCK UP YOUR BIMBOS!"¬† On Friday, the paper trumpeted, "THIS BETTER BE GOOD. Tiger to talk." After the news conference, the Web site headline was, "HONEST AT LAST."

A reader selects a digital version of Wired. Click here to see video that demonstrates how photos can be turned 360 degrees, that stories can be posted to Facebook pages, and how articles can magnified and used in other interactive ways.

Who Says Magazines Can’t Adapt to Digital Age?

Wired magazine and Adobe Systems have teamed up to produce a prototype of a magazine that "moves beyond the static notion of ink on a piece of paper," in the words of Scott Dadich, Wired’s creative director.

"We want to build a way for our readers to engage with that content on any screen or device that they want to. These changes are on par with the changes that media experienced going from radio to television," Dadich says in the video above, showing off the interactive version of the magazine.

"GQ, Esquire and Maxim are selling iPhone app versions of their issues that are clearly bound for the iPad," the Apple tablet unveiled last month, Nat Ives wrote in AdAge this week, describing the Wired-Adobe plans. "Sports Illustrated has shown off souped-up issues under development to play on the iPad. And many in the industry are members of the Next Issue Media joint venture, which aims to build a digital storefront where readers will hopefully go buy all these products."

As reported in this space on Dec. 16, "Magazines targeting people of color appear to be taking a wait-and-see attitude" toward much of this new technology. A survey found that Black Enterprise, in partnership with San Francisco-based zinio.com, has since March 2006 offered a digital version at the same price as its print-magazine subscription. Zinio was awaiting approval to include a Black Enterprise application on Apple’s iPhone.

"Essence magazine, owned by Time Inc., is already available via mobile phone. Other publishers of print and online publications targeting African Americans and Latinos did not respond to the inquiry, apparently not yet ready to make the leap."

 

Prof Gives J-Schools an "F" in Finance

"Yesterday I visited with a journalism class at a major university," Paul Gillin, who has "spent 25 years in technology journalism, the first 17 of them in print," wrote this month on his blog, newspaperdeathwatch.

"This institution’s journalism program is considered one of the finest in the country and its faculty boasts notable veterans of the newspaper and broadcast field. I spoke to a small class for about 90 minutes, devoting the first hour of that time to a discourse on the state of the US media: Why it’s in a predicament, how the story is likely to play out and what it all means for aspiring journalists. The rest of the time was discussion.

"My material wasn’t the type of stuff these students are used to hearing, judging by their reactions. About 2/3 of my talk was about economics and business. Among the topics I addressed were:

"How advertising efficiency is devastating the media economic models that are based on the inherent inefficiency of mass-market advertising;

"The irony that newspaper readership is at an all-time high even as the industry craters;

"How the efficiency of online publishing permits new media organizations to operate much more cheaply than their predecessors;

"Why the 57-year-old average daily newspaper reader is an undesirable target for advertisers;

"Why advertising costs will continue to go down and why this is a problem for traditional media;

"Why Craigslist has devastated newspapers’ most profitable revenue source;

"How the need to sustain high circulation levels has made newspaper editorial content bland, inoffensive and, ultimately, vulnerable to competition.

"The students were aware that they’re stepping into an uncertain world but they didn’t seem to grasp the finer points of the media business. Looking at the journalism department’s website later, I could see why. The curriculum lists 29 courses in the journalism program, and not a single one is about the economics of publishing or how to sustain a career as a journalist . . ."

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CBfPEbkYck]

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann says to the Tea Party movement, "ask yourself, where are the black faces? Who am I marching with?"

Tea Party Examined in Context of White Backlash

A video of MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann’s Presidents Day essay on the "Countdown" show is circulating via e-mail and on YouTube and prompting discussion in the blogosphere. In it, Olbermann cites history to maintain that a racial factor is at work in the Tea Party movement.

"And I think having now been one for 51 years, I am permitted to say I believe prejudice and discrimination still sit defeated, dormant, or virulent, somewhere in the soul of each white man in this country," Olbermann said. "Sixty-three years after Jackie Robinson and 56 years after Brown v. Board of Education, and 46 after the Civil Rights Act, and a year and a half after the presidential election, this is not a popular thing to say.

". . . Fear is a terrible thing. So is prejudice. So is racism. And progress towards the removal of any evil produces an inevitable backlash. The Civil War was not followed by desegregation, but by Jim Crow and the Klan. The civil rights legislation of the ’60s was not followed by peace, but by George Wallace and anti-busing overt racism.

"Why should the election of a black president be without a backlash? But recognize what this backlash is and maybe you can free yourself of this movement, built of inherited fears and of echoes of 1963 or 1873.

"Look at who is leading you and why, and look past the blustery self-justifications and see the fear, this unspoken, inchoate, unnecessary fear of those who are different.

"If you believe there is merit to your political argument, fine. But ask yourself when you next go to a Tea Party rally or watch one on television or listen to a politician or a commentator praise these things or merely treat them as if it was just a coincidence that they are virtually segregated, ask yourself, ‘Where are the black faces? Who am I marching with? What are we afraid of?’

"And if it really is only a president’s policy and not his skin, ask yourself one final question. Why are you surrounded by the largest crowd you will ever again see in your life that consists of nothing but people who look exactly like you? Good night and good luck."

Veteran Chicago journalist Monroe Anderson wrote of Olbermann on his blog, "His commentary, I think, got to the heart of conservative America’s thinking and to the soul of the Impeach Obama fantasy."

FBI Looking Into Post-Katrina Police Shootings

"Federal agents have broadened their investigation of the New Orleans Police Department and are now looking into three post-Katrina police shootings detailed in a news series published by ProPublica, The Times-Picayune and the PBS series ‘Frontline’ in December," A.C. Thompson of ProPublica and Laura Maggi and Brendan McCarthy of the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported this week.

"Assistant Superintendent Marlon Defillo of the NOPD confirmed that the FBI has subpoenaed documents relating to the shootings — which included police investigative reports, as well as other related files—in the past two months.

"The ‘Law & Disorder’ series was an examination of police conduct in the wake of Katrina by reporters at ProPublica, The Times-Picayune and PBS ‘Frontline.’ It chronicled three police shootings: the fatal shooting of a 41-year-old man in Faubourg Marigny, the fatal shooting of an 45-year-old man in front of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and the nonfatal shooting of a man on an Interstate 10 overpass."

Referring to the suspicious shooting death of black resident Henry Glover, the reporters wrote, "The federal investigation into Glover’s death is one of several active probes into the NOPD. A grand jury examining the well-publicized Danziger Bridge shooting — in which two men were killed by police and four others were shot — commenced last spring. The FBI also has an open investigation into the fatal police shooting death of Adolph Grimes III, 22, who was killed in an encounter with officers on New Year’s Day 2009."

Ex-Trucker, at Plain Dealer, Wins for Police Reporting

"Plain Dealer reporter Mark Puente was selected Wednesday for the Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting," the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on Thursday.

"The award, given annually by the University of Colorado, honors reporters who cover police and crime.

"Puente will be honored later this year for a series of stories he did about former Cuyahoga County Sheriff Gerald McFaul. Puente’s stories detailed McFaul’s practices of promoting relatives, giving lucrative appraisal work to people who were not certified to do the work and accepting cash from his employees on his birthday and holidays.

"McFaul resigned last year after state officials started a criminal investigation into the practices first detailed by Puente."

The university added, "Puente, 40, is a former long-haul truck driver who moved his family from Cleveland to the University of North Carolina to start college at the age of 30. He studied political science and then turned to journalism as a senior when he joined the staff of The Daily Tar Heel. He earned an internship at The Plain Dealer in 2006 and was hired half way through."

Public Ranks PBS "Most Trusted" for Seventh Year

"A new poll finds PBS among the most trusted institutions in America and the most trusted name in news. According to an annual poll conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media, 40% of Americans trust PBS’ news and public affairs programs a ‘great deal.’ Fox News was second at 29% and CNN was third at 27%," Marisa Guthrie reported Friday for Broadcasting & Cable.

"This is the seventh consecutive year the public has named PBS the nation’s most-trusted institution," added Radio Business Report.

"In the 2010 poll, 45% of respondents said they trust PBS more than any other nationally known organization. PBS ranked at the top in public trust among every age group, ethnicity, income and education level measured.

"In an effort to measure bias, the survey concluded that 40% of Americans rated the news coverage, investigations and discussions of major issues on PBS programs as ‘mostly fair’ (when asked to choose among ‘liberal,’ ‘mostly fair’ and ‘conservative’). NBC and ABC tied for second by 33% of the respondents, CNN (31%), NPR (29%), Fox News Channel (25%) and MSNBC (24%).

"PBS annually commissions this research to measure the organization’s performance and value as judged by the American public. Full results are available at pbs.org/roperpoll2010."

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