Hello friends.

Starting today I will slowly eliminate my “Notebooks” from this blog. The title for the blog will remain. If anyone wants to read the “Notebooks” in full I suggest that he or she go to Scribd, their new home, and access the book through my name and its title. I will keep all the jazz compilations and references on this blog. I will continue to slow blog and to post my thoughts on old and new media, politics, Washington, my critiques of the press, an occasional review or two about films, television and even books, and my columns as they appear on The Digital Journalist. Thank you for reading and for your loyalty.

PBS and Ken Burns

PBS and Ken Burns: An Appraisal
By
Ron Steinman

As with any broadcaster, PBS needs rating to make it go. Good ratings translate into more sponsors and more grants, both needed to permit PBS to continue in operation. Ken Burns is usually a sure thing, thus his lengthy series on America’s National Parks. PBS wants and needs strong ratings. It will surely get them with this new series on a national treasure that I agree America too often takes for granted.
Ken Burns’ new and endless documentary series is clearly an attempt by PBS to be in do-good phase. True, it offers many people a story about a part of America that we tend to forget exists. People will certainly tune in and many will stay with the documentary for its full run. Though I stayed with it as long as I could, I found it tedious and hard to watch over its many hours. However, I did manage to watch some of the series on the small screen. I confess I also used broadband, an even smaller screen, to watch what I did not have time for on TV. So here is a small shout-out to broadband for giving me the opportunity to dip in and out of the entire series on my own time without being a slave to television. Watching whole episodes and sampling others left me with no doubt that I was watching a film for which I had little patience.
Watching a Ken Burns film is similar to sitting in one’s favorite rocking chair. It is easy to take, in fact too easy. There is no need to think. There is nothing ground breaking in his films, and this one is not the exception. I note, though, that in his films that saluted jazz and baseball, controversy surrounded those works because of Burns editorial choices – what he left out was more important in some ways than what he included. As readers can probably already tell, I am not a Ken Burns acolyte.
Here is my problem. Most critics refuse to acknowledge that Ken Burns does nothing unique. He uses slow pans, even slower dissolves, lengthy zooms, both in and out, and very long holds on stills that sit on the screen for what seems forever, techniques that anyone in film school knows before he or she graduates. That said, I could not argue that it is impossible to ignore the stunningly beautiful and breathtaking pictures filmed by talented camera people with loving care.
Of all Ken Burns’ films, the one exception for me is his marvelous documentary on the Civil War. It is the one work of his that I truly enjoyed — but he did not invent the techniques he uses over again as if they were a pair of comfortable old shoes. Burns’ method is age-old, used by filmmakers for generations before he caught fire with that one series. In fact, the technique lacks inspiration and is boring. Tedium sets in because of the sameness of Ken Burns’ method.
In The National Parks, the story moves lazily across the screen edited in the inimitable Ken Burns style, making the series dull, predictable, and sometimes stupefying in its painstaking attempt to make it more than a family slide show from a recent trip. In addition, the many voices along with Peter Coyote, the narrator, though seemingly different, had the same cadence, and were often soporific. Most of the music was so uninspiring and conventional that it made me think I was listening to rejects from a bad B western film.
There is something else that I found annoying. Ken Burns infuses this film with nationalism and patriotic fervor that borders on the religious. I found that unappealing. Each played too big a role in a film that supposedly relies on “pure” story telling. If those elements were part of the history of the national parks, they should have emerged naturally.
PBS is not primarily a news and information network. Nor should it be. If it is to be truly ecumenical, there must be room for a variety of programs. There is a bit of everything on PBS and Ken Burns’ National Parks opus falls under that mandate. PBS does a superlative job with Frontline, Nova, Bill Moyer’s Journal, NOW, Wide Angle, POV and a host of other strong and timely series and one-off documentaries. For all that, I feel that many independent filmmakers might have better spent the huge amount of money Ken Burns used to feed his indulgence to create films that could make a difference in our lives.
True, it is valuable to remind us about the wonder and quality of the national parks system in America. I will not argue that premise. The national parks are a part of our world that we must honor, and thus preserve. But this is the longest and dullest commercial I have ever experienced. The national parks are important, but they do not deserve this many hours devoted to them on national television. Perhaps a shorter series would have worked better, at least for me. That, however, is something we will never know.

Walter, I Hardly Knew You

This post first appeared in the October issue of The Digital Journalist, www.digitaljournalist.org.

Walter, I Hardly Knew You: Perspective
By
Ron Steinman

Wednesday September 9, 2009, I am on the corner of Eighth Avenue and 58th Street in Midtown Manhattan on a pleasant day in late summer. Just out of a diner where I had lunch, walking toward me I see a stream of well-dressed men and women, many of a certain age, all carrying what looks like an 8×11 white program. The colleague I am with remarks that she recognizes a former CBS correspondent but that she cannot recall his name. Neither can I. Together we wonder where all the people are coming from. Then, as if on cue, we realize they had to have been at the memorial for Walter Cronkite we later learned had concluded at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, a few blocks north.

Though I had been in TV news at NBC most of my working life, I had never met Walter Cronkite. As a young journalist, he did not inspire me to enter the profession. Oddly enough it was not until several weeks after his death that I realized I had never seen his daily news show on CBS. I was too busy working at NBC. I had also never seen him covering special events, a significant part of my resume in broadcasting. In other words, Walter Cronkite was not a direct part of my life as a TV journalist. My bosses at NBC News never told me to look and see how Walter Cronkite and CBS were covering a story so I might change the way I covered a story, especially in the field where the real action took place.

NBC had its style. CBS had its style. Unlike today where everything on the small screen looks alike, we, including ABC News, each had a distinct way we appeared and sounded on the air. It is important to remind today’s audience that in the days before cable and non-stop news, there were only three TV networks, thus three major news divisions. Walter Cronkite was a presence, but it is worth repeating, he never influenced how we at a rival network covered a story, at least in my more than three decades at NBC News.

In the early days of my career I worked the national assignment desk and for the Huntley-Brinkley Report in Washington and New York. I was in a unit that produced documentaries. I covered space when space was new and exciting. I spent 7 and a half years overseas working in Saigon, Hong Kong and London. I had eleven years on the Today Show in Washington and New York as a senior producer. I produced special events as a manager and producer. Though Cronkite was usually on the other side of what I covered, he was there only as a fact, not as a factor. We never really crossed paths. I did not move in his rarified orbit. I was not his audience. So while I spent my time covering the news, I was not worrying about what CBS was doing, nor in particular what Walter (always Walter, not Cronkite and hardly ever Walter Cronkite) was up to.

Though my bosses at NBC News knew every minute what Walter was doing, my job was mostly to best CBS and ABC, especially when we were head-to-head on a story, which more often than not we were, especially if it was a major event. My concern was with what happened in the field at the heart of the story, not what took place on the set in the studio, unless, of course, I was serving as a line producer in a control room. The material my staff and I produced, especially when I ran foreign bureaus, had a direct bearing on the look and feel of whatever show we provided stories for. What took place in the studio and on the set would have had no meaning without what we and other staff at NBC News produced. Walter was never part of any equation that went into how I covered a story or how I directed those who worked for me to cover a story. I never heard anyone in charge say that we should do it the way Walter does it. I never heard anyone say we should copy CBS and so be more like Walter. And that was good because it allowed us to develop our own style, our own methods and our own approach to how we covered the world.

So, Walter, though I knew you were there, I hardly knew you. Yes, we were competitors, but our paths never crossed. I saw you occasionally on TV in small bites when you were doing your evening news show. When I produced special events, your face was on the screen opposite to what our man, whether Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, John Chancellor, Frank McGee, Ed Newman, Tom Brokaw or others did while covering the same event. Perspective is important here because we will never again see the likes of you or anyone else who fronted news programs back when broadcast news had an important place in the nation’s life. You and the other giants are gone. Those currently on the air no matter who they work for are pale imitations of the integrity and honesty you once stood for. Your influence, though strong in the eyes of many, and, yes, strong for me because of what you stood for, no longer has an effect as to how TV covers news. More is the pity.

In the Pursuit of Happiness

This column first appeared in the September issue of The Digital Journalist, www.digitaljournalist.org.

In the Pursuit of Happiness
By
Ron Steinman

I, like many of you, am having a hard time trying to figure a way to save printed news. I pay close attention to everything in the debate over to charge, not to charge and how to charge for news content. It is the major issue facing newspapers as they try to survive.
There are conferences with concerned editors and publishers. Some are in public. Others are in secret. Academics produce learned papers. They look good on a resume. Columnists question the future. Many pontificate. Most have little hope. Self-styled sages make statements to whomever will listen. So far, no one has the answer as to what will save newspapers. How to save newspapers and laterally, the news, as we know it, is the latest in an endless game of Trivial Pursuit.
Whatever anyone thinks, we must consider where the news will come from and the form it will take in the future. Free or not, pay wall or not, advertising or not. Some think private equity firms should back newspapers. There are discussions about using government funds for start-ups. Some proposals champion newspapers as non-profits. Will NGOs serve as news sites the way they do as charities? Whatever the proposal, the Internet hovers. Only time will tell what will work. Until then, the debate will rage. Throw into the mix all those who believe paying for content is a sin no matter what the delivery system, and we have a mess on our hands that may be impossible to clean up.
In the academy and on the Web, some have established themselves as the new arbiters of journalism. They want to remake news in their image. I find that much of what they want is destructive. They act as if they are pragmatists but they lack principle. Enchanted by an Internet where freedom seems to reign, they will indicate they will settle for nothing less than a world where everything is free. I would bet my last dollar these thinkers do not work for free. In their self-designated role of culture warriors, they cater only to the children of the Internet age. They are not uninvolved youth. Rather they are aging adults who believe that by “democratizing news,” the gathering of news will take on new meaning and, thus, new power.
The gurus of the new believe that individuals will openly feed off their concept of free. Because of this, they have faith that collectively people will be more creative and provide news to the audience in ways never before conceived. In other words, creativity will come on the backs of the original creators. Mashups will rule. Short takes will dominate. Cleverness will be the norm. Electrifying thoughts backed by depth will die. These are news haters. They assume they know better how to collect news and parse it than the time-honored ways of the past and the now enfeebled present. If these self-styled philosophers get their wish, the collection and ultimate dissemination of news, as we now know it, will die even faster.
Pay walls are a gamble that the majority of the moguls of print continue to agonize over. They fear that paying for content whether online and increasingly on portable devices will turn even more people away from print. Newspapers owners may be right. It is probably too late to change people’s minds. The genie is already out of the bottle. The young are grossly uninformed because, by their own admission, they read almost nothing. Reading appears to be difficult for them. They hate to read because it probably means they have to pay attention. On the page, print is static. But all it does is make the mind go to places it normally does not want to. It seems that anyone under 29 cares nothing about the future of journalism as long as he or she has their various social networks to make them feel wanted. It is too late to capture this audience? Is there anyone left who values print and ink-stained fingers? Probably yes, but that audience is small and now older. It figures to diminish even further in years to come.
I grew up believing — actually having it impressed deeply inside my psyche when I was young — that anything worth something could not, should not and was not free. One had to work for whatever one gained as a result of whatever work one did. If I did my job as a journalist, there would be rewards. Clearly, as we now know, that idea of paying for a newspaper, and the information it provides, died with the birth and growth of the Internet. That is too bad. People believe it is their birthright to get news for free. The Web represents the anarchist’s idea of pure freedom. As history shows, anarchy makes a momentary splash, and, finally, never has a good result. Unfortunately, the idea of free rules the masses. It is worth repeating: Free does not pay the bills for reporters and editors. In time, information may go the way of the dodo bird.
One thing stands out that makes me very nervous. I feel I am in a roomful of the smartest people in journalism, all of whom have answers but not one has a solution anyone trusts that will work.

Aggregators: To Be or Not to Be

This article originally appeared in the August issue of The Digital Journalist, www.digitaljournalist.org.

Aggregators: To Be or Not to Be.
By
Ron Steinman

Yes, I realize news aggregators offer a real service but I also see them, through no fault of their own, as a real danger. So also does the AP, but for different reasons. It wants to stop aggregators from using its news stories without a proper license, as some Web sites do already. Access the attached URL for the story, as it appeared July 24, 2009 in the New York Times. A.P. Cracks Down on Unpa#1DC4DC. I understand and sympathize with the Associated Press. I wish them well. No one should get someone else’s hard-earned content for free, a continuing problem for all journalism, especially print. However, my take is somewhat different. It is less about the aggregators and more about those who use them. In a way, the two ideas overlap.

By all estimates, there are now more than a billion personal computers in the world. More than three billion people have cell phones. Three billion people! This is staggering. Think of all the advertising space on those small screens waiting to annoy most everyone. Or, maybe, not. Maybe it fills the emptiness of a person’s day. This means that online viewing is rising very fast. When and where it will stop, if ever, no one knows. Add to all these numbers a serious estimate that I believe is too low, that in the next six years we are likely to see another two billion people with mobile computers, meaning the next generations of cell phones, PDAs, mini computers and the like. Despite these numbers, we should remember computer saturation is not nearly complete. Many in the world still do not have computers nor do they have access to a computer. Many who do, do not have broadband or DSL. Broadband probably covers no more than 30 percent of those who own computers. Many who do own a computer do not spend significant portions of their day online. I assume they have lives that exist beyond the small screen. At least I hope they do, though these days one never knows. All these computers and computer-like devices require information or else their purpose will fail.

This is where the aggregators come in with their purported purpose to make life easier for anyone seeking knowledge or at least a sense of theeir world. With this in mind, here is a snap quiz. No, not written; answers will be by a show of hands.

How many read a newspaper? Not many, I suppose. How many read a news Web site? Note that I did not say how many get their news from a Web site. They are different questions. Too many people these days think that when they see a headline they are getting the news. Nothing is further from the truth. The growth and belief in aggregators is fascinating and dangerous. Do aggregators really work or are they a lazy person’s way of getting only a taste of the news. Do people actually read what they see on their screen or do most of these headlines simply pile up and then fade away by the end of the day or whatever news cycle you are on? Chances are that if a person aggregates material from too many Web sites, he or she will never get to read anything. Who has the time?

Using an aggregator as a collection agency, is having someone else do the work of assimilating, finding and presenting information which, with a bit of effort, a person could find for him or herself. Aggregators are not the problem; it is the people who swear by them that are. People delude themselves thinking the aggregator serves as an easy way to organize and absorb news content. Using an aggregator for your only source of news indicates that you cannot think for yourself. True, some sites allow visitors or members to make their own front page with stories they believe are important for them. It could be sports, movie gossip, Michael Jackson, even Washington politics. Sometimes an individual’s choices are weak, misinformed and skewed, more often than not based on simplicity and emotion, rather than complexity.

An aggregator enables you to get as many headlines as you want from as many different sources. That does not mean you will understand what is going on in the world. Editors in print and on the Web create headlines to grab the reader’s attention. However, one must read beyond the headline to understand what the story means.

Aggregators often link to other sites without prior consent. Though the aggregator gives credit, it presents material created by other sources as if the information is its own. The reader gets free information. The organization that collected the news suffers because it receives nothing in return for its product. The aggregator gets a free ride on information collected and parsed by another person or organization. I do not believe the average person subscribing to an aggregator knows the difference. News aggregator Web sites exist to save people the time and effort they might expend if they surfed the Web to get the information without help. If something new pops up, the aggregator collects it and then disperses it to its clients. If you understand the Internet and how it works, none of this is new. We call these applications RSS readers, feed readers, feed aggregators, newsreaders or search aggregators. The problem is that none of them create anything.

As smaller and smaller screens dominate our lives, meaning PDAs, cell phones and mini-computers, who will supply original content? If the majors in old media continue to fail and decline in output and influence, what will take the place of the hunters and gathers of news? Surely not what some are calling “hyper local news sites,” Web sites devoted to local news, often well meaning and with purpose, are struggling as much the big boys to get advertising and stay alive. Citizen journalism, a serious attempt to complement traditional news, does not work unless there is a crisis such as the Iranian election. News cannot live on the work of amateurs or a lucky photo of an event snapped with a cell phone.

Of course, and this is not a revelation, it comes down to the most serious challenge the news business faces today. Simply, how does any news operation survive? Everywhere you turn, serious thinkers are giving this serious thought, seemingly all the time. There is no easy answer. However, if the means of collecting and then disseminating the news fails, the aggregators will also fail. They will have either a limited product to put in its feeds, or, worse, no product at all.

I do not use aggregators for anything except as a marker to point the way to a more extensive look at the news. I trust only myself to ferret out a story, even if it takes me longer to do so than it takes for me to read a headline sent from an aggregator. As long as I can breathe, I would rather do the work myself. I trust myself more than a powerful piece of software or even a set of smart people sitting in the dark in front of powerful computers pulling information and sending it to me electronically. Yes, I know, it is all about time. But time is really all we have and how we delegate those seconds and minutes will be the key to our survival. I really mean that. Except, the young rarely think of survival. They think they have too much living to do.

Making things worse and only adding to the many nails already in the coffin of old media, we have the vaunted London Times on its Web site, Timeonline making hay with a 15-year-old intern at Morgan Stanley. His name is Matthew Robson. He is making pronouncements about all media that has many fawning over what he has been saying. This is what he says about newspapers. “No teenager that I know of regularly reads a newspaper, as most do not have the time and cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text while they could watch the news sumarised (British spelling) on the Internet or on TV.” That should about do it for our current generation. If those youngsters already living in a digital world of bits and pieces find the text is too much for them to consider, we have to feel sorry for the world they will inherit. Aggregators will become more powerful and more the norm. In fact, all information will come via an aggregator. Hope for the future of journalism is out the window. And there will be nobody around to say, “I told you so.”

“Moon” the Movie

“Moon”
by
Ron Steinman

Moviegoers usually want the big bang for the buck science fiction movie epics. They tend to miss the really good, small films that appear infrequently and almost never at the multiplex. However, when they play in a theater near you, they are worth a visit. “Moon,” an independent feature by first time director Duncan Jones, fits the mold perfectly. The script by Nathan Parker is understated, yet direct and pointed. Unlike the multi-part franchises such as “Star Wars,” the “Terminator” films, and most recently “Transformers,” as small as “Moon” is, it has thought-provoking heft that has you shaking your head while watching it. When the movie ends, it stays with you long after you depart the theater.
Thought Provoking
“Moon” is not benign. Nor does it have strange, otherworldly creatures bent on destroying us. And for that, its premise is far more frightening. It takes place sometime in the near future. Astronaut Sam Bell, wonderfully played by an understated Sam Rockwell, who by-the-way is just about the only live actor in the film, is soon to complete his three-year contract as the only man on the Moon in charge of mining for Helium-3, what has become Earth’s major source of energy. His only companion is a computer named “Gerty” played by the obsequious voice of Kevin Spacey. He receives and sends regular taped messages to and from his wife on Earth. Otherwise, Sam Bell is alone all the time, most of which is spent in a Spartan moon base called “Sarang” except for those times when he must venture outside onto the dark and forbidding moonscape.
Frightening Premise
With only weeks to go, Sam’s health starts falling apart. He has hallucinations. He loses his ability to concentrate. On a trip outside the moon base, he almost kills himself. His superiors on Earth tell him that a rescue team is on the way to repair the damage, to him and the base. Here is where it gets interesting. As he believes he is starting to recover, Sam runs into another Sam, one who is fit and healthy, who tells him he is there to start a new three contract to run the base. The original Sam has a great deal of difficulty accepting the new Sam, who is clearly a clone. More frighteningly, we wonder is the premise of a clone duplicating itself forever in outer space something people will face in the future. That, however, is the last thing on Sam’s mind, or whatever has become it. He decides that despite the presence of a new Sam, he must find a way back to Earth. To see if he makes it, see the film, but a warning: the ending is intentionally ambiguous and that is how it should be.
Speculation about the Unknown
The movie takes place after all in the future, a future about which we have no idea, but one that the best of science fiction tackles, speculation about the unknown. Duncan Jones does an admirable job of making us care about Sam Bell and his acting alter ego, Sam Rockwell, who is in every scene and sometimes together in the same set of scenes. Despite Rockwell’s often-eerie presence, he remains sympathetic and genuine. But it is the premise of the movie that resonates. It should cause anyone who sees it to think about a future that, as presented in the film, is one that is entirely possible.
“Moon” is rated R and runs 97 minutes.

Health Care Reform:Are the Politicians for Real?

Health Care Reform: Are the Politicians for Real?
By
Ron Steinman

Motivating the Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats to change health care in America has to do only with money. Covering the uninsured takes a back seat to what the Blue Dogs call fiscal conservatism. In fact, the Blue Dogs might be even more fiscally conservative than the conservative Republicans who probably go to bed at night thanking their stars for the Blue Dogs. We are witnessing politics running wild. These elected men and women seem to be saying health care reform can wait. After all, the country is behind much of the developed world so who cares if we as a nation fall even further behind. The uncovered can and will continue to suffer. People who do not have good health care will continue to drag our country down because we will spend too much money getting sick people better rather than preventing them from getting sick in the first place.
Recall that George Bush said if people are sick they can go to the emergency room. Sure. I have been to the emergency room when all else has failed. It is not a place where a person wants to be when he or she is sick.
If everyone felt as these anti-everything types in Congress, do Congress would, as it usually does, do nothing, or worse, compromise in a way that means many people will continue to suffer. Progress, almost dead now, might be dead and buried forever. The status quo would be just that, the status quo.
These self-styled fiscally responsible elected officials probably believe their penuriousness is saving the republic because they contend that at least 90 percent of Americans have some sort of coverage. In their minds, some sort is obviously better than none. They do not worry about the ten percent who do not have coverage. I do not know where the 90 percent figure comes from but it seems too small when you consider that most observers think between 47 million and 50 million people are without health insurance.
Take a look at the 50 million and think of the following. The top forty cities in America have approximately 48 million five hundred thousand people living in them. Imagine the chaos if on any given morning, all those people awoke to find that they no longer had any health insurance. People would suffer beyond what they can imagine. Some would die. Emergency rooms would collapse from overuse. I could go on and on about how bad it would be. I will not. Use your imagination.
A recent Pew survey finds that 95 percent of the American people believe that health care reform is important. With that, more than two-thirds say the proposed changes are very hard to understand. One third say the proposals are easy to understand. Only 78 percent believe health care reform affects them personally. Even if some people have the perfect insurance plan, and somehow I doubt one exists, why is that number not 100 percent?
Fourteen thousand people a day are losing their health insurance, a situation made worse by the downturn in the economy. Some analysts think that most people only care about themselves and not about the have-nots. The White House can surely do a better job explaining this disparity to people and make them care. After all, we are in this together. Or at least, I hope we are.
Those who are for or against for health care reform are now spending some 2 million dollars a day for advertising. Think of the good that money could do for something else, anything else. And the fight is just starting. The amount will rise steadily.
Fear is a great equalizer, especially when it strikes close to home. Fear of having no health insurance surely must make those who have none anxious all their waking moments. I find it hard to fathom that most Americans want to deny health care to those who do not have it. If those who want to deny health insurance reform to those who do not have it just to save money, then we as a nation are in more serious trouble than anyone can imagine.
I am not naïve about the cost of universal health care. It will be expensive. Any bill passed now will be less than perfect. It will be a beginning. We must decide if we want the 50 million who are without health insurance to continue to be chronically ill or a disaster waiting to happen. In the end without health insurance to cover those who now lack it, the cost to our country to care for the sick will be immense. It is a cost from which we will never recover. It is a cost we can ill afford. Have we no shame?

Oh What a Week it Was

Oh What a Week It Was
By
Ron Steinman

The week started simply enough, though it soon became powerfully interesting because the unexpected occurred. Iran threatened to go up in flames and held the world’s attention for days, as it should have. In need of some respite from the massive street demonstration in Teheran, and the hope that the people would prevail over repression, I had an offer to go to the movies with my son and daughter-in-law and I did. We saw “Moon,” a new science fiction or futuristic movie that in some ways astounded me. Mostly understated, the film had a well-designed set that made me feel as if I were on the moon, both inside where a person lived worked, and outside where that same person lived and worked. Sam Rockwell was outstanding as much the only fulltime actor or set of actors. He plays several roles because he is a clone. Yes, he is a clone. After all, it is the future. Should I not have given that away? Anyway, those who have read about the film know that, so I make no excuse for revealing too much before you see the movie. Rockwell dominates the film. Maybe it is because he is just about the only actor in it. His only competition other than the obsequious voice of Kevin Spacey, his know-it-all and do-it-all computer companion is himself. No clone there, but because it is a computer you just know it will go on forever. It is worth seeing this film.
Then it was back to business as usual. Onto the Internet I went. I turned on the TV. Remote in hand, I watched as much of the Iran story as I could. Street demonstrations. The horror of seeing Neda, the young and talented Iranian woman die before my eyes. The emergence of Twitter as an instrument of information, some of which was valid and much probably not. Watching Twitter on the verge of becoming an agent of change was fascinating. You Tube showed every video it could find. Facebook was part of the equation. I viewed the continued and violent repression of the Iranian people by Basij militia and the police as each organization did everything it could to stem the scent of freedom. Those in the street dreamed about the taste of liberty but as the days went on, the chances of that dream becoming a reality faded.
What else? There was a terrible commuter train crash in Washington, D.C where at least 9 died. President Obama worked hard to talk people into accepting legislation on health care, on immigration and he started commenting about Iran n a way that said what the government in Teheran did was evil. There was almost no news about the airliner lost last week near the coast of Brazil. Unemployment figures rose once again. Many people died in Iraq from terrorist’s bombings as American troops distanced themselves increasingly from everyday involvement in that seemingly never-ending war. I have to wonder if those bombings are a last gasp by insurgents or the resumption of an insurgency that had been asleep, waiting for the American forces to leave. Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina admitted he had an affair with a woman in Argentina named Maria. News reports say his wife said something like, enough already. Stop seeing her. But Mr. Sanford obviously in the throes of love, took another trip anyway to break up with his Maria. At least, Mrs. Sanford was not at Mark’s side when he made his public confession. And cheers to Jenny Sanford for not standing by her man. The guy cheated on her. He is yet to suffer the consequences of his raging hormones. That is still to come.
There is always more but then we hit a sad double-header on the same day. Michael Jackson died from apparent cardiac arrest. The Los Angeles coroner is looking into prescription drug abuse, something that does not seem to surprise anyone remotely connected to Jackson. Farrah Fawcett died when she lost her long battle with cancer. Two icons of pop were not longer among us. I was never a fan of Jackson’s. Call it generational. Call it what you will. I never saw him in person. I never went to a concert he gave. I do not own his music. I understand and appreciate the effect he had on pop music and people everywhere because of his music and, oddly, his wasted life. There are those of you who might jump all over me for not properly genuflecting to Michael Jackson’s image and legacy. Call it sacrilege. Call it what you will. But I never had time for him. Other music is more important to me, such as jazz, mainly bop, and much of classical. Genius is never an excuse for what some describe as a life badly lead. He never affected me in any way, except as a curiosity. Parse his dancing, if you have the courage, and you will see that every step he took in every dance he did, was a copy of every step he made earlier in his career. Maybe his huge, immeasurable audience lived for repetition. I do not. He is, aside from Elvis, the best example of what celebrities suffer, partly self-inflicted, partly an inability to handle fame, in our age of celebrity gone wild. TV networks around the world did little to make themselves proud. They emptied their vaults of Michael Jackson material and devoted far too much time at the expense of real reporting in their adulation of the “King of Pop.” Talk of pandering.
Farrah Fawcett as always good to look at but she was really not much of an actress. I did not follow her life, either but it was clear she did try to become something other than how people perceived her. We will remember her for her beauty, her hair and as someone wrote, she at least tried. That is more than what many people in the public eye do and for that we commend her.
Some week. I will see if next week brings more of the same. If it does, as I am sure it will, you can join me here again for another look back in time.

Short Takes Three

Short Takes Three: One Liners More or Less
By
Ron Steinman

According to news reports there is a tough internal battle in the Obama administration between the regulators assigned to oversea banking. One side wants strict controls over all the banks because they were the ones who did so much to create the economic mess we are in. The other side wants almost no control over the biggest banks because it contends that is where the best talent resides and we should not lose the ability and rights of those people to heavy-handed watchdogs. That side seems to forget it was that very same self-styled unscrupulous so-called “talent” and its freewheeling desire to make money and more money, that brought down the economy in the first place. I side with the strict control advocates. Control executive pay. Do not reward failure whatever happens to be in a person’s contract. Eliminate bonuses unless the bonus for the individual executive aids the bank and the economy. I believe there is world of talent that exists outside the banking industry just waiting for a chance to right that sinking ship. The rewards would be great if new bankers can do it, if the government allows them to do it.
***
The world did not collapse as some predicted it would with the change from analog TV to digital TV, mostly a business ploy anyway. I have a decent set but I cannot tell the difference between what I was seeing and what I now see. If there is a difference, it is slight. The sound is not much better than the often-poor quality I usually receive. I watch my cable bill very closely but hardly understand a word of it. It seems to rise so fast every month that it resembles a runaway train. I know others say it, but I don’t need all those channels, most of which I never watch or care to watch. Many of which I never heard of either. There is only so much time in the day for watching TV, or surfing on broadband.
***
It is time to remove the word alleged, meaning supposed, suspected, so-called, assumed, from the vocabulary of TV reporters and anchors, especially when there are witnesses to the crime in question. It was foolish to hear it in regard to the recent shooting of a security guard at The Holocaust Museum. There were so many witnesses to the shooting that there are no doubts who did the shooting. Lawyers protecting the corporation they work for worry that if they do not use allege the criminal will sue for defamation of character or libel or worse. That is weak. Use alleged if there is no eyewitness or other proof clear of the crime. Otherwise, drop it if it does not apply.
***
I know this will read like heresy, but it is time we put the myth of Tim Russert to bed. He has been dead for a year. It is time we stopped idealizing him. Miss him if you want, but please don’t elevate him to god-like status. It is not good for journalism.
***
I am not imagining things when I look at body builders in the gym and wonder why their heads seem so small sitting on such enormous bodies. It must be that steroids shrink the head as much as they shrink some other vital parts of a man. Perhaps the geniuses who run so-called health clubs should come up with a scheme, or if not, a drug that allows the head of weight lifters to grow in proper proportion with the rest of the body.
***
If I were a working journalist in Washington, every chance I got, I would ask Republican senators and representatives who are against health care reform about the 50,000,000 who have no insurance. The cost to the economy of 50,000,000 potentially sick people is impossible to calculate. Republicans of most stripes probably would rather those people disappear down a rabbit hole. That way, out of sight, out of mind, they would be an annoyance instead of a deadly serious problem. The question of the 50,000,000 must be off limits to the press in Washington because it is collectively afraid it will lose it’s insider status and get only hand-out news instead of digging for the real thing. Perhaps we should male real Jonathan Swift’s ideas in his essay, “A Modest Proposal.” That way the problem will surely disappear.

New Stars of Journalism

This column first appeared in the June issue of The Digital Journalist, www.digitaljournalist.org.

The New Stars of Journalism
By
Ron Steinman

A friend sent me the following the other day.
Mr. Thomas Jefferson “on banks”, said in 1802:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
Were Mr. Jefferson alive today I wonder how he would feel as he reviewed our current economic crisis. Call him prescient. Call him a man with a remarkable nose for the future. Whatever you call him, he certainly defines our current crises dead-on. And he did it 207 years ago.
I live in New York. Growing up, I first turned to the comic pages of the many newspapers that flooded my home. The comic pages are all but dead. Sports, always major in New York, came second. Sports are even bigger today than then. But with most New York teams not doing very well, and with Mr. Jefferson’s words ringing in my ears, I have a confession to make. With the economy more exciting to watch and analyze, there are days I turn to the business section of my newspaper or on many Web sites, first. I know that I will discover something new each morning and that my emotional juices will flow as only a well-played game used to guarantee.
Until the current economic crisis, I rarely read anything in detail in the financial pages. I would check the Dow Jones Averages to see how my investments were doing. Now I usually do that several times a day online because it is easy and the information is fresh. In the past, I sometimes read features about economics. Anecdotal stories in newspapers and magazines were easier to read. Too many facts and hard to understand what I considered financial, well, almost babble, made me run from most business news. The feature articles I now read help explain complicated economic principles through example, personality, biography of people and places, and stories of success or failure. The standout for economic features was, and still is the Wall Street Journal. Other newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, were not, for me always at their best making clear when explaining what economists said in impossible to understand charts, graphs and overly-complicated dissertations about finance. Barron’s, The Economist, Forbes and The Financial Times were even muddier how each explained economics. Today because of the economic mess, they have a very high standing in the pantheon of economic news purveyors.
Until I started copying the following names into my notebook for future reference, they were bylines I glossed over on my way to other parts of my newspaper or other sections of news sites online. Here are a few of them that are now in residence in your household through your newspaper, on your computer screen, sometimes on TV, and on the radio. Some you know, others you may not. There are Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post and Paul Krugman of The New York Times. There are Joe Nocera, Floyd Norris and others who are easy to identify. Then we have Andrew Ward, Bernard Simon, Alan Rappeport, Krishna Goha, Alan Beattie, David Cho, Binnyamnin Applebaum, Eric Dash, David Ip, Daniel Wagner and a host of others writing for newspapers, online sites, magazines and appearing on TV who in a normal world we, meaning I, would not think of listening to or reading.
They all have an important role because we as consumers of news have inherited a new language in which those writers try daily to write. I am thankful for these changes in our language because of our economic woes. So a shout out to the world of business for adding words to how we think everyday, but not necessarily how we use them. Strap yourself in for the ride we are about to take. There are collateral triggers, quants, toxic assets, toxic securities, underwater neighbors, credit default swaps, ratings arbitrage, regulatory arbitrage, the shadow financial system, stress tests for banks, naked short selling, and those formidable twins, the technology stock bubble and the housing bubble. The other day there was a column in The New York Times about “haircuts” as a financial instrument, of sorts. Haircuts? What other common term or theme would economic writers eventually possess as theirs?
Did business journalists fail us by not reporting in detail the hidden or even the overt problems in the economy? Did these men and women, once the orphans of journalism, not take seriously where the economy was headed? If they were vigilant, why did we not heed their cries about the falling sky? Why were they not more forceful about the potential risks the economy faced in the laissez faire attitude of the major moneymakers often aided and abetted by a blind government? Newspaper editors and TV producers were probably complicit in their failure to turn us on about the coming crisis in the economy. After all, business news is often dull and does not usually sell newspapers or get good TV ratings. But so as not to blame the business reporters for everything, we as a public, and I include myself, should have been more vigilant about the cheaters and trimmers in our midst.
From now on we should keep a watchful eye on these “names” because these are the men and women who have the unenviable task of explaining to us our past, the present and what the future holds as we battle our way out of the current economic crisis. Clarity and investigative reporting is in their hands. If not, it should be. Those who report on the economy now have our attention. As the new bold face names, they should not be afraid to take us by the scruff of our necks, and shake us into reality. They are the new celebrities of journalism who will be with us for a long time to come. We should get used to them being around and when things get better, we should not ignore them as we did in the past.

Let Me Count the Ways

This essay first appeared in the June issue of The Digital Journalist, www.digitaljournalist.org.

Let Me Count the Ways, if Possible
By
Ron Steinman

Look at journalism today. Look hard. Though much of what is taking place is apparent, if you blink, you will miss some of what is happening. Newspapers are closing. Others are failing and will also probably close. Reporters, editors and all manner of staff are losing their jobs. Because newspapers and print in general is under siege, everyone has an opinion about the future of journalism and to be more specific, news in print. Some say that there is too much serious thinking in the journalism community. Others say there is not nearly enough and much of it is coming too late. But it is hard thinking and needed. Some is practical. Much is academic. All is about the future of journalism. It is about the failed past and missed opportunities as well as a desire to remake journalism if it is to have a future worth preserving.
Turn in a circle and for every degree, you will find a new or different idea how to save newspapers. It is impossible to list everything everyone says about how best to keep newspapers from falling into the waste heap. It is as if the idea of newspapers, mainstream media, if you will, is slowly moving toward dementia. Living in past glory is not possible. Journalism’s future is all that matters. Survival is what journalism wants, but how is open to question. On some levels, survival in the old way might be a dream. I would be deceiving any readers if I said do not despair. It is apparent, however, that we cannot continue fully with the once hallowed core of journalism, the printed page, the broadsheet and the tabloid.
Many of the ideas how to save the newspaper business come from pundits who are searching for answers they may never find. There are so many voices it is as if the thoughts are bouncing around in an echo chamber. Free from the constraints of reality, they tend to overwhelm us with one theory after another, most of which will not work. I would call it the Babel effect. Along with the many freelance thinkers about journalism’s future is a group of theorists who believe the Internet will save those who embrace its every nuance sooner than later. They say that print will die some day soon and it cannot be soon enough for them. This implies that everyone has a computer, PDA, smart phone, or whatever, and is anxiously clicking and thumbing his or her way to find information they once found in a paper. Not so fast. It is simply not true. Everyone can have an opinion. Importantly, and at times confusing, one opinion is as good as another.
Journalism, though, when it can, is looking to survive by a number of shifting schemes, some possible, others not. One model that is not new has us pay for the newspaper online, the way we subscribe for home delivery. Another is to solicit payments for a news site’s output or its selected portions posted online. This can be limited, as special needs and desires, or full service. Thinkers talk about other pay scales. They refer to tiered charges, similar in a way to what is taking place in sports arenas and new baseball stadiums with the better seats costing more money than the back rows. Each part of the Web site will have a different price and its own set of rules. It may work for some, but I am leery of that because the youth of America, the future consumers of news as we once knew it, do not want to pay for anything, especially when they had been getting everything free online. This sense of entitlement by the young may be the biggest hindrance to journalism surviving in the coming world of 3.0, the next path on the Internet. Some in this generation are so arrogant they believe they can create their own news sites through links they seek and use. But without news coming from somewhere else, all those links are are useless. News and information does not come out of thin air.
That brings us to what everyone who cares about the future of journalism discusses daily. The cost of doing business for a news gathering organization is high. It will continue high and in coming years will be even higher. Without money coming in from advertisers and subscriptions of any kind, there will be a lack of funds to gather daily news and worse, there will be very little money for investigative journalism. Free is a wonderful concept but by its very nature, it fails the news business. As with any organization, it costs money to provide goods and services. If the product is free and there is no money coming in, the product will disappear from the shelf. The business collapses, whether it makes plastics or presents the news. Free must be a word we eliminate for consumers of news. Otherwise the world of news will be Orwellian. Controlled by the few and dispensed to the many, news will become a mirror image of Craig’s List, one classified note after another that people will pore over in search of personal gratification. There will be too much useless information and the overly “informed” will become even less informed than they are now.
Some gurus want print to become non-profits so reporters, editors and managers will not be responsible to owners or shareholders. Other ideas want print online to have firewalls, stonewalls, no walls. There are also those who have no ideas except they pride themselves in repeating the mantra of “I told you newspapers would fail. Why did you not listen to me?” Thanks for the help. Those who publish newspapers and magazines appreciate your crystal ball gazing. If only you had a workable idea or two beyond your doomsday scenario.
Not all newspapers and magazines are dead or even dying. There are some estimates that more than a 100 million people still read newspapers every day. Though a decline from former highs, that number of readers is not insignificant, however you parse it. Some are weekly and local or small town papers. Despite the Internet, recent surveys show that nearly 60 percent of the young, meaning those under 34 years, still read a newspaper, even if not as often as they once did. Pre-Web days, the numbers were probably never very high anyway, unless the reader was looking for what interested him or her most. Do not be fooled by the reach of the Internet. Not everyone locks into a computer or his or her portable device all the time. Along with the decline in newspaper readership, TV viewing has also declined. In this severe economic downturn, advertising is off for everything, including once untouchable television.
Some newspaper Web sites are starting to pull in readers even if they do not draw advertisers in the numbers print formerly did. If print migrates fully to the Internet, which it might someday but not someday soon, will advertisers who believe that not everything sells on the Web support what was formally in print on paper? So far, advertising has not matched this early migration. It costs money to run a news gathering enterprise. What if the money needed never becomes a reality? What then? I have no answer and I think no one else does either. Is there a magic phrase that will unlock the mystery of how readers seek information on the Web and who will pay? Only time will tell. It is my hope that history and culture are on the side of journalism but perhaps that is optimistic and thus in this world where so many expect everything to be free on the Web, it may prove to be a false hope. Yes, the migration to the Internet has started. Where it will end is anyone’s guess.